We’re a couple of months into self-isolation now, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that work isn’t going back to normal any time soon. Even if we open up our economies, it will be months (years?) before most people will be comfortable going into a busy office building, traveling, attending in-person meetings, or shaking hands to seal a deal or greet an acquaintance.

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For many people, lawyers and clients alike, money is tight now and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

You may have less business, longer collection times, or more push-back on bills. You need to make sure that every penny counts, and that every minute of your time delivers something valuable for your practice, your clients, or you personally.

Need to cut costs in your law practice but not sure where to start?

To survive, you will need to cut costs and continue to deliver the same high-quality legal work. Your cost reductions must be careful and targeted. You must find ways to provide what your clients value and only what they value, at a lower cost.

You can reduce your costs by spending less time on a task because you’ve eliminated steps or delegated it to a lower-cost, or automated it. Or found a way to eliminate a waste associated with that task (a place where you routinely have to rework a document, or correct an error) or a delay that holds you up. These are all wastes. Reducing them will reduce your costs, without impacting quality (in fact, you may improve the quality!).

In a knowledge-based profession like law, it can be hard to SEE waste. But if you have a framework for identifying waste, you can start to spot it. In fact, you will probably never look at your practice the same way again.

There are eight types of waste that we routinely see in every law firm and legal department we work with. Being able to spot them in your own practice WILL help you identify places where you can make cuts that won’t impact quality.

Find Your Eight Wastes

This week’s tip is simple: download the Eight Wastes Workbook. Go back and have a look at our Value and Waste series on the blog. Then sit down with a cup of coffee and the workbook, hold a video team meeting, and start brainstorming. Ask your team, or yourself if you work alone:

• What seems harder than it should?
• What takes too long?
• What frustrates you or them?

Record all of your wastes and frustrations in the workbook. When you are done, go back over the list. Pick one thing. Ask yourself what you can do differently to eliminate that one waste or frustration without affecting quality.

We can’t control much about the pandemic, but we can control HOW we work. The Eight Wastes approach gives you an easy-to-use tool to improve HOW you work, so you can take back that control.

And that’s it for this week’s tip.

Don’t forget to grab your Eight Wastes Workbook and put time on your calendar to work through it.

Thanks a lot everybody! See you next week.