How often have you sat at your desk and said, “there just has to be an easier way to do this”? We’ve hard-baked inefficiency into a lot of what we do in our profession. But your time is money, so EFFICIENCY is the key to your profitability. This month, we’ll be sharing the best of what we’ve learned about maximizing efficiency in a 21st century law practice.

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When you increase your efficiency, you can accomplish more by doing less. It’s all about improving your activity-to-output ratio.

What does that mean for your law practice, when you need to achieve the best possible outcome for your clients? It means you need processes and systems in place that allow you and your team to do MORE without putting as much time or effort.

Unfortunately, most lawyers don’t have efficient processes and systems in place. Year after year, studies like the Clio Legal Trends report show that most lawyers can only manage about 3 hours a day of billable work. The rest is spent mired in inefficient processes and admin. But when you’re more efficient, you can increase your billable hours AND complete all those the necessary, non-billable tasks. The result? Happier lawyers, happier clients, and more money. 

So this week’s tip is to be honest about how inefficiency may be affecting your bottom line. Maybe you’ve been sweeping it under the rug for a while. Maybe you’re blissfully unaware of the ways you’re actually losing time and money - two of your most valuable and limited resources.

This week, identify one obvious inefficiency in your practice that affects your profits. If you can’t think of one, then you should download a copy of our guide, 8 Ways to Stop Losing Time and Money in your Law Practice. It can be hard to spot the hidden inefficiencies in your daily work. But our guide will give you a framework to identify them, so you can improve that vital activity-to-output ratio.

Legal professionals who improve their activity-to-output ratio deliver more value for themselves, for their firm and, most importantly, for their clients. Put simply, they’re much more likely to be recognized as true value-driven professionals.

And that’s it. Join us next week for more on building a profitable and productive law practice. If you want information like this once a week, delivered straight to your inbox on Wednesdays sign up below so you never miss a Tip of the Week.

Thanks a lot everybody! We’ll see you next week.