Part 1: Why do they matter?
Many lawyers won’t see a spreadsheet until they step out of school and into a law firm. In fact, many still won’t deal with results like cashflow, P&Ls or productivity until they start a management role.
Lawyers are masters of language, logic and reasoning, but they aren’t always comfortable with numbers and financial results. Yet, numbers are essential to running an effective and engaged team. The best results come from a team where:
- Roles and KPIs are well defined
- Tools streamline their effort for maximum effectiveness
- Results are transparent and efforts are recognised.
It becomes a virtuous circle whereby an engaged, motivated team deliver happier clients – ultimately delivering stronger financial results.
The 2015 Macquarie Bank Legal Benchmarking Report found that top performing firms (recording profit growth rate averaging 29%) focussed on growing revenue by attracting and retaining great staff while investing heavily in technology to simplify systems and liberate staff to work more flexibly.
Technology, used well, is not about reducing staff. It should enable them to be more effective and client centric. A recent article in Deloitte University Press argued technology and humans think better together, complementing one another. Differentiating your firm (now more than ever) relies on utilising both staff and technology to deliver personalised service.
People now demand that information be immediately available, on any device, from anywhere and at no additional cost. We also expect to tailor our devices to view information the way we want. How do you make that happen in your law firm?
A quick checklist
1. Timeliness
Does your team have on-demand access to their progress, performance indicators and tasks, facilitating more timely responses and achievement of KPIs?
What gets measured, gets managed. Look for technology that provides a personalised view of key performance measures, workflow and tasks in real-time, from any device.
2. Accessibility
Give lawyers more value-adding time by showing key matters, clients and latest documents at a glance. As well as the ability to drill down into more detailed information like documents and invoices etc.
3. Flexibility
Traditionally, lawyers have received information, both legal and business, through text. Yet, visuals have a much stronger impact – they’re easier to read, overcome language barriers, and information retention is higher (80% for visual, compared to 20% for text).
Good technology should be able to display information in both ways.
Giving staff flexibility to tailor their own information is powerful – especially if the process is delivered on a robust, fully-integrated system as opposed to time consuming, error-prone data exports and excel spreadsheets.
To get a sense of how technology can accomplish the above, take a look at FilePro Dashboard.
