No matter the size of your law firm, maintaining a positive cash flow is essential. The most successful law firms use a variety of best practices to manage their finances effectively, many of which can be implemented relatively quickly. We’ll lay out three different ways you can make small changes to your practice that result in a significant positive impact on your bottom line.
Almost all lawyers in private practice are required to maintain a firm trust account under their state’s attorney trust account rules. The rules in various states might be written differently, but the concepts are the same. So let’s get started and learn what you are doing right….and wrong.
Chasing down non-paying clients is the bane of most lawyers’ existence. And when you’re already spending an additional three and a half weeks on unplanned work every year, it makes settling overdue accounts that much more frustrating.
While you may not be able to avoid ever having to deal with non-paying clients, here are three things you can do throughout a case to reduce the incidence of non-payment.
To help attorneys better understand the trends that affect their business, LawPay has created a new infographic, “Recent Trends in Legal Payments.” Explore this infographic to see how changes in payment preferences could affect your law firm, and what you can do moving forward to improve payments in your practice.
There is no shortage of voices out there offering tips to attorneys who are looking to go out and start their own firm. Unfortunately, with so many lengthy articles, e-books, webinars, and other resources circulating, it can be hard for attorneys to narrow down this information into practical, actionable items they can take to help make their new venture a success.
Here are a few pieces of advice that we have heard from solos time and time again and they just might help you shorten the learning curve.
When people think of high-profile hacks, their minds don’t usually drift to the legal world. However, recent security breaches at several large firms, including Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, have highlighted the vulnerabilities law firms face. In fact, after one such event, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said the incident “should serve as a wake-up call for law firms around the world: you are and will be targets of cyber hacking, because you have information valuable to would-be criminals.”
As a veteran of nearly 39 years of real law practice (by “real” I mean a broad general practice serving the general public, small businesses, families, and individuals in a myriad of contract, trial, and appellate matters), I know the importance of cash flow.
In my quest for financial security and success, I have perused every bar journal article, attended numerous practice management CLE’s, and varied my approach to billing and collections to see what worked. Find out what I learned.
According to an industry-wide study conducted by LexisNexis, 9 out of 10 lawyers say that they’re operating during a time of unprecedented change. In addition, 6 in 10 agree that retaining clients has become a daunting challenge compared to years past. The fact of the matter is that the legal industry itself isn’t the only thing […]
By 2017, it is estimated that 95% of non-cash transactions will be paid by credit or debit cards. That leaves just a mere 5% paid through traditional paper check payments. Many attorneys are beginning to recognize if they don’t accept credit cards already, they may need to reconsider in order to facilitate collection of fees in the very near future.