The Damage “Drift” Can Do to Your Practice

One of the easiest things to let slip, is “working on the business.” The crisis du jour is always going to trump time spent thinking, contemplating and looking at what we like to call “drift.”

If you started with systems in place sometimes you drift from the system or process because a new employee comes on board and doesn’t really understand the system or adds to it or customizes it in some way. Other times, you may just want to try something new to see if it will work. Edit that, tweak it a little and before you know it, it doesn’t even resemble the original process.

It is not uncommon to drift like that and keep drifting until a problem suddenly shows up and forces you to stop and look at what’s going on.

The very best thing you can do is schedule times to look at certain benchmarks to see if you’re on track with your own satisfaction, efficiency, and revenue.

Members of the Academy bring their staff to Academy Summits and generally use some of the time away from the office for the entire team to reflect on how things are working and what they’d like to see, individually and as a team, work differently or improve.

Department and Firm Meetings are great to keep up with the daily crush of the workload flying by, but to really focus on how things are working and if it’s efficient, profitable, and rewarding, you need to step away.

Every law firm has systems in place. They may be great systems intentionally put in place or they may be processes that a now retired or deceased partner put in place in 1962. Either way, make sure you schedule some time to think about how:

• prospective clients are finding you,
• your meetings with them work,
• the work flows through your office,
• clients FEEL about you,
• your staff feels about the work they do,
• you feel at the end of a day or a week.

You don’t have to be a Member to use a few of our tools to take a look at what you have going on in your practice. If you need any help looking at the systems you have working or not working in your practice, we’ve put our 11 Systems into an 11 Day Email Boot Camp. We just made it available, and it’s free.

One system per day is sent to your email inbox for 11 Days, and if we haven’t already sent you an E-Myth Attorney book in the past, we’ll send you one just for completing the Boot Camp. The E-Myth Attorney (co-authored by the founders of the Academy) is another excellent tool to use when it comes to thinking about the systems you want to implement for smoother sailing.
The course covers:

• How to Create a Strategic and Operational Plan For Your Firm– We’ll teach you how to lay the foundation for a successful practice and your ideal law firm, as well as how to construct the groundwork for making that vision a reality.
• Master Finances and Operations- Learn how to access your firm’s overall fiscal health, interpret why certain financial indicators exist within your firm, and understand how to go about making critical financial changes.
• Assert Your Leadership- Discover a more effective way to lead your law firm so that you can inspire and empower your team, earn the continuing respect of your colleagues, and have a positive impact in your community.
• Build a Superstar Team and Ensure Staff Accountability–  You’ll learn the Academy’s system for Hiring and Onboarding that will transform your staff into the powerhouse employees that you, and your clients, need them to be.
• Upgrade Your Technology– Take a peek into our “go to” technology systems that integrate tools to draft documents and manage your firm, so that you are getting the most out of your tech investments.
• Master Your Marketing-   Learn step-by-step how to attract a steady stream of clients to your practice without breaking the bank or wasting your time on marketing that doesn’t actually work for lawyers.
• Enroll More Clients– Implement our top client enrollment strategies so that you can weed out bad prospects, shorten initial appointments, and convert a significant percentage of your prospects into paying clients of your firm.
• Upgrade Your Workflow Processes– Swipe our proprietary system for increasing the amount of work that you can take on—without balls dropping or work falling through the cracks.
• Become the Leader in Your Field- We’ll show you a simplified way to remain on the cutting edge of legal strategy, tools, and education so that you can have total confidence in what you are providing to clients in the form of your legal advice and documents.
• Add New Streams of Revenue to Your Practice– Learn strategies our members are using right now to expand their revenue streams so that the estate and/or elder law process is never a “one and done” experience.
• Create Your Own “Mastermind”- Combat isolation in practice while staying on the cutting edge and truly standing out in your community.

To access the 11 Day Boot Camp via email, go to

http://training.aaepa.com/11daybootcamp-blog to get started.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback along the way!

Enjoy!

Jennifer Price
Chief Operating Officer
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com