December 07, 2020

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Hanging a shingle and establishing a high-volume legal practice takes ambition. High volume also requires high levels of organization to accompany a stream of clients, cases, settlements and awards. In other words, an attorney who pursues high-volume work must also embrace productivity.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created a season for such productivity. Personal injury, product liability, non-compete agreements, bankruptcy and worker’s compensation, data privacy-related contractual compliance, business-interruption insurance disputes, employment discrimination and other practice disciplines are ripe for an expanded pipeline of work.

For instance, Clio reports that the volume of new civil litigation matters nationally has increased 25 percent since the second week of April. Meanwhile, new insurance-related matters have surged by more than 100 percent.

This increase invites opportunity, but it can also invite chaos without precision. Take this scenario:

An attorney must file a discovery response in a case by Friday afternoon, but his client cannot comply until the next week. The attorney works to quickly file his motion of continuance. In doing so, he forgets to include his required affidavit stating opposing counsel does not oppose. This angers the judge, who threatens sanctions. The client, in turn, could sue for professional malpractice.

Document automation technology can help that attorney or his firm pre-assemble those motion documents into a set. They can automatically create working templates and workflow to assign case data to those templates, now tucked into a central repository.

This is the promise of an investment in such document automation and document management software. However, the document generation story for law firms is not just one of features and benefits. It also tells a tale of how a firm can create a culture of productivity, one that creates a path for the firm to thrive as a business.

Here are five steps along the path toward that culture of productivity:

1.    Save time to complete more tasks and increase volume.

With document automation and centralized storage, a full motion for summary judgment, something that manually takes several hours or days to complete, can instead now conceivably take dozens of minutes.

An old pain in the neck consisting of fumbled files, borrowed existing work product, format revisions, sluggish entry of relevant information and case data, case law updates, fine-tuning of paragraph language, correction of errors and associated tasks goes away. A new process of uploading compliant document sets, creating template fields instantly, making adjustments to and saving the templates, filling out form fields and clicking a button takes its place.

The waste of those indestructible billable hours and the accumulation of unwanted non-billable hours dissipates. Now, dedicate the refreshed time to strategy work, research, client consultation, firm operations and the retention of new clients and fees.

2.    Hire more attorneys to smooth caseloads and accelerate case cycles.

Some of the chaos of solo and small-practice life and resultant erroneous work product and missed deadlines can be attributed directly to caseload. The stereotype of the manic, in-your-face attorney driving from court to court, searching wildly for misplaced work product back in the office is no mere myth.

Document automation and the return on investment that it can generate cuts down on overhead significantly. That often triggers a chain reaction of less clutter, more focused management, resultant decreases in costs and increases in revenue and, over time, bringing on new junior attorneys to take on some of the work as reduced time accommodates new volume.

With more available hands, delays can go down, concurrent work can ramp up and the turnover rate from case to case can improve. Thus, your productivity stroll continues.

3.    Create value that improves your marketability.

The time you save and the overhead you reduce as a result of document generation tools can correlate with an increase in the accuracy, quality and effectiveness of your drafting and motion practice. The value the technology can proactively create for yourself and your firm is hard to underemphasize.

How does that value manifest itself? If a prospective client finds you, whether through a Google search or a referral, there’s a good chance that the prospect will do some additional homework before contacting you. Successful outcomes, for one thing, matter. So do the experience and client trust and reviews you gain.

But reputation is in play, too. Even attorneys with a known track record can inspire a gossip mill among colleagues or make the news with tales of laziness, public flayings by judges, unhappy mentees and other such notoriety.

Remember: Just because new clients can walk through the door as a result of efficiency gains doesn’t mean they necessarily will. The value you create today affects the volume of tomorrow.

4.    Grow your firm’s profits and invest in your business and your people.

Nearly a third of respondents to a 2019 survey conducted by Thomson Reuters identified attorney underperformance as a top risk to their profitability. Given that the survey sponsor is Thomson Reuters, this statistic stands as an implicit endorsement of legal technology as a general solution to this issue.

Because high performance amid a high-volume legal practice is of such high value, the specific connection between the implementation of document automation and document management and profitability is perhaps even stronger. At this stage along the path, you could very well see a high enough boost in your margins to begin thinking bigger.

Upgrade your office equipment. Enhance the look and feel of your waiting area with a remodel. Market your firm more aggressively through television and point-per-click online advertising. Offer more incentives to attorneys to perform—raises, bonuses, CLE coverage and other recognition of work. And recruit a higher caliber of associates and partners.

5.    Expand your legal and geographical footprints into new territory.

Over time, the efficiency that document automation and document management produce could well continue to increase substantially. This hands you some working—and scaling—capital.

What other high-volume areas of practice do you feel comfortable introducing? Could you graduate from small practice to mid-sized practice, maybe with an in-house practice management function? Are there other counties, regions or states that make business sense to compete within? These are questions you may be able to answer and act upon affirmatively.

At this stage of your journey, take a look around. What started out as a purchase to solve ongoing day-to-day problems of process and compliance has now become a top-line source of growth. Chaos will probably never disappear completely in practicing law itself (though one can dream), but you have proven that chaos in your business can very much be tamped down, and your productivity can very much rise.

In doing so, you have created your own little cultural phenomenon.