Since the beginning of 2020, working professionals across a multitude of industries have aspired to achieve a healthy work-life balance. The legal industry is no exception as law firm employees must keep up with growing demands in an increasingly competitive marketplace for professional legal services.
One of the most interesting trends to emerge in the past few years is how legal talent uses technology to support healthier work-life balances. It’s not just the personal lives of your firm employees that benefit from work-life balance, but the firm as a whole also reaps the rewards.
There are practical business benefits for your firm by creating healthy work environments. You can both attract and retain top legal talent by supporting a healthy balance between professional and personal responsibilities of your workers.
How does work-life balance for employees help the firm?
As a managing partner at a law firm, you have three primary concerns for your business:
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Satisfying your legal talent
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Satisfying your legal clients
Some legal experts believe the only priority is the third point on the list. However, the most successful firms prioritize all three, and they do so in the listed order that they appear on this page. Successful law firm managers understand a simple logic: Legal Recurring Revenue can only expand if clients are happy, and clients can only be happy if the legal talent servicing them are happy.
Give your firm a competitive advantage by investing in resources that help your employees achieve a healthy work-life balance. Legal technology is one such resource that automates many clerical and administrative workflows. It allows your employees to save valuable time on necessary clerical tasks, and that time can be reallocated into billable hours to service clients.
Increased casework is expanding demand for legal services
Over the past three years, there’s been a growing demand for legal services provided by law firms. The Clio 2022 Legal Trends Report identifies this increasing trend by comparing the past three years to the average amount of national retained legal business in 2019, the final full year uninterrupted by a global pandemic.
Following a slight decline in legal business throughout 2020, the following two years saw a rebound in retained legal services across the United States. According to the findings, firms opened new cases at an average of 10% above the amount of legal retained business in 2019.
Increased caseloads are also translating into expanded billable hours that are invoiced to clients. Compared to the baseline in 2019, the number of billable hours that are invoiced to clients is up by an average of 28% between March 2021 and August 2022. Collected revenue is also up by an average of 31% compared to inbound revenue from 2019.
Entity management software fosters gainful client relationships
Renewed demand for legal services and the boost in Legal Recurring Revenue for law firms indicates that the legal industry will continue to thrive for years to come. Part of the fuel for this trend is that a growing number of firms are incorporating legal technology like entity management software to support healthier client relationships.
Entity management software is a legal technology solution built by legal experts for legal experts. Its purpose is to automate and streamline traditional entity management workflows to help law firms maintain diligent minute book records at accelerated rates.
Time saved on clerical and administrative work translates into more opportunities to service clients. Entity management software functions as a single source of truth for any questions that clients have about their legal and compliance matters. Your clerks can simply open the platform, use the advanced search features to find the record in question, and provide immediate answers in only a few seconds.
Compare this approach to client relationships with the traditional method. Lawyers and clerks would take client feedback and scramble through boxes and binders of physical documents to find the specific minute book record in question. It’s a process that could take hours or several days to complete.
Which approach do you believe will support more fulfilling client relationships? Subsequently, which clients do you believe will be the most satisfied, and therefore more likely to renew their business interests with your firm?
Legal technology simplifies clerks’ lives and clients benefit
Your firm can make your legal talent happier, healthier, and live a more fulfilling work-life balance. Simply invest in entity management software and other modern legal technologies to create efficient workflows for your employees.
When people work smarter, not harder, they become more productive. Improved productivity at your firm means more time is available to increase billable hours and time dedicated to servicing clients. Greater service is far more likely to improve client satisfaction, which translates into expanded Legal Recurring Revenue for your firm.
Remember that you should focus on three main priorities to support your firm’s future growth:
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Satisfy your legal talent
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Satisfy your paying clients
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Increase Legal Recurring Revenue
Investing in solutions that prioritize all three responsibilities — and in that order — result in more profitable business to grow your firm. Get on the legal technology bandwagon and invest in an intuitive entity management platform like MinuteBox today.