A Recovering Lawyer's Take on the Business of Law - Part 2

Streamlining Processes and Avoiding Manual Work

After moving from legal practice into business consulting, I’ve seen firsthand how operational inefficiencies can hold firms back. Manual processes and outdated workflows can cause costly mistakes and create unnecessary stress for legal teams. This part of the series focuses on strategies to streamline your operations and reduce these pain points.

Thinking critically about manual processes is important. They can often lead to increased error rates, overworked colleagues and delays. All of which impose hidden costs for a firm, especially a firm trying to grow: service delivery takes longer and requires more oversight. That time could be spent either generating revenue or new business.

Manual Processes: A few years ago, my company felt the pain of manual processes so deeply that our management team could recite this from memory: “Manual processes lead to mistakes and overworked colleagues.” We had people working hard, with the best intentions, but still making mistakes, which deflated the whole organization.

How did we fix it? By mapping out all the tasks that needed to happen and grouping them into functions that minimized hand-offs and data entry. We then found software solutions to automate the entire process.

For law firms, think of practice management software. If you’re still keeping time on handwritten notes or spreadsheets, there are multiple hand-offs and data entry points that introduce errors and inefficiencies: converting time entries to an invoice, reviewing and revising the invoice, finalizing and sending it out. And that’s not accounting for client questions and push-back.

Can’t Automate a Broken Process: Moving away from manual processes is important, but it might require reexamining the process itself. A process that’s undefined or not documented still presents risk, even if automated.

Writing down your processes is the first step toward evaluating whether they can be automated or made more efficient. This is a critical first step.

The next step is just as important: assigning accountability. Who is responsible for each step of the process? Each member of the team needs to understand what they are responsible for, who they need input from, and when their part of the process is complete.

As part of assigning accountability, identify what metrics you will track so you can determine how the process is operating. This will also help identify bottlenecks and pain points, which will help you further refine the process.

Key Takeaways

• You can’t automate chaos. Redesign and document processes before introducing technology.
• Minimize hand-offs and data entry. Group tasks logically and assign clear accountability.
• Automate for accuracy and scale. Choose tools that fit your process and measure their impact.
• Build a culture of improvement. Regularly review processes, metrics, and lessons learned.

By following these steps, law firms and professional services organizations can move from firefighting to proactive, scalable growth—reducing stress, boosting morale, and delivering better client outcomes

Thank you for reading Part 2 of this series. If streamlining your processes resonates with your firm’s needs, I’d love to offer support. Please feel free to email me at mwilbers@legalbackoffice.com or set up a time to meet with me at www.legalbackoffice.com/contact.

‍