wvlawyer304
Junior Member
Hi there. Long time lurkers first time poster. I'm looking for some advice on how to make my situation work well. I think I can help make it happen with some input from others.
A little background on me: I live in the capital city of West Virginia. I just finished school with graduate degrees in both law and business. I've run a small company that I started in high school seven years ago. The bar exam is over, but I won't have the results for a couple more weeks.
And the firm: they do a lot of personal injury, criminal defense, and family law.
I interned for this firm a couple summers ago and they seem to like me. They think I have great attorney and management potential so they've put me in charge of the office in addition to giving me some cases. So far I've made some small adjustments like switching to a cheaper internet/phone company, reducing some phone lines (they had a ton which were never used,) and getting some of the IT infrastructure worked on (two weeks ago most of the computers didn't even work, some weren't connected to the network, etc.)
One of the partners is especially worried about the costs of these changes. Hiring IT people to overhaul the network system, clean up the loads of spyware on the computer, and get our software licenses up to date is expensive.
Productivity at the firm is VERY low because paralegals and secretaries can't use the computers properly, and we have big problems with document management. Once everything is fixed and our processes are made more efficient, I know that productivity will be up our bottom line will go up too. Just switching the cable company the way we did will save us $2000/year.
Receiving payments from customers is another HUGE issue. Right now, we quote a customer an approximate price based on what we think they can pay. Then we discount that price from 25-50% based on the customer's situation and how they were referred to us. After that, we generally tell them that they owe nothing up front and they can send periodic payments. Everything is flat fee, there is no hourly billing. This is something I hope to change once our software is working properly.
So what happens is that something that would normally cost $5,000 is discounted to $3,500, with nothing or maybe half ($1,750) required up front. The end result is that the firm receives half or a third of what the "cost" is. We are doing work for free constantly. Last week I was at a hearing with a client from over two years ago who had paid us a total of $170. Our software said he owed over $3k. We probably have a year's worth of firm revenue that is owed and will never be paid.
Does anyone have advice on managing a firm with older, more skilled attorneys? (Of course, I believe they are less skilled businesspeople!) Also perhaps advice on IT management, legal software (we use Practice Master,) managing much older paralegals/receptionists at my age, and most of all, how on earth can we get paid from these people? Should we require everything up front?
I know it's long, thanks for reading and I appreciate any help.
A little background on me: I live in the capital city of West Virginia. I just finished school with graduate degrees in both law and business. I've run a small company that I started in high school seven years ago. The bar exam is over, but I won't have the results for a couple more weeks.
And the firm: they do a lot of personal injury, criminal defense, and family law.
I interned for this firm a couple summers ago and they seem to like me. They think I have great attorney and management potential so they've put me in charge of the office in addition to giving me some cases. So far I've made some small adjustments like switching to a cheaper internet/phone company, reducing some phone lines (they had a ton which were never used,) and getting some of the IT infrastructure worked on (two weeks ago most of the computers didn't even work, some weren't connected to the network, etc.)
One of the partners is especially worried about the costs of these changes. Hiring IT people to overhaul the network system, clean up the loads of spyware on the computer, and get our software licenses up to date is expensive.
Productivity at the firm is VERY low because paralegals and secretaries can't use the computers properly, and we have big problems with document management. Once everything is fixed and our processes are made more efficient, I know that productivity will be up our bottom line will go up too. Just switching the cable company the way we did will save us $2000/year.
Receiving payments from customers is another HUGE issue. Right now, we quote a customer an approximate price based on what we think they can pay. Then we discount that price from 25-50% based on the customer's situation and how they were referred to us. After that, we generally tell them that they owe nothing up front and they can send periodic payments. Everything is flat fee, there is no hourly billing. This is something I hope to change once our software is working properly.
So what happens is that something that would normally cost $5,000 is discounted to $3,500, with nothing or maybe half ($1,750) required up front. The end result is that the firm receives half or a third of what the "cost" is. We are doing work for free constantly. Last week I was at a hearing with a client from over two years ago who had paid us a total of $170. Our software said he owed over $3k. We probably have a year's worth of firm revenue that is owed and will never be paid.
Does anyone have advice on managing a firm with older, more skilled attorneys? (Of course, I believe they are less skilled businesspeople!) Also perhaps advice on IT management, legal software (we use Practice Master,) managing much older paralegals/receptionists at my age, and most of all, how on earth can we get paid from these people? Should we require everything up front?
I know it's long, thanks for reading and I appreciate any help.
