Take time today to put in place a system for regularly closing, storing and purging files and materials that you and your clients no longer need, and you'll never want for storage space or an organized filing system.

Take a hard look at your compensation system and see if it is aligned with your business goals - both short-term and long-term. Ensure that your future is being secured every day by rewarding the types of activities that will ensure progress towards long-term goals - that are in the best interests of the firm as a whole.

Your Key Statistics Report is the nerve-center of your cash-flow analysis. This report looks directly at the factors affecting cash flow, both in the short-term and in the slightly longer term.

The short opinion survey is one of the easiest, cheapest, and least used client development tools available to the law firm.

In a 1995 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Why Satisfied Clients Defect,” the authors pointed out the important distinction between satisfied clients and completely satisfied clients.  In markets where competition was intense, they noted a tremendous difference between the loyalty of satisfied and completely satisfied customers.  For instance, in the auto industry they found that even a slight drop from complete satisfaction resulted in an enormous drop in customer loyalty.

This phenomenon is not limited to manufactured products.  It …

Most firms spend far too many hours and kill way too many trees producing reports which are rarely reviewed, month after month, for their lawyers . The reality is that, in order to successfully manage the financial health of the firm, you only need to get lawyers to look at exceptions to the norm, not the norm itself.

For example, for management purposes, while you look at all the firm’s receivables each month, the reports that you prepare for the lawyers do not need this level of detail. You only need to show the ones which are over a certain …

How to increase the dough in your pocket from your practice by increasing your billing turnover rate.

In what condition are your accounts receivable?

While your total accounts receivable number from your accounting system tells you the total amount of money owed by your firm’s clients, your accounts receivable report should be aged 30, 60 and 90+ days to give you greater information of the state of your receivables.

The 2008 Juris Law Firm Economic Survey from LexisNexis (the last date for which we have such a survey – they are no longer being published – a great loss as these surveys were very detailed and informative) shows that ‘days fees outstanding’ for accounts receivable in 2008 …

Understanding your hourly cost structure has enormous implications for examining the financial status of your firm and for determining your top-profitability lawyers (as opposed to top revenue generators… which may or may not be the same!).

Part of coming to grips with the financial management side of your practice is learning to read the numbers. One of the more important ones to understand is the concept of "Effective Hourly Rate".

Decide to block out your time and put aside one block of time to accomplish important but not urgent tasks to avoid them never bubbling up on your To Do list - and actually get them done.