Law firm owners across the country have responded to this difficult time in a variety of ways — but the BEST thing you can do right now is step back and see where you can make improvements for the betterment of your business.
In the latest installment of Leading Through Adversity, I sit down with Alan Cleveland of Adamson & Cleveland to hear what he’s been doing to lead his team to come out stronger on the other side.
Check out our full conversation here.
1:50 – Resource to the community. We’re not focused on advertising for cases. We want to be a resource in our community for pandemic information. Our posts are about how to get unemployment and CDC links. We want to be a resource and a leader in our community to help folks. It’s crazy for everybody, and people look to lawyers for help. That’s what we do in the personal injury arena. We’re helping people. We want to continue to be a resource regardless of whether it’s about a case or just help them figure out what they need to do to get through this.
3:45 – Remember us. We’re not competing with the billboard guys and the million-dollar budgets. That’s not who we are. We’re more personalized and specific. We take a smaller caseload. We want people to remember us when the time comes. We all know enough to be dangerous in other areas of the law where we’ve handled a case somewhere down the line.
4:40 – Took the fear of the unknown. We have a good team there. We all wear a lot of hats in our firm. We’re an essential business in Georgia. First, we reassured our team, “We’re not cutting anybody. That’s not what we want to do. We’re okay.” We took that fear of the unknown and what’s going to happen. We let them know that we’re okay and we’ve got a plan. The other thing we talked about is we didn’t focus on when you work remotely, you get some efficiencies and you get some inefficiencies.
6:39 – Stick to a plan. We’re always looking for new ways to improve our workflow, to make our cases better, to help our clients. The processes are another obstacle we’ve got to get over and move on. We are trying new things. We’ve been in this process of revamping our accounting system. We want to keep investing in our people and give them the tools or the skill sets to help them educate them to keep going forward. Things are going to change and be different. Just having a plan and sticking to it helps you get through this.
7:41 – Being efficient. We realized we had all this technology lying around and actually used it. That’ll make us more efficient. We use Time Matters, a case management system for about a year. We’re also looking at the first ELITE conference we did a few weeks ago. We weren’t really thinking about, “We need to expand the practice in other areas.” But for us, the bubble is going to come in nine or 10 months.
9:44 – Change is constant. The only constant in my life is change. There are always new cases. There are always new ways to do things. There are new precedents and new avenues for practicing. You have to be constantly evolving. If you’re not, you’re left behind. Right now the most important thing when looking at your business is to reflect on your practice. It’s a good time to look and say, “Okay, what do I want my practice to be? Where do we want to go?”
If you agree or disagree with anything said here, I want to know about it. Text me at 404–531–7691 to tell me your thoughts.
