Practicing at the top of your law license means that you’re doing those creative things that lawyers get paid the most money for. It means you’re not getting paid to answer phone calls. You’re not getting paid to schedule appointments with clients. You’re not getting paid to get coffee for someone. You’re ARE getting paid to do the high level creative work that lawyers do: creating strategies, crafting briefs, and in some cases conducting legal research.

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Practicing at the Top
of Your Law License:
How to Build Efficiency
and Make More Money

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About Jared
• Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting
• A former practicing attorney, Jared has been advising lawyers and law firms
for over a decade.
• Regular presenter at local, regional and national events, including ABA
TECHSHOW.
• The author of the American Bar Association publication ‘Twitter in One Hour
for Lawyers’.
• Host of the Legal Toolkit podcast on Legal Talk Network.
• Jared also teaches for Concord Law School, Suffolk University Law
School and Solo Practice University.

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“Practicing at the
Top of Your Law License”
• Why is it in quotes?
• What does it mean?
• How do you do it?

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“Practicing at the
Top of Your Law License”
• Step 1: Get Efficient
• Step 2: Delegate
• Step 3: Reset Your Rates

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Step 1: Get Efficient

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Get Paperless
• Buy a (the) good scanner.
• Buy a (the) good PDF conversion software.
• Develop a paperless workflow.
• Write it down.

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Embrace the Cloud
• You need real-time updates and modern
collaboration options.
• You need flexibility.
• You need mobility.
• You need reduced costs and flattened costs.

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Poll #1
Just how cloud-based is your law firm?
(A) What is this ‘cloud’ you speak of?
(B) We run kind of a hybrid model -- some cloud,
some local.
(C) I do everything in the cloud. If I can’t access
the internet, I’m pretty damn grumpy.

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Streamline Your Administrative
Processes
• Client Portals
• Electronic Payment Processing
• Electronic Signatures
• Administrative Workflows

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Step 2: Delegate

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Banish the DIY Mentality
• Other people can do what you do,
including parts of what you do
• Just because you can do it,
doesn’t mean you should do it
• Decide on the substantive and
non-substantive tasks you will outsource

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Select the Right Vendors
• Cloud Access
• Secure
• Data Redundancy
• Features

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Delegate Substantive, Administrative
Tasks
• Create a task list for yourself.
• Divide it between substantive and administrative
tasks.
• Decide what you want to keep, and what you
want to give away.
• Create a workflow for everything.

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Poll #2
Are you good at delegating work?
(A) Honestly, nobody can do things the way I want
them done. So, I do everything.
(B) Even though I am the cat’s ass, I do try to
delegate a few things that I don’t have time to do.
(C) Um, yeah. I delegate everything I can. Why
would I work more?

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Invest in Training
• Traditional law firm training:
‘Here’s your computer, sit down
and work.’
• What you need to do: Create
a training program for each job,
one time.
• Have each employee create a
manual for his or her position, including workflows.

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Step 3: Reset Your Rates

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Build a Value Billing Platform
• The problem with billing via the hour is that every
hour is worth the same.
• But, if you can do things faster, should you lower
your rates? Hell, no.
• Readjust your rates, with a focus on value.
• Everything you do does not have an equal value.
Embrace that.

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Poll #3
Do you apply value billing in your law firm?
(A) Hourly rates. That’s the way Abraham Lincoln
did it, and damnit – that’s how I’m gonna do it!
(B) I do some flat fees here and there, so – yes?
(C) I try to create alternative billing arrangements
for everything, because clients want cost certainty.

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Automate Payments
• Adopt electronic payment processing.
• Create billing processes.
• Build a strategy for staying on top of accounts
receivable and collections.
• Get more upfront, or on a recurring basis.

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Jared D. Correia, Esq.
Founder, CEO | Red Cave Law Firm Consulting
jared@redcavelegal.com | (617) 398-7181
www.redcavelegal.com

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Questions?
Contact Us!
mycase.com
support@mycase.com
800.571.8062

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Thank You!