The Actualized Workplace
Much is written about the need for effective leadership and management. Overwhelmingly, people focus on the importance of leaders establishing culture.
The Management Issue (May/June 2023)
Volume 49, Issue 3
Articles
Succession Planning: Bringing Your People on the Journey
Many traditional aspects of a succession plan persist in importance as a firm grows. A succession plan needs to address emergencies, death, and disability, which can cause disruptions to a practice.
Understanding the Dynamics of Staff Retention
Research has shown that employees start thinking about leaving before they actually decide and act on it. This is hardly a surprise to anyone.
Practical Tips to Maximize Mentoring Relationships
In many professions, including law, succeeding independently is viewed as a sign of real success or strength, and people are often reluctant to acknowledge the need for mentoring.
Tips for Successful Management of Remote Employees
Whether you have a virtual office, have remote or hybrid employees on the team, contract with an outside attorney for overflow, or outsource administrative functions, the way you manage the remote te…
Legal Leaders, Embrace Your Role to Improve Legal Workplaces
Legal managers, administrators and leaders have a vested interest in remaking systems to improve legal professionals’ well-being. Managers should note that taking actionable measures matters; promoti…
Regular Features
Editor's Note: Management Challenges…and Solutions!
Managing a law firm is no easy task, made only more difficult by the multitude of changes in the legal profession. Our feature authors in this issue focus on many different aspects of law firm manage…
Perspectives: Have Law Practice Management Questions? Don’t Forget LP
What practice management processes should I implement? What specific practice management tools should I use? That’s a difficult question to answer in the abstract since every law firm and business wi…
Frontlines
Ethics: Three Folks Walk Into a Lawyer’s Office…
The law in pretty much every jurisdiction is that we can become someone’s lawyer essentially by implication if we deal with someone seeking legal advice or services and if we let them reasonably beli…
The Thriving Lawyer: The Power of Suspending Judgment
A person’s path is typically not straight forward or straightforward. There are good times and hard times. At times, the vagaries of life may appear as grave misfortune.
Simple Steps: Evaluating Management Skills
The skills required to be a good manager, to communicate with and inspire others, to help to train them and foster their growth, are often different from the skills required to be a good lawyer.
News & Events: Practice Management Is Who We Are
The Law Practice Division (LP) is committed to delivering resources and support to lawyers, law firms and other legal professionals.
Technology
Product Watch: The Headache of Selecting Headsets
There are so many products on the market, it is necessary to understand the different terms and uses of these devices. Headphones have one or two earpieces that are connected to a band that goes over…
Hot Buttons: Sometimes, a Phone Call Is the Answer: It’s Old-Fashioned Two-Factor Authentication
It is time that lawyers and law firms recognize that, despite the convenience of technology, including email, at times there is no substitute for a phone call—the type of personal authentication that…
Tech From the Trenches- Sharing Files With Clients: Bridging Security and File Management
Lawyers often get stuck trying to navigate the sea of choices of methods for communicating with clients.
Business
Future Proofing: Are We Reversing the Technology Progress Made During the Pandemic?
The Pandemic forced many of us to implement several technologies that we had never considered before. Maybe for the first time, law firms made mission-critical decisions about evolving their technolo…
Taking the Lead: Yes, Another Reminder About Data Privacy and Security Issues
Given the types of information entrusted to lawyers, it is no surprise that hackers and bad actors target law firms of all sizes to steal and misuse data.
Managing: Is a Frustrating Do-It-Yourself Fix to Staffing Woes in Your Future?
Law firms are experiencing analogous frustrations figuring out the fix to unexpected post-COVID professional staffing issues that have recently arisen.
Practice Management Advice: Office Design Promotes Management’s Decisions
Office design is a tool law firm leaders can use to reinforce cultural changes that incorporate new priorities. Whether it be rows of desks, cubicles or office size as an indicator of status, office…
Opening Up a New Market by Getting Certified as Women-Owned
The benefits of marketing the fact that we are a women-owned business didn’t really register with me until my friend, the marketing maven Carol Schiro Greenwald, asked me why we hadn’t gone through t…
Finance: Key Performance Indicators to Financial Statements: The Fiscal Report Card
Key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards are key to monitoring day-to-day productivity and firm performance. Most law firms understand the role these metrics play in ascertaining how the firm…