September 18, 2006

Law Practice Management Tip - September 2006

This month’s tip is provided by Nickie Freedman of Legally Large (www.legallylarge.com). The tips are not meant as legal advice, nor binding on the State Bar of Texas.

To create more billable hours without actually working more hours, think about transferring nonbillable work to your staff. There are obvious tasks that are easily transferable: inputting time, completing administrative forms, making travel arrangements, etc. But so many times, we keep doing the nonbillable work ourselves because ‘it only takes a minute and it would take twice as long to train someone else to do it.’ Is that really the most efficient use of your valuable time?
Taking the extra time to train a staff member to do a task is actually the most time-efficient activity to generate more billable hours. Once the staff is trained to take on nonbillable tasks and knows your goal of transferring more nonbillable work to them, they start thinking of even more activities they can take on that you probably haven’t discovered. Let them know that you want their suggestions to help you in this goal. Let them stretch their capabilities and take on more nonbillable work, leaving you to do what you want to do – practice law.

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