Authored by Liz Lamar, This piece originally appeared in the APRIL issue of ALM's LJN Legal Tech Newsletter

Measuring profitability means measuring lawyer and staff performance. Regardless of whether law firms bill on contingency, flat fee or by the hour, they must measure productivity in order to understand their profitability.

How do law firms measure productivity, and more importantly, how do they turn that productivity into revenue for the firm? In large part, turning time into money begins with which metrics the firm has in place and whether the right key performance indicators are being measured and tracked.

Increasing revenue is about much more than cost-cutting be it by slashing headcount, reducing technology budgets or curbing professional development and staff training. Partners and firm administrators must also focus on measuring those activities within the firm that increase firm income. Although there are many ways to measure firm performance and derive metrics that will reveal a firm's financial and operational health, this article explores four distinct metrics that should be included in every law firm's performance dashboard.

Applying technology to an inefficient process will give you a net gain of zero. Throwing technology at a problem without first looking at the process will rarely ever fix it. In fact, it may likely exacerbate the problem by adding another layer of complexity to existing process challenges.

A great misconception about technology is that it is a quick fix for everything- a Band Aid of sorts. Often, lawyers uncover a problem in their firms and immediately seek to solve it with technology rather than examining their process first. For example, lawyers frequently realize their firms are missing billing opportunities. As a solution, many opt for more sophisticated software only to discover that the cause of the problem is process-related. There is a break in the process by which staff captures billable time and events. In this case, the most effective solution would have been to refine the process.

Affinity Consulting Group's Default Services Team (which specializes in providing technology and process consulting services to "foreclosure" firms) is pleased to be holding its second annual CaseAware® Administrator Bootcamp at the Hyatt Place Fort Lauderdale Airport South, Dania Beach, Florida from October 15-17, 2012.

This 3 day advanced-level intensive training course is geared toward administrators, backup administrators, and firm managers who want to learn everything they can about being a CaseAware® Administrator.

Worldox is the perfect location to manage all of your Outlook messages as they relate to your clients and your firm, however you need to understand that the MODIFIED DATE on an email message will change when you open and message and hit reply!

The reason for this is apparent if you open any message that you have previously replied to - you will see the notation that "YOU REPLIED TO THIS MESSAGE ON...." in the message header. The message has been modified to include this tracking information, which in turn means that the file modified date is changed. This often throws out the chronological listing of messages when sorted by MODIFIED DATE.

Affinity Consulting Group (Affinity), which specializes in strategic technology and management solutions for law firms and legal departments of all sizes, today announced the availability of its YourExecutive management consulting program for law firms in need of flexible management solutions pertaining to law firm strategy, operations, finance and information technology.

YourExecutive alleviates law firms of the hassle and expense of recruiting and securing executive level talent when they may not be financially or operationally ready to do so. Whether the goal is firm growth, increased productivity, or re-assessing existing policies and procedures, Affinity's YourExecutive team will leverage its extensive law firm management and technology consulting experience to deliver desired results.

Partner Barron Henley, Esq. and Director of Education, Jennifer Ramovs collaborated on this recent article published in the upcoming edition of the ALA's Legal Management. 

Barron and Jenn discuss how technology can boost efficiency and how to make sound decisions with your IT budget so that you get the technology you need and the training necessary to ensure that you can get a solid return on your investment.

Click HERE to read more

ALA Members, be sure to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it about taking advantage of exclusive member benefits from Affinity Consulting.

The foundation of any business begins with its identity as an organization. Who are we? What do we stand for? What are our values as a group? It is our values that define our culture, and it is our culture that drives our identity.

As lawyers and administrators, one of our biggest challenges is instituting change so that our firm culture accurately represents our values as an organization. Often times, employees prefer to remain entrenched. They do things simply because "that's the way it's always been done." It's no secret. For most, change is a scary notion. So, how do we create a positive cultural shift? Hopefully, the following tips will help you to get your staff to embrace change with a positive attitude.

This Friday, June 20th, our own Greg Bray will be presenting as part of the reccuring "Feature Friday" webinar series put on by Lexis Nexis. Greg will be presenting from 12PM EST - 1PM EST - you can register for this FREE webinar HERE. 

June 19, 2012, Atlanta, GA - Affinity Consulting Group (Affinity), an independent technology consulting group dedicated to the legal profession, has been named as the newest Rocket Matter Productivity Partner. Rocket Matter is the leading cloud-based practice management solution that meets the calendaring, task management, reporting, billing and overall practice management needs of today's small and mid-sized legal firms.

Nothing describes the default industry like the old adage, “The only constant is change.”  As default firms struggle to keep up with an ever-evolving legal landscape, it is this change that has come to define the practice of foreclosure law.  From new judicial and servicer requirements to shifts in the rule of law, firms must be nimble and ready to adapt their processes in order to conform to the new world of default practice.  

Many of us know that we need technology to make our practices more efficient, but we also know that technology can be a complex and daunting subject. Knowing what you to get, and what you already have, is only the beginning of the challenges technology can face. Helping you navigate the challenges of technology is the goal of our upcoming webinar, June 20th, in partnership with the ALA.

I have talked to hundreds of people over the last 4 years about their experiences—both good and bad—of using Dragon Naturally Speaking in their legal and medical work. Here are 4 myths I have collected about working with Dragon.

Partner Steve Best shares his thoughts on why firms should be implementing document management solutions and, how to evaluate in-house versus cloud-based solutions in this week's Law Practice Today from the ABA Law Practice Management Section.

Read more HERE

VANCOUVER, BC and COLUMBUS, OH - MAY 14, 2012 - Affinity Consulting Group (Affinity), an independent technology consulting group dedicated to the legal profession, has joined Clio’s Certified Consultant program.

Clio is a cloud-based practice management system geared toward solo and small firm lawyers, helping manage everything from intake to invoicing. As a member of the Clio Certified Consultant program, Affinity benefits from intensive Clio training, and priority access to Clio’s technical, development and data migration teams. Such benefits further enhance Affinity’s cloud-based alternatives to traditional client-server practice management systems.