Any successful law firm relies on its employees to carry out firm objectives. Developing clearly defined goals, benchmarks for success, and what success looks like are important steps to eventually accomplishing these objectives.

Establishing goals is important, but laying out the road map to success is of equal importance. Here are some ways you can identify, establish, and track goals for your firm.

What should we track?

Each firm will have different metrics to evaluate. 2019 is all about data, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful by committing to tracking a handful of important numbers. If your office size is relatively small, and employee time is highly valuable, it will not be practical to track every metric imaginable. Instead, focus on 4-5 metrics for each department that you believe will drive success.

To demonstrate this, take the example of an intake department. Here are some metrics it might want to track:

Workload – How many intakes does an individual member of your office process in a day/week/month/year?

Contact Attempts – How many calls/emails/text messages does the intake member make in a given timeframe?

Contact Rate – How many leads does an individual member of your team successfully contact?

Retainer Packets Sent – How many retainer packets does an intake member send out?

Retainers Returned – How many retainer packets are completed and returned? This number will also allow you to calculate the conversion percentage each intake member attains.

Creating Goals

Once you’ve decided what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are for your team, it’s time to establish goals. Goals will look different from firm to firm, but any goals you devise should be realistic, measurable, and have some sort of precedent behind them.

Realistic - Goals should not be impossible. If employees are constantly chasing unreachable goals, morale is likely to sink. It’s also important to keep your ultimate goal in mind. For instance, if you’re a Social Security firm and you want to increase the number of case files you open each month from 30 to 50, you’ll need to decide what level of production each intake member will have to reach in order to advance you closer to the ultimate goal.

Measureable - Having accurate and reliable systems in place to track goals is imperative to maintaining the integrity of your goals. Activity goals like phone time, calls made, contact rate, etc. can be tracked through most business phone system dashboards. Legal CRMs are another tool that can assist you in running performance reports on your employees.

Precedent - If an employee has never processed 3,000 leads in a quarter, then it would be unadvisable to make that a starting goal for your team members. Instead, look back at what the average intake member has handled in the past and decide if that number is acceptable, or if the goal should be slightly raised from the average in order to give your team something to strive for.

Benchmarks

Firms must decide on what timeframe they’d like to evaluate goals. For instance, some businesses will review employee goals on a quarterly basis, whereas other businesses might opt for a bi-annual or yearly review.

Regardless of the timeframe, you should set up agreed upon times where you sit down with your team members to see how they are doing with their individual goals. These meetings are important if you want to make sure that goals are being pursued in the most efficient manner possible.

For instance, if your intake team appears to be working hard, but its number of intakes is down, you might need to find ways to increase the number of claimants your office comes in contact with. Marketing options are plentiful in today’s legal landscape – lead generation companies, PPC/SEO management firms, or outside agencies to run commercials/radio spots are all viable options depending on your budget and target audience.

These meetings are also great opportunities to praise your employees for on track performance. If one of your intake members is leading the team in retained cases, you can highlight the achievement and hopefully gain some insight into what he/she is doing that has brought him/her success. If certain members of your team are struggling, these meetings can be a time where you put in place an agreed upon action plan to increase performance.

Goals are important for any firm, no matter how small or large, successful or struggling. If increasing your caseload is a goal for your firm, reach out to us at eGenerationMarketing today - 617.800.0089