One of the classes commonly taught in business school is operations management. The tools used to increase operations efficiency apply to any business regardless of what it does. Operations are particularly important in the law firm setting. Even though attorneys are in the business of providing legal services, a large portion of time and costs are devoted to operations, i.e., making sure the logistics of the law firm are working smoothly and efficiently. Thus, the more efficient you can make your operations the more time you will have to devote to the substantive practice of law. The larger the law firm, the more important it is to streamline one’s operations. For example, receiving mail in a timely fashion is extremely important for law firms. Timely service of documents is defined by statutes and can be the source of contention or even litigation. For the solo practitioner, this is a non-issue. The mail goes directly from the mail box to the attorney. However, for larger firms, any time lag between actual receipt by the attorney could mean valuable time lost to write an opposition, perform a counter-action or in the worst case scenario a missed deadline. The most intuitive and simplest method of maximizing the efficiency of your law firm’s operations is to create an operations flow chart. Here’s how:
