A Year by Design, or by Default?
Are You Getting in Your Own Way at the Office?
Keep the Cash Flowing: Collection Tips
A reader’s question: Do you have any tips on how to get clients to pay their bills more promptly?
Response: Cash flow is important to the success of every business, yet many lawyers do not design their practice to assure that collections flow in smoothly and regularly. The measures appropriate for your firm may depend upon the size of your clients, the type of clients you serve, and the types of matters you handle for them.
As you read through the suggestions below, think about how you might experiment with some of them or adapt them to your needs. Some may be new ideas for you, and others may be familiar ones that you have just gotten out of the habit of doing.
1. Get a retainer in advance. Hold a retainer equal to one month’s fees in trust until application against the final invoice. Invoice the client each month for the current work. If the client has not paid the first invoice by the time you are sending out the second invoice, notify the client that work will be suspended until the account is brought up to date. Certain practice areas tend to attract a high level of clients with poor payment patterns. Practitioners may want to charge the entire fee up front for such services, or provide in the engagement agreement that the initial fee installment applies to the first stage of the engagement. Provide that the engagement will be put on hold or terminated until the fee for each next stage is paid in advance.
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What Does Marketing Have to Do with Practicing Law?
The Biggest Bang for Your Management Buck
Clues You Can Use to Soothe Clashes
We all have someone we have to deal with who is somehow blocking us from getting what we want. It may be opposing counsel, but it may just as likely be our own partner or a staff member who isn’t performing to our expectations. In those situations our frustration levels mount, and some of us sneer or explode. We go from dealing with a difficult person to being a difficult person.
Get Noticed to Get Business
Leadership Lessons from Katrina
Together Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita brought destruction and chaos to much of the Gulf Coast. In every situation, however, there are lessons and gifts. Here in Houston as a Katrina volunteer at the Astrodome/Reliant Park, I received the gift of watching leadership lessons demonstrated before my eyes.
Usually the impact of our leadership style plays out gradually over time, and we are not able to easily distinguish which variables caused the results we received. In the time-compressed atmosphere of the Katrina relief effort, however, we had the benefit of something like time-lapse photography. We could see strangers form work teams that either dissolved into dysfunction or developed an efficient rhythm despite the rapidly changing environment.
I will briefly describe the leadership keys I observed that worked.
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