Whether they are willing to face it or not, New Zealand’s law firms cannot afford to be an exception. Although lawyers spend years at university, and then many more on the job, honing their skills in order to provide the very best legal advice to their clients, there is a lot more to a well-run legal practice than just providing great advice.

How efficient a law firm is in terms of the amount of time its staff spends on legal matters, and then how successfully and how quickly it recovers payment for such time from its clients, will have a massive effect on whether the firm succeeds or struggles. While it is the provision of legal advice that brings income into a law firm, there are many other administrative matters surrounding the provision of that advice that play a big part in the strength and flow of that income stream.

As Ashley Balls and Ron Pol noted in The Business of Law 2009 (Thomson Reuters, April 2009), the most successful law firms of the future will be those that best embrace technology. Technology such as practice management systems that help law firms streamline the administrative matters surrounding the provision of legal advice, enabling them to spend more time doing the things that actually generate more income.

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