When you’re setting out to manage your law firm, the one thing you need to ask is whether a particular process or procedure scales. That is, whether the management process you put in place today will still be valid when you’re pushing out 30, 40, 50 or more cases each month. Whether your Chapter 13 case management procedures will still work if you’re doing more above-median income cases (or below-median ones, as the case may be).
For most bankruptcy lawyers, the answer would be a resounding no – their case management system doesn’t exist because they don’t see a need for it to do so. And that’s something that spells potential ruin for your ability to manage your bankruptcy practice as it grows.
When I first started practicing bankruptcy law my case management system was … somewhat extreme in the eyes of the casual onlooker. I instituted a (then) complex filing system with file numbers for all client matters, colored subfolders and forms for action items (mind you, this was before everything could be managed online). My intern (yes, I had an intern even before I had a lot of clients) thought I’d lost my mind – why do so much work if there were only four clients in the entire office?
My logic, however, was simple. If I put the system together before I needed it, it would function when I did need it.
Three years later I was working on 30 bankruptcy cases a month and there was no early way for me to remember everything I needed to recall. The crush of information was too great. But with my system, all went smoothly.
So here’s the thing – when you look at a file, ask yourself whether you can possible remember every aspect of it when you’ve got 100 or more just like it. If the answer is no (and it will be), you need to formulate a way to document the nuances. Intake documents, checklists, cross-referencing and tagging play an important role in keeping the system scalable.
We each have our way of organizing our thoughts, so yours will likely be different from anyone else’s system. Regardless, you need to take action now – before things get out of control.
Photo courtesy of picknjim.
