Bad tech, no infrastructure, and a partner racking up money before retirement:
3 things that made a great attorney run for the door.
To practice at your full potential, you need an environment with a set of conditions optimized for the type of law you’re practicing.
This attorney, for example, didn’t have a paralegal or trustworthy docketing software. So they had to spend countless hours every week checking the docket to make sure everything was calendared properly. Any litigation attorney knows that this is a draining, intensive task with major ramifications for screwing up. Having a paralegal AND reliable docketing software saves everyone hours and hours of time, energy, and stress every week. On top of this, the executive assistants were assigned too many attorneys, hampering their productivity and preventing them from assisting with many routine tasks commonly delegated to them.
The tech at the firm was cut-rate too. There was no reliable way to search through the firm’s files to find documents, templates, or exemplars. The web platform was glitchy. The bad tech added too much unbillable time to every day, not to mention the high levels of frustration.
As a cherry on top of this souffle, one of the main partners wanted to rack up as many hours as possible (i.e., $$) before retiring. To do this, the partner had built a churn-and-burn practice that relied heavily on this associate, was not professionally fulfilling, nor a priority of the firm. Consequently, the associate was stuck on this team grinding away on cases and clients that were not moving them forward in their career.
Practicing law comes with a lot of friction. Bad tech, no infrastructure, or uninterested leadership all increase the friction of practice. Sometimes you have to live with it. Most times you don't.
What are the biggest friction points (or things you’ve used to eliminate the friction) in your practice?
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#productivity
