August 2019 - Back Office Betties

Betties Book Brief – Street Smarts

August 27, 2019

It’s time for another Betties Book Brief and we are extremely excited to chat with you about the book we read in August. Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs was written by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham and is a no-nonsense comprehensive guide full of tips that you can actually implement today. With 104 raving reviews on Amazon, we had to see what the hype was about and we were pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable of a read this book actually was.

Street Smarts is full of anecdotes that really offer a been there, done that point of view on many pitfalls small businesses face. We’re excited to share our favorite takeaways below!

6 Key Points We Loved in Street Smarts

Don’t discount your extra capacity just because it’s available. Rationalizing that you’d rather have some money than no money is never a good idea and ultimately a really bad decision.
Always negotiate quietly. Listen to what the other party wants, haggle and be flexible on it, then come back to what matters to you and offer “I’ll give you X, but I’ve got to have Y.”
You cannot do business with everybody. This is the number one rule in business. One word that you must master is “No!”.
Small, high-margin customers > large, low-margin customers. No single customer should be more than 10% of your business and large customers as a whole should be less than 30% of your business.
Raise prices regularly. Don’t piss off your customers by doing this too much, but avoid the sudden hike in prices later on because you didn’t raise them a little at a time earlier.
Don’t buy a business that grossly undercharges. Keeping an existing customer base during a sale is hard enough. If your first order of business has to be raising prices, you’ll be in for a rude awakening.

Have you read this book?

What did you think?

Did you come up with any great takeaways that we haven’t listed here?

Let us know!

Create Efficiency in Your Firm – Interview with Firm Focus

August 15, 2019

Improve efficiency. Minimize distractions. Cut out interruptions.

Attorneys and business owners are always told to do these things, but often there is often no concrete advice on how to do them.

Firm Focus founder coaches firms on just that

We recently spoke with Sarah Tetlow, founder of Firm Focus LLC, about the struggles that attorneys face in their day-to-day lives and how she helps them to efficiently manage their cases and projects. This is not something widely taught in this profession, and the stress of constantly reacting, rather than organizing and being proactive, causes a massive decline in effectiveness. Sarah was quoted by Attorney at Work, stating, “The partners are feeling the reactive needs of their clients every single day. That trickles down. There’s a lot of stress, anxiety, frustration. It’s Groundhog Day every day.”

Firm Focus offers different levels of support and consulting to really dive into what needs to change in order to maximize attorneys’ time and streamline their work. Sarah helps law firms of all sizes up their productivity and efficiency by coaching associates on minimizing external interruptions and better managing their projects. Throughout her career, she has witnessed associates struggle in these aspects, propelling Sarah to create solutions-based programs that help top performers do what they do best – with added processes to keep them organized and efficient.

Tools to implement

In our conversation with Sarah, she recommended two of her top tools that help attorneys stay organized and focused. Smokeball, a legal practice management software that automatically records your time and activity, is one of her favorites. Case management is an obvious way to streamline your work and optimize time, but her other recommendation may not be so obvious. “You know those nagging To-Do items that are top of mind at bedtime? Dump them into Todoist and get them out of your brain,” says Sarah. Todoist is a simple-to-use tool that lets you unload your nagging thoughts in a prioritized and virtual list that you can update at any time.

Do you struggle with being efficient and organized? Let us know what tools you use to combat it!

Lawyers Dish: 7 Tools They Can’t Live Without

August 7, 2019

In this day and age, there is no avoiding technology. Everything is becoming automated or remote, and honestly, we are digging it. Life and business are a whole lot easier when you have systems and processes that help you remember things, handle your billing, and provide access to information at your fingertips – just to name a few.

To successfully run your small or solo law firm, you’ve gotta embrace the tech. We’re making it easy by providing a list of some of the top tools that other lawyers use and love! Read on for 7 tools lawyers can’t live without.

Top Tech Tools for Lawyers

1. Live chat on your website

Implementing a live chat on your website, especially if you have active ads driving traffic, is a game changer for landing clients. Customer service and quick response are two things that prospective clients are not flexible on. They want to talk to you on their time and they want it to be easy to do so. InBound Law Marketing listed reviews on 13 different apps that provide live chat for lawyer websites. Give one a try and watch your lead conversion skyrocket.

2. CaseText

CaseText is a revolutionary legal research tool that every lawyer needs to be using. Don’t believe us? The SCOTUS blog has called CaseText “the best place to read the law on the internet” and we have to agree. Stanford Law School Blog did a test and found CaseText to be accurate in pulling relevant cases and law that were found by an appellate clerk and used to overturn cases of the lower court. Talk about saving yourself time – and a headache!

3. Clio

Clio is a cloud-based software that manages your law firm and your client relationships (CRM). Lawyers rave about the benefits of using Clio on Capterra. This software creates an easy process for client intake, billing, case management (and much more!) to, once again, save you precious time. Clio is also one of the integrations we offer and recommend to clients who want full-service legal practice management software.

4. Evernote

Lawyers have a great ethical responsibility and expectation to keep information straight. Writing things down on paper just won’t cut it anymore! Evernote is a free and easy-to-use organizational tool on your computer or on mobile apps, making your information always easily accessible. Whether you are taking notes in a meeting, saving research in one place, or collecting business cards – Evernote is your tool! Read more on the benefits and uses of Evernote in a law practice here, or watch this video.

5. DropBox

You’ve probably heard of DropBox, but have you considered using it for your law firm? Keeping information in the cloud sounds scary but DropBox transmits your data over an encrypted connection and the data stays encrypted while stored in the server. They also offer two-factor authentication, meaning that if you try to log in to view your stored documents, you will have to enter a pin on your phone to prove that you are, well, you. Lawyerist states that “Dropbox is about as secure as your online banking website.” If you need an easy way to store and share files, DropBox is the way to go!

6. Acuity

Acuity Scheduling is our favorite integration as it’s an impossible easy-to-use calendar and scheduling tool. They make it a breeze to schedule appointments, removing all of the back and forth you’re probably used to. No more hashing out the details of what time works for you and your client; just share your calendar and let your clients pick the time that works for them! Acuity also intakes your client as they schedule with customized intake forms, saving you even more time.

7. Back Office Betties

Obviously, we are all about saving you time (and the shameless plugging of ourselves into this list). When you use Back Office Betties, you save more time than you’ll know what to do with. You’ll also find a new sense of professionalism, an increase in clients (and revenue), and better organization – these lawyers state it best. Our virtual receptionists screen your calls, take messages, schedule appointments, take payments, and so much more.