Many assume that law firms go through each day simply attending to their clients’ needs, winning (or losing) court cases, discussing and debating legal matters with their peers, and so on. People easily forget that a law firm is just like any other business, and as such it has other needs that require attention. Here are just some of the departments and functions that need to be fulfilled within any modern law film.
1. Comprehensive Marketing
Digital marketing for law firms has never been more important, and has to exist alongside your main marketing efforts. Maintaining a digital presence with your traditional marketing activities is important for a law firm to help ensure that it can reach as wide an audience as possible. Most law firms are restricted to working in their local community only, and so maximising audience is of paramount importance.
To deal with marketing matters, a law firm will likely need to hire a dedicated team, be it small or large. Your legal team likely lacks the proper knowledge and skills to create effective marketing campaigns for law firms, and what’s more is they’re probably too busy to do it properly themselves anyway.
2. Accounting
Yes, your law firm is a business, even though it may not always feel quite like that as you go about the office. As lawyers deal with solving higher matters of law, and solve ongoing legal disputes, among other things, someone has to be there to crunch the numbers, send out invoices, collect payments, make proper arrangements for the annual tax return, and so on.
There’s no way a law firm could properly operate without at least one full-time accountant, and more likely a full team.
3. Human Resources
The many different roles that make up a law firm’s business need to be staffed by talented, ambitious and hardworking people, but they also need to be supported in their roles and given help if and when problems arise. There also needs to be someone, or a team of people, to manage office disputes, deal with grievances and the need for changes in working style, as well as someone to step in when members of the team are not performing as they should. All of these roles are covered by an HR manager and/or wider HR team.
4. Administration
Law firms are offices like any other, and there’s a tremendous amount of paperwork, filing and other administrative work that has to get done. The copying alone can take up huge numbers of hours each day. To manage this workload, a law firm needs to hire a team of capable secretaries, clerical assistants and other administrative staff.
Better computers, digitization of subject matter, and other technological advances have helped make at least some of the clerical work in a law firm a bit easier, but you’ll still see law firms pushing more paper than the average office. Really official and legal things very often just have to exist as hard copies on paper.
5. Digital Security and IT
Finally, there is the matter of digital security, data protection and other matters relating to the firm’s IT. The staff in this department are responsible for maintaining office computer hardware, ensuring the integrity and security of all digital files, as well as the thorough backing up and safeguarding of digital copies of things. The office may also rely on computer-based forms of communication, as well as external hardware like printers and copiers, and digital services like cloud services, large file sharing services, and more.
In the information age, no law firm can afford to be without the best IT, and the best professionals to run that system.
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