The Price of Ignorance Exceeds That of Education

A runner for your firm is taking the scenic route every-time he goes to file papers downtown. Let’s assume it’s not intentional, it’s the just the way he's always gone. It takes him 45 minutes round-trip each time, while a more direct path would take only 30 minutes. You are essentially paying him 33% more than needed, to complete the same task, which he does, daily. Over the course of a year, you are paying him an extra 60 hours because he completes the task in an inefficient manner. Simply showing him a map and a better path would allow him to complete 60 hours of other work while keeping your payroll costs the same.

According to Financial Information company Sageworks, in 2014, Legal Services was the 2nd most profitable industry, with a 17.8% Net Profit Margin. That’s great, but is a double-edged sword. You see, this means you can run a sloppy law firm and still make money. Another point to take into consideration is that the legal industry has the 4th highest payroll costs, coming in at 45.03% of revenues. Because this is such a huge cost, anything you can do in your practice to increase output while keeping your payroll costs fixed, will increase your bottom line profits.

Many businesses and law firms will address the problem of being busy by throwing people at the problem. That is a very expensive approach and helps keep those payroll costs up. However, if you have 10 people in your firm and you can make them 10% more productive, you have just increased your work output to be what you’d create with 11 people on staff, but did so without increasing your payroll costs. So how can you do this? Focus on processes instead of bodies. What I’d like to discuss today the value of training your staff with the technology they use daily.

One thing I love about only supporting Mac-based law firms is that we spend very little time doing reactive support, where we go into fire-fighting mode. Our tools and solutions we implement reduce these to be extremely rare events. This frees up my staff and the staff of our clients to focus on more important things. Instead of putting out fires, they can focus on skill development. Instead of calling our support line to remove a virus, they call us for IT training and questions. We also have a lot of proactive and ongoing training for all of our clients so that they can continually get better at the things they do

Abraham Lincoln said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” One of our 4 Core Values at GlobalMac IT is to Sharpen the Axe. We try to get everyone on our team to spend 2 hours per week on skill development. The more they do this, the better they become, the higher their output is, the better communications and experiences our clients have with them and so on. The added value of skill development is almost impossible to calculate, since its impact touches so many things throughout your business.

By investing in your people, you can increase their output while keeping your payroll costs the same. So where do people spend a lot of time? There is nothing in the office that your staff spends more time on than their computer. That is why I discussed in a previous article the “Cost of Slow” and how critical it is that your staff has access to fast, modern computers to assist them in completing their work. Now, let’s say you took my previous article to heart and have since upgraded your equipment. That is a fixed cost, hardware. The soft cost is your staff’s productivity; let’s talk about what you can do to boost it.

How efficient are they on the computer? How much time have you invested in developing their skills? Have you ever given the basics courses? Made sure they are very comfortable and confident in the things they are doing dozens and dozens of times per day? Don’t assume that your staff is as comfortable on the computer as you are. All firms have the range of skill sets, you’ve got some people that a very tech-savvy, others at the other extreme end of the spectrum and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Even the advanced users have told us they got a lot out of our training. One small distinction or new tip, can save someone minutes per day. When they these things 10X per day, it adds up significantly.

Email, calendar, contacts, PDF management, Word, saving and finding files, case management. These are all tools that people access on a daily basis. If they have figured it out on their own, I can guarantee you that the majority of your staff is currently wasting hundreds of hours using inefficient ways to complete tasks on their computer. Wasting 10 minutes a day, works out to 40 hours per person, per year. Think about that. 15 minutes a day is 60 hours per year. Small office with 5 people earning an average of $50k. That works out to $7,500, add on the fully burdened cost (taxes, etc.) that comes out to right around $10k in added profits added to your bottom line.

"Big deal. They know computers, they’re doing fine. My staff is so swamped, I can’t justify giving them ‘computer training.’" That is EXACTLY why you must give them training! You see most people’s computer training goes like this:

1) Congratulations, you have the job.

2) Here’s your computer.

3) Get to work.

How often will a new hire confess his or her computer inapt ability right when they’ve just been hired. Never. So it is your responsibility to train them on an ongoing basis.

So ask yourself - when was the last time you blocked off time to help your firm develop their skills in the tasks they repeat multiple times, every day? We provide a monthly "Mac2Basics for Law" webinar for all of our clients and their staff. Our largest firm, with 37 users, has rescheduled their lunchtime on the day of our webinar, buys lunch for their staff and they all watch it together, because they have seen firsthand the results and positive feedback they get from their staff attending these trainings. Make this a priority for your staff and you will directly increase your bottom line. In addition to learning better ways to use they computers, by training and investing in them, you will make the more comfortable and confident in using their computers, which will help them in everything they do.   

Tom Lambotte is CEO of GlobalMacIT, we provide complete end-to end legal technology consulting to Mac-Based law firms nationwide. Our service enables our clients to leverage technology converting it into a profit-generator for their firm. We provide complete certainty that all the best-in-class IT policies and security measures are in place, so they can focus on growing the firm. Tom’s methods are based on close to a decade of research, testing and real-world refinement of Best Practices, working directly with Mac-based law firms and firms switching from PC to Mac, across the country and around the world.

Go to Tom is the author of Hassle Free Mac IT Support for Law Firms and Legal Boost: Big Profits Through an IT Transformation. He is a highly sought after speaker at national events such as the ABA Techshow and MacTrack Legal. To receive more profit-boosting tips and ideas to boost your usage of technology, go to www.globalmacit.com/boost, complete the form and we will mail you a complimentary copy of Legal Boost - Big Profits Through an IT Transformation.