How can Legal Practices Leverage Process Consulting

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How can Legal Practices Leverage Process Consulting

Law offices and practices perform a valuable role for their clients. Practices are also a business, and a business must be healthy if it wants to continue to add value for clients. The process improvement and efficiencies gained through legal counselling process consulting can help practices remain vital and effective. In this article we will highlight some of the specific challenges for law offices, legal process consultant services, legal process consulting outsourcing, plus the advantages of legal consulting services.

Specific Challenges to Legal Practices

Many law practices are run by excellent attorneys who are average or disinterested businesspeople. This is actually not surprising. Most attorneys enter the profession because they are attracted to the law, and not because they wanted to run a business. Many practices lack technology skills and are not optimized for a digital workplace. These challenges are greater in small and midsized practices versus large ones.  As a consequence of all these factors, legal practices who are SMBs (small and midsized businesses) can struggle to compete.  Additional challenges can include lagging digital adoption and back office technology that is not current.  Many practices can struggle with compliance, but practices with poorly documented procedures suffer the most.  In a digital world, and an increasingly WFH (work from home) environment, cyber security can be one more hurdle to overcome.  A legal process consultant can help with many of these areas.  They can also help identify which challenges should be prioritized plus work with clients to map out the steps to take to streamline and optimize.

Legal Process Consultant Services

All legal counselling process consulting starts off with a discovery phase, … just like in the law!  From there a legal process consultant will document “As Is” processes and also often provide Standard Operating Procedures, or SOPs.  If new processes are to be adopted, or new technology and services are to be deployed, a legal process consultant will document “To Be” processes and work with a client to develop a path from point A to point B.

At Valenta our legal counselling process consulting always takes the following seven steps.

  • Map the Current Process
  • Analyze the Current Process
  • Redesign Processes as needed
  • Test New Process
  • Communicate Changes
  • Implement New Process
  • Monitor and Optimize

Process Consulting Outsourcing for Legal Practices

Many small law firms and midsized practices choose to bring in outside experts to help with their process evaluation.  Outsourced legal counselling process consulting can bring in a fresh perspective and  new set of eyes to issues.  Working with Valenta this expert perspective can be gained economically as well.  We have offshore consultants who have ex Big Four Firm experience.  We combine this skill set with local managing partners located in the cities, states, and provinces of our clients.  Additionally, we have regional partners who are attorneys, and ones who have experience with Fortune 1000 process consulting, Six Sigma, and Lean methodologies.  Besides documenting workflows and providing SOPs our teams can identify process improvement and business optimization potential.  Compliance workflows can be diagnosed and remedied if they do not meet requirements.  Our legal process consultant services can map out the best strategies for digital adoption and can also identify, and even implement back office technology upgrades.  Finally, Cyber security and WFH concerns can be addressed and planned for as well.

Advantages of Legal Consulting Services

In addition to some of the above advantages of legal consulting services, good process consulting can identify which are the biggest pain points in a practice.  We aim to identify what will have the greatest and most immediate impact, and what is the lowest hanging fruit.  A legal process consultant can help identify services and service providers that can address the biggest impediments to profits, efficiencies, and streamlined workflows.  It is making progress on big goals that are some of the greatest advantages of legal consulting services.  For example, developing a sustainable and achievable growth plan can be focused on.  Working towards maximum profitability and the elimination of waste in an organization can also be addressed.  Excellence in execution, having an innovation plan, and mapping out business strategy is also achievable.  Lastly, if there are opportunities for AI and automation in a practice they can be identified, as can staffing optimization, and leveraging outside augmentation where appropriate.

About Valenta

At Valenta we help our clients practicing law take full advantages of legal consulting services.  Our local partners, regional law and process experts, offshore consultants, and project management staff make a nimble and affordable team.  At Valenta we have an exclusive SMB focus.  Our goal is to provide clients in this space access to the same service as the Fortune 1000 receive from the large mega consulting firms.  All of our consulting interactions are flexible action oriented engagements.  For follow on projects we provide ROIs upfront and we aim to make every project self-funding.  Please visit our website to learn more about our Process Consulting Services.  Please contact one of our local Managing Partners to discuss Process Consulting or our other services including Digital Transformation, Staff Augmentation, Digital Marketing, and Learning Platforms.

 

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