Why Gratitude

This past fall I had a chance to hear Kim Cameron, a former Associate Dean at the Ross Schoold of Business at the University of Michigan. He talked about the power of gratitude and gave a number of examples about how gratitude can change an organization.

One of the examples he gave was about a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that he consulted with. This CEO started writing thank you notes each week to someone in his company. He reported that it was one of the best things that he’s done to help the company grow. He also gave some other examples of different studies that were done in the area of gratitude.

I came away from his presentation intrigued. Could simple acts of gratitude really change a person, a law firm, and a business?

I decided to try a personal non-scientific experiment to see what effect gratitude could have on my life.  One of his suggestions was to write in a gratitude journal every day. So I decided to write three things in my gratitude journal every day. Since October, I’ve only missed 2 days.  In addition I got my family involved in this experiment.

Here are the effects it has had on me personally.  Over the past several months I can say that I’ve been happier than I have ever been. I go to sleep so much faster than I used to.  I’ve found my interactions with my staff and my children has improved.

One family story for you. After a few weeks of writing in our gratitude journals as a family we decided to go to the movie together.  I have 5 children so usually a 15 minute car ride ends up with some sort of bickering.  We had a great time at the movie.  Later on that night I was reflecting about how great of a time we had and realized that we didn’t have any bickering in the car. Maybe the gratitude journal was really working.

I’d love to have everyone that reads this post take the opportunity to do two things:

  • First, write in a gratitude journal every day. My goal is to have a gratitude journal on every night stand.
  • Second, take the time each week to write a quick thank you note to someone in your office.

If you will do these two things I’m sure you will have a similar experience as I have had with the power of gratitude.

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The DIY World We Live In

Have you ever noticed how you expect to find answers to everything within minutes now?

I recently rented a convertible Camaro and I wanted to get the top to come down.  I thought it would be easy to do. Usually you just pull the lever on the roof of the car and you can put the top down. Well, this wasn’t the case with the Camaro.

I fiddled around with it for about 5 minutes, then I thought that I should look at the owner’s manual.  Then the thought occurred to me, maybe I can find a YouTube video about it and that would be faster than thumbing through the owner’s manual.  I did a quick search on my phone, pulled up a YouTube video and watched the video.

I found out during the video that I had to move a lever in the trunk before I could release the lever on the top of the car to get the top to come down. I realized in this moment that we really do live in a DIY world where everything that you’d want to know is at our fingertips.

This experience got me thinking about the attorneys that we work with. Do they realize that we now live in a DIY legal world too?  A world where every client can find out a wealth of information, maybe even misinformation, about the services the attorney is offering.

Does this mean that going to an attorney is going to be a thing of the past?  I don’t think so. But if you aren’t meeting and exceeding your clients’ needs then you are going to struggle.

So what does it take to compete in the DIY world that we live in?  It comes down to three essentials.  You need to beat your client’s expectations in delivering your services, you need to be delivering error free services, and you need to have your client’s best interest at heart.

How are you going to accomplish this?

By having a document production system in place. With a system you can know exactly when you are going to deliver your documents because it happens every time. With a system you can get rid of errors in your documents. With a system you can focus on your clients’ needs and not on how the documents are going to be created.

I’d love to hear your comments about the DIY of the legal world.  Please comment below!

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Why Do Errors Happen in Your Documents

I recently had a conversation with a firm administrator who was looking at changing the way they created documents.  During our talk, I said, “One of the reasons that you need a document system is because of the errors you’re getting.”

The phone got a little quiet, and he said sheepishly, “Yes, I know we are getting errors we just don’t want to admit it.”

Errors happen in every law firm but it’s funny that we don’t want to admit it.

So how many errors are getting into your documents?  The reality is no one really knows because you probably don’t want to know.

Then I was having another conversation with another attorney and he was really frustrated that his paralegal couldn’t get the name spelled right for one of their key clients. It was happening all the time! Because the name of the client was similar to another name. The paralegal really did want to get it right.

We have attorneys and paralegals really wanting to not have errors in their documents but are still getting them. Where does that leave us?  Are we going to continue to get errors or is there a better way to not get errors in our documents?

During this 3 minute video I will explain why errors happen in your documents. Of course, I’m not going to completely change your firm in 3 minutes so you don’t get errors.  But you are going to learn why errors are happening in the first place.

If you want more in-depth training that is going to help your firm, I would suggest that you join our webinar on February 25 at 3:00 EST. You’ll learn the steps to creating a Document System.

[button link=”http://www.hotdocsresources.com/3-steps-reducing-errors-documents/” size=”xl”]Creating a Document System Webinar[/button]

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Understanding Your Document Creation Process

Most firms want to do a want to get the right documents to their clients on time and error free. In spite of wanting this to happen, however, many are still struggling in this area.

If you’re one of those firms, I have the next step for you to take!

I’ve already talked about some of the reasons you are struggling with delivery and errors. You learned about how you need to start understanding the reason why errors happen. This is done by collecting information about when errors happen.

The next step is to understand what your current process is. You may be thinking, “I don’t have a process,” or “I already know what my process is.”

In either of these cases you will be surprised at what you find out during this step. What we have found is that even though the firm thinks it knows what the process is, they don’t truly know what is really happening until they go through this exercise.

Go ahead and watch this video about some basics on how to map out your process:

Now that you’ve watched the video, take the next step by meeting with your team and mapping out the process!

I’d also like to invite you to attend our Document Systems webinar on February 25 at 3:00 EST, where we are going to teach you the steps you need to create your Document System. This will lead to delivering on time and error free documents.

Creating a Document System Webinar
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Gather – Transfer – Do

As we have worked with various law firms and banks over the years, we’ve discovered a key area that firms universally have trouble with. This problem area involves getting information from the clients and then transferring that information to the person who is creating their documents.  I like to call this process Gather – Transfer – Do.

We find that the most errors happen during the handoffs from one individual to the next. When you gather information from your client, for example, do you receive everything you need from your client in the first meeting?  Or do you end up needing to go back to your clients multiple times for more information?

If you have to go back again and again, your client is usually thinking, “I don’t have time for this! They should have told me what they need in the first place and not keep asking more questions!” It may also be that your staff doesn’t want to call the client back to ask these questions because they are embarrassed to ask them.

So what happens then? They make assumptions about the information and you just got more potential errors in your documents.

Solution

The solution in these problems is understanding who is going to get the information, what information needs to be transferred to the next person, and how the information is going to be transferred. This seems pretty simple when broken down in this way. And frankly it is. Unfortunately, we still see firms where it is not clear how this is going to occur.

It is critical that you understand the WHO, WHAT, and HOW the information is going move through your process if you are going to eliminate the errors in your documents. To learn the basics about how to map out your process I recommend you read our blog post on mapping processes.

Once you have mapped out your processes and determined who is going to pass and receive the information, then it is time to figure out the WHAT and HOW.

What information needs to pass from each person is determined by the output of the document. For example if a document requires the name, address, and phone number then this information needs to be passed to the next person.  It usually isn’t this simple.  For example, in estate planning you would need to know information about the executors, guardians, type of distribution structure, documents to be produce etc.  This is where the details become critical.

For this we like to use a paper or electronic decision tree that has a set of questions that can be answered by the attorney. This decision tree is passed to the person creating the plan. The decision tree should include all of the questions that are needed to create a document.

How you transfer the information is also critical. Does the person who is transferring the information know how to pass it along?  What form will this information be transferred in via email, paper, website, etc.? If your staff are unsure of this process then errors or missed deadlines will be one of the results.

It is critical for delivering on time and error free that you understand Gather – Transfer – Do. If you would like to learn more about how to create a document production system please join us for our Webinar on February 25 at 3:00 EST. We will teach you all of the steps that are required to create a Document Production System that delivers on time and error free.

[button link=”http://www.hotdocsresources.com/3-steps-reducing-errors-documents/” size=”xl”]Creating a Document System Webinar[/button]

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