We have more lawyers joining the legal profession than any other country in the world. Unfortunately, we don’t have any structured process like some other countries to train young lawyers to manage their practice and to adopt tools and technologies to run their offices.

The good news is that in this era we live in, we can measure almost everything we do with the help of technology. It has been scientifically established that whatever we measure consistently, grows.

This applies to your practice as well. By measuring consistently where your practice stands in key areas and generating awareness about yourself through the internet, expanding your practice can be scientifically done. This is the focus of Law Practice Management.

Most countries have made “Law Practice Management” an integral part of their curriculum. We will first study some such efforts by way of providing context.

How do other countries train lawyers on managing their practice?

Singapore, the UK and the United States have made forms of law practice management training part of the curriculum for a lawyer-to-be, either during law school itself or immediately after. The American Bar Association has a department dedicated to law practice management and training enrolled lawyers on how to expand their practice.

In Australia, LPM is compulsory in order to practice law and in Hong Kong, corresponding courses are the norm.

The benefit is obvious – they help a lawyer learn from the mistakes of those before her. More importantly, they give the lawyer practical tips – help in building her own website, for example and using the internet to create awareness about herself.

While India did not have any Government created programs, the earliest entrant into this space in India was Rainmaker with its programs for continuing legal education.

Towards the end of 2016, iPleaders which offers online legal courses through legal courses marketplace LawSikho.com, collaborated with vakilsearch.com, to launch the aptly named “Nani Palkhivala Law Practice Management Course”.

It comes at the right time, too - The legal profession in India is waking up to the need to embrace technology, albeit rather slowly -

we have court websites, computers in the court premises, e-filing in some courts, etc. as a result. Lawyers who earlier relied on abundant and inexpensive manpower are being forced to turn to technology as clerical manpower becomes increasingly expensive.

There is a free inquiry form you can access by clicking here.

5 things you will learn

(1) What do you want to achieve?

One of the most underrated aspects of law practice is the vision you have for your practice. Without a vision, you are a rudderless ship.

What do you really want? What do you want to be known for? How big do you want to be? How profitable? What value and service do you want to deliver to your clients?

The clearer you are, the more likely you are to get there. And the first take away from the course is to make you clear about your goal.

(2) Track your matters with care

If you are like most lawyers, you lose track of cases more than occasionally, at great cost to your clients and consequently your practice.

You should find a way of keeping track of your cases in a painless manner, and a good law practice management course should provide you with the processes, tools and software to do that.

A license to software that will manage your practice comes bundled with the course.

(3) Take back control of your calendar

Simply put, if you are in not in control of your time, you are not in control of your practice, or your life for that matter.

Invariably, lawyers take on a lot of administrative work and are not able to deal with these administrative tasks effectively. Not only does it cut down the time available to deliver results to your clients, it also impedes on the personal life of a lawyer.

Even the lawyers who delegate spend a lot of time following up on delegated work - because they do not have a central dashboard from which to review and check the status of the delegated work. Often they also do not have the benchmarks to weigh against the performance of lawyers, administrative stuff or even their own effort or performance of the firm as a whole.

The Nani Palkhivala Course promises to give you simple tips that can put the controls to your calendar and your life back in your hands.

(4) Ensure that you earn what you deserve

If you are like most lawyers, you sit up at the end of the month and feverishly try to remember your billing and outstanding.

A good business or a good professional should always know their outstanding and dues. Your very survival may depend on it. Most lawyers hesitate to expand because they do not know how they will pay their bills - don't fall into that trap.

Thankfully, there is an entire body of literature and case-studies they can learn from and implement what suits them in the practice. This course includes steps for systematic recovery of any pending recoverable - You will be amazed what wonders this can do for your practice.

(5) Get known and noticed

With the rise of social media and e-commerce, the interaction between businesses, customers and people in general has changed drastically. Lawyers must maintain a digital profile to remain relevant and make a mark by carefully creating and maintaining a website and/or social media profile.

The harsh truth is that the not having a website is not something you can afford, anymore.

Every participant in the Course gets a BCI compliant website built for his / her practice at no additional cost, and corresponding software to manage the website and office.

Apply for the Nani Palkhivala Law Practice Management Course here.

nce you are done, do share the URL of your new website and your experience of the course with us. We would love to know. In case you feel like learning more, click here.

All the best, and may the force be with you!