Reviews are a great way to analyse employees’ past performance, but law firm goal setting is far more effective in shaping how individuals, teams and entire firms operate in the future. And now that most law firms offer some version of a hybrid work model, law firm goals are an effective way to keep teams grounded in your firm’s culture and long-term vision.
These check-ins help individuals assess their performance, understand their personal strengths and weaknesses, provide invaluable mentorship opportunities and allow employees to provide their own feedback — aiding effective collaboration moving forward.
Let’s dive into how law firms should set, assess and achieve long-term goals.
The benefits of effective law firm goal setting
Goals give our work meaning and keep us motivated. Having a goal means knowing what we want to achieve — and we won’t stop until we get there. According to McKinsey, “goal-setting can help improve employee engagement in a way which elevates performance and benefits organisations overall”. Win-win.
Goal setting is a core aspect of effective performance management. Individuals, teams and entire firms can properly assess their performance as they progress towards achieving the goal by identifying what they want to achieve. Senior leaders will understand which employees are outperforming expectations and can reward them with greater compensation, a new title and more responsibility. This is key to ensuring the firm’s ongoing success.
Goals also ensure that everybody keeps the bigger picture in mind — both personally and across the entire firm. Ideally, every employee’s goals will contribute to your firm’s overall performance and aid effective collaboration. It’s impossible to work together successfully if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.
What sort of law firm goals should your team set?
Goal setting is far from a prescriptive process — the best goals are intrinsically motivated. Encourage individuals and teams to pursue goals they are inherently passionate about rather than trying to force benchmarks on them.
A few main categories of goals might apply across your firm:
Financial
Yes, valuable fee-earners should be encouraged and incentivised to increase their billed hours and collections rates. But there are other types of financial law firm goals and other ways of reaching them:
- By capturing more billable hours. Rather than forcing more hours on already-burned-out teams, ensure you’re capturing all the work they do for clients. On average, Smokeball legal practice management software clients bill for 34% more time, thanks to automatic time tracking tools that bill for every minute spent in our software.
- By increasing efficiency. Think flat-fee firms can only increase profitability by increasing their fees? Think again. Your firm can reduce its hours worked against your fee charged by increasing efficiency. Smokeball’s Law Firm Insights pull data from your automatic time tracking to show profitability by matter and fee earner, so you can understand your profitability and set goals to improve.
- By retaining more — and more profitable — clients. Your firm serves clients of many types and backgrounds, but understanding which ones have the most significant impact on your bottom line helps you set financial goals. Smokeball’s Firm Insights also reveal profitability by matter type, realisation and more, so you can zero in on success.
Our legal practice management software also helps boost pesky collection rates, thanks to auto-generated invoices that draw from your matter details, seamless integration with Stripe and more. Plus, Smokeball now allows for automatic credit card charges for clients on a payment plan.
Educational
All lawyers are required to complete a certain number of continuing professional development (CPD) credits, depending on your jurisdiction. CPD shouldn’t feel like a burden; rather it’s an opportunity for lawyers to explore areas of interest, share their learnings with the firm and provide better service to their clients and communities.
Paralegal and staff roles can serve as a stepping stone in the path toward their JD; if this is the case at your firm, provide time and mentorship for team members to pursue educational goals like studying for (and taking) the LSAT. By supporting employees with their long-term educational goals, they’ll feel your firm truly has their best interests at heart and be more engaged in the workplace.
Cultural/Wellness
Understandably, most firms have struggled to support their existing culture in the wake of COVID-19. A worldwide survey has found that Australians had one of the highest rates of burnout of any country in 2020. The study, which analysed white-collar workers and how they coped with working from home last year, found that almost four in five Australians suffered burnout (77%, in fact) 6% above the global average.
That doesn’t mean employees aren’t burned out — it’s more likely they’re not comfortable talking about it. Help your team set goals that promote a culture of mental wellness — discuss your own burnout; take their teambuilding and anti-burnout suggestions seriously and set timelines for using vacation days. Smokeball’s Firm Insights also offer value here: They show which employees are working the most hours, potentially burning the candle at both ends.
How to help your staff set long-term goals
Keep these three best practices in mind when working with your team to set long-term law firm goals:
Make them SMART
The best goals are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound. There’s no point in setting unclear goals that your staff can’t achieve, that you can’t assess and that are irrelevant to the individual or the firm’s success.
Remember: Intrinsically-motivated goals work best
A 2012 study showed that employees are three times more engaged when pursuing intrinsically motivated goals at work than pursuing extrinsically motivated goals. McKinsey’s research backs this up, revealing that intrinsically motivated employees show 46% higher job satisfaction and are 32% more committed to their jobs.
Don’t just impose goals on your staff. Instead, let employees tell you what they want to achieve and, if possible, connect their individual goals and motivations to the firm’s future success.
Recognise and reward those who achieve their goals
We all like to be recognised for a job well done. If staff work hard and achieve challenging goals, remember to celebrate them. Use tangible numbers from Smokeball’s Law Firm Insights to inform bonuses or incentives, taking the guesswork out of identifying consistent outperformance.
Always champion employees who pursue challenging goals, raise their own performance levels and make the firm more effective as a result. This will go a long way to creating a culture of consistent outperformance.
