SETTING UP A PRACTICE Locating the practice
It used to be the rule that practices were located as near as possible to the local court house. This was a satisfactory arrangement, because in the older towns the court house, the receiver of revenue, post office, police station and the offices of the town council were all located in or near the centre of the town, and all represented places where attorneys usually attended to their business. The 8 km rule also played its part in this decision, and because of the fact that these offices are usually situated in the older part of the town or city, the rental that is payable usually is reasonable.
Today all this has changed. An office is best placed where the prospective clients feel safe, and where they would leave their cars with a reasonable hope of finding it again after having concluded their business at your office. Consultations after hours, especially at night, or having to visit the office after dark, also play a role in this decision. The problem is that rental becomes more burdensome as the environment becomes more modern.
The uncomfortable fact of the matter is that the older town centers have become run down and unsafe, while the modern town centers are acceptable and safe.
The trick here is to balance the convenience of an office next to your work place, reasonably priced, against an office where clients and personnel feel safe, unreasonably priced.
You will have to determine the needs of your would be clients, after having decided on the nature of your practice, and place your office where it would best suit their needs.
Do they have motor vehicles?
Can they afford to go and look for you in the more affluent suburbs?
Is it reasonable that debtors spend more money on transport in order to reach your office?
If they are employed, can they afford the time off that is necessary to reach your office? Do you have to employ staff with driver's licenses in order to serve documents or to
attend to the offices referred to above? If so, what are the risks that you run? Are you going to make enough money to pay the rent?
In more learned terms it can be said that you should draw up a risk register, determining what risks your firm will face wherever it is located, what the potential likelihood and impact of each risk will be, and how to minimize each risk to an acceptable level.
The choice of personnel
The staff you employ are most likely the very first contact any client would make with your firm. If the saying that first impressions last the longest is correct, then you had better see to it that the first contact is immaculate. “Profitable sales and satisfactory returns on investment can only be achieved through satisfied customers.” Research in to customer dissatisfaction has shown that dissatisfaction was mostly caused by “an attitude of indifference to clients by employees”. In contrast “dissatisfaction with the offering” had much less impact on customer
dissatisfaction, and the impact of clients being “attracted by competitors” was negligibly small.
A small office need only consist of the practitioner and a receptionist/cashier. Should the need arise for the typing of contracts, deeds and affidavits which the practitioner cannot attend to himself, these can be farmed out. Any practitioner should have a computer on his desk, and train himself to use it for his everyday needs, and should only expand the number of employees as and when the work load and the resulting income warrants such an expansion. As the business expands, so does the need for proper management. Experience learns that management tasks almost always lose out to fee-earning duties. Clarity of planning, communication of vision and speed in decision making is as important as the quality of legal minds and services.
Since it is expected that the practitioner will attend to the needs of his clients with great sensitivity, it is only the qualities of the employees that need to be discussed.
The Kelly Group who specialised in providing temporary secretaries, listed the following qualifications for the ideal employee: She is recognizable by her skills and personal attributes, attitude, efficiency, acceptance of responsibility, initiative, loyalty, commitment, grooming, tact and charm. Any employee with these attributes will be the perfect personal assistant – representing the practitioner in all facets of the business. To this end the employee should understand the role of the employer, adopt a cheerful and positive approach to difficult and tedious tasks, and assist to run the office reliably and effectively. Since it can be accepted that the above described qualities will not be readily (or cheaply) available to the newly established practice, the following qualities should be looked for: Is the employee computer literate? A receptionist should be able to work the
bookkeeping system and the accompanying electronic technology;
Does the employee have the ability to communicate effectively in writing, on the telephone and face- to- face;
Is the employee accounting literate (the mathematic variety);
Can the employee work under pressure and still maintain accuracy; Is there a willingness to learn and update skills?
Of all the nice attributes that have been referred to above, the most important one is, and forever will be, the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to refer a problem to someone that will be able to solve it, and to make certain that a promised response will be attended to. There is no bigger cause for dissatisfaction than the inability to communicate. The switchboard operator and receptionist should be efficient, friendly, interested and
helpful.
Professional staff should be sympathetic, involved and involved. Support personnel should be business-like in appearance and manner. Offices should be clean, tidy and well maintained.
Documentation should be business-like in appearance, free of corrections and pleasant to look at.
Print should be clear, modern, comprehensive and memorable.
People should be clean, tidy, appropriately dressed, efficient, accessible, friendly, helpful, responsive, enthusiastic.
Eventually the continuous training of staff should never be neglected. Complacency in this regard can have dire consequences.
Once you have done all the above, you should seat yourself on a chair in your reception area and ask yourself what in the setup you are looking at would irritate a prospective client. Try and ascertain why you yourself would not use the services of your practice. Try and determine why a client would refuse to give your firm further instructions. Place yourself in the shoes of an employee, and see what, if anything is causing stress. Try to determine whether employees are sufficiently trained to do their work, and whether they have the right tools for the job. Never hesitate to ask the employee what he or she thinks about the setup. Such an approach can only foster an atmosphere of team work and co-operation.
Information Technology
No big firm will nowadays deal with an attorney's practice unless the practice is technology enabled. This means that all the electronic gadgets that now proliferate in the market, and then some, should be found in an attorney's office.
It is preferable that each fee earner should have a computer on his desk. All computers should be connected to a file server, making it possible to cross index stored material, thus saving time. A scanner should be available to load precedents on to any computer, and a printer should be available to print the products of any computer.
A copier and fax machine should be available, and the firm should be connected to the internet, because the modern wonder of e-mail has become an indispensible tool in the office, not only for external communications, but also for internal communications. This opens up the way for the possible purchase of a machine that combines all these facilities. An effective IT system has become indispensible because of the instant communication it provides with clients, the big government offices, library facilities and other sources of information.
The usual steps of buying and implementing an IT system are as follows:
Work out your “user requirements” and if necessary go and talk to a colleague who has already committed the same mistakes you are about to make. This should form the specification of the system you need, and has two parts:
Business system analysis. This means looking at the way you are working now, and ensuring that they are efficient. This is also an opportunity to do some business process re-engineering.
Determining what IT will help you with your processes and what will make you more efficient. Work out exactly what you want your IT system to do, who will use it and who should be able to access it.
Go to a range of suppliers and ask them if they could supply your requirements.
Select a supplier. Apart from considerations of economy, you should consider whether the supplier can train you and your staff, whether he will be available to assist in maintenance and upgrading, and how much of his account will be taken up by travelling costs.
Like with anything else, you will get what you pay for, and the costs of an advanced IT system can be enormous. A good rule is to buy the best that you can afford, rather than to go for the cheapest product on the market. Keep in mind that the internet can now replace a substantial part of the library, and will save money normally spent on searches in government offices, stationary and telephone costs. Networking will save a lot of time and labour by storing precedents that can be retrieved at will, and enables the sharing of equipment by various users.
The internet is not only invaluable in so far as instant communication is concerned. If used intelligently, it can open new business and marketing channels worldwide, improve business efficiency by way of faster communication, speed up interaction between practitioners, clients and suppliers, and retrieve virtually all the information that is needed to run a successful practice.
Setting up a small office
By way of electronic equipment, a small office would need one computer and printer, a photocopier and fax machine, specialised legal software and full electronic library, a telephone system, and in addition furniture, office equipment and preferably also a docex facility, although courier services these days abound. To this an electronic bookkeeping service should be added, preferably coupled to an electronic receipt printer.
The cost of connection to the internet should be determined before the type of supply is decided upon, since a land line connection requires the payment of Telkom tariffs which are regarded to be the highest in the world. If the required service warrants it, rather connect to the internet via satellite.
Consider the practice in association
Practitioners who wish to remain in single practice may consider the forming of associations, in which separate practices are conducted from the same offices, sharing facilities such as reception, a telephone system, facilities such as a printer, fax machine, copier and the like. Even larger practices who find themselves with spare capacity on hand should look at entering in to an associate agreement with a single practitioner in order to utilize such capacity gainfully. A suggested pro forma copy of an association agreement is attached hereto for consideration.
The paperless office
Advanced technology has made it possible to store all information which is to be found in an attorney's office electronically. An entire file can live out its useful life in a hard drive of a computer, and when dead filed, it could be copied and stored on compact disk, for ever if needs be, and could be retrieved at any given time. This possibility has the result that only
such paper as is needed to be issued to other users need to be produced. Brave practitioners who are very computer literate, and who are satisfied that their entire staff are very computer literate, could choose to go this route.
The trick here is not to lose the information through theft, fire or negligence, because if lost, it could present a big headache.
If the bookkeeping system is kept electronically, it has long been the practice to make backup files, which should be stored away from the office, for exactly the abovementioned eventualities. There should be no reason why all files cannot be treated in a like manner. Financing the small office
The Business Partners Corporation, who is the successor in title to the old Small Business Development Corporation, as well as all commercial banks will entertain applications for financial support, but only if it is accompanied by an favourable business plan. The business plan must contain all your academic and practical experience, the manner in which you wish to equip and staff your business, the location of the practice, and the niche market you plan to develop in the location of your choice. It must contain a reasoned income and expenditure estimate, cash flow forecast as well as projected profit and loss statement. If you do not feel competent to draw such a plan, do not hesitate to employ skilled experience, because the banks place great value on the business plan when deciding whether or not to speculate on your budding but unproven entrepreneurial skills. Be assured that the banks will be fast to call up any amount advanced, if your proposed figures do not tally with you predictions. Two matters should constantly be kept in mind:
The banks will be very careful to check your actual cash flow against the proposed cash flow as predicted in the business plan;
Experience has taught that those businesses that control cash flow carefully have the greatest chance of being successful.
Areas of practice that can be included in the business plan, could be the following: Family law. Divorce and maintenance problems will always be with us.
Motor law. Motor vehicle accidents and the resulting claim for damages will always be with us. The proposed abolishing of third party law will inevitable bring with it new restraints on the drivers of motor vehicles, such as a reduced speed limit, and the system of demerits.
Deceased estates. The administration of deceased estates can only increase. A carefully worded business guide could be left with the receptionists of the burial parlours that nowadays abound.
Conveyancing. The buying and selling of houses in the old townships is on the increase. The constant development of new townships, and the redevelopment of the old townships must create new opportunities. A carefully worded business guide could be left at the offices of estate agents that specialize in servicing customers from the old townships.
Legal aid. The Legal Aid Board has budgeted a sizeable amount of money to be distributed in the judicare system, but you will have to be on their panel of attorneys to qualify for instructions.
Labour law. Instructions could be sought from any of the various organizations that represent the interests of workers.
Any of the above sources could be exploited by diligent solicitation within the rules of the Law Society, and could provide a thriving practice if carefully nurtured. No self respecting attorney should need the assistance of the Legal Services Charter.
