The new year is a time to reflect on where we’ve been, what we’ve accomplished, where we’re going and what we want to achieve. While taking stock of personal goals and dreams, it’s a good time to evaluate your firm.

While the focus here is on technology, an evaluation also should include general office practices such as marketing to attract new clients, procedures for capturing information about potential clients and intake procedures for new cases.

Take a look at your partners, associates and staff. Are they happy? Do you provide a comfortable environment where they want to be productive and benefit the firm and its clients? Are you offering competitive salaries and benefits? Are there intangibles you can offer, such as the option to work from home to compensate for a slightly lower salary? Have employees received sufficient training on the tasks incorporated in their jobs? Are those procedures well-documented?

This is a good time to compare 2002 to previous years. Did your firm earn more or less income? Where did your new clients come from? Did some types of work earn more money than others? Extrapolating this information from accounting and billing programs will help predict what 2003 will bring.

Among the accounting programs to look at are the profit-and-loss statement comparing this year to last, noting where the large changes are, either up or down. If your expenses are way up, consider what steps will bring them under control. If your income is lower, think about what you did differently and what you can do in the coming year to improve your receipts.

Use your billing program to look at which practice areas and which attorneys were responsible for any gains or losses. If you haven’t tracked your work like this, start now to monitor who brought in what work, who realized the most in receipts and what types of work were most profitable. Even the most basic law office pro-grams can be configured to collect this information.

If you’ve had the right combination of computer programs, you’ll be able to do a meaningful evaluation and use that information to plan for the future.

Even the smallest firms should have a network to share files and information. For an office with two or three people, a peer-to-peer network consisting of computers with their own net-work interface cards (NICs) connected to a hub, router or switch and mapped with a common storage drive for documents and data will suffice. A peer-to-peer network is easy to set up and lets you use one of the computers (preferably one with the fastest processor and a large hard drive) as a designated server.

Firms with more than a few people, or with a bigger budget, should have a dedicated server — a high-powered computer designed as a reliable server with a large hard drive, backup tape system, virus protection software and depending on the size of the firm or the nature of the applications, a mirrored drive or an extra processor to minimize down time.

Recently, some clients have had wireless solutions recommended by their hardware vendors. While this is promising technology and attractive in lessening the need for wiring and the ability to work anywhere in the office, the speed of transmissions is much slower and the performance of wireless networks is not as reliable as wired. For now, leave the wireless networks for hard-to-wire spaces and home net-works.

Software arsenal

While reflecting on the current state of your firm’s technology, you should consider the arsenal of software required to properly run and evaluate your firm. Without question, every law firm needs a word processing program to prepare documents. However, be sure you and your staff are using it as efficiently as possible. It’s amazing how many firms have upgraded from one version to the next and still pre-pare documents as if their computers were just a baby-step above electronic typewriters. When I look at documents prepared by some of my clients, I’m always surprised to find files that don’t have headers or footers, have a typed table of contents rather than an automatically generated one or have spaces leading paragraphs instead of tabs. Many secretaries cling to the “dupe and copy” method for creating new documents from old ones rather than having more sophisticated document preparation options available when word processing programs are accessing data from case management pro-grams.

If your firm suffers from any of these, you should consider staff re-fresher training so they can learn faster and easier ways to prepare documents.

Closely related to this is consideration of a document management sys-tem. For years, I’ve believed smaller firms can thrive with home-grown document management by setting up their word processor to automatically show the file path and document name at the bottom of each page of printed documents and by designing a folder and document-naming scheme so there’s predictability about what to call the next document and where to find it.

Recently, however, I’ve begun to realize that it is only the exceptional small firm that can consistently en-force these systems. Additionally, for firms that have been using computers for 10 to 20 years, the accumulated number of files prepared by numerous people with different methods inhibits a firm from effectively leveraging its own work product.

Document management programs like Worldox and Imanage give lawyers a tool to research their own firm’s documents when preparing new ones on similar issues. Controlling versions and collaborating with others inside or outside the firm are other benefits that come with these products. While the entry price for these programs may seem above an average small firm’s budget, the immediate benefit of better access to documents often outweighs the cost.

Case management

Case or practice management soft-ware has been slowly making inroads into law firms. If you’ve just struggled through the annual collecting of names and addresses to send holiday cards, you may be a good candidate for a case management program. One benefit is a firm-wide contact list. In many of the programs, custom fields can be added to track what mailings each client should receive and then easily select those to whom you want to send a holiday greeting.

Tracking how clients came to your firm will help better evaluate your referral sources. Are most new clients coming from existing clients? Are they referred by other attorneys? Are they the result of programs you did for a lo-cal business group? An advertisement in a newspaper?

Knowing how potential clients find your firm lets you spend your market-ing time and dollars more wisely. Using the source information from your case management program, along with financial analysis of the value of the business from the past year in your billing or accounting program, will let you fine-tune your efforts to focus on the most lucrative work.

Clients and potential clients can be left with either a good or bad impression when trying to schedule time to meet or speak with a lawyer. A case management program, with its shared calendar, will allow anyone in your office to assist in scheduling calls or meetings with clients and prospective clients. Compare this to a scenario of a long-standing client calling to ask an attorney a quick question and is told, “I am not sure where Mr. Lawyer is and don’t really know when he will be back in the office.” No one likes their time wasted — especially by a professional who charges $200 or more per hour.

Countless times, I’ve met with an attorney who was sure she needed X software when her staff was spending hours each month retyping lawyers’ time entries into their billing program and therefore not available to work on projects that would save time for everyone in the firm.

The beginning of a new year is the time to naturally reflect. Take some time to focus on your firm, its technology and its people. When consulting with clients, I often ask, “What’s working and what’s broken?” This of-ten gets lawyers to look beyond the software categories and focus on the issues that need work in their firm. Now’s a good time to consider what’s working and what’s not, and fix some of the broken items as your New Year’s resolution for your firm.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems in Montclair, a training and consulting firm specializing in law firm automation. Copies of previous columns are on her company website, www.losinc.com. For information about her quarterly meetings for Time Matters users, check the website or e-mail info@losinc.com. Schlein formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA Law Practice Management Section.

Questions for Carol L. Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 650-7010, e-mailed to news@njlnews.com or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, Edison Square, 2035 Lincoln Highway, Suite 3005, Edison, N.J. 08817.