Grow Your Law Firm Through Data-Driven Decisions with Neal Goffman

Uncategorized Dec 22, 2022

Sure, you’re a law firm owner, but are you running your business like a CEO? In order to support your firm’s growth, it’s crucial to manage it as a business. And like every business out there, leveraging software and automation is one of the most game-changing moves you can make for your firm. Once you’re able to integrate the proper automation technologies into your firm, you’re set up for long-term success.

In this episode, Neal Goffman, CEO of GrowPath, joins us to discuss the importance of optimizing systems and data for your firm. He lays down some of GrowPath’s most powerful software solutions and how they help boost efficiency for law firms. Neal also delves into the biggest struggles law firm owners face today and shares insightful pieces of advice to overcome them.

If you want to learn how to scale your firm through software automation, then this episode is for you.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode”

Learn the benefits of having the right software in place for your firm.
Discover the best practices for supporting your firm’s future growth.
Understand the power of having an insight into your firm’s true capacity.

Resources

Book a ONE-ON-ONE FREE COACHING SESSION with our coaches at Profit with Law’s Law Firm Expansion Coaching Session!
Episode 26 - The Death of The Billable Hour
Connect with Neal Goffman: LinkedIn
GrowPath: Website | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter
CCH Tagetik Supply Chain Planning
QuickBooks
Stripe
Salesforce

Episode Highlights

Who is Neal?

Neal has spent most of his life working in software.
He went into consulting right out of college, then worked with global software companies.
He enjoys growing companies with their strengths, solving business problems, and flushing out competition.

GrowPath Software

GrowPath is a product suite focused on the personal injury space.
It helps firms maximize revenue and improve efficiency using analytics, automation, and AI packaged in a module.
Some of the solutions GrowPath provides are maximizing intake conversion, case management, and understanding conversion trends and marketing efficacy.
Clients can choose only the solutions they need, and most of the software’s solutions are API-enabled.

Top Three Struggles Law Firm Owners Face Today

First, many law firm owners are not running their businesses like a CEO.

Neal: “The biggest problem is one that many law firm owners are ignorant, in that they don’t really have a good handle on their business. They’re not running their business like a CEO.”

Second are issues with staff and intake.
Lastly, the biggest issue law firms are facing is not understanding how they will support their growth.

Neal: “These law firms are growing, and there’s so much business out there. It’s recession-proof. But what they’re not understanding is adding people to growth is not a cost-effective way to do it.”

The Importance of Having a System in Place

Any lawyer with a couple of support staff can benefit from software automation.
Having an intake system can boost efficiency on top of having an intake person.
A system can help identify leads that intake people can miss.

GrowPath’s Target Market

Any flat fee contingency-based arena is a fit for GrowPath.
They reinvest every dollar they’re making back into the company for R&D and creating new solutions.
GrowPath’s roadmap for 2023-2024 is focusing on flat fee contingency-based and pro bono markets.

Neal: “We know that there are however many players in the market, but we keep a tab on the pricing to make sure we’re right in the middle, and clients get the most value for it.”

Overall, practices that don’t do any hourly billing are a perfect fit for GrowPath.

Projecting Future Sales

GrowPath projects future sales based on factors like historical regression analysis, case type, and damages.
For the next iteration, they have beta machine learning models for bigger and more robust data access.
Their productivity tool calculates the capacity of the firm’s resources and projects them based on the present status of the cases.

Neal: “John has five cases, and Jim has seven, so let’s give John two more. But John’s cases might be three times as complex as Jim’s. So you can’t just say we’ll give him more because he has two more.”

The insight into your firm’s true capacity will give you the ability to predict future capacities.
They take the same approach and combine it with the firm’s marketing efficacy in different channels.

Neal: “I’ve spoken to probably 20 different marketing companies that specialize in law firms. They do not ever have a version of the truth that they agree upon the marketing efficacy, and it’s a battle. I don’t know why they don’t want to agree on it, but they don’t.”

Large Volume Leads

Moshe: “That’s really where the disconnect is with marketers — they only have the data they have. They’re not in your office answering the phone. So if there isn’t a system in place to mark those incoming calls as what they were, then they don’t get that last piece of information to be able to know whether it’s a valid lead or not.”

GrowPath has some unique capabilities for handling larger volume-based clients.
If a connection is not made with the leads within the first 60 seconds, it goes to a queue that needs to be followed up.
Phone calls, texts, and emails are then made to ensure the lead gets closed-loop and evaluated.

Neal’s Parting Piece of Advice

Don’t just go by reputation. Pick a software through data-based decisions.

Neal: “You are going to only be as good as the metrics you manage to.”

Set goals for your business every year, quarter, and month around what the metrics are.

About Neal

Neal Goffman is a proven software leader who joined GrowPath in October of 2021. Under his leadership, GrowPath has grown over 100% in less than 12 months. Prior to GrowPath. Neal led a supply chain planning SaaS company, Vanguard Software, for 5 years until its acquisition for $110M by Wolters Kluwer. Neal's experience prior to Vanguard spanned large companies like IBM and other startups that had successful exits to companies like Informatica.

If you wish to get in touch with Neal, you may connect with him on LinkedIn.

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