Are you a law firm owner who’s been wanting to level up their practice? Or perhaps you’re a lawyer who’s been struggling to keep things from falling through the cracks? It’s common for lawyers to juggle a mix of cases at the same time. If you don’t have a good system for tracking everything, it is easy to find yourself overwhelmed. Worse, too many dropped balls can call into question your duty of diligence.

But things don’t have to go that far. You can have a well-oiled practice. You can juggle multiple cases at a time. You and your team can keep tabs on each case and handle them with ease. The secret ingredient to running a profitable law practice is making the work visible.

The most successful practices manage their cases proactively, not reactively. When work is made visible, you and your team can get out ahead of your workload. You’ll know what’s happening in all of your cases at any point in time. You’ll know who’s responsible for what, when things are due, and what the status is for each matter in your workflow. Your entire team will sleep well knowing that they’re on top of things.

And if you’re doing flat fees or other alternative pricing, you already know that efficiency is the key to profitability. Even if you bill hourly, you still may be looking for internal efficiencies or cost savings you can pass on to your clients. To get there, you need the right systems in place to enforce processes and procedures that will enable you and your team to work like clockwork. When your work is made visible, you can spot bottlenecks and prevent logjams.

Legal Kanban uses the Kanban method to make work visible for law practitioners. You start with a Kanban board to plan your cases. The way you set up a Kanban board depends on your workflow and the type of law you practice. Typically, stages of your workflow are represented as columns on your board, and then your matters become cards that flow through those stages.

Kanban Zone provides templates for legal practitioners to kickstart their Legal Kanban journey. We have two basic workflow templates: one for litigation and one for transactional workflows. You can customize each template to suit your preferences and specific steps your team does.

When creating your Legal Kanban board, think of your board columns like they are stations on a factory floor. The goal is for work to flow through the factory as smoothly as possible while minimizing unnecessary delay. Your Legal Kanban board will give you an overall view of where things are in your factory.

Each card on your board will correspond to a case you’re handling for a client. Each card will then flow through your board until it’s done. You can also customize the card with deadlines, checklists, attachments, descriptions, and other pertinent information to keep everything in one place. Depending on what you use for law practice management, your Kanban board can complement, and even synchronize with, your existing tools.