How Many Meetings Does Your Law Firm Really Need?

The following is adapted from my new book, Fireproof.

Your phone buzzes with an alert. You look down, you groan. Another meeting.

Most law professionals can relate to the feeling of having too many meetings to fit into their schedule. They’re frustrated by the seemingly endless hours spent on unfocused discussion when they could be getting more productive work done.

If this describes you or your employees, you’ve probably wondered: How many meetings does my law firm really need?

That’s what this article will answer. By planning your law firm’s meetings ahead of time to be focused and agenda driven, you can ensure that you’re using your employees’ time efficiently and not scheduling more meetings than necessary. 

Here’s a look at the meeting best practices that have worked for my law firm to keep us all on the same page without being overwhelmed.

Setting the Right Meeting Frequency

Many law firms fall into the habit of scheduling a meeting every time a big issue blows up that needs addressing. However, holding meetings as a reaction to a problem is a slippery slope that can lead to an endless cycle of meetings that never get you ahead of the problem’s root cause.

Instead, my firm has had success with designing our meetings to spot problems before they arise. Everyone in our firm is in at least one meeting each week. Each team within the company has a standing weekly meeting. They start on time, and they end on time; people never have to worry about a one-hour meeting turning into a two-hour meeting.

At our weekly meetings, we discuss our “to-do” assignments. These are assigned weekly, and we follow up at these meetings to see how people are progressing on these assignments. A standing weekly meeting works well for most firms because it allows teams to stay aligned and regularly check in on each other without taking up too much time. 

Keeping Meetings Focused

Hand in hand with finding the right meeting frequency is keeping your meetings focused. When you schedule a meeting, you must have an agenda and goal in mind, otherwise you risk a meeting that runs off track and wastes people’s time. 

At my firm, all of our meetings have specific agendas, and the expectations for everyone are clear. Everyone is assigned rocks or to-do’s—either in service to their team or in service to the company in general—and we use the meetings to monitor progress, spot delays, or help people who are struggling.

We always reserve the final minutes of any meeting to nail down what our next steps are and who will be responsible for taking them. Regardless of what it is, everyone in the meeting leaves knowing “who will do what by when,” a term many companies have given the acronym WWDWBW.

Making Meetings Productive

Lastly, in addition to planning the focus of the meeting, you want to make sure the time actually spent in the meeting is productive. 

At my firm, our best meetings have spirited disagreement. People argue their points with passion and respect, keeping personalities out of it. In the end, they agree to pursue whatever strategy the group settles on. Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor, calls this “bumping up against each other.” The process improves our work product and social skills.

As the leader, I make a point to hold back my opinions until I’ve allowed others to speak. If I state my opinion at the beginning of a meeting, everyone tends to agree with me, killing the discussion and others’ insight. It’s not the leader’s job to walk into a meeting and show everyone how decisive they are. It’s their job to flush out the facts and opinions and use those to reach the right decision.

Find what brings out the best discussions in your meetings and guide your employees toward that state. 

Hold Only Enough Meetings to Get the Job Done

Before you groan about the next meeting on your calendar, think about how you could turn that meeting from squandered time into an opportunity for alignment. 

Remember, meetings can be an essential part of your efficiency and productivity, or they can be a distraction. The key to making meetings productive is to find the right frequency for your teams—often enough that your team members stay aligned with one another, but not too often to detract from the actual work getting done—and to keep meetings focused around an agenda.

In short, if you don’t have an agenda and a purpose, you don’t have a meeting. 

For more advice on running a highly profitable law firm, you can find Fireproof on Amazon.

Mike Morse is the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury law firm in Michigan. Since being founded in 1995, Mike Morse Law Firm has grown to 150 employees, served 25,000 clients, and collected more than $1 billion. A household name in Michigan, Mike gets over 20,000 calls per year requesting his services. John Nachazel is the COO of Mike Morse Law Firm. A pioneer in the practice of applying business metrics to law firms, John’s precise insights and financial forecasts have been instrumental to the firm’s growth. John has an MBA from the University of Michigan and twenty years of sales and marketing experience.