Ten Tips To Help Law Firms Make The Most Of 2025

The holidays are a time to rest and recharge. Regardless of your chosen holiday celebration, the later weeks of December often mean a lighter workload, as judges, lawyers, and clients across the country spend time with their families. And that should include you!

One of the reasons it’s so important to rest during the holiday season is to start the new year off strong. Coming off of a few days (or weeks, if you’re lucky) of rest, ready to head back to your firm and make the coming year your best year yet is one of the many benefits of time off! Below, we’ve got ten quick tips you can take into 2025 to help you accomplish your goals.

1- Upgrade Your Communication Tools

Whether you’re discussing an ongoing case with another member of your firm or talking to a client, it’s important to keep your communication tools sharp. Make 2025 the year you upgrade your communication tools, both within your firm and outside it, or at least make the most of the tools you already have!

Over 80 percent of law firms use some kind of CRM, but only 20 percent would call that CRM “effective”.

Keeping track of your communications is of vital importance. You want everything to be documented if possible, so you always know when your last communique with a client or new lead was, and when it’s time to follow up. It’ll make your firm more efficient when every communication is indexed to a legal matter, especially as more and more law firms go remote.

2- Enforce Boundaries Between Work And Life

We know the concept of “work/life balance” has been discussed over and over in legal spaces, but we wouldn’t dedicate one of these ten tips to it if it weren’t important.

According to Clio’s 2022 Legal Trends Report, 56 percent of lawyers work after 5 PM, 42 percent of lawyers work Saturdays, and 32 percent work Sundays.

It’s easy to accept these numbers as the reality of being a lawyer, but it doesn’t have to be that way! There are very few attorneys for whom answering calls and working on weekends is necessary. The law is complex and important, but it isn’t emergency surgery; you don’t always have to be on call! Make sure you’re setting boundaries and making sure you are running your law firm, not the other way around.

3- Make Content For Your Website

It can be easy to think of your law firm’s website like a billboard. Clients end up on your site from your advertising or your position on search results, and then they fill out a form or call you and you’re able to secure their business from there. The reality, of course, is that your website needs to be a lot more than that.

Blogs like the one you’re reading right now are great for boosting your search engine results and informing your clients about legal issues and processes (without giving advice, of course).

Only 30 percent of visitors were able to understand the process of hiring a lawyer when visiting a law firm’s website.

Videos can be a great tool too! In both cases, it can seem daunting to take time out of your day to make content, but you just need a keyboard or a smartphone to start making blogs and videos that will boost your website’s ranking and secure more clients. Just make sure that whoever your audience is, they don’t need another blog or video to answer their questions, and you’ll be off to a great start!

4- Automation Will Ease Your Headaches

Just like content creation, it can seem like investing in automation technology and protocols is a waste of time. The time you put in at the beginning of your automation journey, however, will pay dividends throughout the rest of your career!

The new year is a great time to take stock of your automation processes and work on improving them or creating new ones! Do some research into the tech tools you’re already using, and figure out which of your tasks can be automated at least partially. In a few months, you’ll thank yourself for saving time on things you don’t like to do.

5- Make The Most Of Your Time

Investing time into your automation is just part of making sure you’re spending your time wisely. A year isn’t as long as it might seem; if you’re working 40 hour weeks (lucky you!), you’ll have just 2080 hours in 2025. On average, a first-year associate is expected to bill 1900 hours in a year!

It’s clear, then, that your time is valuable. Make sure you’re spending it right! A good first step is committing to putting everything on your calendar, from meetings to task completion to exercise! By blocking things out on your calendar, you can get a good idea of how you’re spending your time, and how you can better prioritize getting things done.

6- Stay Local

Of course, the biggest law firms in the country ignore this advice, but for the vast majority of lawyers and law firms, it bears listening to: focus on your local area!

Despite increases in virtual meetings with legal professionals, clients still prefer attorneys in their local area.

There’s value in diversifying your client base, and getting licensed in multiple states. But for your marketing, make sure you’re targeting clients closest to your law firm. This isn’t just good business advice, it’s good marketing advice! Platforms like Google and Facebook work best when targeting geographically, and your local search keywords like “car accident attorney Milwaukee” can be some of your highest value results!

7- Integration Is Key To Success

Piggybacking off our earlier suggestion to automate as many of your firm’s tasks as possible, it’s important to make sure the various tech tools you’re using throughout your firm can communicate. All the automation in the world won’t be of much use if you have to manually transfer data from one piece of legal software to another.

Luckily, there aren’t many legal tech tools out there that don’t integrate. Make sure you do your research before adopting a new piece of technology, of course, but you’ll find that many of your tools integrate at least through services like Zapier. Your chosen technology tool’s support staff will be instrumental in setting up these integrations so that your firm can be as smooth as possible.

8- Hire The Right Talent

For many firms, success isn’t measured in profits, but in growth. If you’re growing your firm, you’re going to need to bring in more staff to help you succeed. Hiring, however, is not just a matter of filling a role.

Experience and proficiency are obviously important, but you’re likely going to find a lot of candidates who fit those criteria. When deciding between qualified candidates, it’s important to keep in mind what your firm is all about.

Are you a no-holds-barred, nobody leaves till the work is done firm? Do you have a flexible work from home policy? Do you like to get together after work for drinks and to relax? Find out what makes your firm tick, and use that to analyze your candidates. Making sure your new hires fit your firm’s culture and goals will help ensure they stick around, and that you can get the most out of their efforts.

9- Focus Your Firm And Your Brand

The reality is, you can’t keep everyone happy. Being creative with your marketing means that you will eventually turn people away, even if you’re trying your hardest not to. That’s why it’s important to make sure that when you appeal to a certain client base, you make sure you’re leaning all in.

Niching down your firm’s focus can be an effective business strategy and a great marketing strategy. Going from “car accident attorney Milwaukee” to “truck wreck attorney Milwaukee” might seem like a small change, but in terms of the results your advertising and SEO will return, it might as well be night and day! Take some time this holiday season to find out which kinds of cases are your moneymakers, and consider leaning into those cases in your branding. You might find yourself accessing an as-yet untapped local market!

10- Make Sure You’re Ready To Grow

A common mistake law firms make when investing in advertising and other growth strategies is not setting themselves up for success. Let’s say you’re risking a big marketing push to make sure your phone is ringing off the hook. Do you have the staff ready to answer those phone calls?

The last thing you want to do is spend on marketing and advertising and then miss calls from new clients, or not be ready to follow up on their inquiries! Unfortunately for your firm’s checkbook, these investments have to be made at the same time. But worry not; by making sure your firm is operationally prepared to succeed, you’ll be all but ensuring you will!

Want more tips for 2025?

If our ten tips weren’t enough for you, you’re in luck! In Answering Legal’s Lawyer’s Guide to 2025, we have five times as many tips from experts across the legal profession. Add to that our three roundtables looking back on 2024 and forward to 2025, and our holiday gift package will make sure you’re set for the year to come! Click here to get access to our free holiday gift.

And if you’re looking to make 2025 your firm’s best year yet, you can’t go wrong with Answering Legal. We’ll make sure you never miss a new client call, putting you in the perfect position to grow your law firm. Click here to learn more about our free trial!