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Debate – The mediator, the lawyer’s new best friend?

by with No Comment Lawyer Entrepreneur

Lawyer mediator – Mediation by the lawyer. Even if the latest figures are encouraging, lawyers still sometimes have difficulty adopting the mediation reflex. However, they must be an integral part of the process for the full development of this alternative method to legal litigation which has many advantages that have long been proven, including time saving, confidentiality, cost control and consensual pacification of disputes. A look back at two key players in conflict resolution.

The lawyer mediator, at the heart ofan alternative amicable dispute resolution process

Whether judicial or conventional, mediation and the lawyer mediator remains a possibility open to the parties to find a solution to the resolution of their conflict upstream of the dispute and, when the courts are already seized, to constitute a complementary option to the judge capable of allowing the parties to find a solution to the dispute themselves. The advantages are well known: essentially pacification of the conflict; and resolution (quick and less expensive, €8 on average to be shared between the parties) of the dispute if it is successful.

As a reminder, judicial mediation, established by Law No. 95-125 of February 8, 1995, was inserted by Decree No. 96-652 of July 22, 1996 in the new Code of Civil Procedure, under articles 131-1 and following which govern it. Since then, governments have continued to promote it, most recently through the 2018-2022 justice programming law.

Indeed, the advantages of mediation are numerous. The main ? Reestablish communication between the parties and ensure that they find common ground before the trial. Be careful, it is not up to the mediating lawyer to find the solution but to the parties in conflict. The latter must simply ensure that the agreement is in good faith and that it reflects the will of the parties. The mediation agreement is not drawn up by the mediator but by the parties or their lawyers. And if no agreement is reached, the mediator simply informs the judge that the parties have not been able to agree.

Finally, the advantage of mediation with a lawyer, as we can clearly see, is to find a middle ground between two parties in conflict, before a trial, under the neutral eye of a third person, who will not favor either party. It is also a quick process, since, with some exceptions, a deadline of 3 months maximum must be respected. The latest statistics show in this regard that on average 70% of cases result in an agreement, after around fifteen hours.

The role of the lawyer mediator in mediation

Mediation and especially the perception of mediation by lawyers has evolved significantly in recent years. The proof: many bars today have their own mediation centers and these centers have generally entered into agreements with the courts facilitating the implementation of mediations. This training is logically not without consequences on the use of mediation, better trained, the lawyer concedes more easily and has better control of the process, from the opportunity to resort to it to the conclusion of the agreement in passing through the entire mediation process with which it is necessarily associated. And the figures show this since 68% of lawyers admit to practicing it*. And an indication of the favors of mediation, some lawyers today see in it a potential for development of their professional activity*.

Also, as we can clearly see, the role of the lawyer is major here in the resolution upstream of the dispute: he must not only inform his client of the interest of mediation before the trial, but he is thus also associated. This is not anecdotal: statistics have shown that mediation with the presence of the lawyers of the parties concerned had a 70% chance of succeeding, compared to 30% for that excluding it.

Informing, supporting his client, the lawyer must finally contribute to the drafting of the memorandum of understanding. Here again, its role is not trivial. It is in fact the only one capable of guaranteeing that the parties have concluded the agreement with full knowledge of their rights.

What if everyone got along?

Mediation is not the prerogative of the judge, the lawyer, or even the mediator. On the contrary, it must be the revelation and the outcome of collective work. Taken in isolation, it is of limited interest; however, it will prove to be terribly effective if the different protagonists work together. The conductor here is undoubtedly the magistrate, we must not forget the clerks either, who are in direct contact with the litigants, perhaps more than any other. As we have seen, the role of the lawyer is also decisive. Finally, obviously, mediation will be more likely to succeed with a qualified mediator who guarantees a fair balance. Here again, things are changing, since today 51% of designated mediators come from the legal professions compared to 49% from the business world.

* 2020 Survey on Lawyers and Mediation , Village de la Justice. It should be noted that the percentages presented here correspond to the percentage of respondents.

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Practice management software to perform.

by with No Comment Lawyer Entrepreneur

Practice management software, the perfect solution for practices that want performer.

Could practice management software be the solution to maintaining competitiveness even in times of crisis?

We can already say that the COVID period has highlighted the need to move beyond simply relying on physical presence in the office. But beyond this specific event, it seems that lawyers and legal professionals in general, spurred on by competition from legal tech, are themselves undergoing a transformation, seeking to equip themselves with digital tools to work more efficiently.

Can we say that a page has been turned? Yes, it is inevitable. All professions are affected and the legal world is no exception.

Change will take time and those who have jumped on the digitalization train will already be ahead of the others. No revolution but a change in morals will gradually disrupt the organization of offices.

Why oppose tradition and technology? What if one served the other? What if it was possible to offer a tool capable of making practitioners more efficient?

Practice management software, a major asset for effective teleworking

How can you work peacefully when all customer files are partly paper and partly digital? Or classified according to the sole logic of a collaborator? Until now, the majority of firms find a small organization that works. But what about efficiency and the risk of error?

An online practice management solution brings all files together in one place. It also integrates communication tools for calling clients and colleagues. All these features are accessible through a single interface.

It creates a portable working environment, accessible to everyone, from anywhere, on computer, tablet or smartphone. Obviously, the hosting environment is secure to avoid any third-party intrusion. Teams work from home as well as they would in the office, with the added bonus of a better work/life balance. 

Indeed, remote work is a productivity booster for many employees. The legal profession is also following this trend. According to a study conducted by Jarvis, 75% of lawyers are considering implementing remote work within their firms in the coming months, and for 25% of them, for more than two days a week. Practitioners therefore have every reason to anticipate this emerging trend.

A process change for better collaboration ?

Of course, integrating software into the structure will reshuffle some cards in terms of organization. All employees will have to use the tool which will eventually become part of their daily routine.

The advantage? On a given file, all information will be classified and centralized. And each speaker will have the same level of knowledge. But human relationships remain essential since videoconferencing, chat and integrated notifications allow you to stay connected and not forget anything.

Effective practice management software is like a virtual practice but more efficient. It improves joint work in thinking or drafting legal documents, streamlines tasks and avoids the delays inherent in a shaky organization. So the agendas are synchronized and everyone knows exactly what they have to do, and in how long.

With a 360° vision, the partners have control over the running of their business and, in the event of difficulty with a matter, quickly realize the need to bring in additional employees. They will be able to easily take the train on the way since all the information will already be available to them via the interface.

The self-regulating automation techniques and digital for even more qualitative work!

Among the time-consuming tasks, there is searching for document templates, manually filling in repetitive information, formatting an invoice, retrieving elements from the client. 

These tasks are certainly essential but the added value for the firm is limited. The estimated time lost is around 40 hours per month for additional work which slows down the quality of intervention and advice.

We are certain, management software contributes to the excellence of a firm. On the one hand, it automates actions that do not require expertise and therefore frees up time for missions with real added value. On the other hand, it offers updated documents in a common space so that everyone works on the same basis. Finally, it helps the team collaborate harmoniously on a single document. This avoids version errors due to back and forth emails.

Process automation frees the team from tedious tasks and even more so saves them time. The digitization of work tools makes it possible to improve the quality of advice.

Practice management software to perform like a business

Do lawyers think about their business strategy? Before the current digitalization, few of them considered their practice as a real business. Even today, they think about fees but fail to implement a growth-generating strategy.

However, a digital solution as described above gives an overview of the health of the practice. It is ultimately a dashboard which lists all the files in progress, the time spent on each of them, the workload, the files closed, the average hourly rate invoiced, the invoicing in progress, the unpaid amounts, the profitability for each business. 

The best firm management software will be able to synthesize all these indicators so that associates can take corrective measures (such as recovering unpaid debts which represent a 30% hole in cash flow) or carrying out strategic actions (prioritizing one file instead of another). which requires more time resources). 

With up-to-date data, it is easy to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your company and manage your teams. The objective? Take advantage of this visibility to implement a growth plan for your firm.

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[#SERIE] Profession: Lawyer Entrepreneur #2

by with No Comment Lawyer Entrepreneur

Profession: Lawyer Entrepreneur – Adapt your offer to demand - #2

You have decided to set up your own practice and aspire to become a recognized, even renowned, lawyer in your chosen field. As explained previously , it is in your best interest to dedicate yourself to one of the branches of law that best suits you.

Unfortunately, to successfully develop a business, it's not enough to practice the law you love. There also needs to be sufficient demand to support you. A brilliant salesperson might manage to sell ice to Eskimos, but without a market, an entrepreneur will struggle to survive. In fact, the main reason startups fail is the lack of a market (in 42% of cases, according to a CB Insights study ).

So, as a lawyer-entrepreneur, you too must ask yourself the question of the market. That is to say whether your skills can meet clearly identified needs. If you confirm that there is a market large enough to support you, you will then need to estimate your ability to emerge in this market.

Identify the needs and the number of potential requests in your sector and catchment area

No need to convince yourself of the development of certain branches of law and the phenomenon of judicialization of society.

There are simple market sizing techniques that you can adapt to any branch of law. Thus, it is easy to estimate certain personal law needs. You don't need to look at the statistics to realize that the demand for a family law lawyer is there. If you wish, you can define the family law market (number of potential recourses to a lawyer) by consulting public data such as the number of births, divorces, etc. A lawyer specializing in the defense of victims of car accidents. the road will also be able to quickly identify the number of annual accidents and potential victims.

Since the work of a lawyer is far from being dematerialized , it is important to estimate your market based on your geographical area and to plan to adapt your offer to your environment.

Indeed, most of the time, the location of your firm will matter a lot: a business law lawyer based outside a large metropolis will logically not meet the clientele to which he aspires. On the other hand, if your desire is to practice personal law, an installation in a judicial desert will allow you to easily attract local clients.

If your main location does not allow you to capture a large enough market, opening a secondary firm in a strategic location may prove wise: close to the coast in maritime law, in a border region in international/European law, etc.

An offer nor too wide

To quickly become comfortable and emerge in the medium/long term, it is important to quickly dedicate yourself to a branch of law. Indeed, the general lawyer risks suffering from his clients and having to reinvent the wheel for each case.

In my opinion, practicing more than 3 very different areas (such as: family, criminal, work) risks blending into the mass of lawyers in your bar. But above all this will not allow you to acquire the reflexes necessary for efficient processing of files. Although it is customary to regularly consult a general practitioner who will refer you to a specialist, you will not be able to build up a clientele ready to consult you (paid) for every legal question. At best, you risk competing in vain for your clients' legal assistance.

I encourage you to define your offer based on the 26 specialties established by the national bar council can be judicious and not too complicated.

... nor too restricted

While it is important to offer a relatively limited offer so that it is clear, you should not lock yourself into too narrow a practice of law, especially at the beginning.

If you start without a clientele, you will probably find it difficult to survive by focusing on only one subject. This risks either not meeting a sufficiently large audience or due to a lack of need (e.g.: rights of in-laws, joint ownership disputes, assistance to defendants of Georgian nationality, etc.) or, in niche areas, due to a lack of notoriety. of the cabinet. In the latter case, an offer that is too limiting appears incompatible with a small, beginner structure, with niche firms having been able to prosper thanks to sufficient experience (e.g.: VAT, employee savings, agricultural companies, etc.).

Once your offer has been sufficiently defined, the challenge is to disseminate it to your potential customers. In other words, communicate well! This will be the subject of my next article.

About the author

lawyer entrepreneur

Presentation and introduction by Maître Chloé Schmidt-Sarels.

Having graduated from CAPA in 2012, I did not at all want to practice as a lawyer. So I started my professional career as legal manager of a start-up.

After a very enriching experience, a need for autonomy and a certain nostalgia for public law led me to set up as a liberal lawyer.

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[#SERIE] Profession: Lawyer Entrepreneur #1

by with No Comment Lawyer Entrepreneur

Profession: Lawyer Entrepreneur – The definition of its offer – #1

In a series of articles, Maître Chloé Schmidt-Sarels , a Jarvis Legal user, tells us about her vision of the lawyer as an entrepreneur first and foremost.

lawyer entrepreneur

Presentation and introduction by Maître Chloé Schmidt-Sarels.

Having graduated from CAPA in 2012, I did not at all want to practice as a lawyer. So I started my professional career as legal manager of a start-up.

After a very enriching experience, a need for autonomy and a certain nostalgia for public law led me to set up as a liberal lawyer.

But what to do ? Having never gone through the collaboration box, I still had this crazy idea of ​​setting up directly on my own.

The few internships that I had completed during my studies in Paris were far removed from what awaited me as a new lawyer in a city that could be described as a judicial desert and within a very small bar ( 100 lawyers, or 300 times fewer than in Paris: another world!).

No experience, no clients, no network: was I going to be one of those lawyers who hangs up their dress after a year?

To get out of it, I obviously had to pull out all the stops and adopt a sort of entrepreneurial approach.

Even if this tends to change, I regret that this qualifier of entrepreneur is not necessarily in the DNA of our profession.

However, it seems that this is one of the secrets of the success of our senior brothers and sisters. This is how Corinne Lepage responded to a journalist who asked her if she should manage her law firm like a business manager, that she did not know “how those who don’t do it do it”.

This sentence caught my attention and guided me a little.

This is why I am happy to be able to share my experience as an entrepreneurial lawyer.

I therefore offer you a series of articles which I hope will enable you to succeed in your installation, whether or not you have been a collaborator.

I will therefore share with you my feelings and state of mind, how I defined my offer, the communication levers, the management tools that make my daily life easier and how I manage the financial and administrative side.

Define your offer, the first essential step. 

" You'll see, the clients will choose you ," " You'll be forced to take on every case that comes your way ." These are the well-intentioned and/or worried comments that colleagues have made to me.

Despite my limited experience, I knew why I had studied law. I also knew what I couldn't and above all didn't want to do. It was out of the question for me to focus on criminal, commercial and labor law.

I did not set up as an independent so that my clients would dictate my choices.

So I told myself that I would do everything to ensure that the files handled correspond to me and that my activity is not modeled by my clients but modeled by me, in the service of my clients. So I decided, step by step.

The first questions to ask oneself are: " Who am I and what motivates me? What is my initial training? "

Who am I ? What animates me ?

The idea of ​​practicing in town planning and environmental law quickly imposed itself on me.

Shortly before my move to this small town located in a semi-rural area experiencing massive urbanization, I had a strong ecological awareness and made a shift to (almost) zero waste in my daily life.

As lawyers, in all areas, we are fortunate to be able to sometimes put ourselves at the service of causes (or people) who will give more meaning to our profession.

Each of us necessarily has something that is close to our hearts and which could give a particular color to at least part of our activity by allowing it to differentiate itself. By the way, this consistency is a good way to be happier and more efficient on a daily basis :)

What is my initial training? Should I deepen certain aspects?

Until the master's degree, we are all generalists. We specialize a little during the master's degree. Obviously, my training in general administrative law, followed 6 years previously, would not be enough to allow me to practice in town planning and environmental law.

As soon as I settled in, I decided to train in rural law by completing a university diploma and then going further by completing a second master's degree in town planning and environmental law.

These training courses gave me self-confidence, opened many doors for me and introduced me to wonderful people.

Differentiate yourself

A precise and specialized offer sets you apart. It will reassure you as much as it will reassure the customer.

The time of general lawyers is over. Increased competition and the increasing technicality of many materials simply no longer allow this. Let us not forget that the files we accept engage our credibility and our responsibility towards the client.

Once the “dominant” has been defined for your firm's activity, go further and detail it: by type of case (consulting or litigation), by type of clients (companies, individuals, communities, associations, etc.).

We are lucky to be independent. Let's take advantage of this chance to choose the area that suits us the most and that motivates us.

Obviously, it will then be a matter of ensuring that your desire responds to a request or a need! I will talk about it in my next article.