Are You Fitting Jobs to People?

By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Hiring, training, and managing employees have certainly not been easy things to learn when it comes to owning my own law practice.  I say it time and time again, but these are the things that we never learned in law school, but yet seemingly take up a great deal of time (and expense) if not done well. One common mistake that I am guilty of making in the past, but that I’ve seen come up quite a bit lately…

The Top 35 Overlooked Best Practices for Executive Assistants

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach and Kirsten Allen, Executive Assistant Working for our boss, estate planning attorney Philip Kavesh, we combined have over 28 years of executive assistant experience.  Throughout this time, we have been able to gain numerous best practices and good habits for providing administrative support to a busy executive.  Also through our time in interfacing with many busy attorneys, we have interacted and even worked side-by-side with our fair share of assistants that either lacked the skills, experience, knowledge, training, or personality to be able to properly support their bosses. So we have seen what works…

Is Workplace Stress Killing You? We Can Help.

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach If you’re running your own estate planning practice, chances are, you’re stressed. Running your own law practice is no easy thing to do.  Meeting with clients.  Dealing with difficult cases and situations.  Getting documents out the door.  On top of the actual lawyering stuff, dealing with the normal day-to-day business activities.  Hiring the right people.  Making sure they’re working efficiently.  Making sure that your employees are getting along and managing any conflicts that may arise.  Dealing with toxic employees.  Figuring out how to get new clients through the door.  Making sure you meet payroll….

Should You Be “Tweaking”?

By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Most estate planning professionals would love to make more money, while reducing their work time and stress. Unfortunately, many believe that in order to achieve these lofty goals, you have to do a complete “makeover” of your practice – – and that degree of change is scary! However, this is more myth than truth. In fact, there’s a universal business principle sometimes called “the law of incremental change”, which I call “the law of tweaking” (shame on you if…

Effectively Managing Your Boss’ Busy Calendar

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Whether your boss is an estate planning attorney, CPA, financial advisor or life insurance agent, chances are, he or she has an overwhelmingly busy calendar.  From client meetings, phone calls, seminar presentations, conferences and CE programs to numerous projects to be completed, goals to be reached, and endless obligations to be met. How do you organize, prioritize and manage it all while getting everything scheduled and done? Ask for Assistance with Prioritizing First, ask for assistance in prioritizing your tasks (and your boss’ tasks).  Thankfully, most executives acknowledge that their assistants are juggling several…

Fair Compensation for Support Staff and Associate Attorneys?

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Over the past few years, particularly following the pandemic, we have seen a lot of changes in the employee market and computing both a fair and competitive wage. Regardless of where you are located, inflation and increased competition for competent employees have come to the forefront. Whether you are thinking about your current employees or are thinking about hiring, you may be curious about what exactly is reasonable or fair compensation for either support staff or associate attorneys. Here are a few tips that we use to determine fair compensation. LOOK AT SOME INDUSTRY…

7 Common Mistakes When Dealing with Challenging Employees

By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Dealing properly with employees is yet another key challenge to running a smooth-operating practice.  And, once again, this is the kind of stuff we never learn in law school or any other continuing education course.  Unfortunately, I have made all of the following mistakes and have had to learn the hard way.  By reading this article, I hope that you will now be adequately warned and can hopefully either avoid making the same mistakes or even able to rehabilitate…

Is Your Office a Safe Place for People to Work?

By David Giuliano, Business Coach For over 40 years I have worked in the business world and I’ve learned many lessons. One of the most important aspects of business success is a work environment where people feel safe, can communicate honestly, and grow as a whole.  Having an unsafe environment causes the most damage to the owner of the business.  This might seem like a no-brainer, but the truth is in this day and age, it’s extremely hard to maintain a healthy work environment, but very necessary to do so. My work has shown me that if we can address…

Reduce Your Number of No-Shows and Cancellations with a Proper Confirmation Process

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Having worked with numerous estate planning professionals over the years, one of the issues that a lot of people have struggled with are appointment and seminar no-shows and cancellations.  One of my first questions is always, “What does your confirmation process look like?” For some, they don’t have any process in place at all.  For others, they have a mixture of an e-mail that is sent or a phone call the day before.  While something is better than nothing, there is always room for improvement to help reduce the number of no-shows and cancellations….

Paid Time Off vs. Paid Sick and Vacation Leave: Which is Better for Your Practice?

By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach Add this to the list of items that law school doesn’t teach budding lawyers about when it comes to setting up their own practice.  What kind of benefits should you offer employees, particularly with respect to paid time off? In recent years, many employers have moved more to a model of straight paid time off hours (otherwise known as “PTO”).  This would be a specific number of hours off per year given to employees, sometimes varied depending on full-time or part-time status and many times tiered depending on tenure at the firm.  One attorney…