Google Quality Management for Legal Practices: Compiling a list of quality goals is easy, just recall all the promises that you have made to yourself, your clients and staff

Thursday 13 March 2014

Compiling a list of quality goals is easy, just recall all the promises that you have made to yourself, your clients and staff

Previously I covered the requirement of the LAW 9000 standard for having a quality policy as part of your QMS.

Now you need to plan for your quality goals that should address your priorities, your business intentions and your contractual obligations. Your business plan would have most likely addressed such goals under the heading "Operational objectives" or a similar heading.

Irrespective of whether you have already defined your quality objectives you should, when implementing your quality management system, review the current objectives. A review will establish if they still apply and help you determine what the quality management system distinctive goals are for its performance, such as:

  • Addressing corrective actions within a defined period of time
  • Providing quality system induction training to lawyers and staff
  • Conducting file reviews according to scheduled timeframes.

Things to consider when drafting your quality objectives procedure
  • When do you develop your quality objectives? For example it could be at your annual strategic planning meeting.
  • What are the business areas that the quality goals aim to sustain and improve? These may include administration, management, personnel, purchasing and procurement, client management and others.
  • Are your objectives measurable? Are they suitable for measuring KPIs?
  • Do you have a process in place for reviewing and updating of your quality objectives? Quality objectives may change over time and you need to monitor those to continually improve your services.

Examples of quality objectives
  • To provide clients with a unique service experience
  • To build relationships so our clients are comfortable communicating issues
  • To provide prompt, practical and easy-to-understand advice
  • To help our clients achieve their goals and objectives without unnecessary costs and delays
  • To handle client correspondence promptly upon receipt
  • To aggressively and tenaciously protect our clients
  • Provide mentoring and training of junior legal professionals
  • Ensure all staff know of our firm's policies and procedures
  • To provide clear and prompt bills to clients
  • To increase productivity
  • To share firm expertise and experience throughout the organisation
  • Improving compliance with external requirements
  • Reduce the number of client complaints
  • Improve levels of staff satisfaction
  • Improve levels of client satisfaction.

This list is only a small sample of the vast array of quality objectives you can set for your firm.
Remember when planning your list of quality objectives that they should support your quality policy and mission statement. Support staff are often at the front line of client service so ensure that they are included in the planning of your quality objectives.

For an example of a client service standard see the web pages of Stewart McKelvey law firm.

Next I will cover the requirement of the standard for having a quality manual.

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