New Year’s Resolutions 2025 for Lawyers: 12 Achievable Goals
As the year comes to an end, most people start thinking about their New Year’s resolutions. But did you know that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail? New Year’s resolutions for lawyers can be even more difficult: balancing legal career goals and personal goals is no easy task.
However, having a few realistic goals can make a big difference personally and professionally for lawyers. New Year’s resolutions for lawyers are more likely to succeed if legal professionals take care to set realistic and achievable goals.
Below are 12 realistic New Year’s resolutions for lawyers (that’s one per month!) to help you stay on top of your game.
1. Get organized
Start your new year with a clean slate by tying up loose ends and getting organized. Review your open folders (you can do this easily in Clio with a Subject Report) and ask yourself these questions:
- Should open cases be closed? If so, close them.
- Are there any blocked files? Develop a plan to resolve the issue or consider referring the matter to another attorney.
- Are there any files with unpaid balances? If so, start sending invoices. Also see our guide to law firm year-end financial statements to check that all your business finances are in order for the new year.
2. Adopt a client-centered approach to practicing law
In the digital age, law firms that focus on their clients first are better positioned to succeed. Clear communication, thoughtful processes and consideration of the whole customer journey leads to happier customers, more referrals, and more pleasant customer interactions overall.
Investing in legal practice management (LPM) technology can also improve your client relationships.
Learn more about running a client-centric law firm.
3. Start accepting online payments
If your law firm doesn’t yet accept online payments, make it one of your top attorney New Year’s resolutions. If you are still unsure about accepting online payments at your law firm, consider this: depending on Legal Trends Report 2023When law firms use online payments to collect money from clients, their realization hold is two days lower in revenue, their collection hold lower by five days, and their total hold lower by six days.
Accepting online payments can also help your business grow And improve your cash flow. To get started, here is some information about choosing a credit card processor for your law firm.
Get paid faster with Clio Payments
By signing up for Clio, you can access Clio Payments, which lets you pay faster while allowing your customers to easily pay their invoices online.
Start now
4. Network more
Most recent Legal Trends Report found that referrals are the largest source of potential clients for today’s law firms. In other words, in addition to providing an excellent customer-centric experienceyou need to attend more networking events, both to meet other lawyers and meet new clients.
These events don’t have to be boring—legal technology conferences, legal meetings and events (virtual and in-person), social gatherings and local industry meet-ups can be helpful (and fun) to attend.
To connect with potential clients, consider networking events outside of your industry. Give talks at non-law-specific events, get involved in your local community, and don’t forget to mention to your new connections that you are a lawyer available for hire.
Don’t limit your networking to in-person events, either. Network online by joining professional groups on LinkedIn and starting conversations around legal hashtags on X (formerly Twitter). The legal communityfrom Clio, is also a great way to connect online with other lawyers and legal professionals.
Get more attorney networking tips.
5. Bring more of your legal practice on the go
You already check your emails on your phone, so why not try managing more of your practice while you’re mobile? Turn bus rides and dentist wait times into pockets of productivity: there are many apps for lawyers to help you easily manage a mobile practice.
6. Revamp your online reputation
In the information age, your online reputation is essential. No matter how your customers hear about you, they will likely research you before signing on the dotted line. A string of two-star reviews could work against you.
How to create a strong online reputation? It starts with a structured online marketing plan. Invest time in creating and implementing a solid marketing strategy and start the year by reviewing your website, Google Business Profile List, blog, LinkedIn profileand other social media properties to ensure you stay up to date with the latest best practices.
Don’t have your own website? Clio Grow users can create their own law firm website in minutes.
7. Run better meetings
How many times have you attended an unsatisfactory or unproductive meeting? At some point, we’ve all asked ourselves, “Couldn’t this be an email?” So, for 2024, commit to running effective, engaging meetings with Priya Parker, author of “The art of gathering“. OUR interview with Priya Parker provides great tips for facilitating better meetings, whether with staff or clients.
8. Become more data-driven
How well is your law firm really doing? To properly measure your success, you must take into account data-driven approach: Define key metrics and track them.
We’re not just talking about keeping an eye on how many new customers you attract each month: look at where your customers are coming from and track the ROI of your marketing efforts.
Most importantly, keep an eye on how efficiently your business is running. For example, look at how many billable hours you log as a percentage of your total work day. You can do this easily with Clio Business Dashboard.
To track this information in Clio, create a topic for non-billable/administrative work and use a timer to track time spent on these tasks, just as you would for any other billable topic. Then, compare the time spent on that topic with the time spent on all other topics combined, and voilà, you get your utilization rate.
Compare your utilization rate to the average (which is only 37%, according to our Legal Trends Report 2023) and look for ways to reduce non-billable work, or consider alternatives to billable hours, such as flat rate fees Or emergency agreements.
9. Prepare to greet clients before meeting your next client
If you haven’t yet implemented an automated client intake system, 2025 is the year to do it.
A streamlined customer reception system will save you time and eliminate the added risk of human error associated with manual data entry. Most importantly, a well-thought-out intake process means a better first impression and experience for your client, two essential aspects of an increasingly client-centric approach to lawyering.
To start, here is a client onboarding guide for law firms. Furthermore, Clio Growing Up will give your business the platform it needs to create a seamless customer intake process.
10. Take better care of yourself
Being a lawyer is inherently stressful, but if there’s one thing that matters more than your career, it’s your health. Taking care of yourself should be on every lawyer’s New Year’s resolution list.
If you’ve been working long hours and neglecting to take care of yourself, use the new year as a turning point. Eat well, get enough sleep and take care of yourself. You may not be able to avoid stress as a lawyer, but you certainly can find ways to manage stress more effectively.
Jeena Cho, author of The anxious lawyerhas Much written about the benefits of mindfulness. Try to meditate, even if just for a few minutes each day. This ritual will help clear your mind and prepare you for success at work.
11. Attend events to invest in the future of your business
Attending legal industry events can help you generate ideas to improve your practice and make your business more profitable. For example, the Clio Cloud Conferencefeatures discussions on the latest industry trends, best practices and much more to keep your business at the forefront.
Case in point: Clio customer Chris Trebatoski used learnings from the conference to double your business revenue over the years.
Get your passes for the Clio Cloud Conference 2024.
And if you’re not sure which event to attend next year, check this out List of Best Legal Conferences Lawyers Can Attend.
12. Try a new tool to help your practice succeed
We’d be remiss not to include new technology tools among our list of New Year’s resolutions for lawyers. If you already use practice management software and other technology tools to help your law firm run its daily tasks, you know how much of a difference technology can make. Practice management software also helps businesses invoice, create documents, and track time much more efficiently!
But beyond that, customer onboarding software, document automation software, and payment solutions can also help boost your business for 2025. Be sure to check them out!
Finally, why not experiment with a new tool to meet the specific needs and workflows of your practice in 2025? With more than 250 applications and services in the Clio application directorythere is plenty to explore and choose from.
A word of caution: think carefully about your needs and optimize your processes before optimizing your technology! Find out how Patrick Palace and Jordan Couch successfully implement new technologies to the Law of the Palace.
That’s all for now! We challenge you to try at least one of these New Year’s resolutions to improve your business.
We published this blog post in January 2025. Last update: .
Categorized in: Business
