Reference no: EM133185370

Law Practice Management

Instructions: You may take as much or as little time as you like to complete this twenty-four-question-quiz. Please be sure to place your answers immediately beneath each question, in the same document. It's extremely helpful for us to have a single document to grade, which includes both the questions and the answers together.

Once we receive your completed quiz, we will take some time to carefully review and grade it. Because of how important this quiz is to our process, this grading process usually takes over an hour of our time, with multiple graders sharing perspectives on your answers. Once we have carefully reviewed your quiz, that, along with careful consideration of your resume and the other information you have provided us to this point - both in the initial screening interview and in your written emails to us - will be carefully weighed to determine next steps.

Question 1
John Doe is a solo lawyer. He has been married for 15 years to a professional helicopter pilot and together they have two children ages 10 and 8 who both play soccer in the local pee-wee league. John's office is on the same floor as two of his closest professional friends, Bob and Mary. Bob works about 50 hours a week and struggles to take home $75,000 per year "because of the economy". Mary works half as much and grossed $450,000 last year. John's stated goals are to net $150,000 per year, working 45 weeks per year while averaging 45 hours per week. He comes to you with the following situation and asks you for guidance, help, coaching and advice on what to do:
• It's July 15th and John's gross revenue year-to-date is $200,000.
• He has $15,000 in a/r and his year-to-date weekly average is 55 hours
per week.
• John's book keeper has just informed him that in about 30 days the firm is going to exhaust cash-on-hand.
• John who is normally a very amiable person has seen his prospect-new client conversion ratio drop by 35% in the last 3 months and he's beginning to get scared.
a) What are the three most-likely explanations for John Doe's current predicament?
b) Being as specific as possible please tell John Doe exactly what he should do starting tomorrow morning and explain your reason(s) why?
c) It's now a month later and John Doe's situation still has not improved. Come to find out he did not follow your instructions. How do you feel when he admits this to you and why do you feel this way? (Note: if it makes you feel better when answering this question can also tell us how you think, that we think you "should" feel
d) Imagine you are a fly on the wall in John Doe's home. What was the conversation at the dinner table last night between John and his wife? Between John and his kids?
e) What advice does John likely get from Bob? What advice does John likely get from Mary? What advice does John likely get from his brother-in-law who is a successful lawyer but with a different practice area in a nearby town?

Question 2
Pretend you're working with one of our clients, a brilliant lawyer who has won a case before The United States Supreme Court. She is a published author on important legal theories and widely recognized in the legal industry to be a badass brilliant brainiac who you would NOT want to go up against in court. She has also never taken a single course in her life on the financial management of a law firm. She can recite chapter and verse what the dictionary definitions are for each of the 7 key financial reports her assigned Managing Partner (on whose team you are working) has told her that she must take seriously if she expects to grow her law firm and not wind up having to file for bankruptcy when she drives her business into and through a ditch and over a cliff into a big flaming wreck that lands on her clients who are as blissfully unaware of the financial condition of her law firm as she is. Oh, and by the way, she has her family in the car with her too. OK, got the picture?

Now explain to this lawyer, using your own words,your answer to the following question she may pose to you: "I get why you guys are so obsessed with some of these financial reports you're always trying to tell me are so important. I get why, for example, it's important to have a budget. But what's the point of looking at a cash flow projection every month? After all, I can't control when my clients are going to call me or hire me or pay me, anyway. And, you know the adages about trying to predict the future. It's impossible. So, what's the point of trying? What if I'm wrong. After all, I've lived most of my professional life on a planet where we never ask questions that we don't already know the answer to. No, our knock-knock jokes are not very funny."

Question 3
Please clearly document a procedure for how a task in a law firm is to be handled (note, this is not a test for which procedure you choose to document).

Question 4
A different lawyer's small law firm that you're working with, has been averaging about $50,000 per month in revenue. Costs are running about $55,000. What is your advice to this lawyer probably going to be and why? Please explain your reasoning behind the advice.

Question 5
Your Lead (i.e., your direct supervisor at How to Manage a Small Law Firm) was scheduled to call you at 3pm EST. It's now 4pm EST but you did not hear from them, nor did you get an email or text. Just radio silence.
a.) How do you feel about being "stood-up"?
b.) What is the most likely scenario for why you were stood-up?
c.) What did you do with your time between 3-4pm EST while you were being stood-up?

Question 6
Please describe three situations in which you believe it would be appropriate and necessary to say the words "bullshit" to a lawyer who is paying you for your honest advice and opinions.

Question 7
All things being equal (age, experience, intelligence, etc.) would you rather be represented in a contentious case by Bob or by Mary from the fact pattern above, and why?

Question 8
Describe a time when you convinced a resistant customer/client to utilize your services.Describe the situation, what happened, and how did you get it done.

Question 9
A completely different lawyer you are working with who has a completely different firm than any of the others in any of the other questions, has a $100,000 line of credit. He has $500 in the operating account. Payroll is coming due in 2 weeks. It includes $10,000 for himself. $7,500 for his associate. $5,000 for his secretary. And you can see from his business plan that his assigned MP helped him develop (you're on the MP's team) that this lawyer had planned to spend $2,500 for a marketing campaign to kick-off later this month. There's $7,000 in the IOLTA account as pre-paid legal fees. There's $3,000 in outstanding A/R between three different clients, Mr. Apple. Ms. Banana & the Cantaloupe Company ($1,000 each). Ms. Banana's case has been closed. The other two are still open & the associate is actively working on different parts of those cases. What to do?

Question 10
What is the hardest thing you've ever had to overcome or to help another human being overcome? How did you do it? Which was most important part of overcoming that challenge: the "what", the "how" or the "why"? (Note: If you give us a white-washed, politically correct answer we will know it is b.s. so please be honest).

Question 11
Describe your biggest professional failure. Described what happened and What did you learn from the experience?

Question 12
Describe a time when you had to embrace a new system, technology, process, or way of thinking that was a major departure from the previous way of doing things? Did it become a success story?

Question 13
Give an example of a situation in which you have had to adjust to changes that were outside of your control. How did you handle it?

Question 14
Think of someone or some of the people you most admire. These can be people who are alive, people from history or even fictional character(s). Who are these people? What about them do you admire? Why do you think these people are admirable?

Question 15
Give an example of someone you know whose personal actions led to disastrous results. How answerable is that person for what happened? What advice would you give that person?

Question 16
What are the most interesting new things you have educated yourself about recently, outside of work? Why are these things interesting to you? How did you educate yourself about these three subjects?

Question 17
Please share a link to an example of a law firm website that you think is "great" and explain why you think it's a great website? Please share a link to an example of a law firm website that you think is "not great" and explain why you think it's not such a great website?

Question 18
Why do you think we are asking you all these questions?

Question 19
Assuming we are not total lunatics, that we don't want to waste our time, or yours how many hours of your time do you guesstimate this quiz is likely to save YOU in the event that your answers do warrant a series of telephone and then a live in-person interviews?

Question 20
How many typos are there in the job description, and in this quiz?(Hint: Kobayashi Maru)
Optional alternative to question #20 above: Write a brief explanation as to why we might have gone through the trouble of publishing a job description, creating a web-page and even come up with this nifty little quiz but not bothered to be sure it's all 100% typo-free?

QUESTION
What's the dumbest thing you have ever heard a lawyer say about the management of their law firm? How did you find a way to help them see things more clearly and take positive action?

Attachment:- Management Quiz.rar