Law Firm Operations
A first-90-days checklist for a new NZ law firm practice manager
Stepping into a practice manager role? Here's what to inventory and understand in your first 30, 60 and 90 days.
New practice managers are usually handed the payroll calendar and the keys, and left to discover the rest. This is the discovery, in order.
Days 1–30: find out what exists
- List every system the firm uses, starting with practice management, document management, trust and general accounting
- Pull three months of bank and card statements; list every recurring charge
- Match charges to systems — anything unmatched is a question, not a mistake
- Identify who inside the firm actually uses each system
- Find where contracts and agreements are stored (and note what's missing)
- Meet the principal or partners and ask which three systems would stop the firm if they failed tomorrow
Days 31–60: find out what's committed
- For every system: provider, contract reference, cost, renewal date, notice period
- Flag anything renewing in the next six months
- Assign a named internal owner to every system and supplier — a person, not "IT"
- Rate each as critical, important or standard
- Confirm backup and recovery arrangements exist, and who to call to invoke them
- Check insurance renewal dates (professional indemnity, cyber, business)
- Introduce yourself, by name, to the account contact for every critical supplier
Days 61–90: find out what's exposed
- Identify every system that depends on one person's knowledge
- Identify every supplier relationship held by one partner informally
- Check for duplicate tools doing the same job
- Run your first supplier review on the nearest renewal
- Write down the decisions and reasoning — you are the start of the firm's operational history
- Present a one-page operational picture to the partners: what we run, what it costs, what's at risk, what's coming up
What you should have at day 90
One register, complete enough to answer any partner question in under a minute: what do we use, who owns it, what do we pay, when does it renew, and what happens if it fails.
The Law Firm Operations Checklist is a good companion, and AvenorOps is built to hold exactly this.
practice manageronboardingchecklist