How Law Firms Achieve Flawless Meetings

Whether we choose to embrace it or not, the meeting—which can now take place nearly anytime, anywhere—has become the de facto epicenter of where business gets done.

For professional service organizations like law or consulting, the client-facing meeting is also an opportunity to shine a light on the best facets of the business—qualities such as punctuality, advanced technology and flawless execution. By making the most of meetings, businesses can enhance their standing, differentiate themselves from competitors, and attract and retain high quality employees.

Meeting Business Pressures

The pressure for “meeting excellence” is intense given what can happen when mistakes occur, things such double-booked rooms, video conferencing delays and undelivered catering. These disasters can make meetings memorable in all the wrong ways. And in today’s hyper-competitive markets, those failures can also mean the difference between a follow-up meeting and a cold shoulder.

This holds especially true for the top law firms, where highly paid professionals with even higher expectations meet in high-rent offices. The largest firms, which may have as many as 2000 lawyers working from 20 global offices, annually hold over 50,000 meetings in total. That is quite a few billable hours spent in meetings.

To ensure that these meetings and events meet their exacting standards, most firms have a conference planning and services staff in one of more of their main offices. “We deliver on perfection,” explained one legal conference service manager. “There’s no tolerance for any failure, including water. It is all about the timing, all about showing the clients that we’re the best.”

Customer Perspective: Addressing the Challenges of Scheduling Legal Meetings

Law firms care deeply about customer service, client satisfaction and efficient space management. Many firms have recently undertaken utilization studies and renovation efforts to more closely align their physical space with the new ways employees and partners are meeting and the communication technology they are using to facilitate their work. Conference and event managers have also turned to comprehensive meeting and room scheduling solutions to address these challenges and eliminate meeting mistakes.

To better understand those needs, Accruent reached out to 10 directors, managers and coordinators from global law firms who are directly responsible for meeting scheduling. We discussed their roles, challenges and usage of technology. Their comments provided insights into four key areas of concern and how they are addressed by an end-to-end meeting and room scheduling solution.

For their detailed responses and advice, download the full white paper.

Finding the Right Solution

For over 30 years, EMS Software has been a widely used room and meeting scheduling solution for law firms, with 6 of the top 20 global law firms by revenue currently using EMS software. With an extensive understanding of the legal environment and its scheduling challenges, EMS continues to add the software functionality and features that support the day-to-day efforts of conference managers, meeting planners and legal administrators.

Whether attorneys are taking a deposition, partners are holding a multi-office video conference, or firms are hosting an onsite continuing law education (CLA) class, Accruent’s EMS Software provides a comprehensive, single system that efficiently helps to manage the rooms, resources, services, people and everything in between. “EMS practically eliminated service delivery failure,” shared one conference center manager. “It makes me and my team look like rock stars.” EMS helps create the positive, professional and flawless meetings that successfully merge “law and order” together, each and every day.

Want to achieve flawless meetings? Accruent can help, schedule a demo today!