Resources for Mediators–Setting Up Your Office, Part 1

“First of all, remember that when you're starting your mediation practice, that you’re really starting a business.” Commercial + insurance mediator and arbitrator, Jean Lawler, knows what it's like to “switch gears” from law practice to a mediation practice, and in this episode she shares her tips for how the seasoned-attorney-new-mediator can set up the “practice-facing” operations of a new mediation practice. From document storage, to case management programs, to email considerations and more, Jean provides an overview of the types of technology that are useful to mediators when launching a mediation practice. 

To connect with Jean Lawler, follow her on LinkedIn or find her at LawlerADR.com

To read the full episode transcript please see the Podcast Website.

Links to providers mentioned in the show:

Microsoft 365 https://www.office.com/

Google Suite https://workspace.google.com/

Adobe https://www.adobe.com/

Zapier https://zapier.com/

Wufoo  https://www.wufoo.com/

ADR Notable  https://www.adrnotable.com/

Fourthparty https://corporate.fourthparty.app/

Quickbooks https://quickbooks.intuit.com/global/

Squarespace https://www.squarespace.com/

Acuity Scheduling https://acuityscheduling.com/

PIA https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/

MOO https://www.moo.com/us/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/

Clubhouse https://www.clubhouse.com/

LawPay https://www.lawpay.com/

Transcript

[intro music]

JEAN LAWLER:

Hello, and good day. I'm Jean Lawler, and I’m your host of the ROADS TO Resolution ~Closure ~Certainty Podcast. It’s a pleasure to be with you here today. As a mediator, I am honored to be invited into other people's lives for a few hours, like all of our lives, lives shaped by the many roads that have brought us to our “today”, roads leading to the unexpected, and to roads holding the promise of “tomorrow”. So, that said. How do your roads lead to working as a mediator, transitioning from a law practice to a mediation practice?  Switching gears so to speak…I thought today I would just talk about the practicalities of setting up your office. In a second session, I’ll talk about actually getting your practice going, so this one is more nuts and bolts. I get asked all the time about…just different questions about setting up the office, getting started in a mediation practice. So leaving aside the actual practice, itself, and focusing on the more mundane things, maybe, but the very exciting things…Let’s get to it.

First of all, remember that when you're starting your mediation practice, that you’re really starting a business.  So, it's a small business, perhaps. Maybe you’re joining a panel, but you would have your office, also at home. Maybe you’re mediating solely by Zoom.  Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It is what you want to make it. So let’s just talk for the moment about an independent mediator who is–well, whether you’re independent or not–actually, even if you’re on a panel, you’re still independent. And so…What do you need to do to set up your new practice, your new office, and get going?

First of all, is the formation. The formation of the business. You know, what’s your name going to be? Do you need to become an LLC or some other sort of corporate entity? Think about those things. Check the laws in your state for what sort of corporate documents you would need to file, what business license you would need to get for the area in which you are practicing, and then also, for a website. What name to use for the website, and how that ties in to the name of your business, how that ties in to your corporate name… Hopefully it's not taken. Whatever it is you want to use. But first of all, is of course, getting your business structure in place, with your name, and the legalities set.

So assuming you’ve got that in place, then, what about getting the office set up?…The practice-facing operations of the office…In other words, “the internal”, so to speak. The ones that people don’t see but that are so important because they’ll make your life easier.  Maybe you’re coming from a law firm where you’ve had a secretary, you’ve had a marketing department, you’ve had all sorts of staff able to help you. And now in your business, you may be the only one who’s doing everything, or you will be making a decision on what to outsource to others who, maybe to hire. You know, it just depends, but that also comes as it goes along, probably, for most people. So let’s just talk about getting an office and your operations set up.

You know, you’ve used certain programs for years, perhaps, at your law firm. And I remember when I was setting up my practice, of different programs we had used, and I automatically gravitated to those programs. Well a lot of them may have been much more expensive than I really needed to sign up for because the world has changed. Certainly, there are so many things available out there. And pricing, now that it’s your business, your sole business, you’re not a partner in a law firm anymore. It’s not part of the big overhead expenses, and all the revenue that’s coming in to pay for those. Every hour that you spend mediating is an hour that I would think you would want to have more of your fee revenue going into your pocket, rather than going to pay for expenses. And so, look at that very carefully. Remember, you’re setting up a business. Now, what I will be talking about, probably, will be mostly programs that I have used.

So, your first one is …which tech are you going to go with? Microsoft 365 with Office, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, One Drive. Those are what I went with and I find them invaluable, and I find most businesses, most law firms anyway, use those. Others go with the Google Suite of apps, and things, but whatever it is that you choose to go with, pick something that you’re familiar with. Make life easy on yourself. So like I said, for me it was Microsoft. And then with Outlook, for example, with my email, I got that set up so that I have the encryption and I also have it HIPAA protected so that if I do receive briefs, for example, that might include medical reports, things like that, private information, that I do have that as being compliant.

One Drive is what I use to store briefs and documents in, while the matter’s active. And then whatever other public documents might be there. PowerPoint, Word, Excel, those are all, you know, definitely helpful. Adobe, of course…Don’t get the “Reader” version.  Go ahead and subscribe to the Adobe program that lets you edit PDF documents. I think it’s about $179, $159 a year…well worth it.

Zapier. If you don’t know about Zapier, Z-A-P-I-E-R. Consider it like hiring an assistant in your office. It’s an app that lets you automate different functions. Now, Microsoft Office has that as well, but definitely look at Zapier to see if that might fit your needs. I did, and I used it so when I had, what I called an “intake form” filled-out internally, that then I would get an email. Zapier would set up a calendar slip for me. It would set up the internal file folder, and then I had email language, acknowledgement letters, acknowledgement emails automated so that they would come into my email immediately, and then I could use those to modify however I wanted and send them on. So that is fantastic and it's I think less than $200 a year, also.

In terms of that, you should have some sort of a database where you’re entering your information about the matters that you will be handling. Generally I enter and input information about the type of matter, the lawyers, the date of the mediation. Afterwards, if it settled or not. Things like that. And I couldn’t find, like a case management program, essentially, that you’d be use to in a law firm. I could not find one of those when I was in practice, or when I was starting my practice, and so I created my own, essentially.

There are wonderful ones available now. More people have gotten into that, I guess, to create them, but I use Wufoo, that’s W-U-F-O-O, which is a Survey Monkey company, set up my own questionnaire which really is an intake form, and then I did hire somebody who would enter the information into the intake form. That in turn then went to the Zapier, to the “Zaps”. That then created all those calendar slips, etcetera, etcetera. And then I could always sort, I could look for information, I could run conflict checks. So that was a very…and it is a type of very easy type of way to do it that is very functional and is lower cost.

There are of course plenty of programs—case management programs–out there. They include–some of them everything but the kitchen sink. I just wanted simplicity. For case management programs today, I would suggest, maybe look at ADR Notable. There’s something else called Fourthparty that is just getting going which is very nice and simple. And of course there are many of the big ones that law firms would use, that you could modify, but these others are meant for mediators or arbitrators—people in the dispute resolution industry.

And so, anyway, moving along…You need someplace to, you know, keep your financial records. QuickBooks is what I personally use. I went with the desktop version because it was a lot less expensive than the online version. You buy it once and it can last for three years before you have to update it, but the online version is tremendous as well, so something like that.

One thing that I would point out if you are using Outlook when you do an email. When you open an email to send, to draft an email, if you go to “Insert”, there’s something called “Quick Parts” and you can create templates in “Quick Parts”, save your wording of your acknowledgement emails, your Zoom things, maybe–if you’re doing that–your billing, anything like that. And so I’ve got all of these saved with different categories in “Quick Parts” and when I need to send out a particular type of letter or email, that I’ve already saved the style of, I just go to “Quick Parts” and I click that and voila, there it is.

You know, you’ll definitely need an online calendar. Whether you choose to make it available to the public or not, that of course is a choice for you, but Squarespace, for example, if you choose Squarespace for your website, they actually have email campaigns and the Acuity Calendaring all available and built-in. 

I do think that you should also get a VPN. One of my tech providers who was working with me originally…He recommended “PIA” as a VPN, and I purchased. A lot of companies have that. You pay for it by the year or whatever, it's well less than $100 a year, if I remember correctly. But I use that if I’m in a hotel. You can use it in your office, you know, anywhere where there could be a danger of not having proper security and protection on what you’re doing. You could use it all the time if you wanted. 

Printed materials…You can get business cards, note cards, from all kinds of places. I personally get them from MOO. 

And social media–LinkedIn, Clubhouse are the two. Anyway, there’s just so much more. 

Then the one other thing in particular that I would mention would be your phones. What kind of phone service do you want? Do you want a virtual receptionist? Which I would highly recommend, not just an answering machine…

And banking, do you want to take funds by credit card or ACH? LawPay is very good for that. 
And so those are just a few little nuggets from my own experiences. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. You can find my website at LawlerADR.com. I’m on ROADS TO Resolution ~Closure and ~Certainty Channel on YouTube, and thank you so much. Bye.

[outro music]