With the end of the year just around the corner, now is a good time for lawyers to take a look at the highs and lows of their practice over the year and determine what lessons can be drawn from those experiences.

Lawyers can reflect on their practice as a whole, both to celebrate the successes and to take stock of events that could serve as risk management lessons. This could be an opportunity to review current engagement letters to consider whether it needs revising to address emerging risks or issues. Some lawyers may reflect on additional training for themselves or support staff heading into a new year.

Here are some tips for conducting a year-end ethical “audit.”

An Internal ‘Audit’ Can Identify Areas of Risk and Strength

A self-audit can help maximize profitability and ensure ethical compliance. Taking a candid look at one’s practice may also help find solutions for areas of frustration in one’s practice.

For example, a law practice could consider its billing practices. Did the practice collect less in fees than it was expecting? Are there substantial outstanding A/R amounts? If outstanding invoices are substantial or have remained outstanding for a long time, lawyers may want to take a look at why that is.

The answer could be a need for better billing hygiene. Are clients being invoiced on a regular basis? The engagement letter can help manage a client’s expectations for how often they will be receiving a bill. Regular billing and collection practices during the year help ensure consistency in the application—and reduce the risk of a client being surprised by a large bill they were not expecting.

Identify Red Flag Areas in Your Practice

Lawyers sometimes take on clients they do not particularly enjoy working with. They may try to expand their practice to focus on an area of the law that is new to them. There is nothing inherently unethical in such practices, but they can create risk. Reflecting on whether or to what extent this has occurred in the past year for a lawyer may yield several helpful lessons.

For example, the rules of professional conduct caution against lawyers taking on matters far outside of their expertise, without sufficient training or guidance from others. Not only does this create risk that the work could be less efficient than if a lawyer with particular experience in that practice area was handling the case, but it can increase the risk that a client could bring a lawsuit for legal malpractice.

Indeed, juries tend to take seriously allegations that a lawyer did not know what they were doing and took on work without sufficient parameters or guidance in an effort to increase their own fees.

Lawyers could also consider whether a particular client made a representation especially difficult. In retrospect, lawyers are sometimes able to pinpoint those difficult clients that were more likely to, or ultimately would, make a claim against their lawyer.

Sometimes difficult clients are not worth the risks of representation. In certain situations, lawyers may want to consider the rules that permit terminating the representation. See Rule 1.16 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

Take a Look at Staffing Needs

Although it is a good “problem” to have, with a growing practice comes growing needs. Lawyers, like many others, sometimes struggle with knowing when to ask for help, but this is an important skill. Not only is this added pressure and unnecessary strain on a lawyer’s personal and professional life, it could spread a lawyer so thin that the risk of errors or ethical violations can increase.

For example, lawyers owe a duty of competence in representing clients. This goes beyond competence in knowing the law at issue. It also generally includes adapting to the changing legal landscape, technology, relationships and the like. But if a lawyer has too much work and not enough time, this may result in clients or issues falling through the cracks.

This can be a good time of year to review whether it would be appropriate to bring on another practitioner to the practice. Or perhaps hiring a receptionist, paralegal or IT professional is the next step. Making sure that the team has all it needs is a gift that will keep on giving.

Close Old Files

The end of year is a good time to review the files and to formally close any matters that have come to an end. This is a good practice management tool, but it is not one that lawyers always adopt.

ometimes lawyers assume that “everyone knows” that a matter has come to an end.

Others are concerned that sending a file-closing letter could inadvertently send a signal to the client that the lawyer is not available for additional work. But when considered as a bookend to an engagement letter, a file-closing letter can provide many benefits.

First, a closing letter is useful in clearly delineating the scope, and completion, of the representation. Because courts hearing malpractice claims often look at the reasonable perception of things on the part of the client, having objective evidence of when the relationship came to an end can be very helpful. Among other things, sending a file-closing letter can begin the statute of limitations for any legal malpractice claims.

Second, a closing letter can be used as a marketing tool. In addition to formally closing the matter and conveying helpful information to the client about their file and any outstanding issues, the letter can remind the client of the successes of the representation. The letter can also note the lawyer’s hope to have future opportunities to work together.

By reflecting on the highs and lows experienced in the past year, attorneys can find key takeaways to improve their practice and benefit their professional and personal lives as they step into the new year.

Shari L. Klevens is a partner at Dentons and serves on the firm’s U.S. board of directors. She represents and advises lawyers and insurers on complex claims, is co-chair of Dentons’ global insurance sector team and is co-author of “California Legal Malpractice Law” (2014).

Alanna Clair is a partner at the firm and focuses on professional liability defense. 

Klevens and Clair are co-authors of “The Lawyer’s Handbook: Ethics Compliance and Claim Avoidance.”