The Law Office of Lance Beal, LLC, is owned and operated by Louisiana native, Attorney Lance Beal. Founded on his passion for defending clients’ legal rights — Lance and his team of 10 specialize in a variety of practice areas including Small Business, Estate Planning, Intellectual Property, Personal Injury, Family Law, and Construction Law.
Lance currently serves as an Assistant District Attorney for the 15th Judicial District. Lance is often featured in the Acadiana Advocate for his legal representation on news-breaking cases in the Acadiana area.
Lance believes that by making his hometown of Acadiana a better place, he can make a difference in Louisiana as a whole. Continue reading to learn more about Lance, how he uses legal software, and his journey to scaling his practice to a mid-sized law firm that supports his community.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you become a lawyer?
I became a lawyer to serve my community. As a lawyer, I get to help the underdogs who may not otherwise get the attention or legal services they deserve. I founded my practice on one defining principle — “Protecting People.” It drives everything my team of 10 does daily, and you see it with the positive response we get from our clients.
How did you envision your legal career compared to where you are now?
In general, I am a very goal-oriented person. For my legal career, I wanted to establish a successful mid-size law firm. To do this, I made detailed action steps and milestones to achieve this goal. I like to believe I am still on track to establishing a mid-size law firm. My firm currently has a team of 10.
What advice would you give to other lawyers?
No matter where you are in your legal career, curveballs will come your way. The legal industry moves fast, but the best thing you can do is try to be adaptable. Whether you’re just starting out or looking for new ways to make your practice run more smoothly, there are resources to support you like, legal software, that can help fill any gaps. Choosing a law practice management software for a small firm like mine was critical for success. It keeps costs down, promotes cross-staff communication, and keeps us organized.
For my law firm, PracticePanther has been our one-stop shop. It gives us unbelievable insight into our firm’s operations, legal billing, and financial tracking needs. It has also offered more transparency to our clients and how we serve them.
What’s your favorite PracticePanther feature and why?
My favorite feature of PracticePanther is business text messaging. This built-in feature allows us to easily stay in contact with our clients. In our line of business, clients may need to share images or have an urgent request. Having the ability for a client to simply pick up their phone and text our office like they would a friend or family member is such an added convenience.
Since the feature is housed in our PracticePanther account, it eliminates the possibility of missing texts from clients and allows all client communication to stay in one easy-to-manage section for my whole team to access.
Why did you ultimately choose PracticePanther?
I chose PracticePanther because my law firm needed a legal software solution that was easy to use and kept all of our business operations in one place. After COVID-19 we implemented a remote-work as-needed environment and as our team continues to grow, accessibility grew equally as important.
PracticePanther has many features we need already built-in, like online payments. They also have practice-specific resources for estate planning and family law which our firm handles often. We also really enjoy that PracticePanther integrates with our other platforms like QuickBooks, DropBox, and Microsoft Office.
Simply put, PracticePanther’s one-stop-shop platform makes managing my office easier.
Lance’s story is a testament to leading with your passion and leveraging modern resources to advance your mission. For firms big, small, and everything in between — PracticePanther is here to do the heavy lifting to support your goals and streamline your business.
Interested in learning about what PracticePanther can do for your firm?
