The Small Business Heath Care Tax Credit is designed to help small businesses offer health insurance coverage.  If you provide health insurance coverage to your employees, your law firm may qualify for the small business health care tax credit.  Can you answer yes to these two questions?

• Does your firm have fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees that earn an average wage of less than $50,000?
• Does your firm pay at least half of the cost for your employees’ health insurance premiums?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, talk to your Certified Public Accountant (CPA) about your firm’s eligibility.  Click here to read the IRS’ tips regarding this credit.

Kelly A. O’Leary, CPA, CGMA, MBA, CITP
Director of Finance and Administration

Most people never think about the fact that a lawyer with his own firm as a small business owner. But in fact, that’s the way it is for many lawyers, whether they’re a partner, or a sole practitioner. You deal with multiple cases, handle your payroll and taxes, and manage all of the things a business needs. One of those needs being disability insurance. And anyone who has been around personal injury cases knows that having decent disability insurance can go a long way.

I recently came across an article by Darrell Zahorsky called “11 Tips For Buying Small Business Disability Insurance.” If you happen to be in the market for such insurance, click the link above to check out his article. It covers things such as:

• Defining disability
• Determining disability type
• Looking at financial ratings

And more. Give it a read. It might even come in handy for someone you know.

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Health insurance is a very big deal, especially for small business owners. With all that has developed over the past few years, business owners have had to quickly adapt to legal changes and provide health coverage for their employees. The rush to find employee insurance in order to avoid penalties has undoubtedly lead to some poor decisions when choosing a health insurance provider.

If you happen to be a small law firm owner who rushed into the decision, or you are starting up a small firm for the first time, I came across an article that may be able to assist you in making the right choice. Choosing the Right Health Plan for your Employees, an article on FindLaw.com, covers some helpful things to consider when choosing a health insurance provider, such as;

• What Type of health Insurance
• Whether you should use an insurance broker
• Finding a better deal
• The way to evaluate a policy
• Doing your homework on the provider

To check out the article for yourself and gain some helpful advice, click here.

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Employee benefits are something every working American looks at when considering a job. Retirement plans, health insurance, dental insurance, paid sick days and so on. Offering these benefits can be a big deciding factor when they choose to work for you. When I took my last job, all of these were things I considered. But, there was also something else that pushed me toward the position.

Life insurance.

Sure, it’s not something many employers give much thought. Standard health insurance, paid days off and a 401k are obviously three of the big benefits potential employees look for. But offering your employees life insurance makes for a nice icing on the cake.

If you are wondering if it could cost your firm a lot, check out, Offering Life Insurance to Your Employees, an article on Yahoo Small Business. It covers the basic benefits of offering life insurance to your employees, including how paying for a group rate can be cheaper than you and them paying individually.

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Invest in your employees, and they’ll invest more effort into your business.

One of the things small business owners often over-look is employee development. This is understandable, since time and job duties are limited to a small number of employees. If you allow your employees to better their current skills and learn new ones, your business with often reap the benefits of doing so. This can be just as true for the paralegal who’s been working in your office for ten years as well as the office manager who has been tirelessly filing away your documents for the past two weeks.

Why? It’s quite simple really. When you invest a few resources into bettering an employee, that employee will often come to two conclusions:

1. You actually care about their personal careers.
2. They want to make use of their skills to better your business.

Once they take what they learned from the training, they’ll use it to better themselves in their job duties. This increase in efficiency helps operations at your firm, Freeing up more time for you to do more case-related tasks. Not to mention you’ll be increasing your employees’ loyalty and desire to come to work.

Granted yes, there is always the chance they’ll take the new training and then find a job somewhere else. You should know it does not happen nearly often as people think it does.

Want to hear it from an expert? Check out Forbes contributor Victor Lipman’s article, Why Employee Development Is Important, Neglected and Can Cost You Talent.

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