You need to start figuring out a way to cut these getting paid waiting times down. You will need to do something about this. “These obviously are all projected goals.”, Wilson considers his plans living documents that he revisits continuously to see how well the law firm’s strategic planning efforts are matching the vision laid out. New research highlights how law firm leaders—and clients—are finding opportunity to generate revenue, despite facing previously unthinkable challenges. This site does not provide any kind of explanation, opinion or recommendation about possible legal rights, remedies, defenses, options or strategies. Any strategy worth its salt will explore potential risks in the marketplace and balance them against the expected upside. Keep in mind that your firm’s areas of practice, expertise, capacities as well as culture, should all be taken into account when mapping out possible growth strategies. “It needs to get down to the nitty-gritty, hold people accountable for some of the action items you’re going to get done. Staying consistent is key to building your brand, and an integral part of this process. This site does not provide any kind of explanation, opinion or recommendation about possible legal rights, remedies, defenses, options or strategies. Oakville Family Lawyer | Hamilton Family Lawyer | Scarborough Family Lawyer | Kingston Family Lawyer | Burlington Family Lawyer | Edmonton Family Lawyer | Mississauga Family Lawyer | London Family Lawyer | Ottawa Family Lawyer. “That doesn’t mean you don’t react to the moment,” Truax adds. The number one definition of growth for law firms is revenue. You do the pre-work, financial review and analysis, beforehand. The information provided on this site is not legal advice. “If they’re not using technology right, and they can’t even pull any basic reports to know how they’re performing financially, they can’t pull together reports as far as what they’re paying their people, if they don’t have a website or some of those basic things – and you’d be surprised how many don’t. “Another recent addition to the law firm strategy team is the chief talent officer (CTO), a position that has become increasingly important since the GFC,” says Bruce Boulware, managing director at Boulware Partners. “They’re fighting fires, meeting deadlines, getting things filed in court.” Plus, he adds, “They don’t have the resources to hire an expert to do it for them.”, Small firm attorneys need to pick out a time and day, on a regular interval, to pop their heads out and look around, Caldwell says. You need to compare what work your law firm has done and how long it takes clients to pay you. And being prepared is important if you don’t want into trouble. Topics covered will enable you to: Develop a simple model for defining your firm’s growth objectives; Lawyers are only billing about 2.5 hours a day. By Jessica Haarsgaard and Ioana Good. “To me, if you can keep them briefer and to the point, as opposed to carrying on and making these things too elaborate, they’ve got a much better chance of implementation.”, Related “The Importance of Long-Term Goals for Your Practice”, “If you’re going to get into family law going forward, you have to have some ideas about what success is going to look like before you launch it,” Caldwell says. An insurance defense firm knows that they are going to be dependent upon business filed by personal injury lawyers or medical malpractice lawyers. Which law firm digital marketing growth strategy are you going to start with? Let’s take a look at several key steps and pillars or a quality growth strategy that any modern law firm should focus on to ensure steady growth. They’re refined throughout the year; we ask people to pull together their plans and test them.”, In smaller firms, there are fewer people involved and fewer decisions to make but also less time, Caldwell says. Define your law firm’s growth strategy Define your expected profits per partner over the short & long term Continuously monitor business performance and productivity metrics. Your law firm growth strategy should be at the heart of everything you do at your firm to help grow your practice, so you need to make sure it is as useable and accessible as possible. This site does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and does not form any lawyer-client relationship. That’s what you believe to be a success when it comes to an outcome for your law firm. Until you do some things as far as operations in the short term, maybe you shouldn’t think about strategic planning,'” he says. It’s part of your monthly workflow to be prepared for those audits. Show your clients commitment to your values while simultaneously providing them exclusive access to business growth expertise. “People don’t engage with the same discipline because they’re doing work,” he says. “The reason it’s important is that it’s a guide for a firm to keep on topic and on goals, so we can always look back and bring it up at a monthly meeting.”, The original content within this website is © 2020. Managing Partner’s new report on Growth Strategies for Law Firms provides clear advice on the growth options available and expert guidance on the key factors you need to consider in order to tailor an effective strategy for your firm. Depending on the area of law that you practice, you will be busy at different times of the year. You also need to think about annual planning requirements for trust accounting. “I want to know: When are we going to do it, and whose name am I putting in the box, and when is this task going to start,” he says. “If you’re wanting to grow your corporate law practice, maybe it’s the snagging of three to five major accounts, something that will let you know you’re getting a little bit closer to what the plan had set out for you.”, Be sure to assign responsibility for specific planks of the law firm strategic plan, Caldwell says. Address generational differences. Posted by Jessica Haarsgaard and Ioana Good on Sep 4, 2020 12:00:00 PM Tweet . Olmstead figures that probably three-quarters of large firms have strategic plans, while mid-sized firms in the 50-attorney range are closer to 50-50, with the likelihood shrinking to 15 percent or less of firms with 10 attorneys and fewer. While a larger firm might take six months from the kickoff meeting to the presentation at the end, smaller businesses can get the law firm strategic plan finished in a month—and that’s probably wise given that they don’t have the professional administrators and other support staff in place to help out, Olmstead says. He measures his marketing success in terms of numbers of articles published, newsletters contributed to, seminars delivered, and new contacts and referral sources. Stay at the forefront of marketing. They just maintain the status quo and manage risk to their company. Because in that month they are going to be focused on billable work. “There may be all kinds of reasons why your performance deviates from the plan, but we measure that on an ongoing basis.”, Related “Strategic Planning for Small Law Firms”, What sort of metrics? And then we lock ourselves up for a day or two in a retreat-type setting and basically work through the whole process.”, To measure law firm strategic planning success financially and otherwise, Jenner uses a range of metrics and compares performance throughout the year against the strategic plan, monthly, biannually, and annually, Truax says. In the legal services market, growth has stalled, corporate clients are taking their legal needs in house and independent law firms are losing their share of the market. “And then also, it’s important to get back to people in the organization with feedback about how things are going.”, Olmstead agrees. That’s really bad performance and lawyers need to improve on this. Automation is one of the key components of law firm growth. If you are an insurance law firm, for example, your business ramps up quickly all the way until the month of May. You need to grow sales and still offer top quality service to clients. Related “Going Solo: Debunking the Top Ten Fears”, Sole practitioners face particular challenges, Olmstead says, because figuring out what they are trying to do and where they want to take their practice – and what steps they need to take to get there – ideally should not be a solo activity. — Start with a Goal. Your access to the website is subject to our, Difference Between A Lawyer And Paralegal, How To Deal With Being Disinherited By Parents. Law firm strategy is a future-proof plan that enables firms to prioritize objectives, remain competitive, and optimize financial goals. It then drops through the summer and then ramps up again in October. Every sector in the legal industry has felt the effects of COVID-19. “It requires the discipline to say, Friday afternoon, from noon to 5, we’re going to sit down, and not be billable, and work through some stuff about what we’re going to be when we grow up,” he says. What do we look like today? What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? “The process doesn’t change. Where are they going to spend their business improvement efforts? The lawyers listing on this site, in no way, suggests or implies a qualitative superiority to other lawyers that are not listed on this site. For some law firms, it takes a long time to get their invoices out and then they’re waiting almost three months to get paid. We are in the process of transferring our clients to our lawyers. The need for law firm strategic planning doesn’t change,” John says. Law firm managers should think of these things if they want the company to grow. A plan that isn’t implemented is only a list of suggestions. There are a variety of different practice areas which can include administrative law, bankruptcy’s litigation, commercial, family law, personal injury, tax law, and wills and estates. The most common law firm strategic planning issue facing firms in recent years has been how to respond to the economic shift in the legal market since the Great Recession, with fewer clients and a tighter bottom line, says John Olmstead, principal at St. Louis-based consultancy Olmstead & Associates. They’re only being utilized as a lawyer about 2.5 hours of their day. While nothing is guaranteed in life or law, attorneys and firm management consultants say law firm strategic planning—that is, taking a step back and looking at the big picture—is essential to know where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how you will keep growing whether you’re a solo practitioner or at a large firm. Related “Offer Unbundled Legal Services to Compete in Today’s Legal Market”, One current scenario that’s affecting consumer-oriented firms, in particular, is the trend toward websites that help people handle some of their own legal matters, Caldwell says. “From that, we would also try to back in the number of new clients we would get each year,” he says. The writing is on the wall. For example, Olmstead has worked with firms who have legal accounting software but need to hire a consultant to pull reports for them. Your law firm is dedicated to building long-term client relationships. Law firms can grow in a variety of methods. Change is among us in the legal industry. Here are five success strategies that leading law firms can adopt as part of that investment. A Business Growth Strategyis a roadmap for growing your firm. [The plans] go into books, they go on shelves, and very little happens as a result,” he says. “The process doesn’t change. This article proposes a process through which management can plan a law firm´s future, by defining a strategy and choosing a growth avenue. You will need to develop a communication strategy and employ it to keep the entire program honest. New Law Firm Strategies for Growth Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic and After. Our team has worked with law firms for over two decades. Many lawyers say they are overworked and that’s going be difficult for them to grow their law firm. It’s so fierce that in a newly published survey of 400 law firm marketing and business development (BD) professionals, 52% said competition is the #1 barrier to law firm growth. We know in some jurisdictions that they give you a couple of day’s notice, but in other areas, it may be a surprise. It is part of a suite of strategies encompassing your law firm’s growth strategy, budget & marketing plan. Are you keeping on top of that aging receivable? “I need to do that where the phone isn’t ringing, or I’m tempted to look at my e-mails. “Sometimes what changes is the fundamentals and what’s going on, and what firms need to develop strategies to deal with. “They’re not going to have the patience for a time commitment over a period of months. The best strategies encompass all three. “Most of the [plans] I’ve done for 15 and 25 attorney firms and under, particularly even smaller ones, will typically be 10 pages or less,” he says. I have my own ideas, but they’re more down in the trenches and know a lot of things I don’t know, or forgot, or need to keep in mind.”, Firms should not confuse strategic planning with crisis management, Olmstead says. This is something that wouldn’t make sense to do in December. Then I come back and talk to the people I need to talk to, my bookkeeper, marketing person, other attorneys, to figure out how are we going to get there, and what do we need to do? Law Firm Growth Plans 4. For 30 years he has closely advised law firm management and legal industry service providers. A deep understanding of client needs. “Clients … How can law firms stay relevant and competitive in this ‘new law’ era where many firms are doing things differently, and ensure that’s reflected in their long-term strategy? Growth may mean more clients or fewer clients with bigger projects. Where do we want to be in 12 months, and in five years?”, The plans are revisited throughout the year iteratively, Truax says, which “requires focus and discipline, making sure everybody stays on message. Because of this, you should be able to look at how busy you are throughout the year. We can help you figure out which methods would be the best for your business. Are you are looking for growth strategies for law firms? Virtual Legal Assistant-Delegating to Freelancers, Law Firm Data & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Law Firm Client Reviews & Reputation Management, Virtual Receptionist, Chat & Phone Services, CRMs, Client Intake & Marketing Automation Software, Staffing Services (Virtual Assistants & Freelance Lawyers), #304: How to Discover and Lean Into Your Strengths, with Becca Syme, “Offer Unbundled Legal Services to Compete in Today’s Legal Market”, fewer people involved and fewer decisions, “Going Solo: Debunking the Top Ten Fears”, “The Importance of Long-Term Goals for Your Practice”. The motivation of any firm in the pursuit of a particular growth strategy requires a study of the firm, its management’s challenges and its overall needs. In recent years, most of the challenges firms are having are the same, everything from pressure on the economics, to resistance from clients to fee increases.”. You talk about client relationships at partner meetings and in business development training, but applying the concepts to client interaction can be challenging. With the vast competition law firms face to get new clients, your law firm needs a comprehensive marketing strategy to get found by clients, find new clients, and retain your current clients. As a solopreneur or small law firm, growth starts with setting a clearly defined goal on what you want to achieve. They don’t get paid right away. Our law firm also combines client satisfaction into the mix. For example, your goal might be … You need to grow the number of billable hours you collect on per day. Join Other Savvy Attorneys and Download This Free Law Firm Marketing Guide. For the law firms that grew, their revenue growth basically doubled over five years. Automate Processes. Sign up for emails to get updates on Canadian law and tips for resolving your legal issues. © ClearWay Law 2020 – All rights reserved. “They may only have one shot at doing it,” he says. First, management wants to appear dynamic and aggressive rather than passive. Another 20 percent fell into the shrinking category. Referral Tracking Via CRM Solutions. It might have to happen in a retreat setting. Those are then “vetted and cross-examined, and people are being encouraged and challenged in a positive way,” Truax says. When you’re a high performer, the growth is monumental. A strategic plan provides “a guidebook where you’re intentionally doing things to get you to a certain point, instead of having clients or other external forces dictate to you where you’re going,” he says. That’s a problem from a cash flow point of view. It also helps you to make more money. Without them, you are probably making a series of ad hoc decisions and without even realising it, changing course and that can drastically limit your firm’s success. Now, we know not every lawyer uses trust accounting, but many lawyers do. Growth can be intimidating and mean a lot of different things to legal professionals who’ve just hung out their shingle. Law firms have a thirty-one percent utilization rate. SEO Best Practices. Where do I want to be in 24, 36 months?” he says. In this article, we base our information on the 2019 Legal Trends Report. Effective Law Firm Growth Strategies - Richard Brock. Sign up for emails to get updates on Canadian Law and tips for resolving your legal issues. We describe four growth strategies and use benchmarks of a sample of 150 law firms stemming from all Latin America to … Download your FREE strategy guide below. Performance measurement will lead to higher profits. “It’s not something you do in one sitting, and you need somebody looking over your shoulder, whether that somebody might be your spouse or your staff person.”, Olmstead worked with a solo practitioner in Iowa who did not realize he was only paying his associate of 10 years a $60,000 salary – or that he himself had only cleared $20,000 the previous year.

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