6 Law Firm Management Fails You Need to Avoid
By Stephen Fairley,
CEO, Rainmaker Institute
survival over the long haul. A
solid, well-planned guide keeps
you from making serious mistakes
that can quickly sink your
business.
· Provides structure. Creating
a solid business plan provides
structure and a context for
everyday activities, while helping
to fit daily activities into the context
of a larger, more strategic plan of
how you are going to grow your
business.
Y
ou may have become interested
in the law as a noble profession,
but to break the seven-figure
barrier, you must run your law firm
like a business. As the owner of a
law firm, your primary focus – after
gaining competency as an attorney
– is to understand and apply the key
principles of business development,
operations, management and law firm
marketing every single day.
No one starts out in business to fail,
but fail you will if you don’t recognize
that while you may practice law, you
run a business. To avoid running it
into the ground, there are six law firm
management “fails” you need to avoid.
1. Failing to plan.
To start and run any business, you need
to focus on the big picture, but you can’t
let that blind you to the importance of
detailing the steps you need to take to
make your firm a success -- especially
when it comes to marketing. By having
a marketing plan for your law firm, you:
· Increases
14
your
chances
of
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· Keeps you on track. Staying
on track amidst the day-to-
day distractions and assessing
opportunities to see if they fit with
your long-term goals is another
way that a comprehensive
marketing plan can help you stay
on track.
· Helps you tally the cost of
creating before you start
building. By knowing your
financial costs and risks ahead of
time, you can more effectively plot
your growth strategy and manage
your budget.
· Helps you create a vision for the
future. In the end, your business
will be driven by your vision — and
the process of developing that
vision is critical to your business
success.
· Helps you evaluate your
success. It is crucial to set up
measurable objectives in advance
so you are able to compare your
results against those objectives to
learn where you succeeded and
where you fell short. If you don’t
Winter 2018
know where you are going, how
will you know when you get there?
· Demonstrates
you
are
committed
to
your
business. Being committed to
growing your business starts
with laying a good foundation for
that future growth, with clearly
delineated steps for those in the
organization to follow so they can
contribute to your success.
2. Failing to create a team.
You know the law, but they didn’t teach
you how to run a business in law
school. You need to create a team that
will make your business successful,
bringing the best people onboard in
the different disciplines you need for
financial management, marketing,
sales, etc., and ensuring they succeed
by investing in the latest technologies
to support their efforts.
3. Failing to take care of business
first.
Very few attorneys went to school
to become a bookkeeper or an
accountant, but to manage a growing
business you must know how to
manage your money. You need to
know the basics of finances for small
business, from reading a profit and loss
statement to analyzing your cash flow.
Being an owner means other people
are depending on you to manage the
money wisely.
Too many times lawyers focus solely
on their clients without focusing
on the bottom line. The result is
devastating: not sending out invoices
on time, not raising your rates for years,
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