Setting Up Systems to Run Your Law Firm
I’m out of the office for a week. A whole seven days.
I’ve been out of the office before but not while I’ve had the caseload I have now and not while I’ve had associates to manage. Your law practice gets harder and harder to manage because the business and the firm is growing. However, the trick is that you want your profits to grow exponentially, while your expenses grow linearly, and your work load to stay flat. In order to achieve this, you need systems in place.
A solo practitioner is all hands on deck. You do everything. If you’re not running the business, it stops. You are the operator and the engineer. As your firm grows, that won’t be possible and it’s not a sustainable and scalable business model because you still only have 24 hours in a day and you do need time to eat and sleep. Systems, ideally, should be in place so that it comes between you and the firm.
You build the Systems that run the Firm.
Using proper systems, you can be taken out of the picture but your firm should still be running because your systems are in control. Systems needs to be cleaned and adjusted with time. Your firm will grow and your systems will grow and change with it. The engine that drives your firm needs to be so that if you dropped what you were doing today, someone else could come in and take over, without missing a heartbeat.
Do you have systems in place? If you want to grow beyond a solo operation, now’s the time to start development.
So you’re hanging a shingle – now what? (PODCAST)
I had the pleasure of talking with Attorney Kyle Guelcher on his new podcast show on the Legal Talk Network. His new show is called New Solo and he’s going to be interviewing guests that will be able to speak about being a new solo or giving advice to new solos and how to practice law.
http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/new-solo/2011/01/new-lawyer-new-solo/
Year-End Tax Deductions For Your Law Office
It’s the end of the year and if you don’t have an accountant, get one! Your accountant at this time should be telling you to maximize your deductions to take advantage of tax savings before January 1st if you know you’ll have to pay additional taxes for the 4th quarter.
Here’s a short list of what you can do before January 1st to minimize taxes:
- If you’re in the market to buy new office supplies, computers, new tech, phone systems, etc…don’t want until the new year. Do it now so that you can deduct it off this year’s taxes
- If you know there are CLEs you would like to take, see if you can prepay them in advance to take them next year
- If your membership fees are due shortly, pay them now
- If you have a retirement account, maximize your contributions for this year (although you can do this until April 15 of next year to still qualify as a deduction for this year)
- If your postage account is low, buy postage for next year
- Many people are starting to go paperless or at least less paper – buy a Scansnap this year
- Prepay January’s office rent
- Take your business car for much needed repairs before the new year
- Gather up donations from the office to take to goodwill or other charities to maximize charitable donation deductions
- Give money away to charities for a deduction
Any other tips you can think of before the new year? Post in the comments.
What Lawyers Earn
A few weeks ago, I posted about the average salaries of small firm lawyers from Above the Law.
Now this is a repost from Larry Bodine’s blog which illustrates salaries of not just small firm lawyers, but lawyers from all size firms and a wider range of experiences:
Using Facebook Email for Business
DON’T DO IT!
Using the new facebook email address makes as much sense as using an aol, yahoo or gmail address for business. But then again, I know plenty of lawyers and professionals who do. And guess what? I do lose a bit of respect for them. You might be saving $10 or $20 a month by not getting a @yourbusinss.com email address, but you will end up losing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of business and credibility by not doing it.
And since I’m on the subject, the same goes for free business cards from places such as Vistaprint. Nothing says “newbie” or “I don’t care about quality” more than a vistaprint logo on the back of your free business card.
A Survey of Small Firm Salary
This post is courtesy of Above the Law
Above the Law took a poll recently to determine what small and solo lawyers make in terms of salary. There’s a lot of information and it’s hardly scientific but it still provides a good yardstick in which to measure growth.
This graph says it best:
Also in the post, it boils down all the numbers and deletes the top earners to get an average salary of $175,000/year as a small/solo practitioner.
There are many ways to take these numbers but we should take them with a grain of salt. Attorney salary will differ depending on practice areas, geographic location, years in practice, client base, etc. Bottom line: if you make more than the average as stated by Above the Law – great! If you make less – don’t be discouraged.
Six Lessons I’ve Learned Since I Started Working for Myself
This is a repost from Robert Green’s DIY.
In May of 2009, I was living in North Dakota and formed 2 LLCs: Green Web Publishing, LLC and Battery Powered Games, LLC. I formed two because the 2 businesses are unrelated and have totally different risks. LLCs and Corporations are specifically to mitigate risk so it made sense to do that and I’m still glad I did because if one crashes for any reason, I still have the other making money. I have a few active websites run by GWP and 5 games now published under BPG. Both businesses are profitable in that they make money even when I only do the bare minimum maintenance work. That’s nice because it gives me time to continue investing in them and is the exact reason I chose the businesses I did.
If you’re looking to work for yourself, here are some of my experiences and suggestions:
1) Give yourself lots of time.
It usually takes a lot longer to get good solid money coming in than you planned on. Don’t underestimate this. I remember last summer when I was honestly convinced I could publish a game that would reliably make me 50k in the next year. Not true! Of course there are exceptions but when you’re in a highly competitive market with low margins and fickle consumers – you can’t bet on anything! Give yourself LOTS of time to get started. A full year MINIMUM. 2 would be good. In my experience and with talking to others in the same boat, it seems like it’s a good 2 years of R&D and learning about the market and how to sell your products before you’re making what you originally thought you should be at 2 months.2) Keep your overhead LOW! Running out of money is horribly stressful.
You don’t have a regular paycheck. On a good month, you’ll make a few thousand. On a bad month, you’ll make next to nothing. Business expenses will pile up, including new equipment costs, contracting, legal fees and other. If it costs you $2500 per month just to stay afloat and you only have 10k in savings or 10k available as credit, you’re not going to last long! You must get your monthly expenses down if you’re serious about doing this. That means selling your car if you’ve got a car payment. It means buying cheap groceries and rarely ordering food or eating out for a year. It means cancelling cable/sat tv – you won’t have time to watch anyway. My wife and I found ways to rent really cheap or house sit for people we knew for over a year. That saved probably $1000/month for a year. It may not be an option to most people but don’t rule any cost savings out. You NEED to keep your overhead low because you won’t be able to make good decisions when you’re desperate.3) Network. Network with everyone.
Find local common interest groups and go. Talk when you’re there! I go to game development and mobile interest groups here in my local area and I’ve met some of the most valuable leads in my life at them. I’ve also seen people who show up and don’t say a word, getting very little out of the ordeal. Just go and get to know everyone. Most people are very friendly at those things and you may end up making a few good friends out of the deal as well 🙂4) Make yourself known.
This blog alone has developed into good leads for my business. All I’ve done is blog about the Android development that I’ve done and even though I haven’t really written much in the last year, it seems that what I wrote has been enough to get the attention of a few important people here and there and it’s given me opportunities I couldn’t have dreamed of before.5) Be persistent.
Your first attempt at what you’re doing may very well fail. In fact, the second and third attempts might also be unfruitful. It gets tough – especially when you’ve got those glistening, big bright eyes staring at the prize and it all seems to slip through your fingers as the game, app or website you’ve developed simply doesn’t take off. There’s a lot to learn about designing, developing and marketing a product that really takes hold. For 99.9% of us – it doesn’t happen overnight and certainly doesn’t happen on the first attempt. I’m still searching for that magic bit of gluey game design that makes people rave about a title. I haven’t quite found it but get a little closer with every try.6) Be patient.
This may be reiterating a point made above but these things take time. Though it’s happened to a few, don’t plan on winning the lottery with your first bit of IP. Stay the course, keep refining and improving and keep calm.This may seem very abstract if you haven’t started anything up yet but it’ll make more sense down the road. Of course there are always exceptions but these things have been very important for me so far in my venture.
Working For Yourself: Part 1 [Robert Green’s DIY]
efax 101
When I started my law practice, I didn’t have the money or the sense to go paperless. Approximately 1 year later, I did just that because 1. I had enough money to buy a scanner and 2. I couldn’t afford not to.
One of the main things I did to go paperless was to throw away (actually it’s still in my garage collecting dust) my fax machine and replace it with an efax service. There were many to choose from and I looked at comparison sites such as faxcompare.com. I looked at the cost and how many pages I could receive and send each month and ease of doing so.
I was told by several people that they had trouble with one efax service or another so I also did a search online for reviews. Ultimately I chose myfax.com. I didn’t choose it because it was the cheapest (because it was not). Nor did I choose it because of its ease of use (although it is pretty easy to use). I chose it because it was the only service I could find that when I called their 800 number, there was a real, living, breathing human being on the other side to help me set up and answer my questions. I chose it for its customer service and I still don’t regret it.
Efaxing is easy on myfax. If I have a document I need to fax, I simply attach it as an attachment on an email and send it to the recipient’s phone number followed by @myfax.com. I can attach WORD documents, PDFs, JPGS, or anything else that I want to transmit. I can also attach more than one file if I want to send multiple documents or attach a cover letter separately from the rest of the document. I can also write in the body of the email as an alternative to sending a separate cover letter.
Receiving email is equally simple. I had a land-line where my fax number was located. I simply asked customer service at myfax to port my fax number over to their service and voila, it was done. It took approximately one week but one week later, I was up and running. Every time I would receive a fax, it would come into my email inbox as a pdf attachment. This was extremely convenient now that I was paperless because I would scan all my documents as pdfs anyways.
The advantage of using efax is really to save paper. I don’t have to print out a document simply to fax it. Nor do I have to receive a piece of paper if someone is faxing me something. If I want to print it, I will. If not necessary, I’ll just read it on my computer screen and save it in my folders.
Contrary to popular internet rhetoric, faxing is not dead. It’s been around since the 70s and people still use it. Ditching it altogether will not make you cool or trendy. It’ll just make it inconvenient for some people to send you stuff. Upgrade to efaxing so you can be conveniently reached and also trendy.
Exceed Client Expectations Every Time
I’m having central air installed in my office. The contractors originally told me that it will take 1 week to finish the job. That was 3 weeks ago and now I’m upset even though it’s 55 degrees outside and I have no need for air conditioning. The reason why I’m upset is because they have seriously failed my expectations.
I get calls for uncontested divorces and I often get asked the question, how long will it take. I tell them it takes about 5-6 months. Some people are shocked and tells me that other attorneys they’ve called tells them it’ll be done in a month or two. That is simply not possible because the Judgment Nisi period is 4 months alone for a uncontested divorce here in Massachusetts. What those attorneys are quoting is simply the time it takes from intake to when the clients get to go to court. But that wasn’t the client’s question. The question was when would they be divorced.
As an attorney, how do you make sure that you don’t make the mistake of my contractors or some of these attorneys? Give clients a realistic and overly conservative estimate of cost and time. If you’re taking a retainer for a case, and you expect the case to cost $4000, tell them that there’s a chance it might be $8000 or $10000 depending on what happens. If you think that the case will take 4 months to complete, tell them 4 months or better yet, tell them 6 months. The worst thing you can do is underestimate your price and time from the beginning because your clients will think that you have failed them if you don’t live up to those standards you first set for yourself. If you quote them realistically and conservatively, you’ll exceed their expectations every time!
How to Answer “How old are you?” When Clients Ask
I’m 28 years old. When I started my law firm, I was 25 years old. Not only was I very green behind the ears, I could’ve passed for an 18 year old. For some people, I suppose that’s a blessing but for an attorney just starting out and desperately trying to get business, it’s a curse.
Many times when I meet a client in person, I was asked, “You look young. How old are you?” In fact, I still get asked that question today, but a lot less often (I’ll tell you why later). When I was first asked this question, I was at a loss for words. A million things ran through my head: Do I actually tell them how old I am? They’re gonna think that 25 is way too young. These people have kids older than me!
What I eventually came to realize is that I shouldn’t be afraid to tell them how old I am. And if I do my job right from the start, they’ll ask less about how old I am. What I ultimately realized was that they don’t really care how old I am. What they really want to know is “Do you have the necessary skill and experience to handle my case?” But instead of asking that question which could be rude and embarrassing to the client to ask, they ask me how old I am instead and they use my age as a yardstick to gauge my level of expertise.
The reason why 3 years later, I get a lot less first-time clients asking me about my age is because I’ve developed a system of extensive and lengthy intake before I actually meet with the client in person. We talk about their case and the law and the fees all before they come into the office to see me for the first time. So that by the time they actually come in, they’re ready to sign on with me with retainer check in hand. Because of this extensive intake, most of them no longer is suspicious whether or not I have the level of expertise to help them with their case because I’ve already shown them my grasp of the law during the intake process. And because they no longer worry about my skills and experience, they don’t need to ask me about my age.
I still get a few “How old are you?” questions from clients sometimes but the tone is entirely different now. They ask it as a point of making conversation and not something that hinges on whether or not they’ll engage my firm. I also have no reservations about telling them proudly that I’m 28 years old and yes I own my own small firm with associate and support staff.