Ideally, a law firm’s marketing plan and budget would have been set last quarter. Got those who are late in starting this process, or who don’t know how to do it, here’s a guide. In a perfect world, you would start assessing your current year’s productivity against the year’s plan in August or September of [...]
While law firms are generally comprised of intelligent, multi-talented individuals, there will always be the need for law firms to hire some outside service providers. Yet law firms are not known for being particularly good managers of these providers. It might be a good New Year’s resolution to improve your ability to manage these services. [...]
I’m ending my posts of the year with a difficult subject…individuals within a Partnership who consistently seem to be in opposition with the rest of the Partnership. It's one of those areas of challenge that Partnerships are very good at ignoring, but ultimately to their peril. That vast majority of Partnerships function quite well. This [...]
Most clients already have an established relationship with a lawyer or law firm. That means that if you want to expand your business, you have to steal it from someone else. The best way to do this is with a full-court press. It’s much easier to get more work from an existing client so that [...]
A growing portion of my coaching business has been to help lawyers and law firm senior support staff to plan for their retirement. Traditionally, we’ve gone to accountants to help us plan for retirement because we’ve primarily been concerned about ensuring that once we stop collecting a regular pay cheque, we have enough money to [...]
Precedent figures heavily in most law practices, so it’s understandable that lawyers would rely on past experiences and belief systems in the running of their lives as well. Life experience can create wisdom. It can also lead to our greatest weak spots. In over twenty years of coaching lawyers, my primary goal has been to [...]
In every business relationship there will be moments of miscommunication, misunderstanding or good old-fashioned error. In a lawyer/client relationship, these awkward moments can also result from a difference of opinion over objectives, timing, cost or methodology. These moments are inevitable, but how we deal with them often defines the future of that relationship. As a [...]
While law firms tend to be a relatively flat structure, there is usually a management structure that helps to guide things along. Typically, this includes a lawyer leadership team (a Managing Partner and potentially, an Executive Committee), practice or client team leaders if the firm is organized into teams, and an administrative team comprised of [...]
A large part of my practice is in helping law firms to create a strategic plan. A strategic plan is a road map that identifies the destination of a firm over a declared time period, and says something about how the firm will get there. Law firms have been late to the table with some [...]
Law firm managers need to be active, conscious and pro-active in their role. Management is not merely a title, it is a critical role that is seldom done well in a law firm. Law firms require a range of managers. These include professional managers such as Administrators, marketing or IT directors and the like. But [...]