This is the case if you are experiencing something like any of these:
You also can likely never relax, not even on holiday, from worrying that your managers will let things fall apart.
And so you are often tired, exhausted and frustrated at everyone for always letting you down.
The cause is a lack of setting and communicating boundaries, so everyone keeps taking liberties and disrespecting your authority.
This is common for law firm owners because most of you find satisfaction in your technical legal skills, which, rightly so, you use to feel important and of value to your firm.
However, I’ve seen that this often becomes a way of hiding from those difficult conversations and avoiding holding others accountable.
So, most law firm owners remain forever blown around by their team’s antics and can never lead them to participate in building a truly thriving firm that’s also a joy for everyone to be part of.
A client of mine, a highly committed law firm partner in his 50s who manages his firm alongside two other partners, is now more aware than ever of the lack of involvement from the other two partners.
Before my client worked with me, he could only ‘guess’ if the other partners were bothered or not about growing the profitability of the firm because he avoided simply asking them what they wanted.
And so, the other partners would often operate in a way that went against his wishes, but he never spoke to them about it.
He also avoided making requests with agreed-upon deadlines of the associates and avoided holding everyone who underperformed accountable.
As a result, he felt he had to do everything to keep the firm running reliably, which was deeply frustrating for him and left him feeling disrespected by them.
In working with me, he realised that the problem was that he was avoiding setting and communicating boundaries and being direct with his colleagues.
Over the last few months, we’ve been working together for him to get good at:
As a result of focusing on achieving these three elements by increasing his leadership and management skills, in our weekly one-on-one Zoom session recently, I asked him:
"Can you see an increase in your team’s billables?”
He replied (word for word):
"Last month, was the first month ever, when we had these five fee earners do over 100 hours each last month. I can't remember when that happened before."
So we can see that setting and communicating boundaries is key to building a truly profitable law firm and a firm where the team members properly take the exhausting weight of work off the partner’s shoulders.
Today, make clear requests, agree on deadlines and hold team members accountable when they break their agreements.
For repeat underperformers, tell them that action will be taken if no improvement is shown in ‘X’ days, and if necessary, replace them.
Whatever you do, don’t let others disrespect your authority; otherwise, you’ll forever feel frustrated by the way others treat you.
This doesn’t mean becoming a military sergeant with your colleagues. Still, it does mean creating clear agreements with deadlines with everyone across your firm and supporting them whenever they break agreements.
If you get this right, you’ll be astounded at how you become able to increase your firm’s profitability while gaining precious time to focus on the work you enjoy.
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