Yet when I speak of this at events, I often see law firm owners’ faces in the audience go blank as they cannot fully understand what delegating makes possible.

As a law firm owner or partner, I’m sure you know that there’s no faster way to generate new business than by contacting your past clients.

Yet, most law firm owners, especially small firms with 5 to 100 team members, don’t do much of this because they are too busy doing their client work.

Also, I’m sure you know that when your firm cannot handle more client work because demand is peaking, it’s time to recruit new team members.

Yet I find that most small law firm owners don’t maintain good relationships with several recruiters and communicate with them every week about possible new candidates.

I also know that as an experienced law firm owner, you know that you need to provide support and training to your team members, especially those showing promise, so they can elevate their skills and, in turn, be billed at higher rates for your firm, thus further increasing their profitability to you.

Yet, I find that most small law firm owners don’t schedule regular time to support and train their most valued team members.

Does any of this describe your situation?

This is why I’m so heavy on promoting the skill of delegation. It's this very skill that, as a law firm owner, will free up your time so you can focus on the actions that build a firm you can be truly proud of.

Without delegation, you and the other partners will constantly be overwhelmed with billable work.

While you are doing billable work, you are unavailable for business development, so your firm only grows as fast as clients return for more work.

While doing billable work, you are unavailable to support your colleagues or offer them training, so they don’t get the career progression they yearn for. So they could leave your firm, leaving you with a challenging new position to fill.

Also, while you are doing billable work, you are not available to recruit new team members. Thus, everyone at your firm remains at peak demand, with no room to create a better, more profitable firm. This means likely being beaten by competitors.

Learning the art of delegation is vital, but here’s the secret: it is only the beginning.

Once you’ve mastered delegating your workload effectively, you must learn to have your team members consistently and to a high standard complete client work without your input.

Also, you need to learn how to use your time to maintain client relationships while other team members do their work. This will prevent your associates from taking your clients, so you’ll feel at ease knowing you’ll keep your precious client base.

Increasing your profits while reducing your workload is not only about delegating; it’s also about using your freed-up time that delegating makes possible for these practices (in this order):

1. Business development & maintaining client relationships.

2. Supporting team members to elevate their skills.


3. Recruiting to keep finding ideal new team members.

4. Ensuring time recording, billing, and collections are effective.

So today, before you can build a great business, the first port of call (once you’ve got a base of work coming in) is always learning the art of delegation, and then it’s about using your free-up time effectively.

This secret has enabled many of my clients, all law firm owners, to significantly increase their firms’ profits while reducing their workload.

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