Today, I will break these down for you so you can first see if you are letting these traits hold you back and, if so, how to start breaking free of them so you can also start to noticeably increase your firm’s profitability.
I’m not saying to be irresponsible, yet there is no growth without calculated risk.
Most business risks are caused by a lack of awareness or knowledge about an opportunity before putting something at stake, such as time and money.
This particularly applies to investing in stocks and shares.
Without any knowledge, investing in stocks and shares is a total gamble; however, once we study markets closely, study businesses, find out what their earning ratios are, what debt they have and how many years they’ve been trading, bit by bit, we gain the clarity and confidence we need to make informed decisions and if we choose to invest in a particular stock, take a well-calculated and low risk that in most cases will lead to some decent returns.
The same applies to law firm owners who want to succeed by increasing profits while building a firm that doesn’t exhaust them.
The problem is that most law firm owners don’t even study how they can increase their profitability. By ’study,’ I mean simply talking with others with extensive experience building profitable law firms.
Most also never take the time to learn from others how to lead and manage others, recruit new team members, or effectively carry out business development.
The question is, why not?
As a lawyer, you protect your clients' lives and wealth by seeing what could go wrong, and you create text and agreements that protect them.
However, this thinking is very damaging when applied to building a thriving law firm. It causes most law firm owners to keep doing what they’ve always done because it’s all they’ve ever known.
They do this because it seems ‘safe’.
Therefore, most law firm owners also avoid improving their firm’s workflows, time recording, and collections procedures.
They also avoid requesting that their team members take over more of their work because they fear it will not be done well.
Most also avoid offering decent money to potential new candidates to save money, so they can’t employ great people and stay stuck having to do billable work.
Therefore, most law firm owners stay stuck in repeat patterns that generate the same unsatisfying results.
Such an approach may seem safe, but it isn’t safe in terms of health and is exhausting.
Most law firm owners continue to be the 'experts’ expected by their clients to continue doing their billable work.
As a law firm owner, it took you years to get qualified to practice law, prove yourself as an associate, build a book of clients, and become a partner at your firm.
Maybe instead, you took another bold approach; you became a self-employed lawyer early on, but I’m sure it’s still taken you years to become skilled at what you do.
Either way, those years of investment have made you the ‘go-to expert’ for solving your clients’ legal problems, and I see most law firm owners fall into this colossal trap.
This is because once you sell yourself as the one who will do the work, you will always be expected to be the one who does the work.
Unless you learn decent leadership and management skills, you’ll always remain the expert who is exhausted and has greatly limited profits.
Unlike a team of 5 that can work on five files at once, you can only work on one document at a time.
So doesn’t it make sense that a team billing reliably will always be much more profitable than you focusing on your billing?
Also, while doing billable work, you are not doing business development, recruiting, or ensuring that time recording is happening effectively or that the money the firm is owed is being collected.
So your profits are constantly trashed, and your overwhelming stress to keep billing continues.
How do you break free of all this?
Above all, schedule time to NOT be billing and instead study business solutions.
Talk with others about solving specific challenges you face in your business.
Speak with others who’ve already built a highly successful firm that doesn’t rely on them.
Also, get out of your office, away from your desk and attend conferences to learn directly from others.
Remember, to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results is a sign of madness.
Unlock the full potential of your law firm with The Law Firm Owners' Podcast. Listen to conversations with other law firm owners on the tactics and strategies that increased profits.
