L AW QUARTERLY Engagement Beats Cash 7 Legal Tax Strategies Expect Growing Pains Mission, Vision Values INSIDE August 2022
BY ALEX MUÑOZ PG 22 How Automation Will Turn You into a Super Lawyer Automation, when used properly, can completely transform the way you practice law. BY JAY MCALLISTER PG 2
Learn about the contributors to this issue and connect to take your business to the next level.
1AUGUST 2022 Contents AUGUST 2022 LAW PRACTICE QUARTERLY
PG 26 Meet and Connect
PG 14 You Can’t Do That ... We all have it: that little voice in the back of your head that repeats of the reasons you can’t do something. Ignore it and set your business apart from the competition.
Expect Growing Pains You know that when you grow your law firm, growing pains are inevitable. The road to growing your law firm usually isn’t a straight and narrow path.
PG 10 Key Financial Players Know the limits of your team and when to bring in someone who knows more than you do and who can contribute to your vision.
If you want your firm to be among those with significantly lower turnover than the average, you must focus on engagement.
BY NERMIN JASANI
BY JAYDEN DOYE PG 8
BY AMY M. GARDNER AND KEITH SBIRAL PG 6 7 Legal Tax Strategies for Legal Professionals Do you want to pay less in taxes? Fortunately, the new tax law has provided opportunities for just that.
BY JEN LEE PG 16 Mission, Vision, Values Achieving clarity on who you are (and, sometimes even more importantly, who you are not) is critical to success.
BY CHELSEA WILLIAMS PG 12
Fostering the Passionate Law Firm Successful lawyers and firms understand that you really do have to be passionate and love the industry to achieve success.
BY DIANE L. CAMACHO PAGE 22
Stop Using Your Last Job Ad as a Job Description
Legal hiring series: go from crafting a job to on-boarding a new employee in a systematic way for all hiring levels.
BY MARGARET BURKE PG 4 Engagement Beats Cash
Many law firm leaders are no different from the entrepreneurs in “The Passion Economy” — they want to succeed and enjoy what they are passionate about.
theirovergainingmanagement,enhancingsuccess,legalandmorecontrolhowtheyspendtime.“
This notion came to me as I read Adam Davidson’s “The Passion Economy.”1 Adam interviewed many successful business owners, ranging from a hairbrush maker to a factory in North Carolina. I couldn’t help adapting what they shared into lessons for law firm management. Their stories of recognizing a need to adapt and change, reminded me of some of the firms I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Many of the companies’ that Adam Davidson features, were started and then passed down to a new generation. A new generation who realized that although it’s important to respect and appreciate what has brought a company to success, continuing with “the way it’s always been done” was not sustainable. In the Passion Economy, Adam’s case studies’ realized they had to be creative and open to change Good advice for law firms, too. In my experience working with my clients, I’ve seen the rewards that law firms reap from embracing changes in their industry and accepting that it’s okay to want more. More than ever, law firm leaders are focusing on achieving greater success, enhancing legal management and gaining more control over how they spend their time.
FOSTERING PASSIONATETHELAW
S hould law firms be passionate? Yes! Isn’t that what we in the legal profession want? That is, to be part of something great and part of a team of professionals who are proud of their profession and their firms? Yes, passionate about their firm. It makes sense, right?
Now, let’s get passionate about your firm’s success!
The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson. davidson.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/239718/the-passion-economy-by-adam-https://www.
In this era of the “great resignation,” law firms have seen a lot of talent leaving for other opportunities. Over the past two years, there’s been more movement than I can recall previously in my 15+ years in law firmManyleadership.successful firms have responded to this change in encouraging ways. For example, many firms I work with are embracing strategic legal management, more focus on culture, self-care and greater efficiencies with open arms. They’re recognizing the need to prioritize and retain talent while also freeing themselves up to focus on clients. They are regaining this ability by inviting experienced law firm leaders to the table. They are hiring internally, bringing in fractional specialists, and being open to the many professionals that specialize in the areas where they need help. A fresh perspective on some age-old challenges a firm may be facing usually brings with it innovative ideas and solutions to the root problem firms are trying to solve.
FIRM
It’s important to understand the nuances of successful law firm management and approach each client with empathy and an innovation mindset. As a law firm specialist, I’ve learned it’s critical to integrate and become part of the evolving firm’s team, while continually focusing on strategy and management of the execution. A path forward really is available to these firms that want to be their best.
Margaret Burke, Kolibri Law Firm Management
Successful lawyers and law firm leaders understand that you must be passionate about and truly love the legal industry to be successful. After all, law firms are not for the faint of heart. Managing extreme demands, high expectations and challenging work is the thread that ties us together. This shared experience, combined with a “we’re in this together” mentality, contributes to a passionate firm. I think it’s time to embrace and foster the passion!
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More than ever, law firm leaders are focusing on achieving greater
turnover, increasing engagement can both decrease turnover by 24-59%4 and increase productivity.5 And, unlike many other strategies, increasing attorney engagement does not cost significant resources, hurt staff morale, or require years of groundwork to succeed. What is engagement? It’s when someone approaches their work with a sense of selfinvestment, energy, and passion.
Why does engagement matter? Because when your team is focused only on billable targets or putting out fires without a larger mission, they lose perspective, and engagement drops.
In turn, lawyers and staff leave, costing your firm time, money, and morale. Just think of the money paid to recruiters, nonbillable hours conducting interviews, etc. And if they stay, disengaged lawyers are still costing the firm; McLean & Company estimates that one disengaged employee can cost their employer up to 1/3 their annual salary.6 When you consider that as many as 67% of American workers are unengaged,7 those numbers add up quickly.
Thomson Reuters Institute, 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market: A challenging road to recovery (2022), available absenteeism1098report-2017.aspx.www.gallup.com/workplace/238085/state-american-workplace-76annually.)withat54report-2022/https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/legal/law-firms-stay-go-Market:32021-midlevel-associates-survey-the-national-rankings/.available2report-2022/https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/legal/law-firms-stay-go-at(increasescalculatedonarolling12monthbasis).TheAmericanLawyer,2021MidlevelAssociatesSurvey(2021),athttps://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2021/08/23/the-ThomsonReutersInstitute,2022ReportontheStateoftheLegalAchallengingroadtorecovery(2022),availableat(increasescalculatedonarolling12monthbasis).Id.Id.(Increasescalculatedonarolling12monthbasis;attorneys“stayfirms”with8.7%2021attorneyturnover(versus“gofirms”18.4%2021attorneyturnover)averaged51morebillablehoursId.Gallup,StateoftheWorkplaceReport(2017),availableathttps://See,e.g.,id.Id.Id.(environmentswithloweremployeeengagementhave69%higherratesthanthosewithhighengagement).
Amy M. Gardner and Keith R. Sbiral, Apochromatik
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Whether you want everything to be different, or just to feel everyone is rowing in the same direction, there are five simple strategies you can use today to foster engagement. You can find them at aposignup.com/ forum. You can also request an invitation to a Focus Executive Forum, where managing partners, GCs, CEOs, and other executives gather to develop and share emerging best practices to confront today’s workplace challenges.Whatever your next step, both your retention of talented team members, and your firm, depend on increasing engagement, and we’re glad to help.
Y ou know the numbers. In 2021, law firms lost close to 25% of all associates, despite compensation increasing more than 11% among firms overall, and more than 15% in Am Law 100 firms.1 There’s no end in sight; 27% of associates are willing to move firms for higher compensation, and 60% are willing to move for better work-life balance.2 And yet, Thomson Reuters has found, the turnover rate varies widely among firms.3 If you want your firm to be among those with significantly lower turnover than the average, you must focus on engagement. While many strategies can help reduce
Recently we worked with an in-house team in a Fortune 250 company. Each member was clearly engaged in their area of responsibility, but not necessarily with theWeteam.conducted interviews with team members and asked the team’s goals. None—even the most senior—knew. They said things like “cut costs and support the business?” (in the form of a question). Who is motivated by a mission of “cut costs and support the business”? Who bounds out of bed for the vision of a question mark? And if the goal is a question mark, how do you know whether you’ve succeeded?
We then asked how long they planned to stay with the company. Even with outsiders reporting to their boss, 1/3 said they planned to leave within a year. On the other hand, workplaces with engaged employees have 2459% lower turnover.9 (Even when they don’t leave, disengaged employees are also more prone to Fortunately,absenteeism.10)thisisnot insurmountable.
BeatsEngagementCash
Take inspiration from the managing partner of a small firm we worked with recently, who said we “helped [the firm] realize a vision for the firm we all wanted to build and identify specific steps we each committed to take to get there. They turned us into a TEAM rather than a set of individual wonderful people and excellent lawyers and now, everything is different between us.”
What does this look like in the real world?
On the other hand, more engaged employees lead to higher productivity, profit, and client satisfaction.8
Fringe Benefits of Hiring Spouse
7
The Augusta Rule The Augusta Rule allows you to shift taxable business income to tax-free personal income. The Masters’ Tournament is held every year in Augusta, Georgia, hence the name of the rule. If you rent your personal home for up to 14 days per year, that income is non-taxable. So, next time you need to hold a business meeting or a team building event, do it in your home and pay you for renting your home. We advise one monthly business meeting at their home, which equals a total of 12 rental days. If you rent your home to your business for $1,000 for each meeting, you just shifted $12,000 from taxable income to tax-free. Mix Business and Pleasure If you plan your next trip that includes both business and pleasure time, you can turn the majority of your personal travel expenses into business expenses. Travel expenses for flights, car rentals, or vehicle expenses can all be deducted. You can also include lodging and 50-100% of your meal expenses that are related to your business travel. For international trips, you only have to partake in business for only 25% of your trip when the destination is outside of the U.S.
There could be huge tax incentives for hiring a spouse. Hiring them on a part-time basis and paying them in the form of fringe benefits can be both tax-deductible expenses section 105 medical reimbursement plan can make up most if not all of the reasonable compensation you pay to your spouse. These contributions are a salary expense for you and can be used by your spouse Meals Expense Deductions Meals and entertainment were previously deductible expenses, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut entertainment out. The good news is that meals increased to be 100% deductible when they have a business purpose. The bad news is that this can make meals at a bar with live music, dinner theatre, etc. entertainment and not deductible. Hiring Kids to Business
IN ANY BUSINESS, TAXES ARE ALWAYS ONE OF THE LARGEST EXPENSES. DO YOU WANT TO PAY LESS IN TAXES? There are 7 ways that attorneys can decrease taxes, and both CPAs and lawyers alike know about these strategies. This tax-saving plan can help if you only implement, one, two, three, or all seven of these strategies.
The new tax law provides an incentive to hire children. If your law firm has the right business entity structure, there are some great perks to hiring dependent children. Their income will be exempt from Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment tax withholdings.
Mileage and Vehicle Expenses If your firm uses a vehicle a minimum of 50% for business, you can deduct vehicle-related expenses. You’ll have to decide whether you’ll use the actual expense method or the standard mileage rate method. If you choose to use the actual expense method, you would need to track all expenses, including gas, repairs, insurance, etc. If you choose the standard mileage rate method, you would only need to track the number of business miles you drove during the year. You’d then multiply that number of miles by the IRS’s rate. The standard mileage rate method has always been popular but the actual expense method allows you to include depreciation on your vehicle. We recommend having your tax strategist do this calculation and see which expense method will be beneficial for your business.
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Legal Tax Strategies for Legal Professionals
Perfect Business Structure For Law Practice Under the new tax law, pass-through entities such as S-Corps and LLCs may qualify for a 20% deduction on qualified business income. This could save your taxes every year. If your income is higher than the QBI deduction limits, you may look into becoming a C-Corporation. Although C-Corps face double taxation, the corporate tax rate has been reduced to a flat 21% on C-Corps. Schedule some time to talk with your tax advisor about which business entity structure will give you the best results.
Jayden Doye, Prestige Accounting Solutions
It’s a domino effect, and it happens fast. I’ve seen it wipe out firms and dissolve partnerships. I don’t want you to end up in the law firm graveyard.
Scaling from $0 to $10,000,000:
YOU KNOW THAT WHEN YOU GROW YOUR LAW FIRM, GROWING PAINS ARE INEVITABLE. THE ROAD TO GROWING YOUR LAW FIRM USUALLY ISN’T A STRAIGHT AND NARROW PATH; IT’S WINDY AND INCLUDES MISTAKES AND UH-OH’S ALONG THE WAY.
The reality is that strategy requires you and your firm to make hard decisions: whom do we let go, do we decrease our profits and reinvest in the business, do we shut down an entire department, do we merge with our competitor?Theseare tough decisions. And on the other side of these decisions is the legacy you want your firm to leave behind.
If you want to grow your practice to a wildly successful law firm, contact me, Nermin Jasani. I am a former Wall Street lawyer, now a law firm strategist, dedicated to helping women-owned law firms grow through business principles and fundamentals. Nermin Jasani, We Are Wildly Successful I’ve worked with law firm owners who have hit the $3 million mark, fallen back to $1.8 million, and then crawled to $4.2 million. Why all of the up and down and back and forth?
The simple answer: there’s no strategy. Most law firms operate on a one-month forward-looking basis and don’t have a plan for what happens in 12 months, three years, or five years. There’s a hazy idea of “We’d like to make X” or “I’d like to be involved less in the day-to-day and be the vision of the company.”Whatdoes that mean? It sounds a bit esoteric.You’d be confused if someone else said that to Havingyou.a strategy is a detailed plan that includes your financial goals broken down by practice area or department, where each department has key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you track your growth. The
Expect Growing Pains
Strategy starts by looking ahead, a minimum of 5 years, puts a stake in the ground of where you want to be in 5 years and then works backward. Strategy is detailed: finances, budgets, KPIs, client acquisition costs, client journeys, marketing channels, and growing practice areas.The strategy looks at your entire business as a whole: sales, marketing, finance, accounting, service, and innovation, and determines the gaps in each department, and fills them with profitable solutions.
strategy also includes a written and financed marketing plan beyond SEO. The strategy consists of a hiring plan that compliments the practice areas you want to expand and will be revenue drivers for your firm.
The windy road of uh-oh’s happen when you don’t have a strategy. The lack of strategy becomes apparent with the rest of the firm, from you and the leadership to your intake and support staff. They start to feel nervous, leading to attrition in the firm, which leads to clients not getting white-glove service and clients firing your firm, which results in a direct hit to your revenue and profitability.
Example 2: Do a re-brand—if you don’t have a hiring, client acquisition, or financial strategy, what do you hope a re-brand will do? It’s lipstick on a Examplepig.
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A strategist can help you strip away the inefficiencies in your practice, help you focus on what will grow your law firm, and build the law firm you and your partners dreamt of when you were Associates in someone else’s practice.Keepin mind that no one can guarantee pain-free growth. Law school was painful, studying for the bar was painful, and you got through both experiences. Likewise, growing your law firm will be painful, yet worthwhile.
Everyone wants to grow their practice. But few get there successfully.
3: Do a mission, vision, and values workshop— this is not enough to map the firm’s road ahead. If you’re flying from New York to Los Angeles, a mission, vision, and values workshop is the plane seats for the passengers: your firm members, employees, and other staff. It is not the pilot, the gas, the flight plan, the wind, the runway, or the wheels, to get you out of New York and into Los Angeles.
Here’s what is not considered strategy: Example 1: Hire a CEO for the firm—this is not considered strategy; that’s a Hail Mary play to get the firm partners on the same page; when communication between the partners has been a mess for over two years, profits have been in decline, and you’re hoping someone comes in to babysit the partners.
Business Banker: Most people miss this one, but it’s a real thing. This relationship gives you VIP access to funding that only a bank can provide. We saw this play out in the recent events of COVID when everyone was desperately trying to get the PPP funding. Those who had a pre-existing relationship with a banker had a much less stressful experience getting these funds than those who
W hen I first went into business for myself, I knew next to nothing about marketing. I had just left a partnership at a local tax firm and my partner there was incredibly old school when it came to marketing and advertising. He was not a fan of spending any unnecessary money and didn’t see the value of investing in marketing. I recall having come up with a specific marketing strategy using direct mailers to a specific prospect type we liked working with. He didn’t want to spend the money to print fancy mailers, so I made a risky move. I printed my fliers out in the office on regular paper and in black and white (because he also didn’t want to pay for colored printer ink). Cringy, I know. Regardless, I folded those suckers up, put them in envelopes, and hand-wrote each letter to be mailed out. That right there was the extent of my marketing experience. By the way, it totally worked and we got new clients from black and white printed tri-folds. Fast forward 4 years to 2017 when I started my own firm. Marketing for my new company was going to be a totally different ball game. My company was niched in the legal space and 100% remote with no physical office. I wanted to reach clients on a national scale so the amateur local mailer campaign I by coding all of the transactions that take place in all of your bank accounts. This person also makes sure that your books agree with your bank statements each month. They may also handle things like payroll, certain filings, and accounts payable. The ultimate deliverable you get from your bookkeeper is your monthly financial reports consisting of your Income Statement (P&L) and your Balance Sheet. You may even get a few other financial reports from them, but everything they do leads up to the delivery of the reports. That’s where this person’s skills stop.
Financial/Retirement Planner: Investing in your long-term wealth is something you can’t afford to put off. In Mike M’s book, “Profit First” he reminds us that “Profit is not an event, profit is a habit”. The reason 98% of people put off saving for anything including retirement is that they think they don’t have enough to save or invest. The amount of money you have available to allocate to a savings or investment mode is much less relevant than creating the habit of setting it aside for that purpose. It’s creating the habit of when you receive money, prioritizing some portion (regardless of the amount) towards long-term wealth.
created wasn’t going to work this time.
The first mistake I made when looking at marketing in my business was in thinking that I could find one person to do all the things; social media posting on all platforms, website building, strategy creation, data analysis, and all the other things that it takes to have a welloiled and proactive marketing plan. If you’re not laughing by now this may be your clue that you need to do more with your own marketing, but if you know anything about marketing, you’ll know that what I thought was one person was actually a whole team of five people with very different skills. Furthermore, if those five people weren’t being motivated by MY specific goals and communicating with each other to make sure their efforts were complimentary it was going to enter the world in an apparent state of chaos. This same exact mistake is being made by entrepreneurs when they consider their finances. So, here’s your shortcut to who you’re going to need on your financial team and what they do.
Bookkeeper/Accountant: This person takes care of the laundry list of technical things that happen behind the scenes every month. Things like keeping up on the books
Key Financial Players
Chelsea Williams, Core Solutions Group, Inc.
Whydidn’t.isknowing who these people are and what they do vs. don’t do so important? Too often I hear about business owners who I call bookkeeper hoppers. They fire bookkeeper after bookkeeper because they don’t feel like they’re getting what they should be. The truth is, they’re expecting a CFO service from a bookkeeping provider. So, they bounce from bookkeeper to bookkeeper and in the meantime have no consistent financial reporting and are flying blind. Just as personal money habits spill over into your business, so do your people skills. Know the limits of your team and when to bring in someone who knows more than you do and can contribute to your vision. You must also take accountability for your vision and all of its details. Your team is tasked to help you achieve it, but it’s your job to make sure they know exactly what that vision entails and what their role is within it.
Tax Preparer: Your tax preparer is the person who handles your quarterly estimated tax payments and your end-of-year income tax return. The key to finding the tax preparer you need to be working with is to stop being cheap and find someone who will save you way more money than you spend working with them. There’s a difference between simply preparing a tax return and creating a tax strategy. Legal tax loopholes can be accurately implemented into your business, and it takes a knowledgeable and proactive tax professional to do it correctly. Find you one.
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CFO (Chief Financial Officer): Right now, this is probably you. So, if you’ve never heard of this financial quarterback, pay close attention. A CFO takes the monthly financials from your bookkeeper, knows how to carry a conversation with your tax preparer, and understands how your operations impact your finances so well that they can anticipate your financial future. They also understand how operations affect money. They create, report, and analyze KPIs (key performance indicators) which are the needle movers in your business and the predictors of success.
This is arguably the most important financial player on your team.
If you wanted to add level 2 tasks to this position, the person would need to be able to use Word, make judgment calls, and have some office experience. Looking at this breakdown, decide on the position you want to create and the skill level you should hire. You may want to hire a parttime person with Level 1 skills. You might hire a full-time person with Level 1 and Level 2 skills to handle all the tasks that must stay with the manager. Also, think about tasks that can be added for a person with this level of experience from other areas in the firm. This works for any position in the firm that is overloaded with work. This is a task we work through with our solo attorney client who aren’t sure what help to hire.
Consulting Services, LLC
The cost of a bad hire is estimated to be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the employee’s position, the amount of time spent on training the employee, and the services you used to hire the person. But bad hires cost employers more than time, money, and effort. A bad hire may cost you a client through a disastrous interaction or a star employee who resents picking up the slack, fixing mistakes, or otherwise accommodating a poor performer. And once you do rid the firm of the wrong hire, you may have costs associated with the termination, not to mention having to face the whole hiring process all over again.
Oncethis:you’ve
So, when someone comes running into your office, saying I need a new assistant right away; anyone will do, don’t take them at their word. Don’t settle for “just another warm body” simply because finding the right person for the job opening takes too much time, effort, and expense. You don’t just want a body in the seat; you want the right body. Now, more than ever the need for good hiring practices is critical.
Join us next quarter for Step 2: The Job description.
Diane L. Camacho, DLC
Step 1: Assess Your Needs In a law firm, we often find ourselves jumping in and doing something as quickly as possible. This isn’t the best approach for hiring. The first thing you need to do before you start sending out inquiries and posting job ads is to determine exactly what you need.To accomplish this, ask the person you’re hiring for to start tracking their time for a week or two and create a summary of tasks at the end of that period. For example, let’s say you’re hiring an administrative clerk to help the manager. A one-week summary of the manager’s tasks might look like this: Looking at this summary, it’s clear that some of these tasks require little skill or experience [ 1 ], some require a bit of knowledge or experience [ 2 ], and some are tasks that cannot be delegated [ 3 ]. The tasks in our example could be ranked like
W e are often asked to help with hiring for our clients. When we ask to see the job description, 9 out of 10 times we get a copy of the ad used to hire the person they just fired. We had something else in Thismind.article begins a series on Legal Hiring. Each magazine will have a new step in the overall process. We will take a law firm from crafting a job to on-boarding a new employee. The goal of this series is to provide a systematic way to hire all employees in a law firm from receptionist to senior associate.
ranked the tasks, group them by the level of experience and identify the skills needed for each level. Level 3 tasks must stay with the manager. Level 1 would look like this:
Hours Task 2 Counsel Betty & Sam 1 Distribute HR materials 3 Schedule attorney interviews 1 Send rejection letters 2 Find locations for office holiday party 16 Prepare budget 1 Contact copier rep to discuss repairs 2 Finish insurance renewal application 1 Schedule meeting with partners and insurance broker 1 Attend meeting with partners and insurance broker 1 Coordinate coverage for Tom’s vacation 1 Review lease to confirm deadline to expiration 2 Prepare ad for new paralegal 1 Post ad for new paralegal Level Task 3 Counsel Betty & Sam 1 Distribute HR materials 1 Schedule attorney interviews 2 Send rejection letters 2 Find locations for office holiday party 3 Prepare budget 1 Contact copier rep to discuss repairs 3 Finish insurance renewal application 1 Schedule meeting with partners and insurance broker 3 Attend meeting with partners and insurance broker 2 Coordinate coverage for Tom’s vacation 3 Review lease to confirm deadline to expiration 2 Prepare ad for new paralegal 1 Post ad for new paralegal Tasks Skills Distribute HR Materials Good communication skills Schedule attorney interviews Ability to use email and internet Contact copier rep to discuss repairs Trustworthy Schedule meeting with partners and insurance brokers High school diploma (if required by firm) Post ad for new paralegal Able to follow instructions with minimal direction HIRING SERIES Stop Using Your Last Job Ad as a Job Description
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“Are you sure?”
“I can’t…because” talk, think of two to four ways it could work. The ideas can be totally zany and things you would never actually do, but the exercise of forcing your brain to figure out a way something could work instead of focusing on all of the reasons it can’t work will change how you do business. If you are starting a law firm (or thinking about starting a law firm), what is holding you back? What are you afraid of? List it all out and then come up with two to four ways you could get around those “reasons” if only you had that super power of turning off your lawyer brain.
“You can’t do that. You’re too old/don’t have enough experience/too young.”
“You have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.”“Youhave
chamber of bad decisions, but find your people. Find the person whose first response is, “Congratulations!” when you say you want to open your own firm.
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to bill by the hour because that’s how it’s always been done.”
Jen Lee, Lawyer Success NetworkTM
“Do you want to make less money? Because that’s how you make less money.”
“You have to give free consultations in order to generate business.”
Charge flat fees. Create hybrid fee models that encourage efficiency and recovery. Sell online courses. Write books. Start a YouTube Channel. If no one else is doing it, that is fantastic. That means you have something that sets you apart from other lawyers without the dreaded free consult as your only marketing tool.
Where can you find those people? Believe it or not, social media is a good place. There are fun groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Clubhouse dedicated to lawyers who run their own practices. If you are more of an in-person type, check out the solo and small firm sections of your local bar associations. You may also hear (or think) that you must follow some sort of lawyer code when setting up your practice. Things often heard:
Ignore all this nonsense. If you want to work Mondays and Wednesdays from 9AM to Noon, then design your law firm so that is your schedule. Set client expectations and clearly communicate your available hours.
W orking with a lot of lawyers who want to open their own firms, but are receiving mixed responses to their idea has been eye-opening. “Oh, that’s too risky. Bad idea.”
When you hear this feedback, it gets discouraging. So, the first piece of advice is to seek out those who support your ideas. Not saying that you should be in an echoYOU CAN’T DO THAT ...
Turn off your lawyer brain. You know, that little voice in the back of your head that repeats all of the reasons you can’t do something. We all have it. Every time someone proposes something new or different, we are trained to spot all of the issues. We literally spent three years of law school trying to find something wrong with everything presented to us. The problem is that in the real world, you are also running a business. Being paralyzed by analyzing every situation creates inertia and resistance to change…because that’s how it’s always been done.To end with a challenge: for the next week, whenever your brain starts in with the
AND OTHER ADVICE YOU SHOULD IGNORE
Seek out those who support your ideas. Not saying that you should be in an echochamber of bad decisions, but find your people.“
The charging for consultations is a gamechanger. Once you get it through your head that you are offering a valuable service with your consultation, it becomes easier and easier to make money and improve cash flow in your law firm. If you can’t sell yourself on charging for consultations, it will be very difficult for you to convince others and explain how your business model works.
17AUGUST 2022 ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT? VALUESVISIONMISSION
I like to use the example of Starbucks’ mission statement: To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. When you read this, what is the one word you’d expect to see, but don’t? ‘Coffee’, right? This is because Starbucks is NOT a coffee company - they are a company that is all about providing attractive, pleasing environments that can serve as channels by which they can sell products that are a fit for how they have chosen to define themselves. As written, their mission statement enables them to sell, yes, coffee. They can also sell
Defining your MVV is analogous to building your house on rock.
Achieving clarity on who you are (and, sometimes even more importantly, who you ARE NOT) is critical. This goes hand in hand with answering the WHY question. Why do you and your entity do what you do? The answers drive decisions like what kinds of service or products you should be providing - and which ones you should not (or, even more critically, stop offering).
As I worked with more and more clients, I became increasingly convinced how key the Mission, Vision, Values are.
When I started my own consulting business, I never gave MVV a thought— my mission, simply put, was to get things done! Agility and efficacy would be my middle names…until I started encountering a degree of success. When asked by my clients and referral partners about my ideal client profile, I remember proclaiming, “I’m industry agnostic!”. When asked about what kinds of clients were the best fit for us I would claim that “we can, and do, help everyone!”. We came to realize that some clients were beyond our ability to save. Even when it was time to hire, it was similar. Since I had had so much success in bringing on and managing teams as an employee, I assumed it would be easy to start my own teams! In a vacuum and without the guardrails provided by a well thought out and implemented Mission, Vision & Values, hiring a team was a real hit and miss experience. I finally got religion on this when we invested in our own strategic planning session where we defined our mission, vision, and values. We began to strategically pivot away from the clients whose businesses were on fire to ones that were more stable and successful. Instead of taking on clients whose main question was ‘How do we survive?”, we began to cultivate clients whose central question was “How do we overcome obstacles and grow successfully?”
Their mission began informing decisions from staffing ... to determining which practice areas to focus on. “
tea. And food. And music. AndOnebooze.ofour clients also provides a helpful example of the utility of your MVV. We tend to work with professional service providers—folks that are really good at what they do but don’t know how to manage the business side of things. Not that they can’t or couldn’t figure it out on their own - they just don’t have the time and this is what we at CSR do. In this example, this law firm was all over the map - they had been around for decades, expanded and contracted, had partners come and go and were trying to figure out what they were going to do going forward. The Mission statement that was generated through the strategic planning exercise revealed that at the end of the day, they were really focused on the client experience. They wanted to be known as the law firm that wasn’t going to be like going to the dentist. Their mission began informing decisions from staffing (why recruit attorneys or staff that are not a mission fit?), to determining which practice areas to focus on. Once they began using their Mission statement as a decision filter their practice flourished with purposeful growth. Once you have defined your mission, we focus on creating a Vision statement. If Mission is practical, Vision is, well, visionary. It should focus on the future no matter how fanciful or aspirational it may be. Your vision is your opportunity to dream about what your work will change and how it will affect the world. Henry Ford is the poster child for visioning. His Vision for the Ford Motor Company was to democratize the automobile. How and why is this aspirational? To democratize speaks to making it ubiquitous. EVERYONE who wants a vehicle should have one and cars should be everywhere. At the time of the creation of this statement, the ENTIRE country had about 1,500 miles of paved roads. There was no infrastructure in place to support this (gas stations, dealerships, garages, etc.). The automobile sold for I admit it… I am a convert. I became a real believer of the importance and value of the MVV (Mission Vision Values) through the worst way possible— by experiencing the lack of them. And not only with clients but for myself. Like me, you may have experienced MVV within the context of Corporate America. We would attend the required rah rah sessions, take the tchotchkes and assorted branded stuff that bragged about the organization’s MVV, put it on our desk (until it got pushed back or covered with dust), and probably never thought of it again. What a waste, right?
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As we probed into what the partners at this practice dreamed … we determined their vision: “Everyone deserves healthy skin. The growth that was UNLEASHED after the adoption of their MVV is something I have never seen before - 2.5x growth from the beginning of our time with them to the four year mark, this little four word statement was instrumental in unlocking their recruitment, drive to optimization, choice of technology purchases, etc. The final V of the MVV is equally important. I particularly like values because they tend to be quicker and more flexible tools that enable you to react to day-to-day situations swiftly and in a more targeted manner. Values are clear and quick action statements. They apply to internal AND external stakeholders, and are used to define the work culture and make decisions. Here are some examples of values that should NOT be used: Honesty, Integrity, and Respect. Why, you might ask, should these not be used? Because, in the grand scheme of things - they are meaningless. Think of it this way: how confident would you be with a restaurant that proudly proclaimed as one of its core values that it was “100% vermin free”? These “permission to play” values are the basics upon which any organization can be assumed to deliver. Think beyond these values that should be a given to what values you want to characterize your enterprise.
$2,400 and that was more than the average American family made in a year. That is aspirational indeed. Later in the mid-20th century, the Ford Motor Company actually achieved what seemed an impossible vision and began to struggle to define what their next “next” was going to be. It was time to create a new vision.
Another great example of an aspirational vision comes from one of our medical clients.
As an example, CSR’s core values are tenacity, versatility, caring, and openness.
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Henry Ford standing with Ford Model T (p.19), Public https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H.Ford_et_sa_Ford_T.jpgDomain.
Alex Muñoz, Consulting, Solutions & Results. Values apply to internal and stakeholders,externaland are used to define the work culture and make decisions.“
We chose these for very specific reasons and we re-validate their selection each year when we pop the hood on our strategic plan. Each value has a story behind it and even the order they are stated in is intentional. The value of choosing your values cannot be overstated. One of our law firm clients was able to use their core values immediately upon choosing them. During the exercise, they realized that they really value a team first work environment. They had experienced “Lone Rangers” before and knew that that wasn’t something they wanted to revisit. A nagging issue with one of their partners, under the light of this agreed upon core value, was suddenly brought into focus. This partner was exclusively focused on himself and his staff. This created tension and mistrust within the entire firm. This revelation enabled them to prioritize and take practical action. Your Mission, Vision, and Values will define your company culture and direction. Without it you will flounder. With a clear MVV that is regularly reviewed and lived out, your company will choose and retain the employees that should be on your company’s bus as Jim Collins would put it. You will ensure your ladder is up against the right wall using Stephen Covey’s metaphor. You will make strategic decisions that will lead you to where you want to go. If you are not a convert, I invite you to go through the exercise of determining your mission, vision, and values so you can discover the power to target and accelerate your firm’s growth.
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23AUGUST 2022
HOW AUTOMATION WILL TURN YOU INTO A SUPER LAWYER
f you’ve ever been sitting in front of your computer resentfully completing a tedious but necessary task and thought to yourself, “There has to be a better way to do this” know that you are not alone. In fact over the last 10 years, I have spent thousands of hours sitting down and talking with lawyers and their support staff about common law firm activities that need to be completed and have observed just how much inefficiency plagued the various processes. Throw in the pandemic of 2020 and the increased need to be more available than ever while operating in an increasingly virtual environment. These circumstances have caused many solo attorneys as well as attorneys at larger firms to fall victim to inefficient operating methods and unsuccessful technology deployments that have actually decreased their total
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Onvr the engagement letter is executed, the automation could create a new matter number in your practice management system, associate all relevant contacts and save the form responses as notes under that newly created matter. This simple yet powerful automation has a potential of saving you an average 2 hours per new matter. There are a whole host of additional applications for leveraging automation that can introduce so much efficiency in your firm. Some common automations we create for our clients include copying email attachments from your outlook email into your Legal Practice Management System, scheduling calendar events between you and your clients, performing a 3-way reconciliation of your trust accounts, informing mortgage lenders of your client’s retention of your firm, and more! The options are unlimited. The main thing to remember is that in order to automate these processes, you must first clearly understand all of the steps involved and document these steps in a flow chart.
assembles and sends your engagement letter based on the type of engagement being requested from your client and perform the necessary follow-up if the engagement letter has not been completed after a predefined time period has passed.
Hopefully, you are beginning to see the power of automation and how when used properly, it can completely transform the way you practice law. The top performing law firms that we support typically leverage between 40 and 60 automations, and they could not imagine reintroducing these manual tasks back into their day-to-day operations. Ultimately, effectively leveraging automation in your law firm frees you from performing repetitive tasks over and over. This of course allows you to perform more work in a shorter amount of time so that you can focus on doing the things you love!
Jay McAllister, Paragon Tech
Nowadays,abilities.operating a successful and a profitable legal practice entails understanding what your business objectives are and being able to pair those objectives to the right technology solutions that will solve for those and create a better experience for your clients. By leveraging these platforms, you will be able to outcompete larger firms who have more human resources, instead opting for a lean, effective legal practice where you are empowered to take control of your time and enjoy the fruits of your labor. If you feel that your legal practice has become analogous to a prison, trapping you to the confines of your office, then keep reading. We will dive in deep and you will learn about the five critical technologies I have implemented in countless firms across the U.S. to allow them to bill more, work less and retain their clients.You’ve probably been hearing an increasing amount of information promoting the use of automation tools in law firms. The concept is simple. You will always have a finite amount of hours and a finite amount of energy each day to perform your mission critical tasks. The problem is, in order to scale your firm, there is an inherent need to accomplish more with the same amount of time and energy input. The solution is leveraging automation. So should you go out and adopt an automation platform like Zapier today? How about enabling the built in automations in your Clio instance? The answer is a resounding “NO”. Before you can begin to effectively automate your workload, you will need to spend time mapping out your core processes. Of course, how can you automate the steps to completing a task when the steps aren’t known, and clearly defined and documented? Once you have a wellconceived schematic of your critical processes, you can leverage automation tools in order to extend your capabilities. In order to map out your processes and document the steps, I like to recommend an easy-to-use and effective platform called Lucidchart. This cloud-based application allows you to intuitively create flow charts that define your processes and all of the decision trees required to complete that task. Once you’ve completed this, you now have a shot at beginning to automate your simple tasks. The benefits of automation include improving your client satisfaction, ensuring that you have a consistent and predictable client experience and eliminating manual entry of repetitive tasks. You will also reduce the amount of non billable time spent performing activities that are necessary to provide quality counsel to your client, like documenting your time entries, or collecting initial client intake information. Lastly, in firms where multiple individuals have a hand in producing the work product, automation will enforce accountability across your team to help with follow-up and activity completion. You can make use of automation tools like Zapier or Integrately to trigger certain actions to be completed across separate platforms. These automation tools will wait for an initial condition to be met in one platform, and then based on the input, produce your desired outputs in another separate platform. An example of this could be an automation that walks your client through the intake process and captures the necessary data points to onboard them faster. You could build an automation that Before you can begin to effectively automate workload,youryou will need to spend time mapping out your core processes.“
Margaret Burke at the time of writing, is the Managing Director at Kolibri Law Firm Management.
For entrepreneurs, business is absolutely personal, especially regarding our money. You weren’t taught in school how to manage your cash and understand its patterns. I’m out to change entrepreneurs’ relationship with their money in their business and life.
Alex Muñoz alex@expertiseinresults.com linkedin.com/in/csrmunozexpertiseinresults.com
Alex is the bi-lingual (Spanish/English) & bi-cultural founder and principal of CSR : Consulting, Solutions, Results where he drives organizational change via strategic planning, execution, and accountability for law firms. CSR’s hallmark is the ability to quickly and efficaciously analyze, diagnose, and implement solutions for organizations seeking to scale. He has helped dozens of firms to plan for succession, remove obstacles, and grow.
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Jen Lee is the managing attorney at Jen Lee Law, Inc. in San Ramon, CA. She is also the founder of Lawyer Success Network™, helping lawyers design and build profitable practices. She often speaks on business development, networking for lawyers, and law firm management topics.
As an entrepreneurial executive and growth catalyst, Margaret draws on her 20+ law firm management experience managing operations, finance, HR, IT, and business development to improve operations, streamline processes, and scale revenue. Her work has spanned new business launches, M&As, risk management, and operation/infrastructure development as C-level leader for an award-winning Boston law firm, a startup professional services company, and others. Margaret holds a Masters in Business Development, she is a Certified Legal Manager (CLM) and a Certified Coach. In her spare time, Margaret enjoys traveling with her husband and trying out new vegan cuisine and recipes. Kolibri Law Firm Management provides fractional law firm management services to help you run a lean and efficient law firm. Please visit www.kolibrilaw.com for more information about Kolibiri’s services.
Amy M. Gardner amy@apochromatik.com apochromatik.com
During the first two years of building his own CPA firm, Prestige Accounting Solutions, Jayden discovered his niche- professional service providers. As a CPA, Jayden’s goal is to help entrepreneurs like as himself, gain independence, eliminate debt, and create unique action plan to bring more to their bottom line while paying less in taxes. Invest in yourself and start working with Jayden TODAY!
Jayden Doye jayden@prestigeaccountants.com @TheGreatJaydenaccounting-atlanta.com833-672-2268
Nermin is a former Wall Street attorney who ran her own law firm while advising hedge funds and other registered investment advisers. She is now a law firm consultant helping solo and small firms with their pricing, marketing, operations, and team training. She hosts a weekly podcast called: Wildly Successful Law Firm and can be found on all podcast platforms.
Margaret Burke
Diane L. Camacho diane@dlccs.com linkedin.com/in/dianelcamachodlccs.com
Chelsea Williams hello@yourcoresolution.com facebook.com/yourcoresolution@core_solutions_groupyourcoresolution.com
Amy M. Gardner is a certified career and career transitions coach and team development and leadership consultant with Apochromatik. She coaches lawyers one-on-one, in small group masterminds, and delivers workshops for law firms and other employers to reengage teams and help them thrive. Amy is a former Big Law associate, partner at a mid-size Chicago firm, and dean of students at a top law school.
Jen Lee jen@jenleelaw.com facebook.com/lawnchlawlawyersuccessnetwork.com925-586-6738
Diane L. Camacho is the founder of DLC Consulting Services, LLC which provides legal management and operations consulting services to small and solo law firms. She is a Certified Legal Manager with over 30 years of legal management experience and a degree in organizational behavior and leadership. Her team consists of legal managers with over 80 years of management experience in law firms combined.
mburke@kolibrilaw.com linkedin.com/in/margaret-t-burkekolibrilaw.com
Jay McAllister jason@paragonus.com linkedin.com/in/jaymcallisteritparagonus.com815-556-1145
Nermin Jasani nermin@wearews.com linkedin.com/in/nerminjasaniwearews.com@wearewildlysuccessful
Jay McAllister is an extremely passionate and highly motivated entrepreneur. He is the founder of Paragon Tech, a technology firm focused on conceiving, creating, and curating the absolute best solutions to increase efficiency at all levels in law firms across the US. He is incredibly gifted at listening to and truly understanding and connecting with those he communicates with at a deep level.
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