Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

Alright, so perfection is in the eye of the beholder but a couple weeks back I had what for me was a darn near perfect week.

What do I mean by “perfect”? Well, bottom-line was cold hard profit (for us meaning $3,000 in a single week) but more broadly I’m talking about a week where there was a wonderful mix of attention paid to past, current, and future income which occurred partly due to certain timing issues but also resulted from very intentional planning decisions. So how can I (and you) make sure we have more PERFECT WEEKS?

1. Perfection Requires (lots of) Planning. When I say this I’m primarily talking about planning/managing your calendar. What’s the old Lincoln adage…time/advice is a lawyer’s stock-in-trade? You and your legal assistant should be constantly looking at your office calendar so no time is wasted. Take a look at the daily schedule of candidates for high political office sometime with days scheduled down to the minute…that might be a bit extreme but for the success of your law practice your time is similarly important. Control your calendar!
2. Income Diversity or Create Past/Present/Future Income. Here I mean spending time collecting/concluding past cases, working on present cases, and selling/marketing for future cases. During my ‘perfect week’, we were effective in collecting past income and I had a couple of real estate closings where you sort of “collect” for all the work leading up to the closing. As for present work, I had some nice chunks of in-office work time plus four cases in court which were a mix of quick “status dates” but also two substantive hearings. Lastly, I had three new client meetings, my weekly marketing breakfast, and a media interview that all might add to our future income.
3. Create Intentional “Office Hours.” This generally goes back to the planning issue but flat-out I think you should plan for 1-2 “office days” each week. In my experience there’s a tremendous efficiency difference between the days when I can just get into the office early and be around the office all day compared to the days when I’m pulled in several directions and then just get back to the office for a few hours in the afternoon. In my opinion you need to create those minimum 3/4 hour work chunks (if not full days) to really be productive…avoid 1-2 work chunks because by the time you check e-mail and return a couple of telephone calls that time is up and you’ve accomplished nothing substantive.
4. Free Fridays. And I don’t mean take too many long weekends, nope, but I do think if you can keep court stuff and most meetings off of Fridays it will help promote perfection for 2 weeks…the current week and the next week. During my perfect week, Tuesday was fairly busy but the real money days were Wednesday and Thursday with a lot of court stuff, a new client meeting, and a real estate closing Thursday afternoon…great profitable days. But then Friday I had nothing scheduled and just worked around the home office. This allowed me to catch-up on “busy work,” get the post-court letters out, enter any billing from the last day or two, and get planning/organized for another (near) perfect NEXT week.
5. Location, Location, Location. Until we get a more virtual court system (I’m not holding my breath), if you’re a lawyer who appears in courtrooms frequently managing the location of your court appearances is critical. Roughly, you should never appear in court unless you have 3 matters set in court that day in the same courthouse and you must always anticipate court delays and be able to be productive anywhere. For example, on Wednesday I had a couple quick matters in court in the morning, then a full hearing at around 130 pm, then finished my day with a new client meeting in the downtown area. On Thursday, I had a couple quick matters from 9-10 am and then a full hearing at 11 am, had some unfettered work time from noon to 2pm and then a real estate closing at 3 pm. So a couple great days all just steps away (of course those Daley Center elevators are another story for another posting).

The phone ain’t ringin’…it’s Christmas Eve! So I decided to skim some articles I’d been wanting to get around to reading…the highlights:

1. Some news for those of you on the front lines of lawyering in the Circuit Court of Cook County. First, here’s the piece announcing the creation of a new domestic violence division within the Court.  My understanding is this will primarily impact the life of judges (and less that of me as private lawyer) over at 555 W. Harrison since previously the judges over there had been split between the criminal and domestic relations divisions.  As a citizen of Cook County I was a tad saddened to see this proposal regarding the closure of 4 suburban courthouses over the weekend to save $$$. Am I missing something or isn’t there an obvious compromise to close a couple versus the only choices being close 4 or none?

2. The Double-Edged Sword of Suing a Client. A nice analysis from our friend Ed Poll with an analytical process to undertake before suing a client…first, there’s the loss of future business/referrals; second, possible negative publicity; third, possible negative press/perception. Remember regarding these sorts of matters, client communication is key. And I must say I’ve frowned a bit of late on using collection agencies who can be as much of a pain in the butt for creditor or for debtor.

3. One Lawyer’s Definitive Guide to Video Marketing for Lawyers. It’s hard to think of reasons NOT to do this as any cost barriers to entering the camcorder/video market have virtually disappeared. I’m going to make a big push here in 2010.

4. How to Market Your Business with Facebook. Well, since I only use FB to criticize Notre Dame football, converse about golf, and for the occasional political rank this blog ain’t the place to learn about FB marketing. But I WILL have a Facebook Page up shortly! As a non-expert on all things “social networking” it sure seems like FB and Twitter are where the buzz is. A separate link on 21 small to mid-sized Chicago businesses using social media effectively.

5. Total Attorneys:  For-Profit Lawyer Referrals? I honestly had never heard of Total Attorneys until the Tribune ran this piece a couple weeks back (it is a Chicago-based company). It doesn’t sound that different than LegalMatch that I used a couple years back although the article makes it sound like Total Attorneys directs the prospect to a single lawyer whereas LegalMatch merely allowed me as one of 5-10 lawyers respond to a prospect’s fact pattern. Far from being a legal ethics expert, I would only ask why it’s okay for bar associations to have referral services but not private, for-profit companies? SOME of the bar referral services are fairly lame w/o that profit motive.

6. Far From Field, Lawyer’s Blog a Player in N.F.L. A little off topic but I liked this piece because I am more jock than lawyer & it does emphasize a point that I and likely many lawyers should open their eyes to which is something to the effect that social media – Internet business likely has much better business potential than merely providing traditional, bricks/mortar legal services. Florio, 44, an erstwhile Vikings fan living in Steelers country, began his blog in 2001 as a sideline to his law practice. Is 2010 the year your blog income exceeds your lawyer income?

7. And to close with some “light” reading…a primer on international child abduction. Because if you’re a domestic relations lawyer like yours truly one of these IS going to walk into the office sometime…likely sooner rather than later. It’s got something to do with the Hague Convention, no?

The headline comes from a fascinating book I’ve been working through the last couple of months, Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. Published in 2005, it might be my favorite business read of the year thus far. It profiles 14 small businesses (a relative term…I’d only heard of one, Clif Bar, prior to reading the book) and the subtitle is, Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. I’ve tried to really keep up on my outside business management reading this year because it’s just a fact, if you’re involved in managing a small law practice you have more in common with non-lawyer business owners than your typical lawyer/associates and in my opinion reading only within the legal media doesn’t give you the breadth of expertise you need.

The concept of “mojo” is introduced upfront…a sort of elusive quality that these companies have related to their passion for being. Clif Bar’s founder, Gary Erickson labeled it as “something about the brand, product, and way of being in the world that was different. I realized that mojo was an elusive quality and needed to be tended carefully.” I think of this as some connection between your business to some bigger goal/purpose beyond the narrow product or service you provide.

Another characteristic of the businesses profiled is the intimacy of connection with the communities in which they’re located…i.e. it’s hard to imagine them being located anywhere else. Some of our Midwest readership might be familiar with Zingerman’s deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a good example of a business with a very intimate relationship with its location. On one side this is reflected in the inherent style/culture of the company (think Bentonville, AR w/ Wal-Mart as an example) but it’s also the direct financial support of community organizations through the business/profits. I’m attracted to making this a BIG goal of mine. The broad framework might be connecting my firm with a nonprofit or two consistent with our values and possibly practice areas. For example, the bigger local passion might be eradicating domestic violence and that’s what your legal services business is about through your practice, direct financial support, volunteerism, board service, and depending how you feel about this aspect, this could be part of your marketing plan too. Particularly with a law firm, I think this can also add a bit to your “mojo” and general employee morale because lets face it, part of lawyerland is just dealing with unhappy people at life’s lower points but if you’re connected to something larger this might really give your firm culture a boost. Creating your own foundation might be another way to accomplish this purpose. In Chicago, I’ve been impressed with what I saw being done by real estate company Baird & Warner and their foundation when I had a closing recently down at its headquarters at 120 S. LaSalle.

A chapter is titled, A Culture of Intimacy, discusses mostly the intimate relationships between company and employees. A lot of this chapter is a discussion of the great fringe benefits that go to the employees of these firms from education reimbursements, health insurance, retirement benefits, and flexibility of schedules. The underlying premise being to remind people in unexpected ways how much the company cares about them. I aspire to this too…with all the people who are just miserable and unhappy in their jobs, wouldn’t it be nice to create a great environment for people to spend those 8 hours each day & to really be part of something larger than oneself?

A way to think about your business:  “An attempt…to reorder the world in some way.” Could you develop a “Direction Statement” for you firm like Reell Precision Manufacturing? Not the businessy-type document that a business or marketing plan should be but rather guiding principles discussing company values, management concepts, and ideals to guide everything that your firm is going to be about.

And you’ve got to get the money/profit right to do all these great things. A good quote from dressmaker Selima Stavola, “If they call up on the phone and ask me how much I charge, I say, you can’t afford me.” I can relate to this myself when focusing on the level of paranoid, thoroughness that I try to bring to the table as a lawyer…the documents must be right, that’s my work product. I don’t want to have any thoughts in the back of my mind asking, will I get paid for this level of attention to detail. Remember, a company without profit is dangerously close to not being around at all.

The book concludes with an inspiring chapter, The Art of Business, and profiles the founder of Inc. magazine, Bernard Goldhirsh and his quotation…

I kept thinking that the entrepreneur is like an artist, only business is the means of his expression. He creates a business from nothing, just a blank canvas. It’s amazing. Somebody goes into a garage, has nothing but an idea, and out of the garage comes a company, a living company. It’s so special what they do. They are a treasure.

That’s what you can do! You can reorder the world in a way that you value, having a great impact on the people at your firm and your clients. It doesn’t just have to be the drudgery of reviewing another contract…make it about something BIGGER. It’s your blank canvas.

These are the 14 companies profiled:

Anchor Brewing
CitiStorage
Clif Bar
ECCO
Hammerhead Productions
O.C. Tanner Co.
Reell Precision Manufacturing
Rhythm & Hues Studio
Righteous Babe Records
The Goltz Group
Union Square Hospitality Group
W.L. Butler Construction
Zingerman’s Community of Businesses

A good biography with some good psychological history in a recent WSJ profile of U.S. Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. I like this quote and think it’s very applicable to legal entrepreneurs:

“In so many areas of life, you need to be a long-term optimist but a short-term realist. That’s especially true given the inherent dangers in aviation. You can’t be a wishful thinker. You have to know what you know and don’t know, and what your airplane can and can’t do in every situation.”

That’s very consistent with what Jim Collins labeled the Stockdale Paradox in Good to Great. The idea that you should have long-term faith that you’ll be successful but you also must have the day-to-day discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.

I got contacted by another young attorney recently seeking my advice regarding her obtaining employment (not the first such contact I’ve gotten). The story was a common one, essentially she’d been hopping from contract position to contract position over the last few years and currently she had recently become unemployed again. Is this your plight?

Wouldn’t hanging out your shingle on a full or part-time basis be a better long-term plan?

I will not sugar coat the start-your-own-firm process…it’s tough and not always the most lucrative endeavor. But even during this recessionary year the income has kept coming and I know I’ve got something that can be built upon in future months/years. The contract job to contract job to contract job to unemployment attorney has about zip.

And it’s right down from Daley Center at State & Washington. Here’s OfficePort’s site and some coverage recently in the Trib.

A place to work for the home office and self-employed crowd…Website says $400 per month but no extended leases get signed. I’d like to see a shorter than monthly option.

Nope, that’s not a description of hallucinogenic drugs. Actually, it’s a funny quote from this NYT’s blog post:  Lock the Law School Doors, it’s actually meant to describe the allure of the big money and prestige of Big Law.

As you might guess from the title, the artilcle is a warning of the less-than-great job prospects that face law school graduates currently and likely into the foreseeable future. Interesting that the U. of Miami’s law school dean wrote to members of this fall’s class with a similar warning and asking that students defer entrance into law school this fall.

Of course this isn’t a new story, this was the best analysis I’ve seen in recent years discussing the legal job market and here’s a piece from the last month, Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools. I think we’ve seen the recent highlights because as often happens during a recession, many with poor job prospects or laid-off workers head to law school and many schools have seen increased class sizes this fall.

My take, you can’t argue with the economic reality and the dwindling (temporarily or likely permanently) of the $150k+ gigs for BigLaw associates. Hopefully law schools will use this time of economic change to broaden their career services viewpoint (make the PIE bigger). During law school I felt that there was very much an institutional preference for large firm private practice both indirectly through the comments of faculty and more directly in terms of the on-campus interviews being almost exclusively large private practice law firms. Why not increase that pie significantly by getting government/business beyond private practice on-campus…from the FBI/CIA to nonprofit management to think tank type places. Also, as quoted in the orignal piece:

“Students may just have to make it in a more entrepreneurial fashion.”

Welcome!

I just finished another re-read of Jim Collins’ Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. With business books it’s kinda like movies for me, there aren’t too many I like so I re-watch and re-read the same 5-10 every couple years. But Good to Great is an excellent read because it’s not just some CEO spouting crap, it’s some 200 pages based on sound, academic research regarding Fortune 500 companies that either fit the criteria or they didn’t. Plus it makes 6 simple (not easy) points shared by the so-called “Great” companies:

1.  Level 5 Leadership;
2.  First Who…Then What;
3.  Confront the Brutal Facts;
4.  Hedgehog Concept;
5.  Culture of Discipline;
6.  Technology Accelerators.

Plus he makes several good triathlon references (looking forward to Lake Geneva on 9/12/09) including a story of multiple Hawaii Ironman Triathlon champion Dave Scott, who would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off to give him an edge.  But I digress…

The absolute golden takeaway point of the book is contained within the chapter entitled The Hedgehog Concept where Collins makes the analogy between great companies and those small, porcupine-like hedgehogs. The point being the “great” companies simplify their complex business world into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs aren’t pursuing several different ends and such, rather, they’re focused like a laser on their own, specific vision. 

And how to discover your “Hedgehog Concept”? Three questions:

• What are you deeply passionate about?
• What can you be the best in the world at?
• What drives your economic engine?

How ’bout applying those three questions or looking for the overlap in the “three circles” in your legal services business, as mentioned in the book.

When I apply the 3 circles to my practice I end up asking myself, why the heck am I representing anyone in residential real estate matters? I’m not particularly passionate about the subject matter and the economics of that practice area flat-out suck. Conversely when I think about elder/family/disability law I do consider those areas about which I am passionate, very accomplished in, and with pretty decent economics as the elderly and disabled populations sky rocket.

Maybe I need to pull a Cork Walgreen (he eliminated food service within Walgreens over a five year period) and just stop it with the residential real estate? I think so…but when?

Well a belated happy 4th of July and hope you didn’t get too wet at your local parade and fireworks display. It was cold and rainy in Chicago but the morning and the evening were fine so no great impact on my plans. Yet beyond celebrating the signing of our Declaration of Independence and John Cabot’s discovery of our nation, the 4th also serves as a handy half-way point for the year so I thought I’d gauge my progress…

2009 Business Goals & Plans

1.  Generate an average of $6,000 gross income per month and $72,000 for the year, specifically from lawyering revenue only.

Analysis: I’m going to be just beneath this goal at the halfway point of ‘09. I was at just over $30k through May but I know that June’s income wasn’t great. I’m still very dissatisfied with the inconsistency of my income month-to-month. Simply for living and planning purposes I’d like to just churn-out month after month of $6k to $8k sort of months rather than some big months and then a $1,500 type month. Some things I’ve been doing to generate more business were to put in an application with the CBA’s Domestic Relations Referral Service, I’m set to attend a seminar in August to get on the Cook County Arbitrators list of panelists, and I joined a weekly LeTip group. Three marketing initiatives for the rest of ‘09:  experiment with Google Adwords, Website redesign, and really reachout to other attorneys to make more professional referral relationships. If there’s one thing this blog has done is it has helped me meet many lawyers and I’m sure some of them need a family law referral source so I need to become that person.

Grade: B.

2. Become a Cook County Circuit Court Child’s Representative.

Analysis: I do have a very vibrant domestic relations practice involving many, many child custody matters and I do surely seek out continuing legal education seminars covering this subject. I really need to figure out if this or becoming a certified collaborative attorney is the better use of my time and resources. I need more information for 1-2 real seasoned family law practitioners.

Grade: C.

3. Complete a law review style article.

Analysis: Minimal progress. I want to get a couple scholarly articles under my belt because I really do enjoy writing but I’d also like to bolster my resume for law school teaching purposes.

Grade: F.

4. Create both law firm and blogging business plans.

Analysis: Very little progress on this front sad to say.

Grade: F.

5. Blogging consistency and attend Chicago Bloggers Meetup Group monthly.

Analysis: Primarily the issue here is simply viewing blogging as a very serious business endeavor that’s very much about of my future career and income generating plans. I’ve made around 90 postings here this year and about 70 over at ClosingChicagorealestate.com…not too shabby I’d say. Plus the traffic has really been solid as we’ve solidified things since the transfer over to WordPress. I’m just about halfway through Yaro Starak’s BlogMastermind program and expecting that to be a great guide as I work through more of the marketing portions of the program.

Grade: B.

6. Coaching and Mentoring and Getting Mentored.

Analysis: I’d like to have at least three mentors in my life:  one for lawyering, one for business consulting, & one for my Christian faith. Unfortunately I only have the lawyer mentor in place currently. The one I’m frustrated about is the business mentor/coach…I’m not sure where to turn on that front. There are a lot of business coaches out there but they cost $500 per hour. I may have to seek this out through a local group like Rotary or a Chamber of Commerce. I did get my first contact to act as a mentor through the ISBA’s MentorCenter so I was happy about that…I think that’s the ideal, having both sides of the mentor/mentee relationships in your life. And I am making some progress on the blog mentor program that I bought in early ‘08 so that’s good.

Grade: C.

The Road Ahead…

Some fairly random things I’m thinking about beyond the above:

• Improve my Website and really make it a business generator and tie in with online ads…take advantage of decent traffic stemming from my blog profile on the Web.
• Create a firm overview publication with fee listing as part of the package that clients see prior to our initial meetings.
• Market hard to other lawyers I meet here to turn them into referral sources and vice versa.
• Consider a firm merger. I want to play bigger and take on bigger cases and I think great teamwork and synergy might be the answer…any takers?

Editor’s Note: I meet so many great and interesting attorneys through SIC that after only 4 years I thought it might be useful to hear from some other voices in this space.  I mean there are so many things that I don’t even know that I don’t know…perhaps others know. Plus, I’m a big junkie of good conversation and interviewing so it’s fun for me too.  Russell graduated from the University of Illinois law school, was licensed to practice in November 2006, and started his solo practice earlier this year. Interestingly, he’s also fluent in Spanish which we discuss a bit below, with both English and Spanish Websites.

SIC:  Why’d you start your law practice?

RK:  I started my law practice because I saw that my boss (another solo) was making more
money than I was.

SIC:  Describe the timing of your launch in terms of point-in-career, experience, life factors, and
finances.

RK:  I'm 31 and my wife works and we have no kids yet. I realized that I go solo now while I
have my wife's income and no child related expenses or I never would. My wife takes care of my
day to day expenses. I saved a significant but not massive nest egg to get started. I'm 2 months in
and I still havn't exhausted it.

SIC:  What are your primary practice areas and how did you select them?

RK:  My primary areas are criminal law, family law and bankruptcy. I practice in these areas
because that is what my experience from my prior job was in.

SIC:  How do you office?

RK:  I rent from an older more experience attorney. I can't recommend this enough. My landlord
is an incredible resource who has offered me very affordable rent, great advice, and even a few
referrals.

SIC:  How have you tried to attract clients? What works/doesn’t work for you?

RK:  I personally studied how to appear in Internet searches and put a lot of time into it. It's
complicated and everyone is trying to sell you "the secret to high Google rankings" but you never
really know what you're going to get. I now get a lot of clients off the Internet. I also network like
crazy. I let people know I speak Spanish and have reasonable rates. The only thing I've done that
laid a complete egg was sending out letters to people I didn't know if I didn't follow up. If I
followed up, the letters would pay off sometimes.

 
SIC:  How did set your fees

RK:  I set my fees based on what my old boss used to charge.  My clients are mostly working
class and can't afford big retainers and the possibility of endless bills so I use a flat fee system.

SIC:  What are the best and worst decisions you’ve made in running your solo practice?

RK:  My best decision about starting a solo practice was planning early. I was thinking about this
for over two years. I wrote down every idea and reviewed them constantly.  My opening went off
without a hitch and I immediately started getting paying clients.  My worst decision was billing
too low for my first half a dozen clients or so.

SIC:  I know you’re fluent in Spanish, how have you targeted that niche population?

RK:  I have a Spanish website.  I write letters and personally visit social agencies that deal with
Chicago's Spanish speaking population. I network with every spanish speaking lawyer I meet.  
Soon, I will be hosting legal seminars in a spanish speaking church.  Same as what anyone does, I
guess.  Only in Spanish.