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).

I was honored to be interviewed recently over at GAL radio. Hopefully I gave you all a few take-a-ways to help Grow Your Practice!

Alright so I enjoy the Quixotic tales describing the new “Solo” who has just hung his shingle with trepidation, big dreams, and 500 brand new business cards as much as anyone…it wasn’t that long ago that I was there.

But, is your Firm TOO Small?

I’ve been thinking about this recently after some mildly disturbing interactions with some colleagues recently. First, a client of ours needed to locate some paperwork urgently from a former attorney. So I and the client contacted the lawyer and she was out-of-town for the winter, she had zero access to documents via electronic means, and she had zero staff. The document was finally obtained more than a week after our request, fortunately, the attorney’s spouse was going to be in Illinois and could locate the document. Second, the opposing firm in a case I called over the holidays where the firm’s telephone message reported that they were closed from 12/24-1/4 and callers couldn’t even leave a message. Third, the accountant I called recently, and I was only given a voicemail option, and then my call was returned 4 days later.

So if you’re too part-time, too inattentive to clients and opposing counsel, you very well may be too small and likely too exposed to ethical and malpractice liability.

Have you considered…

–A back-up lawyer to fill-in some gaps while you’re on the links in Arizona?
–A part-time assistant to check e-mail/telephone messages daily?
–An ‘Of Counsel’ set-up with a larger firm?

Well, there’s about 8 hours left in 2009 as I jot down a few thoughts here in the Central Standard time zone. Can I say that New Years Eve is a non-event for me…not sure why although it may have to do with the fact I’m more of an early morning person than a late night person so the concept of staying up past midnight to see fireworks or some lighted ball dropping isn’t quite the cat’s meow for me. But the one thing I do enjoy about the transition from year-to-year is the opportunity to reflect on the last year and plan ahead to the next year.

Here are 4 Final Thoughts for 2009 from one Solo (attorney) In Chicago…

Steady Income Sources are Nice and/or Cash Flow is King. I’d guess that like with me, this is a huge struggle for many solos. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that sole practitioners tend to be more dependent on individual clients than larger law firms. And if these individuals are anything like some of my clients they’re not always rolling-in-the-dough which equals paying their lawyers in dribs and drabs. It’s hard to lawyer like that and it’s hard to live with that. Can you find some steady sources of income to create an “income floor” that you can count on each month? Over the last 6 months or so the combination of my work as part of the Cook County Domestic Relations Division Referral Program (run through the domestic relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook County per rule 13.8b) and as an arbitrator through Cook County’s mandatory arbitration program have allowed me to create more a floor under my income. Not huge dollars but at least I have knowledge at the start of each month I can count on say $1,500 of income that isn’t dependent on a client’s payment that month. Might there be some court-appointed options that you can plug into? Or is there a way you can gain some business or entity clientele with more repeat business to supplement your individual clients?

Marketing/Selling is Key. Here’s a fact they don’t teach ya in law school:  The lawyers who make the most money aren’t the best legal practitioners rather the lawyers who make the most money are the best salespeople and marketers. This fact is of the utmost importance if you’re starting/building a law firm. I’m just about at a point where I’ve located the marketing sweet spot in terms of really getting the phone ringing regularly with new client inquiries. The big 3 marketing channels that work for me are:  1) Current/former clients (reached via personal meetings/contacts, annual mailing, and monthly Constant Contact e-mail newsletter); 2) Other professionals (reached in many ways like category #1 plus memberships in local Rotary and LeTip chapters); 3) Bar Association referral services. For me categories #1 & #2 are where the action is BIG TIME. Other areas I’m pondering are better Internet-based ads and targeting the evangelical Christian community which I’m active in better. I’d hope to maybe do an interview with some small firm attorneys and their Google AdWords experience. I see them up on this blog and they just seem so generic that I can’t imagine why/how they’d be effective plus I’ve heard of some bad experiences…I suppose it’s all about the correct keywords, no?

Under-Billing:  A Problem with Solutions. This is becoming less of a problem for me as my self-confidence grows, I see the quality of work I do vis-a-vis other attorneys (and vis-a-vis their billing rates), and I do better with regards to items 1 & 2 above…in other words these things are all interrelated. Lawyers under-bill because they might not think they’re very good lawyers but I’m starting to see I am a pretty good lawyer. And as I build some steady income sources and effectively open several effective marketing channels I’m not as worried about losing that 1 client if I quote too high of a fee because there will be others who will happily compensate me for the quality of work that I do.

Use Friendly But Aggressive Billing Communication. I like where I am right now with regards to our billing communication and follow-up. And I don’t say that theoretically, I say it meaning we’re getting paid well and our receivables are reasonably low. What’s working for us? It’s one non-lawyer’s job to mail our bills our each month and to follow-up with clients at specific time increments if there has not been payment. And this isn’t some a-hole collection agency (I’ve sworn off of them) rather it’s a friendly member of our staff making a reminder call. Full and accurate communication in your billing is key too…the description on your bills is as important as any of your in-court legal writing and probably more. I bet most clients are reading your bills more closely than a lot of judges are reading your pleadings. Eventually you must withdraw and bring your fee petition if there’s non-compliance. I haven’t crossed the sue-my-ex-clients bridge yet, BUT, if you’re in area like under the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act where you can bring a simple fee petition as a pleading like anything else in the case you’ve got to do it. Clients seem to act if you’ve got a judgment against them and a wage deduction’s comin’.

SEE YOU BACK HERE NEXT YEAR!

Not to get too Freudian on you all, but, sometimes one of the upsides to blogging and I suppose a lot of writing in general is that it encourages a degree of self-analysis and introspection. This last post (and perhaps some quiet time last week in the UP) and specifically the notion of a law practice broken down into thirds has got me thinking about two sort of macro-level viewpoints that often hold me back from greater success as a small law firm manager. And I’m guessing I’m not alone.

First is the pull or conflict between the “worker bee” mindset versus the business owner/rainmaker/CEO mindset. I’m nearing the 5 year mark of my own firm’s existence and I have not yet fully conquered the “worker bee” syndrome. Meaning I still have a twinge of guilt when I’m NOT getting very specific, currently profitable, legal work done. And what results is that the 1/3-1/3-1/3 model gets out-of-whack big time because I feel like I must be spending more time on the substantive legal work “third.” Inevitably what happens is my breakdown becomes something like 70% substantive legal and probably 15% each for marketing and business administration. Thus I’m too focused on present legal work versus creating future legal work & creating a better legal services business in the future. This is a big deal. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with the “worker bee” syndrome in general but if you know that’s kind of who you are then your/my place might be as another firm’s associate being the ultimate 2200 billable hour worker bee…ouch, that stings.

Second, and less specific to lawyerland, is the old ACTIVITY versus ACCOMPLISHMENT struggle given emphasis by the late Peter Drucker. This is rather self-explanatory but can be particularly challenging for the small firm attorney depending on your staff constraints. I currently utilize one, part-time legal assistant so on the days that she’s working most of my “activities” get shifted off of my plate…scheduling, logistics, reminder telephone calls, buying office supplies, simple banking, mail sorting, etc., etc. I’d include checking e-mail more than say 2-3 times a day in the category of “activity” w/o any substantive accomplishment too. And lets be clear, what I’m labeling as activities are different than sort of utter time wasting procrastination. The things I list above are things that must be done, however, they are not profitable accomplishments that are putting dollars in my pocket…they’re sort of tangential. A typical error would be me putting off spending several hours on drafting some critical legal document for a client and instead spending that time doing non-substantive activity-like busy work. Some easy fixes are proper delegation of work to staff and limiting your e-mail usage each day. The bigger mindset change is developing the mental discpline to differentiate between the important and the urgent. Or like former (future?) Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz used to preach using the W.I.N. acronym:

What’s
Important
Now

Or if I’m a tad less fatalistic, what would happen to your active cases for the next 2 weeks if you suddenly had a family or health emergency or even a planned vacation that wouldn’t allow you to practice law for the next 14 days?

This is not intended as a re-post on vacation planning although some of those principals DO likely apply here. Nope rather I’m dwelling on a simple yet instructive experience I had recently when a colleague of mine asked me to step into a real estate transaction that got delayed and he had to skip out-of-town. Plus, Nerino Petro also made reference to a bar association’s clean-up of a lawyer’s practice upon the lawyer’s death recently at his scanner presentation at the Solo and Small Firm Conference. And it was a little challenging to get my transaction closed. By no means was the transaction in bad shape nor horribly organized yet I think a few moments dwelling on how your cases/files/firm would look to someone else just picking them up for the first time, might be useful.

Because even for a “simple” residential real estate transaction file it was very challenging to understand the status with a mere review of this file. If the lawyer whose transaction I was covering had not been reachable this would have been a very challenging transaction for me.

A Solo’s solution?

–Keep a well-organized hard/soft case file.
–Keep a detailed case log on all of your cases…this is a no-brainer for things like a real estate transaction where many people might be working the file and it’s almost more logistics than law.
–Keep a more general listing of all your current cases with status and pertinent dates.

Stumbled upon this resource from a tweet by the venerable Ed Poll. He’s got a bunch of great instructive videos up on YouTube that look like they’re worth exploring. He provides an easy-to-follow ‘to-do’ list.

A follow-up to my recent post, Stop that Job Hopping Once and For All…

Thanks for the great comments on the post above. No, solo practice isn’t for everybody that’s for sure. Hopefully most solos have a growth plan too. Julie Fleming made a great point about the paramount importance of marketing skills that far too many lawyers are lacking…maybe Julie can help you (click here).

And on a related front, a great guest post over at the Third Wave entitled How to launch your law career with some useful networking (social and in-person) tips thrown in.

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.

I’ve enjoyed participating in Ed Poll’s new forum’s site here. Several discussion categories and a treasure trove of Ed’s writing from over the years. I think the forums are fairly new and just starting to generate significant activity. I’ve gotten some good advice directly from Ed myself, and no consulting fee.