Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Although my interest in the NBA has waned a good bit since Jordan’s game-winner over Byron Russell and the Jazz back in ’98, it was difficult to avoid the media circus surrounding LeBron James’ announcement that he would sign with the Miami Heat and the fallout therefrom. I was just the slightest bit surprised and disappointed that he left Cleveland because personally I most admire those coaches and players who’ve stayed with a team or location for the long-term and really built a meaningful and successful legacy, through the highs and the lows…Paterno, Wooden, Bird, Magic, Jordan.

Isn’t it a bit like the lawyer who jumps to big law for the money, security, and anonymity instead of building a practice that involves going through the lows and highs yet in the end having birthed a living company?

I like this nugget from the Washington Post’s Micheal Wilbon:

Something my friend Charles Barkley said on NBA TV the other day resonates with every single old-school player I’ve talked to. “In fairness, if I was 25 I’d try to win it by myself,” Barkley said. “Not technically ‘by myself,’ but I would want to be the guy. LeBron is never going to be the guy.”

Kinda like an “Associate” at Biglaw, no? You’re never going to be the guy. Being a follower and not wanting to be the centerpiece in your career isn’t always bad, right. Good money and employment security are powerful draws, just ask LBJ. Just be sure it’s what you really want.

Sure, the early years for a legal entrepreneur aren’t too glamorous earning $20,000 per year for a year or 2 but if you learn, grow, and stick with it there’s some serious accomplishment at the end of the rainbow. You’re building something; you own something; accountability…the buck stops with you; you’re a job creator; and, you’re a Leader!

Here’s a reminder from my 12/19/09 review of Small Giants:

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.

A Reluctant Retailer Decides to Open Her Books. Just substitute “law firm” for the word retailer in that headline and I think this article could be hugely impactful to you firm’s bottom-line. I think the key “take aways” from the article are really unlocking the unused intellectual value of your lawyer and non-lawyer staff alike and really building a business team. I haven’t done as good a job as I should over the years but I’m amazed at the ideas we generate when my legal assistant and I really dig into the business issues we’re confronting. The sort of all-knowing lawyer or CEO concept is stupid primarily because it so under uses the strengths of other employees.

Supreme Court Rules for Student Seeking Discharge of Student Loan Debt. Although not a fan of financial irresponsibility in lending and I am someone who does have moral qualms with bankruptcy discharge, it’s nice to know there may be some options for students. Here’s SCOTUSblog’s take on the opinion.

Staying Ahead on Retainers. This was part of the ISBA’s Illinois Lawyer NOW, Best Practices column recently. Likely a problem for many over-stretched sole practitioners. I definitely like the **get larger retainers and **actively push the use of credit cards ideas. Personal example with me is just comparing a handful of our clients who are on the “automatic credit card charge plan” versus the more typical mailed monthly bill people…the credit card folks I KNOW I’m getting paid that day we close our billing cycle whereas the regular mailed monthly billed people it’s more of an I THINK/HOPE I’m getting paid sometime sort of feeling. BIG DIFFERENCE! Here’s the link to the Illinois Law NOW Best Practices page with a bunch of free, useful practice management columns.

The Danger of Domestic Relations as a Practice Area…see here, here, and here. One piece discussed a lawyer’s alleged assault on an opposing party in an Order for Protection case…not surprising to me sadly. I haven’t been a part of any assaults but I see way to many lawyers losing their cool and even making harsh verbal attacks on an opposing party. Then there was the jailed deadbeat dad who tried to egg the judge…how’d he get the egg if he had been incarcerated?? And then the rash of religion/custody disputes that I’ve seen lately in domestic relations land. I think the divorce/religion package is more combustible than politics/religion.  I tend to view this litigation as attempts by custodial parents to over-intrude on the non-custodial parents’ parenting/visitation time.

Are You CEO of Something? This relates a lot to the first item above and really just getting more out of your people by being a good manager. And it’s a double-positive…you delegate and make your legal assistant “CEO” of certain areas of your business really empowering/growing him or her and it lets you focus on more important things. So far my part-time legal assistant is CEO of client billing, office supplies, and post-closing real estate file/mailing procedures.  Here’s a bit from the article:

We had this really motivated, smart receptionist. She was young. We kept outgrowing our phone systems, and she kept coming back and saying, “Mark, we’ve got to buy a whole new phone system.” And I said: “I don’t want to hear about it. Just buy it. Go figure it out.” She spent a week or two meeting every vendor and figuring it out. She was so motivated by that.

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The question:  What’s the worst decision you’ve made in your early years in solo practice? The unanimous answer:  UNDER-BILLING…in other words, under-valuing the worth of your legal services. And it kills you for at least 3 reasons:

• If client pays, you’ve cost yourself that difference between what you’re worth versus what you actually billed.
• You’ve lowered the perceived value of your brand…right or wrong the cost of a product or service often equates to it’s perceived value or luxury.

• You often lower your performance expectations (and actual performance) to match your billing rate. Ideally you give the same effort for your best clients and say that pro bono case but I’ve felt the leak of lowered performance that’s hard to totally avoid

Rummy

Because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

–Donald Rumsfeld

Okay, you might not like the politics of our old Congressman in Illinois 10 but I saw this quote again used in the 1/09 Illinois Bar Journal and just had to piggy-back on it…it’s in my top 5 of personal over-used quotes to my family. And it’s critical for sole practitioners and a primary reason to make sure you have some able people around you and mentors to reach out to even if they’re not directly “in the firm” so to speak.

Because I don’t know what I don’t know BUT maybe someone else does know what I don’t know and that’s invaluable.

I just finished up the second volume of Stephen Ambrose’s 2-volume set on Dwight D. Eisenhower which covers Ike’s presidency (’53 – ’61) through his death in 1969. Ike’s one of my current focuses of historical study…I mean there are only so many books on RN and Watergate that a guy can read, right. And he’s obviously a giant of the 20th century, I just don’t love reading military history so I’ve avoided him a bit in the past. There was a passage from the book that I think is instructive for lawyers. It discussed a time period in 1955 after Ike had a heart attach while in office…

Dulles (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) nevertheless began by congratulating Eisenhower on his magnificent achievement in building a team that was “so harmonious, so imbued with principles…that we were able to carry on the business of government effectively without serious interruption.” He cited Wilson as an example of an incapacitated President who had failed to build such a team, so that when Wilson was stricken, “the situation fell into disarray.” Eisenhower thanked him for the compliment, saying how pleased he was that matters were going so well, because he had long been an opponent of “one-man” government.

This is a very real lawyer and law firm problem too…sort of the one woman/man lawyer and firm. And it’s a bit counter-intuitive. The egotistical viewpoint is to build your individual importance but yet this really undermines the goal of building a wonderful legal services business. And this issue has big short-term and long-term ramifications. Long-term, do you have a practice that can be sold or does it just go away when you stop lawyering. Short-term, does your firm make $$ when you’re on vacation or worse does your “one man” firm not allow you to vacation.

This contiguity of leadership issue is a lot what Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great (he called it Level 5 leaders). Some of the “good” companies had strong single generation leaders while the “great” companies built great teams that allowed for sustained greatness.