Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

This is another critical area I’ve been “puzzling” on lately as sort of our The Olson Law Firm, LLC 2.0 re-launch and I had a long session with my off-site legal assistant earlier this week on the subject. Our current set-up is I have one off-site legal assistant who works through our computer network over the Internet for some 10 hours per week and handles the phones during the 2-3 mornings per week that she works. I think the off-site employee is the way to go (especially since I’m transitioning to a home office set-up) but there are times/tasks that I miss having someone here/there in-person…there still is some administrative/garbage work that I do that I wouldn’t do if there was an on site staff person. Broadly, my assistant works on residential real estate closings, billing/collections, daily as needed tasks (lots of basic follow-up calls, ect.). FYI, our assistant is paid $15 per hour.

What’s next?

Most importantly improvement and further delegation in her primary work areas: residential real estate and billing/collection. Those of you who work in the residential real estate field know this…it can’t be a profitable practice area if you as lawyer are “touching” these files too much. I think it’s appropriate for me to do an initial, thorough contract/inspection review with a client and likely draft/dictate an attorney modification – property inspection letter. I’d say that’s the “practice of law”. And obviously I’m going to attend a closing. But unless there’s something unusual I shouldn’t be doing anything else on a residential real estate file. If I’m calling about pure logistics issues I’m trading billable time for a nonbillable usage. And similar tweaking on billing/collections. I’m going to get a PO Box near my legal assistant so that monthly payments go right to her…only $20 per year. We’re probably going to transition to PayPal for credit card transactions. And, maybe most importantly, we’re going to utilize a software consultant to get better usage from our billing package. We’re making the common error of letting our ignorance limit how we use the program when so much more in terms of business planning and budgeting can be done.

The biggest addition to her work load will be utilization of digital dictation equipment. This is the one area that I’d planned on when she was hired that we haven’t done at all. Essentially I was waiting to incur the cost for the dictation equipment until I crossed certain bridges…i.e. I knew I’d be in this set-up beyond six months or so. This will allow me to utilize our assistant for longer letters, pleadings and just general better communication/instruction. They always say you speak significantly faster than you type.

She’s going to create a firm pricing schedule. This obviously isn’t going to take long but I want to have it. We do get calls about pricing and I think this will be a net positive…simply having a pricing schedule for our core practice areas.

Other additions to her work-load:

–Create legal information pamphlets.

–Create Survey Monkey client surveys.

–Change our client forms to fillable PDF forms (currently just Word-based).

–Purchase monthly office supplies.

If you’re not using any administrative staff I’d encourage you to do so. Personally I think it makes the practice of law much more enjoyable. If you’re a “pure” solo I’ve found you’re just stuck doing way too much in terms of administrative work and it’s not fun. You’re too tied to your desk if it’s just you. Building a business and seeing another person grow is fun and rewarding.

More of a question than an answer here…but it came up lately in our office. Here’s my posting related to the incident.

The recent situation with me was simply a post-decree divorce matter where we represented a woman regarding some child support modifications and defended her in various contempt of court proceedings. Near the end of these proceedings the woman needs to sell her home and doesn’t utilize our firm for the real estate transaction. Why? How can we change this? Should we want to change this?

The obvious answer could be I suppose that she wasn’t happy with our representation…knowing the client and this particular instance that wasn’t the case here. And at some level I think it’s a good thing that this client put us in her “family law expert” box…I want our clients to think that we’re family law experts and indeed it’s likely our largest practice area. But on the flip side, we do work in real estate extensively too.

How to bridge this gap?

Actually we also have had the opposite result in the last few months too where a former family law client retained us for a real estate transaction. With this individual she had learned of our real estate prowess through our quarterly client newsletter…so some of our marketing is paying off.

The only other direct thing we do in terms of client education about the breadth of our practice is sort of a “close file marketing letter” explaining the breadth of our services.

What more should be done? My staff and I actually just met about two things I think that will address this to some degree. First, we’re going to create some subject-matter specific pamphlets whether as PDFs or hard-copy pamphlets for distribution…this might go out with our quarterly newsletter, our monthly billing and/or sent to prospective clients upon an initial cold call. Second, we’re going to start finishing client representation with a Survey Monkey survey and somehow breadth of service will be addressed in the survey questions.

I bet you’re not. I’ve always been pretty well networked…I’m social, right? And I do love the story about Bill Clinton collecting names in a shoebox for years…but I digress.

But are you doing everything you can to promote yourself through this age of great and active Internet networks? Yes on some level I’m talking MySpace and Facebook. Do you have your page? Just got mine both up and running a week ago.

Beyond that though I’m talking about how the Internet is being used by such things as innocuous as your college and high school Alma maters. My high school, college, and law school now all have Internet-based networks where I can look up fellow graduates and their profiles. Might someone, sometime need a lawyer in Chicago? I know I look through these listings sometimes when I need an out-of-area referral. Make sure your profile is updated.

The Alliance Defense Fund, Rotary International, and even my landlord also provide similar set-ups for listing profiles/practice areas, ect. Those are some of my obvious ones. I’ve updated my profile in all these sectors so that I’m “open for business.” Are there other associations you might be a passive member of but they might have extensive online member profiles/postings?

Not too many years ago the only contact you might have with these large national and international social networks might have been for these people to be on your Christmas card list. Today you can be socializing with folks and generating potential business everyday through your Internet networks.

Great posting from Rjon over at How to Make it Rain responding to a law student asking about going solo right out of law school…a great list of what to do and what to read. Some new items to add to my reading list.

I’m a Facebook “newbie” myself…but I’m learning. Good read from Web Worker Daily.

A comment too important not too post by Steve Imparl:

I used PayPal and I really like it. Using it, I get paid a lot faster and clients like the convenience. If you decide to use it, I hope you’ll have great success with it, too.

This likely should drive your Firm’s payment process…I’m always amazed when I still hear the lawyer debates about using credit cards…duh!

Technolawyer’s Blawgworld 2007 available here.

NYTimes has another good piece from their Small Business section…a dentist who wanted to “scratch” his entrepreneurial itch and moved to the States from South Africa and started a financial planning business. A take-away from reading it and I’d saying very applicable to the lawyer entrepreneur: the small business/entrepreneur skills are very separate and unique from the skills of the specific profession/business that you’re starting. In other words lets just assume that to start a law practice you need to be a competent lawyer in some practice area but that alone wouldn’t be a good reason to start your own practice. The separate entrepreneurial skills are things like: focus, self-discipline, schmoozing, ability to read people, and organizational know-how.

A blurb from the article:

How to know whether you should go out on your own? Everybody has a personal list of entrepreneurial characteristics. Mr. Altmann’s includes focus, discipline, a knack for schmoozing and the gift of sizing people up.

John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger Gray, says it is important to analyze your underlying strengths, like organizational know-how or people skills, that can be exploited no matter where you land. “Explore your passions and fundamental talents that might be buried or underutilized for some reason,” Mr. Challenger said.

The learning point, make sure you have the entrepreneur “basket of skills” before making the jump in any field. Just being the great lawyer/engineer/doctor isn’t enough.