Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Is it sacrilegious of me as a mostly life long Chicagoan to admit I’m not particularly impassioned about Sunday’s Bears-Packers NFC Championship game? Honestly, I’m as big of a jock as they come but to me sports passion is about sports I participate in and/or teams that I have a personal connection to such as the high school or various colleges that I have a personal connection to. For me, pro sports teams = equal private business = less passion.

That said I’ve always admired Lovie Smith’s low key coaching style from afar and never more than this year, particularly from a management perspective. He darn near got himself fired after last year’s 7-9 performance. And with due respect to the addition of Julius Peppers, the biggest change Lovie made in 2010 was the upgrading of his coaching staff. Historically he’s had pretty weak coaching staffs and he’s even served as his own defensive coordinator on occasion which to me is a big no-no for a head coach who needs to really be monitoring the team’s big picture. Yet this year he built a great staff with 3 former NFL head coaches as his assistants.

Big picture I’m focused HARD on 2 things this year:

1. Financial management/measurement.
2. Building a business that performs independently of one person (me).

For building a business I’m creating my law firm’s procedure manual so that no tasks are too reliant on one person but rather everything’s ‘on paper’ as we grow and personnel changes. The other sub-heading beneath the independent business heading is building a team and delegating aggressively. This is my initial sketch to implement over the first 3-6 months of 2011:

Legal assistant

• Client billing w/ follow-up (this has been her primary role for several years).
• Tracking/buying office supplies.
• Monthly financial input & measurement.
• New client intake/scheduling.
• Residential real estate.

Paralegal

• Pleading drafting.

1L/2L

• Client newsletter and general social media.
• Legal research.
• Cook County filing (yep, it’s still paper-based).
• Blog assistance and technology projects.

I intend to be focused on client meetings, court appearances, management, and final review/oversight of legal work product. So we shall see if 2011 is a ‘Super Bowl’ year for me.

President Obama and I both survived our Christmas vacations…his vacation plan and mine. It was a real vacation for me…9 days away w/ only a single afternoon spent at the Marquette, MI public library monitoring some office work/e-mail while overlooking Lake Superior. Of course the last two weeks since I’ve been home have been about as busy as possible but I suppose that’s to-be expected and not a bad thing. It’s nice to get up to da UP not just to see friends/family but also for some time of quiet analysis away from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of Chicago lawyering to ‘Look Ahead/Back’.

2010 wasn’t an utter joy but it was my Firm’s best financial performance in our 5-year history and I definitely learned a few things along the way:

• Specialize. I’ve always been too indecisive in really getting specialized in our practice areas but the real estate market crash did what I hadn’t and now we’re practicing family law and only family law.
• I found some marketing channels that work. CBA lawyer referral service, LeTip, and most importantly marketing regularly to our clients/former clients/referral sources.
• Too much me. I finally sat down and charted specific tasks that will be delegated to my legal assistant and also we’ll be posting a couple jobs early in the new year.

2011:  If we don’t get this right it’s hard to get anything right…”this” being financial management generally. One of my take-aways from E-Myth was to lock-down time every week for legal-business management. So I’ve been calendaring 5 hours per week that’s non-modifiable business management time and it’s already been paying dividends.

• Pricing/retainer agreement revamping. Considering how important these are to a legal services business I’m ashamed to admit I’ve hardly thought about these in 5 years. But I have spent some time on this over the last month and will roll-out some very specific language and pricing changes that we’re planning ASAP.
• New client meetings. This is another lawyer matter that hasn’t been given the attention it deserves considering how mission critical it is. I pretty much know how I want this to change and will draft a specific procedure for my legal assistant to follow.
• ‘To the cloud.’ Anyone heard enough of Microsoft’s Windows 7 commercials during NFL football coverage? Hey it’s planted in my head so I guess the marketers have accomplished something. And it’s also where we’re headed. I think we’re going to be incremental in how we move everything to the cloud, meaning, as new clients come aboard this year everything will be cloud-based but likely won’t move all of our current clientele to the cloud.
• Measure performance. I’ve done this well in fits and starts…that’s why I used to post our monthly $$ figures here but I clearly haven’t kept up as well as I should. So I’m going to do this for a month or two so it’s done how I want it done, create the procedure manual, then delegate.

And I want 2011 to be our best year yet! It’s not magic and I don’t intend to earn $1 million this year but I do want to grow by 10%…that’s How a Small Business Becomes a Big Business.

I just wanted to give a brief shout-out regarding the above which is a CLE I’ll be a part of put on by the IL State Bar Association on February 10, 2011.  It’s a midday (12-2pm) program in Chicago or online. The presenters are a law practice management consultant, both big/small firm attorneys who work in virtual law firms, and of course the requisite ethics speaker.

A good program for anyone looking to start a practice or maximize profits through cost-cutting. There are many, many things that lawyers used to really NEED that they Don’t NEED TO HAVE in 2011.  I’ll help you avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

Update

I ask again…why are you commuting to a single office location on a daily basis??

Chicago No. 1 in road congestion.