Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Checkout the article HERE about running a virtual law practice that appears in this month’s Illinois Bar Journal…the flagship magazine of the Illinois State Bar Association. Wow, the author’s name is the same as mine…small world.

Tell me if you need a copy or password help.

How would you like 25 tons coming at your little, old law office?

Yeah, I wouldn’t either but not all your clients are shall we say emotionally stable. I saw this article recently:

EDWARDSVILLE • A 42-year-old Collinsville man was being held on a charge of damaging government property Monday after he allegedly tried to back a truck up to a door of the Madison County Courthouse.

Roy L. Conger Jr. of the 400 block of South Jefferson Avenue in Collinsville allegedly damaged landscaping and concrete stairs at the courthouse, located at 155 North Main Street in Edwardsville. He was being held in lieu of $25,000 bail.

Edwardsville police were called about 4:15 a.m. Police said the tractor-trailer truck had become stuck on the south steps of the courthouse. They said Conger left the scene but surrendered at the nearby Madison County Jail.

Court records show Conger had been involved in recent court wrangling over child support. His motion to reduce payments had been denied earlier this month.

Conger apparently sought a reduction based on loss of a job but Associate Judge Keith Jensen said in an order denying the motion that Conger’s own actions caused the job loss.

That’s Whopper with a capital “W” meaning the proper noun that you purchase at Burger King. And I’ll admit it, I had 2 Whoppers for dinner last Thursday night. It’s not something I recommend regularly at 670 calories a pop but it was my last hard training day before last weekend’s Lake Geneva Triathlon and I hadn’t had much lunch and my wife and I were going swimming that evening, and, well it just happened.

My little trip to Burger King got me thinking about a good restaurant analogy used by Rjon Robbins on a recent coaching call. He compared a “Hamburger only” restaurant with an “Order anything you want” restaurant and used that comparison to argue in favor of greater specialization in your law practice.

He made 2 primary points with one that I’d surely considered before but the other being really an expansive/new perspective for me:

First, a niche specialization implies greater expertise or skill. I get that…from McDonalds serving the best french fries to recently consulting with a highly regarded neurosurgeon when a family member of mine had brain surgery instead of heading to the family practitioner down the street. I think most people get that…Specialist > Generalist.

But the more eye-opening-to-me perspective was his view that you must put the success of your legal services business ahead of serving the “order anything you want” clients. And as I sit here this view isn’t hard to understand that, sure, the success of my law firm SHOULD be more important than the whims of certain clients. Yet how many of us have bent over backwards for clients and let client demands drive our lives and often our practices into the ground?? Just think of the difference between representing 50 divorce clients vs. 50 totally disparate client matters. For the sake of argument lets assume the same fees are generated from either bunch of 50 cases, but, my goodness, the 50 divorces would likely be what 10% of the work of the 50 totally disparate matters (maybe less). That is a huge difference in simple net profits alone not to mention issues like office policies or procedures that would allow the 50 divorce cases to be handled easier and easier over time whereas the 50 unique cases would be a hard, start-from-scratch slog each time….so remember:  My law firm business > “order anything you want” clients.