Growing your law firm doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a process. If you’re looking for a get-rich-quick scheme to achieve your goals by cutting corners, you won’t find that here.
On the contrary, if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to look deeply at your current processes, assess what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong, and find alternative ways of handling your law firm, then the information you’re about to receive will help you achieve your goals.
In this article, we’ll go over six of the most coveted secrets to growing your law firm:
- Prioritize Your Time
- Hire the Right People
- Eliminate Office Drama
- Market Your Firm Early and Often
- Work On, Not In, Your Firm
- Plan for the Future
By starting off your plan of attack with these six action items, you’ll be well on your way to a more successful tomorrow for your law firm.
1. Prioritize Your Time
A leader is expected to wear many hats. The perfect person for the CEO position is the perfect person because they are highly qualified, decisive, and ready to take on a role that requires a large amount of responsibility.
What the ideal CEO is not is the catch-all for answering every little question and performing every odd task in the office.
Let’s talk about stretching yourself too thin as the leader of your law firm. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
- Your team members look to you as the final decision maker on projects, campaigns, and hires, which means you have to give your opinion on absolutely everything.
- You’re involved in every single aspect of the firm and projects can’t even start without your presence.
- Sometimes you’ll take hours out of your day to talk a team member through a challenging situation.
- Your team comes to you seeking advice and asking questions when it comes to following their dreams.
- So much of your time is spent responding to messages, checking emails, organizing your calendar, and answering the phone that you never seem to have time to make any big business decisions for your law firm.
Exhausted just from reading that list? We are too.
How can we prevent this?
Prioritize your time.
Yes, the law firm CEO has many things to worry about; but what if those things were handled better by someone else? What if you had the power to delegate responsibilities to your team members which would then free up your schedule? What would you do with your time if you knew it could be completely yours, totally uninterrupted?
As the leader of your firm, you have the power to determine when and where your strengths are best utilized. Create a culture where your team members know who to go to before coming straight for you, the boss — or better yet, take initiative and problem-solve for themselves.
Your team members all understood their roles when they accepted their current positions. Whether they’re in charge of finances, intake, client services, marketing, or the front desk, ensure that they all have the information and resources they need in order to better support their team members when they come to them with questions.
When you take the time to sit down and determine where your strengths lie, you can get a better idea of how to delegate your tasks. Figure out what gives you energy, what wastes your valuable time, and leverage your team members to help take off your hands some of the things that aren’t the best use of your time.
Your time is valuable, and it should belong to you.
2. Hire the Right People
As Crisp Founder and CEO Michael Mogill says, “The root of any problem is people. The root of any solution is people.”
Your law firm can only be as successful as the team backing it. If your team isn’t strong or capable enough, or just simply doesn’t care about what happens to the law firm, it’s not going to progress in the right direction.
If your team has been the top factor keeping your firm stagnant, go right to the source and figure out where you went wrong. Have you really hired the best candidates for the job, or have you simply hired the first available ones?
There’s a big difference between the two. Sure, we currently live in a time where there are nearly 6 million people without a job — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that every single one of those six million people should be working for your law firm. If you hired someone because you were desperate and needed an extra body, that’s likely what got you into the current mess you’re in.
Take a look around your office and ask yourself the following questions about your team members:
- Would I enthusiastically rehire any of my team members again?
- What are the qualities I admire about my best team members?
- What are the most problematic qualities about some of my underperforming team members?
- If I were to hire new candidates for each position in my law firm, what are the top three qualities they must possess?
As soon as you know what kind of people you’re looking for, find them. They’re out there, but they’re not just going to choose to work at your firm over the others — unless you give them a reason to. Help them understand why a career with your firm is the best decision they could possibly make.
A-players want to work for A-teams, so prove to them that you’re the A-team that will change their lives.
Looking for a more in-depth way to attract the perfect people to your law firm? Check out this exclusive webinar that will help you take the guesswork out of finding the right people for your open positions. Get to work on building your A-team today.
3. Eliminate Office Drama
As a society, we have seemingly accepted having drama in the workplace as the norm when it simply doesn’t have to be. The organizational and personal impact of drama negatively influences team performance and individual productivity. The more drama that occurs within your office, the less there is that actually gets done.
If your organization is plagued by this toxic disease, that doesn’t mean it has to be a death sentence for you and your team members. There is a way out — and you’ll find the secret weapon this November 2-3 at the Game Changers Summit.
If you haven’t heard of Cy Wakeman and the wonders she works for Fortune 500 companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, and many more, it’s time you learned. Cy is a renowned drama researcher, New York Times best-selling author, and popular leadership consultant.
As Cy always says, “Drama is emotional waste.”
How much time is being taken away from actual work due to your office drama? What projects end up taking much longer than necessary due to poor leadership development?
4. Market Your Firm Early and Often
Marketing is the single most important thing you can do for your practice. If you think you’re doing enough, you probably aren’t. It takes what it takes. You can’t send one or two emails and expect to sign a new client immediately. The desired response comes after the 100th or 200th time reaching out — or simply whatever it takes.
In today’s day and age, your clients’ decision-making journey has changed. Instead of seeing your ad once and immediately becoming a client, their journey is full of twists and turns, multiple touchpoints, and meaningful messaging.
You’ve got to meet your potential clients where they are. Understand that they will need constant reminders that you exist and can help them when they need it. There are five stages to this new buyer’s journey:
- Awareness: Your potential clients have never heard of you.
- Interest: You have piqued your potential client’s interest, and they are ready to learn more about you.
- Evaluation: Your potential client is seriously considering working with you, but is likely also considering a few other options as well. Win them over!
- Decision: Your potential client is going to hire you to represent them — unless you give them a final reason not to.
- Loyalty: Your client has worked with you and joined your law firm’s community. If you want to make them supporters of your brand for life, you’ve got to keep up with them and continue to show them you care.
From here, you can build your content marketing strategy based on this funnel and strategize how to reach your potential clients where they are, with what they need — and then be sure to be relentless.
You might be marketing a lot as is, but until you’ve gotten the results you want, you aren’t doing enough.
5. Work On, Not In, Your Firm
As the leader of your law firm, you’ve got to start thinking of yourself as the CEO.
You can’t possibly expect to become an expert in business or leadership if all you’re doing is getting lost in the day-to-day activities in your office. We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with keeping a pulse on operations and making sure everything and everyone is on track, but you’re needed elsewhere: in the visionary seat.
Take the time to network with other growth-minded law firm owners who have walked the same path as you. Attend events and learn from experts in the field who have built their organizations from the ground up. Read books, listen to podcasts, and consume information that will help you bridge the gap between lawyer and CEO. Understand what you can do to be better than yesterday.
Think about some of the most famous and influential CEOs, leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet, and Elon Musk. They’re constantly finding new ways to innovate and improve their systems in order to lock in their place as leaders not only of their own companies, but of all of their competitors as well.
So, what kind of CEO are you: one who doesn’t want to transform themselves and their firm or one who’s willing to do whatever it takes?
6. Plan for the Future
If your team can’t function without you being in the office with them, how can you expect your firm to survive if you die?
Can you honestly say your firm is set up to outlive you?
If not, it’s time to start legacy planning.
What must your team have or know in order to ensure a smooth transition without you? Who must be in place? The number one most important thing to understand when legacy planning is that your team needs to be aligned — with you, with each other, and with the goal of the firm. If they’re not, you can’t expect them to last a day with you gone.
Understand what you’re up against and prepare yourself for the future, because you never know what it’s going to throw at you.
This is yet another topic that we focus on in Crisp Coach.
Crisp Coach is a closed-door community of the highest-performing law firms, and that means yours.
Apply to join this highly sought-after growth program today.
Final Thoughts
If you’re ready to experience law firm growth like you’ve never seen before, you can’t skimp on any of these secrets. Every single one of them has to be executed perfectly, and if you can accomplish all of them, you’ll begin to see great results.
Try these out for yourself and get ready to reap the benefits.
