Non-Billables Contribution to Your Legal Practice's Bottom Line

Many lawyers enjoy practicing law much more than they enjoy running and building a business. Considering their training, it's no surprise that lawyers don't want to do any business planning.

    Yet, study after study has shown that those with formalized plans -- for business or life -- are more likely to succeed than those without such plans. Yet business planning need not be complicated. Andrea Combs, staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal, June 3rd, 2007,in an article entitled, “Starting a Business? Don’t Do This,” pointed out that only 44 percent of small businesses with more than one employee survive after the first four years. The article points out that one of the biggest mistakes contributing to this statistic is the lack of a detailed marketing plan and the failure to seek advice from seasoned professionals.

    Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People published by Free Press in 1989, says to "begin with the end in mind." Simply put, it is like going to London without knowing how you are going to get there, where you are going to stay or what you are going to do and see. In fact, most of us are just not that adventurous and can't imagine taking off to some foreign location without some sort of plan.

Of course, some think that formulating a plan in your head is good enough. Wrong. You don't see the holes, gaps and pitfalls. Getting it out of your head and onto paper is not as overwhelming as you may perceive it to be.

    Not all strategic marketing plans are about growth. Objectives can range from focusing on building and developing relationships with your current client base, to solidifying your referral networks, to making sure infrastructure exists to support growth.

    It’s almost certain that any legal-marketing plan will fail without proper support from all managing partners and without the right structure.

    Managing partners need to understand the importance of marketing and must be able to explain why marketing is crucial to the growth of the firm. Non billable marketing contributes to the firm’s bottom line and helps measure compensation for everyone, including the office administration support staff and marketing professionals.

Part two will be posted tomorrow.