ready to launch: practical tips for starting (and growing) your law firm
Post on 15-Apr-2017
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Ready to Launch:
Practical Tips for Starting
(and Growing) Your Law
Firm
Presented By:
James K. Cowan, Jr.540.443.2860 Direct
jcowan@cowanperry.com
Introduction• We started our new firm’s journey a little over three years
ago. We’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way, and
gotten some excellent advice. In our time this morning we are
going to discuss a few of those:
I. Start with the End in Mind;
II. Cash Flow is King the First Six Months;
III. The Nuts and Bolts of Establishing a New
Firm;
IV. Office Space and Initial Equipment;
V. Budgeting, Accounting and Outsourcing; and
VI. Start-up Marketing, Retaining Your Current
Clients and Growing your Firm
Start with the End in Mind
• What is your vision for the firm five years from now?
• First Impressions Matter:
when you are starting a firm, you introduce yourself to so many people, each of which create a perception of what the firm is, what its practice areas and strengths are….
Start with the End in Mind
• Professional services, like the other markets, are
segmenting into:
(i) high service level/unique or segmented value
proposition/perception; and
(ii) more of a commodity/value and efficiency focus
looking to volume in a specific practice area to generate
profits.
• It is important to know what you are building a platform to
service
• Your budget, staffing assumptions, location, hardware and
software choices will all be affected by your answer.
Questions we asked ourselves:• Why should a client follow us to the new firm, when we were leaving a
larger, more established firm?
• What did we want them to know about our expertise?
• How would we meet their legal needs in a way that making a change
was a “safe” choice for their business or for their legal matter or piece of
litigation.
• When another lawyer in our market was asked about us, how would
they describe our firm and practice?
• What was realistic given our size and resources to attempt– given that
we have ethical duties not to exaggerate our capabilities to prospective
clients.
• How would we try to differentiate the firm in a crowded legal market?
The result…
• An Introductory letter:
• Defining our practice areas and goals for the firm
• Our mission/differentiating statement from other
providers
• A call to action
• The letter was the first step in a branding exercise
that we continue to this day:
• Our footer on every letter tells people what we do
(and what work we want referred to us)
• Consistent messaging and staking out who we
want to be in our market, and defining that market
for the client.
• If you looked at our website you will see it builds
and reinforces each of these messages
Cash Flow is King the First Six
Months• So how are we going to fund this
endeavor?• What are the costs to operate for the first six months?
• Do you need to pay yourself?
• What is the payment cycle for your practice mix?
• Our backup plan was to have three months operating expenses
in cash, three months available on a line of credit…
• But the key piece of our plan – that kept us from needing to dip
into those reserves was to have retainer based monthly income to
cover all the fixed costs
• We probably underestimated the payment cycle and found out
that while we were busy, it took longer than we thought to get set
up and paid from larger clients…
The Nuts and Bolts of Establishing a New Firm
A. Entity Formation
B. Hire a Lawyer
C. Insurance
D. Agreements You Will Need
on Day One
Office Space and Initial Equipment
• Initial Considerations in Choosing an Office
• Location, image, cost, renovations,
expansion…
• Technology Choices:
• Computers- PC or Mac?
• Cloud-based or local/onsite file storage?
• Practice Management Software
• Security of Client Data
• Copier/Printing Scanning Solutions
Budgeting, Accounting and Outsourcing
• Detailed Budgeting is the key to fiscal discipline
and a good night’s sleep…
• You need a game plan to insure good reporting
and forecasting:
• Outsourcing accounting, payroll and payables is an
option that has worked well for us.
• What information do you need on your
dashboard?
• weekly cash balance reports that show a projection
of our available cash ninety days out
• monthly profit and loss statement
• monthly balance sheet
• month and year to date budget reports
• Vendors payables
The Final Lap…
• Start-up Marketing. Making the most of
your first 100 days.
• Retaining Your Current Clients. How
do you transition clients from your
current firm?
• Growing your Firm.
• Referral sources v.
advertising/marketing
• Follow up is the key
• What questions or aspects
have we not touched on?
• Thank You for Attending
Today’s CLE Presentation
250 South Main Street, Suite 226
Blacksburg, Virginia 24060
p: 540.443.2850
1328 3rd Street, SW
Roanoke, Virginia 24016
p: 540.777.3450
www.cowanperry.com
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