How can I grow my law firm?
In today's competitive market, the subject of “how to grow a law firm” often comes up. It's not easy to run a law firm, and it's much more challenging to grow a law firm.
For many firms, the problems that hamper growth, like the costs of starting a law firm, working to acquire new clients, competing with other law firms, and having little time to concentrate on the business side of things-can become so burdensome that law firm growth becomes sluggish. If this describes your law firm, you are not alone.
Help for Small Law Firms in Gilbert, Arizona
The free Masterclass for growing your law firm at Richard James equips you with the strategies needed to transform your law practice into what you've always dreamed of, fostering business growth and lead generation for your law firm. Take your law firm to new heights by switching from grabbing at straws in your industry to being business-savvy.
Richard James offers a masterclass for law firms seeking financial freedom and marketing success. This digital Masterclass has the potential to transform your law firm:
- You can learn from his step-by-step system that can generate up to $200,000 for your firm every year without spending any money;
- You can discover how to create effective systems for your business;
- You can learn about various tactics for generating instant momentum, and finally;
- You can learn the secret to working less and earning more.
We will help you develop your market by establishing a business strategy for your law firm. This strategy can provide more lucrative outcomes without stress or long hours. You will see that doing both business and marketing while practicing law will not have to be complicated. You can rediscover your passion for law practice.
What are you waiting for? Complete our Masterclass now!
The Five Simple Steps to Grow Your Law Firm (Masterclass): How Richard James Discovered Them
With my own two hands, I developed a multimillion-dollar law firm in Phoenix from the ground up. We began in a modest, 400 sq. ft. space in a small office building. The other lawyers in the building were quite curious when we quickly expanded the workforce from just two individuals to approximately 22 employees. Every time I walked the hallway, an attorney from this same building would emerge and ask me questions.
Because of this, I decided to interview law firm owners actively seeking ways to grow their businesses. It became evident that I was doing five things that no one else did. I referred to these crucial steps as “shifts.” While I helped other lawyers implement these five steps, we watched them have annual revenue growth of $200,000, then eventually $300,000, and beyond.
I became better at sharing my findings with my existing members as I documented what I was doing, and they started attaining even more fantastic results. And I'll now share these with you. Follow these five simple steps if you want to increase your earnings to $200,000 more while simultaneously having more freedom, more time for your own family, and less work.
Shift #1: Create Core Values
The first action step to take is to develop your own core values. It all begins with figuring out what you really believe. Without the correct beliefs, it will be challenging to grow your law firm.
You probably think right now that you own a small law firm. The problem is that you're not moving forward because of that belief. The truth is that you are actually a small business owner that provides legal services. There is a distinction between being an attorney who incidentally owns a law firm versus being a small law firm owner who is either the attorney or employs attorneys. It makes a huge difference when you start to work under the new set of beliefs, I can help you reach the following core value: to satisfy your clients.
I am confident you currently provide excellent service to your clientele. You open the case and close it, and you get pretty decent outcomes within the limits of what the case allows you to do. But what truly matters for client satisfaction is what transpires between the case's opening and completion.
- Just how do we speak to our clients?
- How well are we keeping our promises?
- Are we prepared and have all the information we need about the client's situation before they sit down with us?
- Have we ensured that our personnel is specifically trained in engaging with clients?
- Would our clientele give us a score of nine or ten on a scale from one to ten?
- In what ways are we serving our clients?
Therefore, if you want to do shift #1 to manage a profitable law firm, you need to embrace the following core values:
- I'm a business owner that wants to grow my company's size.
- I'm going to learn how to deliver top-notch service to all of my clients.
I can show you how to improve your law firm business through the following four shifts if you possess these two core values.
However, if you lack these beliefs and values, whatever growth you accomplish will most certainly damage your law firm. The reason is that it will just accelerate the process of convincing clients that you are not very efficient at your job. Not to mention the potential problems at the bar if people start complaining.
Shift #2: Pull the Curtain Back
Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where they drew the curtain back to reveal who the huge, glorious Oz actually was? So, who is hiding behind your law firm's curtain? Who is tugging all the strings? Who thinks that if they quit, the business would cease to exist? It's usually the owner of the majority of law firms. Owners believe that everything must go through them since they founded the company. Then they're shocked when they discover that they have become the operation's bottleneck.
Then there's the issue of their practice swinging from feast to famine. They sometimes get overworked and swamped while juggling all the duties. There are also instances when business is sluggish, and no money is being made. The law practice trudges along through all of these fluctuations. Many of my clients have gone through this before completing the shift.
Rule #1 of making this shift is avoiding bright and sparkling objects. What I'm trying to say is that, far too frequently, rather than performing the hard work of uncovering the truth about the law firm, we run after the seemingly simple remedies that seem seductive and guarantee to fix all of our problems. As a result, we:
- Increase our marketing budget,
- Experiment with a popular social media campaign,
- Post a video on TikTok,
- Upload YouTube videos,
- Create a brand-new website,
- Create referral schemes,
- Produce a podcast.
I'm not suggesting these things are inherently wrong, but they do not solve the primary issue. We must determine what isn't working before finding the best solution. That is why we must draw the curtain back to discover what is working and, most essentially, what is not working. It's essential we figure out what's wrong with our firm so that we can solve it.
When several clients initially came to see me, these clients were handling their difficulties the same way that a fireman would. They would run to extinguish one fire, then another one, without first pinpointing the source of the problem so they might learn how to avoid fires entirely. They didn't have a way to draw the curtain back to see what was really happening.
Shift #3: Use the Magic Bullet: The Lead Conversion Machine
This time I'll show you what I'm most likely known for. Over the course of my career, this is the secret formula that changed both my businesses and those of my clients. It's what I call the Lead Conversion Machine. As proof of its worth, let us first describe the Old Way of generating and converting leads.
THE OLD Way
- Pour a lot of money into marketing.
- To make the pages of your Google My Business more effective, you would need to learn to be an SEO expert.
- You'd make videos after videos after videos.
- You'd need to get referrals, utilize billboards, send direct mail, etc.
- You would have a podcast of your own.
- You would probably start blogging.
- You would buy leads.
- You would share your content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
And here is the catch. You would do all of these things. Then maybe a client will come one day. Your phone may eventually ring. However, you have no idea how they discovered you or even why they decided to reach out to you.
This old way's tedious and consumes so much money and time. It gives the illusion that you're making progress towards your goals, but like Stephen Covey says, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
THE NEW WAY
The New Way involves developing a machine that powers the Lead Conversion Machine. We have named it the Perfect Client Life Cycle because it is the path potential customers take from being a lead to becoming a referring client.
- To start, count the number of quality leads you get.
- Then track how many of these leads convert into appointments.
- Then check how many of these appointments are really attended.
- How many of those attendees stay with your law firm?
- What was the case worth for those who hired your firm? How many of these clients paid in full?
- Lastly, how many of them recommended you?
The goal of gathering this information is to determine which of the leads work and which do not work. We will monitor the performance of each of your lead-generation sources (direct mail, billboards, Google Ads, Facebook – anywhere you spend marketing advertising money) to identify which ones are effective.
Every single lead is tracked by the lead conversion machine at all times.
Shift #4: Take Your Time Back
Here are three things you must do if you desire a life outside of your law firm:
- Stop doing tasks that others can handle. There are others in your workplace who are capable of doing the work you do, yet you do it because you feel you are the only one who can. Put away that $20 per hour hat. You are undervaluing yourself and not enabling your law firm to see the best version of you.
- Stop allowing people in your law firm to enter your workplace to borrow your brain whenever they want to. Set time limits that will enable you to assist others without interfering with your own productivity.
- Start optimizing your efficiency. Recognize that systems must govern your law firm, and your systems should be run by people.
Let us now go further into this. Client Services, Collections, Legal Work, Sales and Marketing, and Human Resources are just a few of the departments you will find in a small law firm.
It usually goes like this: Betty is responsible for Marketing, Kelly is responsible for Sales, Sally is responsible for Collections, etc. However, with that arrangement, people run your law firm, and you want systems to run your law firm.
We want systems to operate in these departments, followed by people to run the systems. When you do this paradigm shift by mastering delegation and placing the right people in the proper seats, extraordinary things begin to happen.
- You will regain your time.
- You will be able to expand and handle the new business that is pouring in a while your client satisfaction will skyrocket.
- You will be more efficient in your workplace and save money on unnecessary wages that you were paying because you were running your business with people rather than systems.
Shift #5: Invest in Mentoring
All the hard work and dedication in the world won't amount to anything if you don't put any resources into finding a mentor who can help you discover and develop your full potential. That may seem to be a self-serving comment from me since I train small law firm owners. But I am not saying you have to use me. I believe you must get a mentor – any mentor.
Who helped you grow into the lawyer you have become today?
Maybe you worked as a clerk under a judge or worked for another lawyer who trained you by example and counsel. Or you reached out to someone who excelled at what they were doing and learned through the experience.
Now, who helped you grow into the businessperson that you are now?
Nobody, most likely. Few lawyers I encounter have read the literature they should have or enrolled in the right mentorship programs. They also do not have a mentor who works side-by-side with them to educate them on how to manage a law firm. Even if they had a business mentor, it was most likely general advice from a person with no particular expertise in growing a law firm.
How much money have you spent to earn the right to practice law?
- Finances: College and then law school, with tuition ranging from $350 to $500,000.
- Time: Many years of study, courses, and so forth.
You worked hard and made many sacrifices to get the knowledge and expertise required to be successful at what you do.
Now, how much money have you put into acquiring the right to own a small law firm?
Most likely, not much. So, how do you have the skills to manage your law firm like a business if you haven't taken the training or made an effort to understand how? You haven't even worked with someone who has done it before to teach you the ropes.
Here's what I refer to as the mentor loop…
To start, recognize it always begins with a mindset: we bring about what we think about. What we believe is determined by how we think. Then our behaviors are determined by our beliefs. Our behaviors, in turn, influence our results. This is the reason why a mentor is so essential in helping us in changing.
A mentor can help you improve your thinking, which will lead to a shift in beliefs, behaviors, and results. And most important, the mentor is with you every step of the way. This is how you learned the law. And this is how you will learn to be a successful small company owner.
If you desire freedom, serve more clients than you already do, and earn more money, you must master the art of owning a small business. Partnering with a mentor is the greatest strategy to do this.
Please think about the following three questions:
- How satisfied are you with your law firm?
- How satisfied are you with your earnings?
- How satisfied are you with the amount of freedom you have or lack?
If you are not happy with your answers, you'll need the help of a mentor to get you where you want to go.
As a mentor, I show you how to do what I do and what has proved to work for me. I'm not recommending that you hire me. What I'm saying is that you should look for a mentor who is a good fit for you.
Personally, I do it, too. Throughout my career, I have personally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mentorship that has provided me with specific help with challenges I needed to solve. What you need is a mentor who teaches via EXPERIENCE rather than just theory.
Let Richard James Help Your Law Firm
We will provide you with a road map for establishing a successful and predictable practice. Aside from that, we won't send you on your journey by yourself. All of our efforts are focused on helping you succeed. That's why we're here to help you every step of the way. We'll walk you through everything, address any concerns you may have, and be there for you whenever you need us. Call us now to know more about our Free Masterclass!
