Starting a Law Firm | Time is of the Essence

I don't know if this is a common saying or not, but I find myself saying it a lot, "getting started is often the hardest thing to do." That statement resonates with me a lot because I repeat it to myself every day - right before I push off doing something I know I should do and I know will help my practice. So I wanted to talk a little bit about it today.

One of the fundamentals principles of starting a law firm is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of being specific, fear of being laughed at (particularly when you decide to pursue novel marketing ideas), and, often, the fear of being unsure that you can provide the service you are promising to people. Fear, at least for me, often results in procrastination.

"Let's just get started on that on Monday." "It can wait until later." Until it finally falls of the radar screen and never gets done.

My actions and this way of thinking came to the forefront of my mind this week as I was reading a book. It's a business book. It has nothing to do with the practice of law. The premise of the book is that the idea of making money slowly over time is outdated and ineffective for the most part. To attain true wealth one must build something that has either great scale (it can be sold to a lot of people) or great magnitude (it is expensive, so even though only a few want it great wealth can be obtained). Think "Angry Birds" on the iPhone (scale) and selling real estate in Malibu (magnitude) for examples.

I am hesitant to tell you the name of the book because it's extremely cheesy. If it weren't for a direct recommendation from someone I trust on such matters, I never would have picked it up. It's called "The Millionaire Fastlane | Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime." I know, cheesy. It's written by MJ DeMarco (and just so you know, I'm not getting any money from this book for talking about it - I just really like it).

But the content is great. You've already heard about the premise - it's the execution of that premise that brought to mind this idea that time is of the essence. The book points out time and time again that you get nothing for free. If you want to be successful, you have to work at it. In the beginning, that might mean turning off the television or staying in on a Saturday night. But the payoff is worth it.

Put into words, traditionally our goals are events, as opposed to processes. It is the failure to define and understand the process that gets people in trouble and prevents them from achieving success. I'll give you an example from the book and then I'll give you an example from my firm.

One example from the book was the guys own story. He designed an internet limo reservation service, much like the attorney services you now see. You type in where you are, where you want to go, if you have any special needs, and it sends the lead to a few limo companies that then get back to the client with their bids. When the bid is one, MJ got a cut of that. He eventually sold the company for a hundred million dollars or something like that. That is the event. People see the event and think "why don't I just do something like that." What they forgot to recognize was it took several years of hard work to realize the event. Most people won't or can't commit to that process.

My example is my search engine ranking. I'm young enough to know the Yellow Pages are dead. If you are relying on Yellow Pages to get clients, you better start looking elsewhere. I also knew the Internet is essentially the new Yellow Pages, but with a catch - you can have the prime listing (the number one position) for free! All it takes is a little elbow grease and time. It took me a year of about working on that goal 2 hours or so a day to make that happen. But it happened, and I'm benefiting greatly because of it. But when people talk to me they see the event (1st spot for my search terms) and not the process (busting my ass to make it happen).

That's why I'll typically tell anyone that asks how I got to where I did. I know there is little to no chance they will actually follow through (though if they did they'd reap the benefits).

If you're still reading, congratulations, because I've finally made it to the point of this post - COMMIT TO THE PROCESS. Understand you are going to have to bust your ass to be successful and get started doing it today. I can tell you from personal experience that the sooner you start and the more you do it the easier it gets. There are things you can be doing today to make your law firm successful - do them. Don't put off the process hoping the event will magically appear - it won't.

Reader Poll

Some of you will actually read this all the way down and some of you aren't afraid to ask questions, so I thought I'd take a reader poll to answer something I've been contemplating - writing a book about starting a law firm.

I love the idea of how to books. They can answer your questions, get you started down the right path, and more importantly, keep you from making stupid mistakes that are only the result of not having done it before. The book I just reviewed was a how to book - it doesn't tell you what kind of business to start but lays out very succinctly a method for making money quickly and then using that success to leverage success in the future.

I know there are already books out there about starting a law firm - namely "How to Start a Law Firm" by Jay Foonberg. I know this because I own the book. It's okay, but in my mind it's extremely outdated. Foonberg I'm sure is a great guy, but he simply doesn't have the familiarity with technology that most of us do - it's a generational thing.

My book would cover all of the subjects I talk about here on my blog and then some. But here's the key - it would be organized in a way that you could actually find and have specific questions answered. Where should you really start? That's in there, at the beginning. What factors should you think of when getting office space. In the office space section. When you should you expand? How should you go about creating a marketing plan? All in the book.

So, here's my reader poll. Would you be interested in that and do you think others would be? In my mind I'd create the book, slap it up here on my site and sell it for like 15 bucks or something. You pay for it and it's downloaded directly to your computer. No publication costs, no marketing costs. You find me, you can buy it.

What do you think? I'd really like your feedback. Answer by posting a comment.

Starting a Law Firm | Book Review | Office Space

As the title of the post implies, I have two things I want to talk about today with regard to starting a law firm. The first is a review of a book I've been reading. The second is about office space. Here we go.

Starting a Law Firm: Selling the Invisible Review

One of the things I love about owning a law firm is that every day I am making several decisions. About half of them deal with clients and their cases, and the other half deal with creating and maintaining a successful business. I really like both aspects of law firm owner role.

Unless you are trying to sell a service or have thought about how to sell a service, though, you have no idea how hard that can be. What you are selling can't be seen like a car, it can't be heard like an Ipod, it can be smelled or tasted like food, it can't be touched like furniture, and when the service is complete, if it's done right, your client or customer will probably feel like what you did was a fairly easy task. Think about how hard it is to put a value on something like that.

The book I am reading right now helps to put all of that into perspective, and gives practical advice to make your business grow. It's called Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith. It's a compilation of a bunch of short, to the point, anecdotes on what works and doesn't work when promoting and selling a service based business.

For example, one hurdle we all face is the case when we are hired and it is resolved very quickly. Sometimes it is because of sheer luck, but most of the time it is because a fatal flaw in the case was recognized, pointed out, and the case is dismissed. When this happens, clients feel two things: first, they feel great that their case was dismissed; and second, they feel like they got ripped off because they paid you a lot of money for what seems like little actual "work." Beckwith helps explain the situation with two quotes:

A man was suffering a persistent problem with his house. The floor squeaked. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Finally, he called a carpenter who friends said was a true craftsman.

The craftsman walked into the room and heard the squeak. He set down his toolbox, pulled out a hammer and nail, and pounded the nail into the floor with three blows.

The squeak was gone forever. The carpenter pulled out an invoice slip, on which he wrote the total of $45. Above the total were two line items:

Hammering, $2.

Knowing where to hammer, $43.

And this one, which is also a great illustration.

A woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted Picasso sketching at a sidewalk cafe. Not so thrilled that she could not be slightly presumptuous, the woman asked Picaso if he might sketch her, and charge accordingly.

Picasso obliged. In just minutes, there she was: an original Picasso.

"And what do I owe you?" she asked.

"Five thousand francs," he answered.

"But it only took you three minutes," she politely reminded him.

"No," Picasso said. "It took me all my life."

These are the kinds of lessons strewn throughout this book. Great lessons on thinking about how to position yourself to be different from all the other law firms out there by simply explaining your strengths in ways that resonate with potential customers. Read this book. Buy this book. It will change the way you look at promoting your business.

Starting a Law Firm | Office Space

I've talked a lot about law firm office space. I've talked about it here, here, and here. But I'm back to looking for more office space and I'm thinking about what an office space should do for an attorney, specifically a DUI attorney or criminal attorney (since that's what I am).

These are my thoughts, kind of randomly thrown out there.

- I don't think clients really care where your office is.

- I think clients really care about what your office looks like when you get there (clean, easy on the eye, connotes success, confidence, and a certain demand for respect).

- I think the most important factor is convenience for you and your staff. And by convenience I mean: (1) it's easy to get to; (2) it's easy to get to where you need to go, i.e. courthouses; (3) it's a nice place to work; (4) it's functional; and (5) it's affordable.

What do you think?

Finally, these are my options for office space:

1. Traditional office in a big city high-rise (this is what I have now). We all know what that looks like.

2. Literal traditional office in older part of downtown (in a way like you'd expect from a small town lawyer). Here's an example.

3. Modern, open style loft office (conference rooms available for uber-confidential conversations/meetings). Examples here, here, and here.

I know there are people reading this blog, so help me out!

Starting a Law Firm | Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

In a previous post I laid out my starting a law firm to do list, including 13 or so items I needed to get done so my firm can hit the ground running when the doors open. So far I haven't gotten any of the things done, though I have started at least 3 of the to do list items. As I look back through the list again I can see I have set myself up for failure for two reasons - so I need to modify the to do list and modify my philosophy for completing the to do list.

First and foremost, my law firm to do list is not specific enough, and it is causing me to not get anything done because I'm trying to figure out what I need to do first. I'm sure this happens to you, probably when you are trying to write a complicated brief or structure a complicated argument. You know what you want the result to be, but getting there requires several pieces to be completed first.

For example, item number one is putting together my law firm website. I have several things I need to get done, but I haven't sequenced them and broken them down into their parts so I have a distinct plan to follow and so I can get some sense of accomplishment from crossing things off my to do list. Preliminarily setting up the site so it has content is probably made up of more than one step. So step one should really be figuring out what I have to do to get my site up and running and then do those things.

So, number one on my how to start a law firm to-do list is to refine my to do list into manageable, reachable action items. Once that happens then I can actually focus on getting tasks done, as opposed to thinking about what needs to get done to get tasks done (if you aren't confused by that last sentence, good for you!).

The second thing going on with starting a law firm is I am getting really bogged down in the details, wanting everything to be perfect. For example, I spent a couple of hours on the internet last night trying to price a laptop for my practice. In reality, I don't need some state of the art computer to be successful. I need something that has enough memory to hold a lot of pictures and pdf files, and I need microsoft word and power point. That is really about it. So, when looking for a computer, how hard can that be?

I'm falling victim to law firm paralysis by analysis, a common problem among entrepreneurs, I think. I need to remember that one of the great things about opening a law firm is that you have the flexibility and the authority to change things whenever you feel like they need to be changed. That will not mean that my decisions, particularly when significant money or time allocations are involved, will be made willy nilly, but there comes a time when you just have to pull the trigger and move on to something else.

Starting a law firm really has been and I think will continue to be a very humbling and rewarding experience. And moving forward I have to goals: (1) better define what needs to be done and break those things down into smaller pieces; and (2) make concise, quick decisions and move on to the next item.

Hopefully in meeting these new goals I'll be able to knock out several items on my to do list and get this law firm up and running!

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