Maine Law Practice Management

Attorneys hate to think of themselves as ‘salespeople’ – but, if you’re a law firm owner/manager, you’re selling things the same way everyone else who owns a business is selling things.     Though, you might not be selling what you think you are . . .     Legal consumers are not like you : They don’t know as many Latin phrases as you do .  They don’t care about arcane statutes .  Precedent is meaningless to them .  Heck: they probably don’t even have a ballpoint pen.     What they do ha v e is a big problem, that they want someone else to solve.     And, you’re th at someone else; you’re the problem-solver.   Keep that in mind when trying to convert your leads .  They’re stressed; they really want to hire you – and, they’re making an emotional buying decision, which is what most purchases come down to anyway.     Once a potential client is having a retention conversation with you, they’ve already dec...

Law firm collection rate s tend to be well below average .  That’s in part because law firms are great extenders of credit .  They’ll taka a retainer upfront, struggle to collect any more money, and then continue to work through a situation in which it’s unlikely they ’ ll get paid anything more .  This is precisely why most senior lawyers will tell their juniors to get paid as much as possible upfront, because another dime may not ever come.     But, that’s bad advice in a market in which there is continued downward pressure on legal fees; and, it also encourages attorneys to avoid a fixable problem.     It’s not the only solution available, but one method for dramatically increasing your collection s is to adopt an evergreen retainer model .  The way it works is : the law firm sets a retainer amount for an initial client payment ; and then, moving forward, it’s the client’s job to ‘top off’ that amount , on a recurring basis, wh...