Maine Law Practice Management

There’s that really old saying that negates the value of hyperfocus, wherein some one person critiques another by saying that they ‘ can’t see the forest for the trees ’ .   Basically, it means that you can’t see the big picture .  And, of course, seeing ‘the big picture ’ , in the sense that you have a vision for your business , is important .  But, you can also get lost in the big picture, too.   Many attorneys, especially solo and small firm lawyers, get lost in the sauce – they can only see the forest, and becom e overwhelmed ; consequently , they are frozen , and ca n’t seem to take any positive action .  So, sometimes, it helps to look at just one, single tree .  In ter m s of a law firm’s business operations, that really means creating a project list, and focusing on just one project at a time .  That’s a great way to get unstuck, if you are – and, most business management philosophies strive to get business owners to concentrat...

Running a business, really, is conducting one big experiment .  You’re continually testing hypotheses, and seeing whether they work .  You need to make frequent adjustments, to tweak things , for the better .  You could say that a business owner is like a scientist – perhaps a less glamorous analogy would be that it’s like owning an old car, that you constantly have to fix.     In any event, no successful business owner has a perfect record .  Though, that’s not a bad thing , necessarily .  Making mistakes, iterating on them, and improving – is basically what business owners do.   Of course, that can be a difficult thing for law firm business owners to get their heads around .  That’s because most of them are lawyers – and lawyers are trained to be perfect, to never make mistakes, with the ever-present threat of an ethics claim hanging over their heads .  But, running a business is not practicing law .  It’s okay to make...

Law firms continue to experiment with different payment models ; and, that includes subscriptions .  Subscriptions are popular, because it’s consistent recurring revenue – which everyone is looking for .  That’s one of the reasons why technology companies are so valuable .  And, if’s the same reason why lots of professional service providers (like law firms, but also like IT providers) are moving to subscription pricing .  One of the biggest challenges to implementing a subscription system is building out the inclusions .  That’s harder than setting the price point, frankly .  But , the best part about subscriptions and flat fees is that , generally speaking, law firms make more money doing work in that way, than they do on traditional billing – as much as 20-30% more , in fact .   But, back to the main question: How do you set up a subscription option ?  Think of it as stacking services, and constructing an offering that is more app...