Maine Law Practice Management

Law firms often focus on gross revenue, when calculating how much they make.  But, there are expenses that go into running every business, including a law firm.  And, gross profits aren’t what you really make.  What you really make i s your gross profit minus the cost of expenses for running your business.  And, this can be expressed in a number of ways.  Knowing your profit margin is useful for finding out how much you ‘net ’, in terms of revenue f rom your practice.  You could also consider the notion of an effective hourly rate = how much you make per hour, minus your case expenses.  Understand that, and you know what you truly make in your business.   Now, to figure out your profit margin, you need to have a strong grasp on your expenses – and, this is where law firms often fall down.  While it’s relatively straightforward keeping track of gross revenue using standard law firm tools like time & billing software, or law pra...

Especially in the current job market, it’s important not to overextend yourself in hiring for new attorneys or staffpersons .  But, since lawyers aren’t very good with math or data, hiring often becomes a real ad hoc adventure.   Most attorneys hire like they do everything else = they guess about what they can afford, and what they can take on.  That, however, can be dangerous, when it comes to hiring, because law firms can overpay (and waste money) or underpay (and risk losing a candidate , or good employee) ; and, if you spend beyond your means, it may mean that you need to move on from an employee you don’t want to move on from, because you’ve gotten way out over your skis .   So, it makes sense to perform, at least, a basic financial analysis – before making a new hire .  And, for attorney hires, this can be simpler than for staff hire s , since staffpersons may not bill directly .  For those staffpersons , this is a bit more of an art than a...

A lot of attorneys, new and seasoned, volunteer for everything under the sun, until they’re so busy, they just wanna puke .  Now, that’s not the goal of volunteering.  When it comes to working with organizations, legal-specific or otherwise, the idea is not to overwhelm yourself – but, to actually generate business, based on your in-person networking and referral marketing efforts.     But, it’s hard to do that if you can only spend a microscopic amount of time on your commitments, or n one at all .     Of course, there’s a simple solution, here – that’s maybe easier said than done – which is not to over commit.  But, it is difficult to turn down opportunities, when you feel like , as a young lawyer, there may not be all that many others.  And, as a more experienced lawyer, you might feel like everybody wants a piece of you.  In either case, it’s hard to say ‘no ’.   But, one of the most important things you can do as a busi...