If you want to ring in the new year with a more successful law firm, there are some things that you’re going to have to do. This starts with making the commitment to yourself that you’ll follow through on your list of improvements until you see them all flourish. If you’re not quite sure how to get started, we’re going to share with you some of our best suggestions for improving your firm in 2019.
The first tip we’re going to give you is a big one. Most don’t take the time to do this and they end up regretting it years later when they look back and see they’re not where they wanted to be at. You should take some quiet time to yourself and think about where you want your firm to be in five years. This is what’s called a five-year business outlook. How many clients do you want to have? How many offices would you like to operate? How many lawyers do you want on staff? These are all areas that you need to think deeply about. By looking five years into the future, you can start to develop a plan to get there. When you don’t look into the future, you simply can’t come up with a plan.
If you’ve been using some legal analytics tracking software at your law firm, we first want to congratulate you. Having data to look back on is something that simply can’t be replaced. Now is the time to look back at the last few years and figure out what type of people are your most popular customer demographic. You should identify the key services that are driving your profits. Also, list the services that aren’t that popular. This valuable information can allow you to further research the reasons behind the trends. You may be missing out on a large sector of specific legal services because you’re priced higher than your competitors. This is something you can fix as long as you can first identify the issue.
At the beginning of the year, it’s time to take a look at your expenditures from the previous year. Look for the costs that were necessary and some of the ones that weren’t. It’s important to realize that more expenses meaan less profit for your business. At the end of the day, you want the biggest profit you can get. This requires you to be diligent about the money you spend. At the time it may feel like an important necessity to purchase something. However, you may look back a week or month later and say to yourself ‘that really wasn’t necessary’. Now’s the time to analyze your past year’s spending and look for ways to increase your profit by decreasing unnecessary expenses.
Your law firm is your baby and you want to make sure that it constantly improves over the years. Making your law firm ever-changing involves taking the time to look over your past and identifying areas of improvement. The above are some easy tactics that you can utilize to identify those weak areas and come up with great solutions for future improvement.
