A lot of law firm owners feel incredibly dissatisfied with their work.
They’ve fallen out of love with their job.
They feel like they’re just hustling day in, day out, and they’ve lost the energy and enthusiasm for helping their clients and solving their problems.
But there is a real opportunity to use your law firm as a vehicle to create your dream life.
Instead of feeling like you don’t even get time for the things that matter to you most, you can actually design your law firm so you’re passionate about your work and still have the freedom to do what you want to do.
I totally understand that helplessness, and that feeling of being in the trenches when you’re practicing law.
When I had my law firm, before I scaled it, I was burned out in my late 20s.
I remember talking about it with friends and family and law firm coaches and lots of other people.
They’d say things to me like, “What is it that you want?”, or “What do you wanna do?”, or “What’s your why?”
And I’d be like, “I don’t fucking know.”
“All I can think about is what’s directly in front of me, what the next task is – I don’t have time to think about my why or what I wanna do with my life.”
“I need to put out this fire. I need to deal with this team issue. I need to deal with this client. I need to do the law society end of month review. I need to respond to the audit.”
There was just no space in my mind to think about anything other than what was directly in front of me.
I felt really out of alignment with myself and with what it was that I actually wanted…like…I really just didn’t know.
I think that’s the same with a lot of law firm owners I talk to.
Even though they’re running their own business, they feel a real sense of disempowerment and a lack of autonomy around their life and their business.
They feel like they’re not in control, and that they’re just on the hamster wheel and having to hustle to keep it all going.
But what I know though is that, when you do take a step back for a moment and decide to make some positive changes, you really can use your law firm as a vehicle to create your dream life.
And that’s why I wanted to share this framework with you today.
This is my five step framework for building your dream law firm to create the life that you crave.
Step 1: Look at your skills and passions
This might seem kind of obvious, but when you’re on that hamster wheel, you can lose sight of the real skills and passions you have.
You’re just trying to get things done.
But this is a great opportunity to write a list or brainstorm them. Get out the whiteboard, do it with a friend if you want.
Think about all the skills that you have. All the ways you can make money, and how you’ve made money in the past.
Think about all the different services and products that you’ve sold over the years.
And this isn’t just law. This is all time.
Look at everything, because there may be a way you can bring in some other skills and passions to what you’re doing.
Also ask yourself what you really care about. What are you most passionate about? What can you rant about for 10 minutes nonstop?
There are lots of different questions you can ask yourself to provoke these answers.
What do friends and family come to you for? What are some industries that you know a lot about and that you’re passionate about?
Write all your answers down and consider them for a moment.
Then think about your work and how aligned it is with what you’ve just written down.
Step 2: Work your strengths
Something I find really interesting about law firm owners when they feel misaligned, is that often they don’t know what they’re naturally good at.
What I’ve learned is, no matter what we do in our business or in our lives, if we don’t find a way to work in our strengths the majority of the time, we will never rise above the dissatisfaction.
If you’re feeling dissatisfied right now, you will not rise up above that unless you become familiar with what you’re naturally good at and utilise those natural strengths most of the time.
It’s important to note that strengths are different from skills.
A skill is something you’ve learned on the job or at uni or profs or somewhere else along the way.
A strength is something you were born good at.
The best way to find out what your strengths are is to go and do some strength testing.
I do this with my team, I use CliftonStrengths Finders, which is also known as Gallup’s StrengthsFinders.
There’s also DISC, or a free one you can use right now is 16personalities.com.
Go and have a look, and figure out which one you like.
I took them all initially, and the one that I found was most aligned with who I am and explained it best was StrengthsFinders.
Whichever one you use, it’ll help you to really nail down what your strengths are.
Have a think about what you’re doing in your law firm right now, and see how they’re aligned to your strengths. You’ll probably find there is at least some alignment there.
But then you can start to think about how you could evolve your firm or change it so you spend more time working in your strengths.
That’s not something you’re gonna figure out in an hour. You’re going to need to ruminate on it for a while, because it’s not a quick decision.
These are big, fundamental decisions and things to think about, but ones that will ultimately bring you more satisfaction in your work and your life.
Step 3: Narrow your niche
Now you know your skills and passions, and your strengths, it’s time to figure out how to niche your law firm.
Narrowing your niche is all about specialising in solving one specific problem for one specific type of client.
Most lawyers do a lot of different work for a lot of different clients.
The problem with that is there’s a lot of complexity that’s involved with having to do so many things, and it leads to exhaustion and burnout.
When you narrow your niche, you’re simplifying your law firm in a way that’s going to help you to get good systems, processes, technology and people in place.
You’ll also allow yourself to take a step back and move into more of a leader or CEO role, so you’re not hustling day in, day out like you are now.
You’re going to be able to create a lot more space for yourself by narrowing your niche.
There’s a lot that goes into doing this, and if you want you can go and look at this video about how to actually niche your law firm.
Step 4: Design an online legal solution
The next step is to create an online legal solution that you can sell online to your ideal clients, without you being involved in the day-to-day running of it.
This is something that takes time to get in play, but the best time to start is now.
A lot of law firm owners want to go off and build this great online legal service and use all this technology straight away, but that’s not actually the best way to do it.
The best way to do it is to first figure out what it is, who it’s for and what the price point is.
You’ll need to think about your ideal client in quite a bit of depth.
Look at their fears and frustrations and problems, and then look at what they want to achieve.
The job of your online legal solution is to take them from their problem to where they want to be, so that’s what you have to figure out.
When you can do that it will really help you to cut out the complexity in your law firm, and create an automated legal solution that allows you to step back from the delivery of that part of your service.
Step five: Pre-launch it
You get to this point before you’ve built your online legal solution.
At this stage, you’ve probably just got the bones of what your online legal solution could be.
Maybe all you have is a name and a few bullet points of what it is, how you might price it…just something that you can go out and pitch.
This is when you can pre-launch it.
A pre-launch is all about taking the online legal solution design, pitching it to some of your target clients and getting them to buy it.
From there, you can use that money to fund the build-out of your online legal solution.
This is super important because I’ve seen so many lawyers go and spend a whole lot of time and money and energy building out this big solution, only to find out their ideal clients don’t want to buy it.
I know one lawyer who spent more than $900,000 building an online legal solution, and it missed the mark and they only sold like, $2,000 with it.
They didn’t test it early on. They didn’t pre-launch it. They built it thinking the people will come, but that’s just not the way it works.
It’s about creating a minimum viable product, which is really just a list of what the solution includes, going out and pitching it to people, getting them to buy it and then using that money to build it out.
If nobody’s buying it, that’s either a sign that it’s not quite right, or perhaps you’re pitching it wrong.
But knowing that at the pre-launch stage will save you so much time and money and energy building out this thing nobody wants.
Once you’ve taken these five steps, and if you have a successful pre-launch, then you’re going to be able to go and start building that online legal solution out.
As you do that, you’ll naturally get in place the processes, people and systems that operate that solution, which will allow you to step back and let it run itself.
You’ll get the space to remove yourself from that day-to-day hustle that has you feeling so trapped at the moment.
The great thing about starting to step back is it’s going to start freeing up space in your mind just to think.
That’s really such a wonderful thing, because you can start to consider those questions, like What is your why? What do you want? What projects are you passionate about pursuing?
All those sorts of big, important things that you just don’t have the capacity to think about when you’re trying to put out the next fire or deal with the next client demand.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. For more tips and ideas on growing and scaling a modern, successful, 7-figure law firm, sign up to my Savvy Lawyers Facebook group.
