When you’re starting a law firm, it’s easy to get swept up in the meaningful elements of your work: how you want clients to feel when they’re working with you, the type of cases you want to take on, and the injustices you’ll be challenging. Of course, there’s a lot more to starting and running a law firm than that. The following will explore a few steps you need to take if you’re going to be starting a law firm.
Understand The Rules
You’re interested in law, so hopefully, this point isn’t coming as a shock to you. Starting a business in the current era involves obeying regulations and meeting legal requirements. Do your research and follow all steps with care. Be careful with paperwork and ensure that you understand all implications involved with the contracts you’re signing. It’s completely okay to hire a lawyer who specializes in business contracts if this isn’t your area of expertise.
Be Careful About Your Team
A law firm almost never requires only one person. You’re going to need people to help you, and that’s wonderful, but you want to be diligent and careful about who you hire and for what. When people need legal services, they’re often in highly emotional states; they’re easily put off or scared away by someone who answers the phone unprofessionally. Make sure those you hire are people you trust and that they understand what’s appropriate in a legal work environment.
Think About Data Storage And Organization
One of the things that can really impact the efficiency of a law firm is how you store all your case-related information. Almost certainly, in the digital era, you’re going to want cloud-based storage that employees and colleagues can access from their respective devices that also have reliable privacy and security measures. The two most common platforms for this are MyCase and Clio. When comparing the two, you want to consider your long and short-term goals as you want to be able to grow and migrate data should you require it. The end goal should always be to think long term, while making small steps in the desired direction, according to your business plan.
Client Aquisition Focus
Physically starting your own law firm and ironing out the logistics like wifi in the space you’ve rented is only the beginning. The much harder and much more important part is developing a strong client acquisition strategy. It doesn’t matter how stellar you and your partner are if no one is coming to you for your services. This is going to involve navigating the muddy waters of online marketing and figuring out how to get your advertisements seen by the people who need what you have to offer. Most people today will begin their search for a lawyer online, and this means domain authority and search engine ranking are going to be critical.
You will likely be required to produce content for people in need of legal services that can be accessed for free. Articles or videos explaining what people should do immediately following an accident or describing instances when they need to reach out to lawyers tend to rank well because they’re answering questions that people type into search engines. If you are a gifted writer with the ability to polish and edit your own work, you can write these articles yourself. You can also hire a ghostwriter. You might need to hire an additional marketer to help with search engine optimization or you can find a ghostwriter that knows how to optimize all content for search engines as well as craft content.
Budget
A budget is a good idea for pretty much everyone, but it’s especially important for law firms as, in many cases, there are a lot of upfront costs. Further, you might decide your payment structure involves free consultations or taking on clients and refusing pay unless you’ve won their case. This means you need to be really savvy with the money you’re using upfront. You’ll want to work with an accountant and have strict standards for recording and managing the business’ money. Even if you have a nice chunk of cash to start you off, you want to make sure this money goes as far as it can. It might be several months before the money starts coming in, and even then, it might only be a small percentage of an ideal profit. It takes time to build up a good reputation and a history of legal success. Try to keep your expenses down in the interim, and don’t be afraid to look into courses or books on the financial side of business management.
The above information should have helped you understand some of the preliminary steps involved in starting a law firm. The initial years can be demanding and time-consuming, but providing legal services to people in desperate need of them can also be incredibly fulfilling work.
