RJon Robins

Building a Million-Dollar Law Firm: It Starts with Your Mindset

July 7, 2015 by RJon Robins

The most important requirement for building a million-dollar law firm isn’t your marketing budget.

It’s not the caliber of your people.

And it’s definitely not your legal abilities.

It all starts with you – specifically, with your mindset. Developing a success mindset.

Do you believe that you can build a profitable law firm that allows you to enjoy life without compromise? Are you determined to seek out the knowledge and the guidance you need to build a seven-figure law business? Are you willing to stop looking for excuses and instead focus on solutions to your biggest challenges?

If you can say “yes” to the above, you’ve already done the hard part.

It’s been conclusively demonstrated that it IS possible for a single-shareholder law firm to gross well over one million dollars annually. Many of our own members are proof of this. Building a millionaire mindset is the key of achieving that sum in your law firm.

Not only that, but we’ve created a road map to help you get there. The policies and procedures that you need have been documented. The critical parts of your law business – from your people to your marketing to your factory (the actual delivery of services) have been identified and our members learn how to optimize them. The challenges you’ll face have been foreseen and planned for. The tools you need have been identified. The community you need exists.

So why are most single-shareholder lawyers miserable and stuck in barely-profitable firms?

Because they don’t believe their life can be anything BUT miserable. Because they’re not interested in learning how to run a massively profitable law business. Because they make excuses from the minute they wake up in the morning until the minute they go to sleep.

Building a million-dollar law firm isn’t complicated. A proven road map exists. You just have to want it. Do you want it? Contact us today to learn more.

Three Ways to Escape Your Law Firm Cash Crunch (And One Fatal Mistake to Avoid)

March 3, 2015 by RJon Robins

Every law firm has been there. Cash is tight, payroll is due next week, and you’re not sure where the money is coming from.

Long term, you can liberate yourself from this stress with the right strategic approach to financial management.

In the short term, you’ve got three basic options to generate the cash you need.

One, you can sell more work. You can rattle the bushes looking for cases. Work your referral sources. Call past clients and ask them what else you can take off their plate.

Two, you can get more work done. How much work is currently in-process? Speed up the production of your factory, get the work done ahead of schedule, and bill for it earlier than you thought you’d be able to.

Three, you can collect Accounts Receivable. What does your A/R sheet look like? If there’s a significant amount of outstanding billings, the quickest way to generate cash is to go after it.

Now, here’s what NOT to do: Don’t borrow. And if you absolutely must borrow, you must have a plan of action to make a profit with the borrowed funds for maximizing cash flow management.

There’s a difference between performing debt vs. non-performing debt. A law firm that loses money because it has no operational or business plan borrows non-performing debt.

A firm that borrows the exact same amount, on the exact same terms, can make it performing debt by deploying those borrowed funds against a business plan that’s been reasonably calculated to service the debt and make a profit for the business. This is just one solution for financial challenges.

Sadly, in the absence of either a written budget, cash flow projections, budget variance report or written business plan, most struggling business owners fail to make this critical distinction and wind up digging a hole for themselves without overcoming cash flow challenges. They can often be heard yelling up to their rescuers “Don’t bother me right now, can’t you see I’m busy digging!”

Replace Yourself in Order to Build a Million-Dollar Law Firm

March 3, 2015 by RJon Robins

“I’m a lawyer. So I have to spend most of my time practicing law.”

This line of thinking is both common and dangerous for solo lawyers. It’s not true.

Not only do you not HAVE to spend most of your time practicing law, but once you’ve created a successful practice, you SHOULDN’T spend most of your time practicing law if you want to build a million dollar business.

What you need to do is replace yourself. You need to hire an experienced attorney, give him/her the title of Senior Associate, and turn the legal work over to them.

Then, you can spend your time building a profitable law practice – working ON your business instead of IN your business. You can work on your million-dollar marketing. You can perfect sales systems. You can brainstorm. You can innovate. You can take a vacation!

What you can accomplish with this free time will easily pay for the additional salary – not to mention that your new associate should bring in work as well.

It’s really a no-brainer. So why is this concept so tough for most solo lawyers to grasp?

It’s the trap of “False Economy.” At first glance it makes sense to avoid adding money to your payroll when you’re perfectly capable of doing the work yourself. But that calculation doesn’t account for the opportunity cost of your time.

To illustrate, let’s assume that you pay your associate $80,000 annually.

In exchange, you are now free to spend the majority of your time marketing, innovating, and looking for growth opportunities. Let’s conservatively project that these efforts enable you to generate one new case per week, and that your average case is worth $5000. You’ve just generated $260,000 in new revenue for your firm. Achieving success in law firm business can be quite easy with the right mindset.

Would you rather save $80,000 by doing the work yourself, or generate $260,000 by replacing yourself? That’s the choice you’re making, and I hope that you can see it’s an easy one that will help growing your law firm revenue.

If you’re serious about creating a million-dollar law firm, you need to replace yourself. Stop looking for excuses and take the plunge. You won’t look back!

What Does a Legal Administrator Do? When, Why & How to Hire One For Your Law Firm

March 3, 2015 by RJon Robins

I think the biggest mistake that most lawyers make when they tackle the question of how to hire the right firm administrator is they forget to ask when to hire the right firm administrator and what they end up doing is they hire the right – they start looking for the right firm administrator when they’ve reached a point of overwhelm and desperation in legal firm management.

Clearly, overwhelm and desperation is not the right mindset to be in for how to hire the right legal administrator so you want to be able to project the growth of your firm by looking at your business model, by looking at your financial projections, by looking at the marketing and the sales that you’re building today and see where, if this stuff works, which we hope it will, where is this going to have your firm in six months? And if in six months your firm is going to need a legal administrator the time to start looking is now not six minutes before it needs a legal administrator and sure as hell not six months after you should have hired a legal administrator because you’re going to need time to screen, to test, to vet, to train, you’re going to have to make an investment in this process because this is a really important position for the growth of your firm; so how is in the right mindset of being proactive. That’s number two.

Clearly define the job of a legal administrator. That means you’ve got documented processes and policies and systems and procedures and job descriptions which define this is the job of the legal administer so you know what position you’re actually hiring for. Then what you do is you, this sucks, I know this sucks, but this is what everyone goes through to build a multi-million dollar firm.

It’s not easy but I promise you, this is worth it. You – you do the job of the legal administrator yourself for at least 90 days. Take this written job description you come up with and follow it and learn it and understand it and live it then you’ll know when you’re interviewing prospective candidates you’ll know whether they get it or don’t get it because you’ve done the job. They’ll never be able to hold you hostage, you’ll always be able to spot check them to know if they’re doing the job right or wrong and you’re never going to have that fear factor of, oh my God, desperation, what happens if they quit?

If you know how to do the job in your firm, I’m not saying you should do it, but you should know how it’s done so you can never be held hostage and then you’ve got to have a screening, testing mechanism, a way to vet prospective candidates before they waste your time and last, and definitely not least, and I don’t provide this service myself so I have no vested interested in telling you this other than I want you to be successful, hire a professional. You can’t be a brilliant lawyer and a brilliant recruiter, they just don’t go together. You focus on being a brilliant lawyer, let the recruiter find you the brilliant legal administrator. Please don’t try to do that job yourself. This isn’t a DIY, this isn’t a do-it-yourself. Get the professionals to help you with that.

How to get started with a law firm marketing plan.

February 3, 2015 by RJon Robins

https://youtu.be/1NJXzTZOHfA

How to get started with a law firm marketing plan; all right, so first of all you have to identify what stage of growth your law firm is in. The first stage of growth is from revenues of zero to about $250,000. We call that creating a successful law practice. We’re not worrying about a business, we’re not worrying about it being sustainable, we’re not worrying about you being able to step away for a month at a time and have it keep going, we just want it to be successful, get your head above water, get revenues to about $250,000 gross.

Second stage is $250 to about $500,000, that’s where you start to bring in staff, you start to bring in other people to do things to delegate things, you need processes and policies and systems and procedures.

The third stage is $500,000 to about a million, that’s really all about the financial controls using the metrics and the financial controls to make better, quicker, more objective decisions and over a million dollars.

The point I’m making is, you’ve got to know what stage you’re in because the things that are going to be great, if your revenues are between zero and $250,000 are going to act like an anchor if you try to do the same kind of marketing when your revenues are $500,000 and you’re working your ass off and you wonder why can’t I get to a million dollars, well, it’s because you’re doing the same things that you were doing when your revenues were between zero and $250,000.

I like to say that tricycles are great for toddlers and mountain bikes are great for teenagers. The only problem is, when you put the toddler on the mountain bike or the teenager or the tricycle then things go wrong. So step number one of getting your marketing under control for your law firm is understand what stage you’re in.

So let’s just talk about Stage 1 for a minute. Stage 1 marketing is very simple. It’s everything you’re going to do to bring prospective clients to your firm and that’s another thing you’ve got to know is the definition of marketing.

The definition of marketing is everything that you do to bring the right kind of prospective clients to find the right kind of prospective clients to the right place, I don’t mean geographically but where do you want them to go first? Do you want them to just pick up the phone and call you the minute they have a question or do you want to do some pre-education, some prescreening, some preconditioning at the right time. Do you want them calling you right when you’re getting to go to trial? Do you want them scheduling an appointment right before you’re getting ready to go on vacation or do you want to modulate and turn the dial up and down so that you have a steady flow of business and don’t overwhelm your factory.

You want the marketing for attorneys to also precondition the prospective clients so that they arrive with the right expectations, answer their frequently asked questions, try to help them make an educated decision about whether or not you’re the right law firm for them. At three in the morning while they’re watching a video or reading a checklist or reading a letter or reading an email or whatever they’re doing so they don’t show up the next day or the next week for their appointment and waste their time and waste your time to discover that you’re not the right firm for them and then you also want them to (arise) with the right frame of mind. The idea is you want them to be in a frame of mind where they’re coming to you looking for a solution and not looking for someone to just vent or unload their woes to.

All right, marketing is very simple; it’s everything you do to bring prospective clients to the door then sales takes over to convert the prospective client into paying clients. Marketing can be as simple as old fashioned advertising for your legal business strategy. It could be as simple as networking, it could be as simple as picking up the phone and calling prospective clients to find out what they’ve got going on that you can help them with.

It can be as simple as writing articles, a website, a blog, a newsletter, an old fashioned paper newsletter is a great solution for marketing. It doesn’t need to be high-tech. If your revenues are between zero and $250,000 stay away from things that are expensive. Stay away from things that are going to take a long time to pay off, stay away from things that are very complicated. Stick to the simple stuff, stick to the stuff that lawyers have been doing for thousands of years, yes, lawyers have been doing this stuff for thousands of years to market their law firm, to bring prospective clients to the door stick to the low tech stuff.

Once your revenues get over $250,000 your marketing has to begin to communicate the value of doing business with your firm and not just the value of doing business with you because if your marketing is all about you and your personality and how great you are and how you’re the most brilliant lawyer in the world and your revenues are over $250,000, $500,000 and you start bringing in paralegals and you start bringing in assistance and you start bringing in associates which is what you should be trying to do to build your business. If your marketing and law firm branding strategy is all about how you’re Superman or you’re Superwoman there’s going to be a disconnect between the clients expectations and how your business is set up to deliver those services so your marketing when your revenues are over $250,000 needs to shift from your personal message and your personal brand and your personal how great you are and has to start communicating the value of your business.

Once your revenues are over $500,000 then you can start to expand your marketing and legal advertising plan further back in time from the place where the client knows they have a problem, they’re actively looking for a solution. Once your revenues are over $500,000 you can start to communicate earlier in the buying process to the point where the client may not even be actively looking for a solution yet and you start educating them that maybe they have an opportunity to make their lives better and then of course once you get over a million dollars then it starts to get really fun because now you’ve got the time and the money and the resources and the platform to share your message with the world and communicate how you want to make the world a better place; that’s when marketing starts to be really fun and really profitable. That’s probably why you went to law school in the first place.

Build a Million Dollar Law Firm by Spending Your Time with the Right People

January 23, 2015 by RJon Robins

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” ― Jim Rohn

Take a few minutes and ponder that statement. I think you’ll find that it’s largely accurate. We’re social beings, and it’s not surprising that our environment in many ways dictates our behavior.

It’s true in small ways, like the mannerisms and gestures we make while we’re talking.

But it’s true in big ways, too. What’s your mindset when you face a challenge…do you look for ways to overcome it? Or do you look for reasons to quit? If your time is spent by people with a defeated, losing mentality…it’s going to be hard for you not to adopt a similar mindset.

Here’s what to DO with this information: start being more selective about who you spend your time with. Intentionally choose to spend your time with people who bring out the best in you. Look for people who inspire you, who help you solve problems, who encourage you to keep going even when things are difficult. Look for people who energize you and help you look at challenges from multiple perspectives. Look for people who know how to take big ideas and turn them into step-by-step plans for success.

On the other hand, protect yourself from negativity. Limit the time you spend with people who are constantly whining and complaining, people who refuse to accept responsibility for anything, and people who throw in the towel when things get tough. In particular avoid people who are cynical and full of reasons why big ideas WON’T work but don’t have any big ideas of their own.

As lawyers, chances are you spend a LOT of time with people in that second category. Law school and the practice of law has taught many lawyers to be negative, to look for problems rather than solutions, and to demand precedent before doing pretty much anything. That’s fine, while you’re actually practicing law. But if you let that type of thinking seep into the rest of your life, like most lawyers do, you’re putting yourself on the fast track towards a miserable career and an unhappy life.

Who are you spending your time with?

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RJon Robins

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Community

Read This

Manifesto

to Discover How to Create REAL Profits

Turn your phone
into a classroom!

to Discover How to
Create REAL Profits