RJon Robins

Do You Own a Business…or Do You Own a Job?

January 8, 2015 by RJon Robins

You own a law firm. But is that law firm a business…or is it just a job?

A business is comprised of systems that allow it to keep functioning, with or without a given individual – you in this case. On the other hand, a job requires YOU and your time.

Which do you own?

The easiest way to figure it out is to answer this question: What would happen to your law firm if you took a two week vacation?

Would it continue to operate like clockwork, with the legal work getting done, clients remaining happy, and new work continuing to come in? If so, congratulations, you own a business.

Would it grind to a halt altogether because it’s completely dependent on your presence? If this is your reality, what you really own is a JOB…and it’s time to get to work creating a business.

The advantages of owning a business rather than a job are endless. We just discussed vacations. But there’s also the security of knowing that, should you or a family member get sick, you can take time off work without your practice disappearing. There’s the reality that creating systems for your business ensure a much more consistent client experience. And there’s the fact that, when YOU aren’t the one responsible for getting all of the work done, you can spend all of your time looking for ways to improve the business and make it more profitable, rather than just doing tedious legal or clerical work.

If you own a business, congratulations! Keep looking for ways to make it even better. If you own a job and you’d LIKE to turn it into a business, we can help. Keep reading our blog entries and check out our resource page. Read more about our community and the services we provide for lawyers like you. You’ll get the information and the tools that you need to build a BUSINESS…rather than keep working a job.

How To Raise Your Legal Fees And Still Win The Business

January 7, 2015 by RJon Robins

https://youtu.be/V3OP9wao788

A common question law firm owners ask themselves is how do I raise my legal fees and still win the business. Here is how it works. First of all, get over the idea that the value of your services has anything to do with you, it doesn’t! The value of your services has nothing to do with you. The value of my services has nothing to do with me or what a great company I’ve built or the fact that we’re the largest provider of outside managing partner services in the entire country or anything like that. The value of your services has everything to do with the value of your client. Your client values their life, then they value your legal services.

Your legal services are designed to help your client make a profit, in other words, your legal services are designed to help your client go from a place that they don’t want to be in their life or their business to a situation or a place that they prefer. Your services will make such a difference to your client and change their situation that they will truly value your services.

Clients value your legal services in several different aspects that help growing your law practice. They value it in terms of their time, in terms of their money, in terms of their reputation. If you get a client who doesn’t value their time very much, doesn’t value their reputation very much and doesn’t have a lot financially to gain or lose based on the outcome of the case then it will be difficult to raise the price of your legal services.

On the other hand, if you do smart strategic marketing and learn how to create a systematic process for interviewing prospective clients to find out what they value then you are more likely to have a better outcome. If the client stands to gain $1000 and you offer them a solution for $1000 that doesn’t make any sense, you’re never going to be able to sell that; it’s always going to be hard for you and it’s always going to be hard for them.

On the other hand, if the solution is worth $1000 and because you get your shit together and manage your law firm like a real business so you can efficiently deliver a solution for only $250, well gee, you’re going to sell me something that’s worth $1000 to me and I only have to pay $250, you can do that all day long and then you can scale it to a $10,000 solution for $2500, $100,000 solution for $25,000, a million dollar solution for $250,000. These are numbers I’m just making up by way of illustration.

The point is, get over the idea that the value of your services has anything to do with you. That’s your ego talking. That’s the ego of other lawyers who want to puff out their chest and brag about how great they are and that’s why they get the fees that they get. In reality, these lawyer’s talents do not have much to do with it.

The clients are buying the opportunity to improve their situation and the clients are seeing that as getting money at a discount. They way you raise the value of your legal services, the way you raise your prices and still beat out all of the other lawyers in the market takes time. Take your ego, chuck it out the window, don’t bring it into the meeting with your prospective clients with you, and take the time to talk through, not to tell them, not to dictate to them, not to teach them but to talk through your prospective client’s situation.

I know this sounds simple and I’m repeating it again and again for you but I do this solely because this is exactly how you sell millions of dollars worth of legal services and make yourself as well as your clients feel great about it and your Following these steps is how you raise the price of your legal services and still get all of the business.

Take Control of Your Time by Operating Proactively, Not Reactively

December 18, 2014 by RJon Robins

“You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don’t decide, others will decide for you.” ― Tony Morgan

Review your day so far. If you’re reading this first thing in the morning, think about yesterday.

How have you spent your time? Specifically, break it down into two categories:

Time you’ve spent proactively. Advancing your own agenda. Working towards your own goals and objectives. Examples of proactive time could include planning your next marketing campaign, improving your systems and procedures, setting new financial goals, reading a book about killer sales strategies, and so on. It’s time that you’ve spent working towards your goals for yourself and your business, in the way that you deem most valuable.
Time you’ve spent reactively. Putting out fires. Responding to the events of the day. This is time that you’ve spent doing things in reaction to your surroundings – dealing with an angry client, resolving a dispute between employees, responding to emails and phone calls, calling the plumber to fix a leaking faucet, etc. This is time that you have spent not because you chose to spend it this way… but because you found yourself compelled to respond to events that happened around you.

Simply by reviewing this information – and by asking you a few questions about what you’ve said – I could predict two things with a fairly high degree of certainty:

How profitable your law firm is.

How happy you are.

Simply put, the more proactive you are with your time and energy, the more successful your firm is going to be, and the happier you’re going to be. It’s not rocket science. When you’re able to spend your time growing your firm in the way you see fit… it’s going to grow. And when you are able to spend your time the way you choose to, as opposed to how you’re forced to, you’re going to enjoy it more.

This is a pretty big deal, right? Make it a top priority, as we prepare to kick off the New Year, to spend a higher percentage of your time proactively, and to spend less time reacting to the events of the day. You’ll be happier and you’ll make more money because of it.

Networking Tips for Law Firms: Boost Profitability in Four Steps

December 6, 2014 by RJon Robins

Lots of lawyers think that networking is a waste of time. And it IS a waste of time for many of them. But not because networking isn’t a great way to develop business. (It is.) Networking doesn’t work for lots of lawyers because they don’t know what they’re doing. They haven’t thought about it strategically, they don’t have a plan, and they certainly don’t have systems in place to get the most out of the time they spend. So they don’t get results. When it’s done right, maximizing your networking potential is a great way for a small law firm to generate business. It’s especially valuable for a firm in the early stages – where the lawyer typically has more time than money available. So how can you make networking WORK for your firm? Here are four tips:

Select the right target audience. Who should you be building relationships with? The answer: people who are in position to give you business, either directly or through quality referrals. It’s baffling how many lawyers spend their time networking with other lawyers in the same practice area… of course those lawyers aren’t going to send you business! So start by identifying individuals and groups of people that are in position to give you business.
Look to give before you get. Once you’ve figured out who you should be networking with, the next step is to start developing relationships. And you do that by GIVING before you GET. How can you provide value to the people you’re meeting? Maybe by connecting them with others in your network… maybe by providing them with some friendly advice or feedback… maybe by sending them a memorable gift. This approach won’t generally create instant results, but it does lay the groundwork for a highly profitable long-term relationship.
Listen more than you talk. Most people would rather talk than listen. To actually create relationships, you need to do the opposite. People like to be listened to. When you listen, and when you ask intelligent questions to show that you’re listening, your conversation partner walks away feeling good about what just happened. And, listening gives you the opportunity to glean valuable information that you can use later to strengthen the relationship… hobbies, professional dreams, challenges, and so on.
Follow up… follow up… follow up! If you walk away from a networking event thinking that you’ve just had some great conversations and those people are going to remember you forever and send business your way every opportunity that they get… you’re crazy. It doesn’t matter how impressive you are. We’re all busy, we’re all distracted, we all have thousands of thoughts racing around our minds every day. So it’s your job to make sure these strategic connections you’ve just created don’t forget about you. Send them a note. Give them a call. Send them a gift on their birthday. Forward them an article or a blog entry that may be helpful to them. Stay on their radar screen.

Networking CAN be a waste of time… but it doesn’t have to be. For networking without feeling awkward keep these four tips in mind and the potential will be more effective than ever.

Improving Law Firm Profitability & Cash Flow

December 2, 2014 by RJon Robins

There are six key numbers that every self-respecting equity owner of a law firm should be looking at every month. Every month you should be looking at a budget, a budget variance report, a cash flow projection, an aged accounts receivables report and a cash position operating and trust. Remember these six key numbers.

Once your revenues are over a million dollars then we can start talking about a balance sheet. Until your revenues are over a million dollars a balance sheet is really just a distraction. Keeping your law firm profitable until you get to that million dollar mark means you just need to manage the business and propel it to this point through a cash flow projection management.

A decent bookkeeper, a good bookkeeper, should be able to give you these reports very easily. If your bookkeeper can’t or won’t give you a written budget variance report every month, a cash flow projection and six week cash flow projection you should consider getting a new bookkeeper. You need to know where you stand every month as far as revenues projected to come in, expenses projected to go out go. These are key numbers for your law firm profitability you need to be aware of, and you need a bookkeeper that will give you these numbers.

I’m not saying this to be funny, I’m saying this seriously. You need a new bookkeeper! I’ve had this conversation with thousands of lawyers over the last 10 or 12 years and usually the problem is that the bookkeeper went to law school, in other words, usually the lawyer is being pennywise and pound foolish and trying to be their own bookkeeper. Here are a couple of tips on how to decide if you need to hire a new bookkeeper.

First off, your bookkeeper is probably not very good unless they went to accounting school, have a finance degree or formally studied bookkeeping. For bookkeepers there is a very good chance that you may be a brilliant lawyer but a very bad bookkeeper.

Number two, it is extremely difficult to be objective with ourselves and to hold ourselves accountable for our budget, budget variance report and our cash flow projections. That’s why the owners of the most successful solo and small law firms have an outside chief financial officer. This officer is appointed to sit there and go over the budget, variance report, cash flow projections,and make a plan based on the accounts receivables report. Once you have someone appointed to this job, you won’t go deeper and deeper with the client month after month and they owe you tons of money. You won’t have to go over the cash position in your operating account and your trust account.

The way you get control over the finances of your law firm profitability is by making the decision to plan and get help. You decide how you’re going to live your life, how you’re going to run your business and who can help you reach these goals. Don’t try to be your own bookkeeper. You can hire a bookkeeper in most markets today for $35, $45 an hour. As an attorney you may bill by the hour, which I don’t recommend, have a flat fee, value-based or other creative billing, either way, your time is worth much more then it would cost you to hire a bookkeeper.

Being an efficient lawyer, is one of the main goals every law firm should be focused on. What would take a good bookkeeper three hours takes you six. Not only does it take you a long time but you hate it. It makes you miserable, it doesn’t inspire you, it doesn’t make you excited and where do you think all of that energy goes to? It trickles over to the next time that you meet with a prospective client or a potential referral source.

Get a good bookkeeper, ask the bookkeeper to watch this video. They can watch a bonus video at smalllawfirmCFOservices.com, and you should watch it as well. It’s a 45-minute complimentary lesson on each of these six key numbers so you understand what you need out of your bookkeeper. If there is one thing to take from this video, it’s this.. if your bookkeeper can’t or won’t give you these six key financial reports every month, you need to move on. You are wasting time and energy.

Get a better bookkeeper. If the bookkeeper is you, you definitely need a better bookkeeper.

Your People Are (Should Be) Your Most Valuable Resource, So Invest in Their Success

November 20, 2014 by RJon Robins

You can’t build a million-dollar law firm by yourself. You need your team to get you where you want to go. From your secretary to your paralegal to your associates, at the end of the day your law firm is only as good as the people that work in it. That can be a scary thought, right?

The good news is that you have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to find the right people to fill each job in your firm, and to engineer each job in your firm for maximum profitability. Hiring, training, developing, and equipping your people are among the most important tasks you’ll ever deal with as the leader of a small law firm. Yet many solo lawyers don’t give these tasks the attention they deserve – usually because they are “too busy” and think they just need to put a warm body in a chair and then hope they figure out what they’re doing each day.

A much better (more profitable) approach is to view your people as assets to invest in. When you make smart investments of time, money, and key resources for team success, you’re laying the foundation for the success of your firm. Here are three of these investments that you, as the leader of your firm, need to make into your people.

1) Invest in hiring the right people. It’s tempting to hire quickly in order to fill a need. But hiring the wrong person will leave you back in the same situation, likely in just a few short months. Take the time to conduct an extensive search and truly identify top talent for each position you need to fill. Rushing this process is penny wise, pound foolish. Take as much time as you need to find the right person for the job.

2) Invest in training your people. Once you’ve hired the right person for the job, invest the time and resources to thoroughly train the new employee. Teach them the key policies and procedures of a law firm that are relevant to their job. Introduce them to your firm culture and make sure they understand exactly what you do and who you help. (Even if they aren’t in a “sales” position.)

3) Invest in tools for your people. Put your people in position to succeed. Whether it’s computers, software programs, periodical subscriptions, comfortable office furniture… give your team the tools they need to be successful. If a top-of-the-line office chair for your secretary is going to cost you $500 but is going to make him or her 10% more productive and significantly more excited to come to work each morning… it’s not going to take long for that investment to become profitable law firm.

Your people will make or break your law firm. Make smart investments into their development and position your firm for success.

Subscribe now

Turn your phone
into a classroom!

Connect with our

Community

Read This

Manifesto

to Discover How to
Create REAL Profits