Even if you’re new to the legal profession, you probably know just how tricky it can be to handle the day-to-day demands of your job, never mind working out how to manage a small law firm on top of this.
After all, it’s one thing to carry out your personal duties as an attorney, filing paperwork, consulting with clients, managing legal intake, etc…, so how on earth do you manage and grow a law firm on top of all that?
Well, the good news is that learning how to manage a law firm is not as tricky as it sounds. You just need to make sure that your firm comes across as strong, organized, and professional so you can attract the right clientele.
But if eventually you want to continue to grow your firm and market yourself, you’ll need to do the work internally before you start advertising it to bring in more clients. With that in mind, here are our top tips on how to run a law firm from the ground up.
How to start a small law firm
To begin with, we’re going to share a few quick tips to bear in mind when starting a new law firm. We’ve no doubt that you know all the legal minutiae that you’ll need to get started, but you might not be familiar with the business side of things.
So, if you plan on starting your own small law firm in the future, make sure you do all of the following:
- Create a business plan – a business plan is essential for working out costs, who your target market is, and how much money you might need to set your business up to begin with.
- Invest in insurance – it never hurts to be insured in all areas of your business, so make sure you look into getting whatever insurance types you think necessary for your new business.
- Make sure you have the experience – generally speaking, it’s advised that any lawyer looking to start their own business has at least 3 years of experience and one or two clients to get them started.
Of course, these are just the basics, and if you want more information on this sort of thing, we have a whole article about starting a small business from scratch.
How to expand a legal practice
Now that we’ve touched on how to start a small law firm, the next step is to look at how to expand a legal practice to serve your client’s needs. Below are our top tips on how to grow your business once you’ve started:
1. Build a strong team
At the heart of any good law firm is a solid team of experienced professionals who can deliver excellent service. Therefore you, want to make sure you’ve pulled together a strong, cohesive, and professional team of employees capable of meeting such demands by using modern hiring trends and tactics.
A great way to tell if you’re missing a vital chain is to Identify your business’s current weak spots or gaps and hire people who can fill those niches. For example, you may need to partner with another attorney or bring in more paralegals to handle smaller tasks.
Alternatively, you could hire additional staff members in non-legal areas to take on admin roles for you, such as employing a trained live answering service to handle your calls alongside a virtual receptionist for your law firm.
2. Carry out market research
Researching market dynamics and focusing on niche offerings is a great way to hone in your efforts to bring in new clients that fit your specific services, which in turn will help to grow your business and take on more clients in the future.
So, make sure you put in the time to learn what your customers are looking for and then tailor your services to meet their needs. That way, you can be sure you’re offering a service that is sought after.
3. Figure out your systems
With multiple employees beneath you, you’ll probably need a way of tracking attorney hours, client invoicing, scheduling, and task management, as juggling all of these things can become a huge job in and of itself.
So, much like market research, take a look at the various systems and top lawyer apps that you could implement to fulfil all of these needs, if possible. Again, your law firm wants to come across as organized. You are not in a position to drop the ball on legal tasks, invoicing, or scheduling.
4. Create a website
Nowadays, having a website is incredibly important if you want to grow a law firm. Not only does it highlight you as a professional business, but it’s how most of your leads will be finding you – whether it’s through social media, a paid ad, an attorney review site such as Avvo or a search engine result.
Simply put, when managing a law firm in this digital age, a website is an absolute must. Start with the basics, profiles on you and your associates, the area of law you focus on, what exactly your law firm does, etc…, and go from there.
make sure you also provide contact information, links to any attorney review sites you have a profile on, as well as the social media platforms you use. From there you can build your SEO with keywords and blogs so that when leads run a search, your website will pop up higher in the results.
5. Market your law firm
Saving the best till last, when it comes to growing and managing a law firm, marketing your business is essential if you want to expand your customer base and find new clients in the future.
From social media posts to newsletters and review highlights, there are many ways to market your law firm, all of which we cover in our dedicated article on the topic. And by doing even some of what we mention you’ll market successfully.
Boost your team with VoiceNation
So, you should now have a good idea of how to manage a small law firm and grow it in the future. However, if you want help straightaway with handling admin and incoming calls, then VoiceNation’s legal answering service is here to help.
Our team of highly skilled virtual receptionists can answer your calls 24/7 as well as provide bilingual answering services in Spanish so you don’t miss out on demand from a core customer base.
Get in touch today to learn more about our services and various price packages.