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Growing Your Law Practice Means Learning How To Work On It

I notice a lot of attorneys who view how many hats they’re wearing as a badge of honor. It’s something they talk about with pride.

“I’m wearing so many hats.”

“I’ve got to do the marketing, accounting, and the client work.”

“I’m doing it all.”

I question whether that’s the right way to be thinking about your practice - especially if your goal is to create, what we call, “freedom in practice.” This is freedom to have a more lucrative practice AND more personal time.

If that’s your goal, then I’ll challenge you that wearing more hats is not better.

In fact, I’ve had an operating principle in all of my businesses which is that my #1 job is to fire myself. The fewer things I need to do, the more I can be the owner of the business instead of an employee of the business.

Don’t think of wearing multiple hats as a good thing - it’s not.


 

Most attorneys have never really processed this. They believe that the practice and themselves are the same thing.

In actuality, the key to creating real asset value in their practice is to only wear the owner hat.

As a practical matter, you’re probably wearing a lot of hats today. You may be handling the financing, billing, client work. You may even be answering the phones.

The key to firing yourself is to find opportunities for other people to do all of those things.

A short while ago, I ran the Freedom In Practice Training where I showed an organization chart of what a law practice looks like. Each task of the firm is represented by a box with the name of the person responsible for it - just as a company might have a CEO, COO, VP of Marketing, VP of sales, etc.

It applies to every law practice, regardless of size. Whether you’re a solo practitioner with no staff or a multi-hundred person law firm, they all have the same organizational structure. The difference is that the smaller the firm is, the more boxes an attorney will find themselves in.

Let’s say your name is in all of those boxes right now. You’re the owner, CEO, VP of finance, and VP of Sales and Marketing. It’s all in front of you, visually represented. Now you see which roles you can get others to fill, getting rid of many of the hats you’re currently wearing.

Here’s what I’d like you to do: After you read/watch this, list out all of the things you’re doing in your practice today and think, “How do I fire myself from that?”

Start by pulling out a piece of paper and writing down the organization structure of your practice.

What are all of the things that happen in your firm, and who’s doing them?

Once you can see it, it allows you to think about how to get rid of many of your hats.

In our coaching program, we have a process called Delegation Liberation. It’s about finding the right way to delegate tasks so you know it’s getting done to highest quality standards. It allows you to remove yourself from the operations of certain parts your business.

I want to encourage you to think the exact same way.

How can you remove yourself from parts of your business so that you act more like an owner and less like an employee?

If this has been helpful to you, visit practicealchemy.com/freedom to book a 10-minute call with our Practice Growth Team. We can talk through where you are in your practice, how you can grow, and see if or how we can help you.

Raj Jha