4 Steps to Generating Record-Breaking Law Practice Profits

Here’s Your Roadmap to Record-Breaking Profits!

 Are you on track to meet your law practice goals for the year?

And I’m not just talking about revenue goals.

Even if you are meeting your revenue goals but your law practice is not supporting your life and allowing you to spend your time how you want with the people you love, is the revenue even worth it?

Right now, it may feel like it’s impossible to have it all: meaningful revenue, fulfilling work, and a life you love.

But I’ve helped over 522 lawyers achieve these things, so I know it’s possible.

Even if it feels like every time you get one aspect of your life and law practice to work for you, another part breaks down; it’s not too late to course correct.

Today, I’m going to help you turn it all around so you can enjoy record-breaking year-end profits and transform your law practice into a business you love.

The key is understanding the big picture of what it takes to make a law business thrive.

And the best way to master the big picture is to know, understand and master the individual components of your law practice in the right order.

Let me show you how.

Why you must understand the big picture

There are a lot of moving parts required to keep a law practice running, and you have to do them all well if you want your law practice to grow. But with all the conflicting messages about what it takes to grow a successful law practice, it can be easy to get distracted by shiny objects and never actually achieve anything. And without the proper guidance, you risk “working on the right things at the wrong time,” which will waste your resources and leave you frustrated.

But if you master the 4 key components of transforming your law practice into a law business you love, you will always be able to course correct and break records in your law practice, even if you’re coming out of a slow season right now.

Here are the 4 components you need to master to transform your law practice into a thriving business.

1. Pricing & Packaging

How you price and package your services determines your success. If you bill by the hour or charge too low flat fees, you’ll always be overworked and underpaid. And if you don’t package your services in a way that makes clients eager to hire you and pay you meaningful fees, then you won’t be able to engage enough clients to thrive.

After investing $20,000 for expert advice from the best consultants on pricing professional services, I created a pricing model that will allow you to have the support you need to deliver meaningful outcomes for your clients without being overworked and underpaid.

We call this pricing model “affordable premium” fees.

If you want to turn your law practice into a thriving business, the first step is transitioning to affordable premium fees.

Here’s why:

Affordable Premium Fees:

• Allow your clients to choose the right fee for what they need based on what it would cost them to do nothing and risk leaving their assets stuck in unclaimed property
   
• Focus on the outcome of your services: when pricing your services, affordable premium fees allow you to focus on the outcome rather than the time it takes to complete the project.
   
• Affordable Premium Fees allow your clients to secure their families’ futures while being more affordable than going it alone. 

Once you’ve nailed down your pricing and packaging, it’s time to make sure you have the resources to get your offer in front of as many clients as possible and fulfill on your services—and that requires funding.

2. Funding

Now that you have an offer that’s priced and packaged to convert, the next step to transforming your law practice is to secure the funding you need to grow. 

Capital is the oxygen that keeps businesses alive, and law practices are no different.

Even if you aren’t struggling financially right now, it’s important to secure funding so that you can build cash reserves to protect your livelihood and longevity in the case of an economic downturn. The key is to start applying for funding before you need it.  

As a lawyer, you’re trained to be risk averse, so you may have some resistance to taking on debt. But making sure you have the proper funding is one of the most responsible things you can do to secure the future of your law practice.

Trying to grow a law practice in this economy without having a way to access cash when you need it is far riskier than taking on debt the right way. And knowing that you have a profitable offer (See step 1) will give you (and your lenders) confidence that you can repay whatever you borrow.

Here’s how to use credit the right way to mitigate risk and maximize opportunity in your law business.

Apply for:

• An SBA Loan, i.e., Lightning Loan
  • We provide our member lawyers with a complete business plan/model that has consistently helped them get approved for up to $150,000 of financing, even if they have no assets or income to prove they could pay it back
• 0% Interest Business Credit Cards
  • We support our member lawyers with strategies and a list of the best banks to secure 0% interest credit cards
• Lines of credit that get wired directly to your business account

Once you have an offer that’s priced and packaged to convert and you know how to secure the funding you need to pay for software, marketing, and staff, it’s time to master your client engagement system.

3. Client Engagement

Getting your services in front of the right people and educating them on why they need it is the key to bringing in revenue and growing your law practice. 

The best way to get clients is by delivering presentations that convert.

Leading in-person or online presentations puts you in front of 20-50 potential clients at one time and allows you to educate them on why they need your services and why you’re the perfect attorney for their needs, all within an hour. 

Just think how many hours it would take to make a meaningful connection with 50 people if you connected with them one at a time.

Presentations allow you to connect with and serve as many people as you need to reach your law business goals—without burning out or exhausting your marketing budget.

That’s why leading presentations is the best way to grow your law business, but the key is to do it using a proven system that actually converts.

Here’s how to leverage presentations that gets 33%+ of attendees saying yes right away + the rest hiring you when they are ready.

• Educate JUST ENOUGH to inspire action … with 1-3 stories that help people understand the potential issues and identify themselves
   
• Don’t leave behind materials or handouts, but instead use a proven worksheet method to ensure you get their information and can follow up
   
• End with a clear invitation that lets people know their next steps -- either with you or not with you, do not be afraid to rule out people who aren’t for you

So once you have a high-value service you love to deliver, funding to market it and deliver it, and you have a system for consistently getting clients, the final component of the system is to master your calendar so you have all the time and money you need.

4. Goal Based Time Management

The secret to having a life and law business you love is to prioritize self-care and tie your financial goals to your time goals.

At NLBM, we teach our lawyers to ditch their to-do lists and use goal based time management.

With goal based time management, you create a hierarchy of activities based on priority. 

We recommend you schedule your priorities by blocking out time on your calendar for activities in this order.

• Self-care—It’s important to put self-care first so you have the time, energy, and sense of well-being to handle all of the other tasks on your calendar and enjoy them.
   
• Family & Social Time—Our loved ones give our life meaning, so we should schedule time with them before our business tasks.
   
• Business activities—It’s important to note that this category is reserved for income generating activities, not side projects or busy work.

Mastering your calendar will allow you to generate more revenue and still have free time to spend however you want. Most lawyers that implement the time management system we teach reclaim 10-15 hours a week. 

Here’s what’s possible for you once you master the 4 components of transforming your law practice into a business you love.

a. Solo Practice: Our time management strategies will easily allow you to meet with 4-6 clients a month. Our lawyers have an engagement rate of 80-100% at an average fee of $4,000+, so being able to meet with 4-6 clients a month will allow you to reliably make $16,000-$24,000/month.

b. Staffed Practice: With a Staffed Practice, you’ll be able to meet with 8-12 clients a month, and with an engagement rate of 80-100% at an average fee of $4,000, you’ll be able to consistently make $32,000-$48,000 a month.

c. 7-Figure Firm: If you choose our 7-figure firm model, you’ll be able to meet with 18+ clients a month, and with an engagement rate of 80%-100% at an average fee of $4,000 you’ll be able to consistently generate $72,000+ a month.

Member lawyer Amy Hsiao mastered the 4 components you just learned and was able to transform her law practice into a business she loves. When she first joined us, her average fee was only $950 per engagement.

 But after going through our program, including our training and coaching around pricing and packaging, creating a high converting client intake system, and goal based time management, Amy’s average fee increased to $5,000, and her client engagement rate increased to 90%. 

Now she makes 6-figures a year and has the freedom to travel 2-3 months out of the year. 

These are the game changing strategies we share with our lawyers to help them create a life and law business they love. If you become a Personal Family Lawyer (PFL), you’ll discover how to offer a high value service you love to deliver. You’ll learn a system for practicing law in a way that is truly fulfilling financially, emotionally, and spiritually and makes you proud of the lawyer you’ve become. If you don’t want to go it alone, and would love to build your law practice into a real business with an 80%+ engagement rate and $4,000-$6,000 per engagement—whether you are a solo, small/staffed practice or building to a million or more—using Life & Legacy Planning as a Personal Family Lawyer®…you can speak with a Law Business Advisor (LBA) from my New Law Business Model team. 

• Your first step is to apply for a call with an LBA here
  
• You’ll be taken to video where I will walk you through how our proven model works and what to expect on your call
  
• Finally, you’ll be asked to answer a series of questions to help you get the most value from the call, and then you’ll choose a time to speak with a Law Business Advisor, at a time that works for you. 

As you continue to explore if our program is a good fit, you’re also invited to join our free Facebook community. The Lifestyle Lawyers’ Club is our exclusive, lawyers-only Facebook community of like-minded entrepreneurial lawyers. (It’s literally like having access to thousands of helpful senior lawyers who’ve already been where you are.) Join the free Facebook community here.