The Wrong Way to Adopt the Right Law Practice Model

From Struggling Law Practice to Lifestyle Business and Legacy Company: What to Do—And When to Do It—So You Don't Run Out of Money or Patience Along the Way.

Following a step-by-step plan plays a big part in building your successful service-based law business, but there’s an even more important element to consider: Timing. What to do and when for maximum results, maximum success, and so you don’t run out of money or patience along the way.

It took NLBM Founder and CEO Ali Katz YEARS to figure out how to build the right business model for a client-focused, heart-centered law practice, and then leverage that practice into a real business, and eventually a legacy-focused company that could live beyond her. Why?

Because she kept getting sold into programs that promised her a dream she wasn't actually ready for, and then she spent tons of money and time spinning around in confusion wondering what was wrong with her, and why she couldn’t figure it out.

The Right Order That Won’t Steer You Wrong

There's an order to things. And if you try to skip the steps because you got sold into something that wasn't right for you, at the right time, you'll waste so much time, energy, attention, and money—we call these T.E.A.M. resources—blaming yourself for being stupid or lazy or scared. When the truth was that you were none of those things ... you just weren't ready for that stage yet. At least that’s how it was for Ali.

So, what's the order of things if you are a lawyer, have a legal service you offer in your own practice or that you’d love to build a practice around, and you want to earn enough money from that service to support your life, so you can have a lifestyle you love on your way to building a legacy business?

We can answer that by providing you with Ali Katz’ four sequential steps for building your practice into a lifestyle business and, eventually a legacy company, using your T.E.A.M. resources most wisely each step of the way.

1. TIME

• USE a pricing and delivery model that provides HIGH value to people you love to serve, and can be provided efficiently with the support of a team, and less and less of you over time.
• For lawyers, this means you must ditch the hourly billable, and the too low flat fee service, once and for all, and instead use a premium pricing model for your services that pays you well enough to provide seriously high value outcomes to your community. Now, if you’re like a lot of lawyers who truly care, you may be afraid of the word “premium” because that could translate to not affordable or accessible, but we see—and teach—it differently. Your services should be “affordable premium” which is a concept taught in Ali’s book The New Law Business Model (Chapter Six. The Third Shift: Leverage the Affordability Paradox), and when applied results in your services being the most affordable possible for your clients while at the same time paying you well enough to deliver a truly valuable service to the people who need you.

2. ENERGY

• IMPLEMENT a clear intake/enrollment structure that ensures you only meet with people ready to hire you.
• For lawyers, this means you need to ditch the free initial consultation model once and for all, and instead shift to a working meeting model in which you provide value right off the bat to people who want and need your services. And, you qualify people for your working meeting with one of 3 qualification strategies that you can read about in our book, New Law Business Model, such as submitting homework ahead of time. By doing that you will only meet with people who are already invested in hiring you and ready to do so.
• A 100% engagement rate is a game-changer. Consider how much time and energy you’re investing in meeting with people who aren’t ready to hire you right now, and what your life and business will be like when you reclaim that energy and put it into working on your business. Add up those hours, and consider putting them into the next step, “Attention” that will build you a bigger audience for your services.

3. ATTENTION

• CREATE an education-based marketing system that provides value to everyone who engages with your content, and filters out the people who you can’t serve, and brings the people you can serve into your intake/enrollment process.
• As lawyers, we need our services to be more accessible, but that doesn’t mean we can or should serve everyone on a 1:1 basis. In fact, some of the best ways you can serve your community is with broad-reaching FREE education about the legal system and the specifics of your practice area that you know more about than anyone else in your community, even if you think you aren’t the expert yet. By directing attention—yours and others—to your free educational content, you become the expert, and when done well you provide a great service to those who cannot afford to work with you, and to those who can, and should spend 1:1 time with you.

4. MONEY

• ADOPT a time blocking and cash flow forecasting system that takes all of the above into consideration, and allows you to use money to buy back your time, energy, and attention whenever possible. Remember this: money is infinitely renewable when you know how to use your non-renewable resources of time, energy, and attention wisely.
• As lawyers, we have the best opportunity to use money to buy back our time, energy, and attention because our services are such high stakes, and can be so high value, if we structure them properly to differentiate them from what people can do themselves at low cost or free online. The key is to use your time, energy, and attention to craft your pricing and deliver money, your intake and enrollment structure, and your education-focused marketing to take your law practice into a lifestyle business, and perhaps even a legacy company that you love.

If you’re ready to build your law practice into a business you love, without reinventing the wheel, stop wasting your time, energy, attention, and money getting sold into taking the right steps at the wrong time, or spinning around for years like Ali did.

Ali talked about how important it is that you stop wasting your time, energy, attention, and money during Ali Live: The Next Level for Lawyers event on January 20, 2022. Click on this minute and a half video link now, so you can hear the words you need to hear right now.

Build Your Law Practice Into a Lifestyle or Legacy-Style Business You Love

If you've got a legal service you love to provide, and you use your time, energy, attention, and money as we’ve outlined here, you'll be able to turn that legal service into a law practice and then law business you LOVE ... working part-time, full-time, lifestyle or legacy-style.

This is exactly what we teach the lawyers we serve with our New Law Business Model with each of these 4 components ready-made and done for you to build an Estate Planning practice that works, so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. And, the lawyers we serve love being lawyers again as a result.

You can take this model and apply it to ANY service-based practice model. And love your life and business too.

If you’re a lawyer who would love to serve families and business owners with meaningful estate planning, and apply our New Law Business Model to your life and law practice, have a conversation with one of our Law Business Advisors who will help you make a plan.