Big Heads-Up For Owners Of Small Legal Firms Interested In Increased Practice Financial Management Awareness…

It’s late 2024, and I’m still seeing no doubt well-intentioned external Accountants of client firms recommending investment of more Owner ClientTime?.

The rationale still appears to be that more owner investment of their limited and valuable time into client files will result in additional revenue, driving up Per Equity Owner Profit.

It may well do in the short-term, but be fully aware that the present root cause of poor current profitability, and resulting heavily impacted practice financial health (indeed the firm’s very survival), may be the usual cause.

The usual cause is Owners investing too much time in client matter files, often for sub-optimal returns.

Delegation is insufficient, ineffective, or both, and time invested in critical management areas that can make a strong and permanent difference to profitability is insufficient to allow most firms to dig themselves out of the hole.

Robservation…As with many non-professional small businesses, an improvement in pricing of one per cent can impact profitability as much as ten per cent.

An owner with sufficient clear-thinking time to identify (and do something about):

·????? current large areas of valueless time in the firm, and

·????? identify areas with obvious potential for minor price increases,

can turn poor profitability on its head virtually overnight, with powerful impacts on practice financial health and Owner well-being.

The additional clear-thinking time will never (ever) be found by Owners who listen to and follow dangerously misguided advice to invest more time personally in client matter files.

If you feel stressed and over-burdened now you probably are, and need a few substantive changes in how you allocate your valuable time.

The bottom-line…One of the most useless changes possible is to do more of what’s currently causing the majority of the problems!

Small firm law practice management is not trending “easier” …and you didn’t need me to tell you that.

If changes are needed it’s essential to get the big things right that will make the most difference, immediately and for the long haul.