Finding Your Law Firm’s “Why” Will Inspire Your Lawyers to Win

The following is adapted from my new book, Fireproof.

“Why do you come to this firm and practice law every day?”

If you ask lawyers this question—what their “why” is—many will say things like “to make money” or “to gain professional experience” or something along those lines. Of course people want to make money, but that alone is unfulfilling. 

If you run your own practice, you need your employees to want something more than a paycheck. You need a higher purpose. You have to have a compelling reason for your lawyers to get up in the morning and head into work with enthusiasm.

You need to know your firm’s “why.”

As I’ll explore in this article, finding your law firm’s “why” and clearly defining it for your employees will inspire your lawyers to work for something personally meaningful to them, not simply a paycheck. They’ll feel more invested in the outcomes of their cases, more loyal to your firm, and more motivated to treat your clients well. 

Why You Need a “Why”

You might think finding your “why” is just a useless touchy-feely exercise, but it’s more than that, and the research proves it. Authors and business experts Jim Collins and Jerry Porras spent six years studying companies such as Disney, Marriott, 3M, and HP to discern why their stock performed fifteen times better than the overall stock market for decades.

One thing all these great companies had was “a deeply-held core purpose.”

Collins and Porras’s findings have been echoed countless times, most notably by Simon Sinek, whose book Start with Why asserts that your core purpose must be idealistic and compelling. It tells the world what you believe and the value you’re bringing to society, not what you make or how you make it.

Your core purpose is not supposed to be a goal you achieve but something you strive for every day. It also embraces the quality of what makes your business special and successful. 

When your “why” is apparent, potential employees who share your values will seek out your firm. Current employees will feel a deeper emotional connection to the work they do. Lastly, your firm will always have a core purpose to keep it moving in the right direction. 

Finding Your Firm’s “Why”

Now that you know the value of having a “why,” how do you find it?

One way is to use the Five Whys exercise, a root-cause analysis method used by Toyota to perfect its lean manufacturing and near-zero-error production system. 

Here’s how it works: you start with a simple description of your work and then ask why is that important? until you drill down to your root cause. In my firm’s case, we are a personal injury law firm.

Why is that important?

We help people get compensated for their injuries.

Why is that important?

We help individuals who don’t have the knowledge, time, and money to fight insurance companies.

Why is that important?

We help struggling people receive just compensation for their suffering.

This line of questioning led us to discover that our “why” is advocating for our clients to make their lives better. The people who come to us often have been hurt or traumatized, and our job is to help them rebuild their lives and become whole again. This is the catalyst that drives our lawyers’ actions and inspires them to win.

Inspired by “Why”

As you drill down into your firm’s “why,” you’ll see an idealistic and inspiring cause emerge. You’ll realize your “why” was there all along, but perhaps you didn’t think of it this way before. Now you do, and you can communicate it with your employees.

They aren’t simply working a case for the money; they’re fighting to help someone get compensation for an injury, leave an unhappy marriage, or see justice for a crime committed against them. They’re doing something meaningful. 

When you frame the work your lawyers do in your firm’s “why,” everything they do becomes more purposeful and vital.

For more advice on running a highly profitable law firm, you can find Fireproof on Amazon.

Mike Morse is the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury law firm in Michigan. Since being founded in 1995, Mike Morse Law Firm has grown to 150 employees, served 25,000 clients, and collected more than $1 billion. A household name in Michigan, Mike gets over 20,000 calls per year requesting his services. John Nachazel is the COO of Mike Morse Law Firm. A pioneer in the practice of applying business metrics to law firms, John’s precise insights and financial forecasts have been instrumental to the firm’s growth. John has an MBA from the University of Michigan and twenty years of sales and marketing experience.