The Small Firm Roadmap: A Survival Guide to the Future of Your Law Practice

by Aaron Street, Sam Glover, Stephanie Everett

Let’s be traditional small law firm practice isn’t working. Too many solo practice and small firm lawyers struggle to generate enough cashflow, get clients, meet expectations, hire the right team members, or use technology. Some small firm and solo lawyers even struggle with mental health issues or substance abuse. It doesn’t have to be that way. What if you could own and manage the law firm of your dreams without the 80-hour workweeks?There’s a demand for the services provided by small firm lawyers, but your law firm business plan and solo law practice strategy should align with what clients need.In The Small Firm Roadmap, the innovative team at Lawyerist.com, Aaron Street, Sam Glover, Stephanie Everett, and Marshall Lichty offer a proven path in this practical guide to help clarity around your law career and success in solo practice or small firm management through vision-castingShift into a future-oriented law firm focused on value and client engagementCreate roles and hire for the right cultural and functional fitMatch your strategies and process with how clients make decisions todayDevelop pricing models that attract and convert your ideal clientsMaster all three personal roles in your firm as entrepreneur, firm manager, and lawyer technician The Small Firm Roadmap is your guide to the future of law practice with a client-centric law firm management model.Isn’t it time to get what you want from your small law firm?

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Law

380 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2019

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pro: This was a practical book, particularly when it provided example KPIs and the Small Firm Scorecard questions. There were a few other helpful exercises (series of questions) that caused beneficial reflection. In some ways, it was half workbook. I could see using some of these exercises during a team building session. It'd be fascinating to see how paralegals, first year attorneys, experienced attorneys and partners compare in answering the same questions about the same firm.

Pro: There is a heavy focus on modernizing the practice of law, which I - as a younger millennial - appreciate. This book has a wonderful analogy about how the old habits of practicing law are like taxi cab service, but clients are looking for Uber. Society is becoming increasingly intolerant of businesses that do not provide customization. Law cannot get away with a terrible customer experience forever. For example, (1) billable hour as the only fee structure, (2) client has no idea what the final bill will be, (3) lawyers are incentivized to be inefficient - undermining client trust, (4) client must work around lawyer's schedule and wait for updates (scary to not know what is going on). In some fields, especially transactional law, some clients can find non-lawyer solutions to their problems. Granted, those solutions might not be ideal, but it's easy to see why a client might be seduced away from hiring a lawyer. This book challenges the reader to redesign practice in a more client-centered way. I found the alternative fee structure stories and client intake procedures particularly interesting.

Neutral: The audience seemed to be lawyers in personal injury, trusts and estates, and family law practice. In other words: this book seemed targeted to lawyers whose clients are individual people - not corporations. It made me curious how the same lessons in this book might be adapted to boutique firms that serve corporate clients. Is it better to tailor toward the company's mission statement (treat the corporate client as an entity), or individuals within the corporation (isolate decision makers)? If the latter, which people in the corporation would be best to target?

Con: I was a little disappointed by the website. While listening to this book, I was excited to go back over several exercises in print form, because the book assured that all these could be accessed by making an account with Lawyerist. After I finished listening, I signed up. However, I had trouble finding the Small Firm Scorecard. I could find the advertisement for the tool and prompts to join (though I had already joined), but I still couldn't figure out how to get to it. That was a bummer, but the content sounded good enough that I was motivated to send them an email to figure out how to get it.
^EDIT: They give the proper link outright in Chapter 5. I had trouble, because I tried to access just by navigating the Lawyerist website by intuition. The link explicitly given in Chapter 5 works perfectly.

[Samuel Saul Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book my final semester of law school and decided to re-read it for motivational reasons.

Once again, I found this book to be extremely helpful. It also highlighted some things that I did (or meant to do) when I was truly solo that, for one reason or another, I haven't been doing since joining VanNoy.

I once again highly recommend this book at any and all of my lawyer friends, whether you're in a small firm or not.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers sound guidance on how legal practitioners and law firms of all sizes need to evolve in order to work towards the best outcomes for both staff and prospective / existing clients. Also contains a lot of info on other skills that lawyers need to obtain to achieve holistically good outcomes (above and beyond their technical knowledge of the law).

[Stacey McLarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read for Solo Attorney

This book is full of practical advice and helpful tips. The authors presume that you do want to have a profitable law firm, but your work is there to support a good life, not the other way around. I have been a listener of the lawyers podcast for a while, and think this group is a lot to offer solo and small practitioners.

[Bill Zawrotny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, thought-provoking book that is helpful to any attorney, not just those in small firms or thinking about starting small firms. The practice of law is changing, and it's important to get ahead of it as quickly as possible.

[Maradona_2185hotmail.Com · Rating 1 out of 5]

I donsreadi Yat

[Mark Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is packed full of information. I suggest anyone starting or operating a small law firm read this book.

[Sarvesh Desai · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides very interesting and unique perspectives on the future of the practice of law firms and provides practical tips to apply the strategies at a firm. It is written for small firms, but applicable to firms of all sizes.