The Biggest Mistakes New Law Firm Owners Make (and How to Avoid Them)

While starting your own law firm can be incredibly exciting, it’s also something of a risk. In fact, a recent Harvard study reported that, “firms die with extreme ease and astonishing speed,” especially in the current climate. Fortunately, there are many steps that you can take to ensure that you’re putting your best foot forward.

For example, you should start by familiarizing yourself with common law firm mistakes, so that you are then able to avoid them.

Not choosing a niche. While offering a wide range of legal services may seem like a great way to build a large client base, niche firms tend to perform better overall. This is because it gives you the chance to become experts within a specific field, improving your overall success rates. It also means that potential clients have more faith in your firm.

Finding a niche will also help to improve upon your marketing efforts, as you have a unique selling point that you can draw upon in your campaigns. As such, it becomes a little easier to stand out from the crowd.

Poor time management. Poor time management is a drain on your time, energy and resources. Despite this, it is something that many first-time law firm owners fall victim to, often because they are trying to do too much at once. Fortunately, there are a few different ways in which you can work around this. 

For example, you should start by putting together a daily to-do-list, making sure that tasks with rapidly approaching deadlines are completed first. However, you should also make sure that you start hiring additional staff as soon as you possibly can. This way, you’ve got a talented legal team on hand to help you grow and scale your business. 

Not pricing your services correctly. Many new law firm owners tend to underprice their services. While the reasoning behind this is understandable, it could mean that you’re working far below the market rate, meaning that you are not properly compensated for your time and effort. Furthermore, it could actually stop clients from reaching out, as they may believe that low prices suggest low quality work.

As such, you should make sure that you price your services competitively from the word go. Furthermore, its perfectly acceptable for these prices to rise over time, though you should make sure that you communicate this with existing clients ahead of time.

Not knowing how to handle your finances. Another common mistake made by new law firm owners is mishandling their finances, such as by not keeping accurate records, or struggling to build a healthy cash flow. This can be remedied right away by working with skilled legal accountants, such as member of the FinOp Group team.

Together, we can ensure that your firm is in the best possible position in terms of finances. Get in touch today to find out more!