2023 Small and Solo Firm Practice Jumpstart
If you are a solo attorney or a manger of a small firm, there are a handful of things you can do in early 2023 in order to jumpstart growth for your firm, and to improve your quality of life. As a small firm owner myself, I’ve written this short summary because I’m sick and tired of bullshit artists trying to sell hype & hustle porn to fellow attorneys.
Let’s dive in.
Dial-in your Google Business Profile. If you don’t know what this is, figure it out quickly because you’re losing business. If you already have one, improve it with a more detailed description, professional photographs, and video (video is rolling out in 2023 so get some videos ready and in-the-can for upload soon). Cost: Free
Dial-in your social media profiles. Even if you don’t regularly post, make sure you’re LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles all look professional, mention your firm, and link to your website. Cost: Free
If you don’t already have a professional, consistent, and reliable means for answer all telephone calls, sign up for an answering service. It’s far less expensive than having a receptionist on the payroll, and it can offer 24/7 coverage. Smith.AI is a good choice. If you use my referral code, I get some sort of credit (not sure how much), and you get $100 off. I’m not recommending them because of the affiliate cash or reward; I’m recommending them because they offer a great service. Cost: Varies depending on the plan, but cheaper than apart-time receptionist.
If you don’t already have a comprehensive and versatile CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, sign up for HubSpot. If you’re still using a basic Microsoft, Google, or Apple Contacts app, it’s really time to upgrade. HubSpot will integrate seamlessly with other apps and services (e.g. Smith.AI, website forms, etc) and allow you to save far more valuable data about prospective, current, and past clients. Cost: Free
If you don’t already have a comprehensive, consistent, and robust intake system, sign up for intake, sign up for Lawmatics or Clio Grow. Note: An intake system is different than a CRM in that you can set up checklists and even automations to keep track of where leads, prospective clients, and actual clients are at in the sales pipeline. A full-description of what these two suggested systems can offer is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say that they can easily be used by a solo or small firm, and they each cost less than an hour of your billable time each month, so they are worth the cost. Lawmatics has a bit more of a learning curve, but it’s more powerful for automation. Clio Grow is more limited, but integrates better with Clio Manage if you use Clio as your practice management software.
If you don’t already have a comprehensive and efficient practice management and billing software, you’ve got several options. First, let’s assume you are fresh out of law school or you just opened your practice and you don’t have a lot of money. HubSpot’s free CRM and Google’s free suite of cloud software is actually all you really need to run a full law practice. Yes, really. You’ve got a powerful word processing system with Google Docs. You’ve got the equivalent of MS Excel with Google Sheets. You’ve got a rival to MS PowerPoint with Google Slides. Finally, Google Drive is a very serious competitor to DropBox. Using Google Sheets, you can keep track of time and billing by giving each client a Sheet, and you can track all your cases with another Sheet (detailing all your current clients and next action steps on all their cases). Now, all this being said, you are going to likely want to add Clio to do your practice management and billing because it will likely pay for itself in increased efficiency and capturing small billable matters that might otherwise go undocumented. Cost: $39 to $129/mo.