A Portrait of Your Ideal Law Firm

Sanford Fisch recently blogged about finding your primary aim: creating a detailed picture of the lifestyle you want, encompassing your work and personal life as well as your involvement in the community. Once you’ve painted this vivid portrait of your ideal life, how do you bring it into being?

The next step is finding your firm’s strategic objective; in other words, creating a picture of the business you want to have that will generate the net revenue to support your ideal life. Not a daydream or a pipe dream – a detailed picture complete with milestones for accomplishing clearly defined goals. Where to begin?

Decide on your practice area. Will you focus on estate planning? What types of estate planning – basic, intermediate, or advanced? Will you include elder law, asset protection planning, pet planning, or lgbt planning? What about the myriad other areas of focus now in demand by estate planning clients?

Assign a number to the amount of revenue you want to generate. Think about what geographic area you’ll cover. Will you have one office? Will you have a satellite office? What will your offices look like, inside and out? How many employees will you have?

How will clients find out about your practice? How will they feel when they walk into your office? When they interact with you and your employees? What will your law firm’s relationship be with the people and other businesses in your community?

Take time to think in detailed terms about what your firm will look and feel like. By the time you’re finished, you should have a rich and detailed portrait of the law firm you want to bring to life. Then, you’ll be ready for the next step – mapping out an organizational strategy for your business. We’ll cover that in a future blog!

Robert Armstrong
President and Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (800) 846-1555
www.aaepa.com