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Planning for a Successful 2010
As a participant in a law firm, you should be thinking about what you can do to contribute to the success of the firm on a frequent basis. Whether you are the managing partner, a practice group leader or an associate, your daily, weekly and monthly activities should contribute not only to your personal goals, but to the firm's goals as well. In addition, your goals should include those related to current clients, potential clients, marketing and firm administration. The following are some important goal-setting techniques and some examples you should keep in mind throughout the year, not only to make sure you are growing personally, but also to make sure you have contributed to the overall growth of the firm in a meaningful way. The goals are broken down into three categories: Annual (what you want to accomplish in the next year); Mid-term (what you want to accomplish in the next 30 to 90 days); and Short-term (what you want to accomplish daily, weekly and monthly).
Annual Goals
Set your financial goals. Set financial goals for the upcoming year in terms of billable hours, billings and collections. Break your goals down by client to see what can be achieved within your current base. Then determine the shortfall from your goals. This is the basis for setting your business development goals. Some examples:
For the 20 current clients I have, I plan on billing 1,600 hours of my time and 5,400 hours of other attorneys' time based on actual results from last year and work in the pipeline. This will result in 7,000 hours of billable time on my originated clients. Since my goal is 10,000 originated hours, I have a shortfall of 3,000 hours. If I bill on average 350 hours for each client, then I need about nine new clients this year or I need to increase the number of matters from current clients.
I will increase my realization from 91%-95% this year. I will review any client with less than 85% realization and consider terminating the relationship if I cannot increase the billing rates or figure out a way to service the client more efficiently.
Set your business development goals. How much work do you need to generate? What current leads are you working on and what is the likelihood of closing them? What fees may be generated in the current year? Your needs for developing new business will set the base activity for your marketing goals. How many new meetings a month are needed to meet these goals?
Set your marketing goals. How many one-on-one meetings with centers of influence and referral sources will you have this year? How many seminars will you volunteer to sponsor or be listed as a presenter? How many newspapers or magazine articles will you write related to your expertise? Set your annual goals and break them down by month.
For example:
I will have five to 10 marketing activities a month, two sporting events a month, one association meeting, and five to seven breakfast meetings.
In addition, I will plan on presenting at seminars related to my expertise in June, July and September. June will be an in-house, firm-sponsored seminar; July will be a seminar in conjunction with a local bank; and September will be a seminar at the bar association.
Set your administrative goals. How will you contribute to the firm's administrative accomplishments? An example may be to help plan the firm annual partners' retreat. Another goal may be to revisit the partnership agreement for clarity and compliance with new laws and regulations. Another may be to create and implement a new partner capital contribution program.
Mid-term Goals
Annual goals will never be accomplished if you do not break them down into mid-term goals. Most project-based annual goals do not get realized unless you plan to complete them in the next 30-90 days.
Go through your list of annual goals and set up a schedule to either accomplish half of them in the next 90 days or to complete a solid timeline in 30 days on how they will be done over the next year.
Some examples are as follows:
Over the next 30 days, I will review the partnership agreement with our firm counsel for any suggested changes and draft a memo to the partner group with recommendations.
Over the next 30 days, I will form a committee that will be in charge of setting the agenda for the annual firm retreat. We will find a facilitator in the next 60 days and schedule the retreat for the third week of June.
Short-Term Goals
Short-term goals are defined here as those that will be accomplished on an ongoing daily, weekly or monthly basis. These should be more specific.
Daily Goals
Clear e-mails daily. Make it a goal to clear all your e-mails before going to bed every night. This does not mean you will complete the task immediately, but you are proactively scheduling this task to be accomplished in accordance with a client or firm deadline. It is good client service to address an e-mail and respond in a reasonable time, even if you cannot complete the requested assignment. Call the client and set expectations of when you can address the issue. Otherwise, your clients or your partners will think that they are not important.
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