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.

Answer phone calls periodically throughout the day. In this day and age, if someone is calling and leaving a message, it is a sign that it is of an urgent nature. Otherwise, they may just send an e-mail. So return phone calls promptly. If the call is not from a client but from a referral source or a prospect, you may be one person on a short list of attorneys they are calling in order to refer work or to solve a problem. The first interaction that prospects have is your responsiveness to their phone call inquiry. Again, return the phone call immediately, even if only to request a conference call the next day. This is the first impression someone will have to evaluate your responsiveness ' make it a good one.

Enter your time daily. There is nothing more annoying to everyone at the firm than delinquent timekeepers. Managing partners are annoyed because they are trying to evaluate the capacity of the firm and determine who needs work and to whom they can delegate more work. Firm administrators are annoyed as they are trying to evaluate the profitability of the firm and cannot do so with only a limited number of timekeepers up-to-date in the system. The time and billing managers are annoyed, as they are responsible for making sure all time is entered in order to report to their superiors or run a final bill for a client. When time is not entered daily, attorneys tend to forget what they did, or not add enough description in order to process the required bill at the end of the month. Entering time daily improves utilization as more billable time is recorded. It also improves realization as more accurate and descriptive time is entered, making it easier to explain a bill to a client in terms of value received. Entering time daily gives the leaders in the firm up-to-date information on who needs work in order to make a positive impact on the current month's profitability. If time is required only to be up-to-date at the end of the week, then there is less time to make an impact on the current month's profitability. You cannot impact performance in a current month if you only enter time monthly.

Prioritize your workload for the next day. Given that there are only so many hours in the day, at the end of each day you should prioritize what you want to accomplish the next day. Make a list of what must get done and segregate that list into three categories: 1) My assistant can do; 2) I can delegate to an associate or another attorney who needs work; and 3) I must do. You will be surprised how many tasks are on your to-do list that you do not actually have to do. By delegating work to an associate or your assistant, you are expanding the work that gets accomplished, improving utilization at the firm and also saving clients money by delegating work to an appropriate level, i.e., at lower rates.

Weekly

Prioritize your schedule and workload for the next week. While prioritizing work on a daily basis is vital, it is even more important and rewarding when done for the next week. Make sure you can schedule tasks and goals at least a week in advance so that you can request the necessary resources that might not be available in a pinch. By reviewing and scheduling your workload for the next week at the end of the previous week, you can realistically determine what is important versus urgent so that you can leave time for those important matters. Important matters are those tasks that no one may realize you did not do but that will make you and the firm more successful in the long run. They may help your productivity next month or next year ' long-term goals. If all tasks end up being placed in the urgent “must do” category, then this usually comes at a cost ' more stress for you and your staff, and usually tasks are then handled by whoever is available instead of the appropriately skilled person.

Meet with staff for which you are responsible. Make sure you meet with all your staff for which you are responsible. By “responsible,” I mean officially or unofficially. “Officially” may be someone for whom you are assigned as a mentor or who is working directly with you on a project. “Unofficially” may be someone who is located in your vicinity at work or is assigned to another practice area that you can help the firm groom into a more productive and skillful attorney. Too often, skillful associates get lost because their practice area may be slow and partners in other areas do not feel responsible to brainstorm how they can benefit from sharing resources to improve the firm's overall utilization. It always surprises me how partners in one practice group feel no responsibility for helping partners or associates in another practice group. If this behavior were part of the compensation system, then I am sure firms would be more profitable.

Monthly

Check in with your clients. Even if there is no project or task at hand, check in with your recurring clients on at least a monthly basis. This should be a weekly basis for some clients and a daily basis for others. But, at a minimum, you should be in touch with all your clients you billed last year on at least a monthly basis. It may be a two-minute phone call to say, “Hello, I've been thinking of you.” We are often so busy that we do not have time to leave our offices and assign work to other staff. Then, when someone stops by our office and ask if we need any help, we have a laundry list of things that need completing. This works with clients the same way. They are busy too, and you will sometimes be surprised when you call a client who you have not heard from in a while. You may find they are glad you called, as this issue came up with which you may be able to help.

If there is a project in process and you have not heard back from your client, or if you failed to give your client a timeframe within which he or she should respond back to you, you should follow up and not wait for your client to get back to you “because the ball is in his court.” Your client will appreciate your proactive service, and you will get better, timelier results for your client.

Revisit your marketing and business development goals. Set goals for what you want to accomplish this month in terms of marketing and business development, based on your annual plan and current results to date. Call your referral sources with whom you have not met this quarter and schedule a breakfast, lunch or dinner for next month. About 40%-50% of your business should come from your recurring referral sources ' bankers, accountants, insurance agents and business associates who are centers of influence. Call current clients and take them to a sporting event. About 10%-20% of your business referrals should come from satisfied clients. Meet with other attorneys you know at other firms or through bar associations. About 15%-20% of your business should come from other attorneys who are calling you for an expertise that their firm does not have or because of a conflict of interest.

Finalize your bills within five business days after month-end. If you could finalize your monthly bills within five to seven business days of the previous month end, then you can turn around your collections rate dramatically. Many businesses pay their invoices once a month, and if you can get into the early payment cycle of a client, you could potentially speed up collections by 30 days.

Conclusion

Planning and goal-setting are two important keys to success. If you do not write down your goals and set deadlines, the chances that you will accomplish them by year-end are slim to none. If you schedule out your goals for the next year in 90-day buckets, you will be surprised by how many you will accomplish and what a positive impact you will have on 2010. To be successful, you also need to define your behaviors on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. By being disciplined, you will be more productive, efficient and successful and you will not be revisiting the same items on your to-do list ' month after month ' that you never seem to have the time “to do.”

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.

Answer phone calls periodically throughout the day. In this day and age, if someone is calling and leaving a message, it is a sign that it is of an urgent nature. Otherwise, they may just send an e-mail. So return phone calls promptly. If the call is not from a client but from a referral source or a prospect, you may be one person on a short list of attorneys they are calling in order to refer work or to solve a problem. The first interaction that prospects have is your responsiveness to their phone call inquiry. Again, return the phone call immediately, even if only to request a conference call the next day. This is the first impression someone will have to evaluate your responsiveness ' make it a good one.

Enter your time daily. There is nothing more annoying to everyone at the firm than delinquent timekeepers. Managing partners are annoyed because they are trying to evaluate the capacity of the firm and determine who needs work and to whom they can delegate more work. Firm administrators are annoyed as they are trying to evaluate the profitability of the firm and cannot do so with only a limited number of timekeepers up-to-date in the system. The time and billing managers are annoyed, as they are responsible for making sure all time is entered in order to report to their superiors or run a final bill for a client. When time is not entered daily, attorneys tend to forget what they did, or not add enough description in order to process the required bill at the end of the month. Entering time daily improves utilization as more billable time is recorded. It also improves realization as more accurate and descriptive time is entered, making it easier to explain a bill to a client in terms of value received. Entering time daily gives the leaders in the firm up-to-date information on who needs work in order to make a positive impact on the current month's profitability. If time is required only to be up-to-date at the end of the week, then there is less time to make an impact on the current month's profitability. You cannot impact performance in a current month if you only enter time monthly.

Prioritize your workload for the next day. Given that there are only so many hours in the day, at the end of each day you should prioritize what you want to accomplish the next day. Make a list of what must get done and segregate that list into three categories: 1) My assistant can do; 2) I can delegate to an associate or another attorney who needs work; and 3) I must do. You will be surprised how many tasks are on your to-do list that you do not actually have to do. By delegating work to an associate or your assistant, you are expanding the work that gets accomplished, improving utilization at the firm and also saving clients money by delegating work to an appropriate level, i.e., at lower rates.

Weekly

Prioritize your schedule and workload for the next week. While prioritizing work on a daily basis is vital, it is even more important and rewarding when done for the next week. Make sure you can schedule tasks and goals at least a week in advance so that you can request the necessary resources that might not be available in a pinch. By reviewing and scheduling your workload for the next week at the end of the previous week, you can realistically determine what is important versus urgent so that you can leave time for those important matters. Important matters are those tasks that no one may realize you did not do but that will make you and the firm more successful in the long run. They may help your productivity next month or next year ' long-term goals. If all tasks end up being placed in the urgent “must do” category, then this usually comes at a cost ' more stress for you and your staff, and usually tasks are then handled by whoever is available instead of the appropriately skilled person.

Meet with staff for which you are responsible. Make sure you meet with all your staff for which you are responsible. By “responsible,” I mean officially or unofficially. “Officially” may be someone for whom you are assigned as a mentor or who is working directly with you on a project. “Unofficially” may be someone who is located in your vicinity at work or is assigned to another practice area that you can help the firm groom into a more productive and skillful attorney. Too often, skillful associates get lost because their practice area may be slow and partners in other areas do not feel responsible to brainstorm how they can benefit from sharing resources to improve the firm's overall utilization. It always surprises me how partners in one practice group feel no responsibility for helping partners or associates in another practice group. If this behavior were part of the compensation system, then I am sure firms would be more profitable.

Monthly

Check in with your clients. Even if there is no project or task at hand, check in with your recurring clients on at least a monthly basis. This should be a weekly basis for some clients and a daily basis for others. But, at a minimum, you should be in touch with all your clients you billed last year on at least a monthly basis. It may be a two-minute phone call to say, “Hello, I've been thinking of you.” We are often so busy that we do not have time to leave our offices and assign work to other staff. Then, when someone stops by our office and ask if we need any help, we have a laundry list of things that need completing. This works with clients the same way. They are busy too, and you will sometimes be surprised when you call a client who you have not heard from in a while. You may find they are glad you called, as this issue came up with which you may be able to help.

If there is a project in process and you have not heard back from your client, or if you failed to give your client a timeframe within which he or she should respond back to you, you should follow up and not wait for your client to get back to you “because the ball is in his court.” Your client will appreciate your proactive service, and you will get better, timelier results for your client.

Revisit your marketing and business development goals. Set goals for what you want to accomplish this month in terms of marketing and business development, based on your annual plan and current results to date. Call your referral sources with whom you have not met this quarter and schedule a breakfast, lunch or dinner for next month. About 40%-50% of your business should come from your recurring referral sources ' bankers, accountants, insurance agents and business associates who are centers of influence. Call current clients and take them to a sporting event. About 10%-20% of your business referrals should come from satisfied clients. Meet with other attorneys you know at other firms or through bar associations. About 15%-20% of your business should come from other attorneys who are calling you for an expertise that their firm does not have or because of a conflict of interest.

Finalize your bills within five business days after month-end. If you could finalize your monthly bills within five to seven business days of the previous month end, then you can turn around your collections rate dramatically. Many businesses pay their invoices once a month, and if you can get into the early payment cycle of a client, you could potentially speed up collections by 30 days.

Conclusion

Planning and goal-setting are two important keys to success. If you do not write down your goals and set deadlines, the chances that you will accomplish them by year-end are slim to none. If you schedule out your goals for the next year in 90-day buckets, you will be surprised by how many you will accomplish and what a positive impact you will have on 2010. To be successful, you also need to define your behaviors on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. By being disciplined, you will be more productive, efficient and successful and you will not be revisiting the same items on your to-do list ' month after month ' that you never seem to have the time “to do.”