Michelle Peters
The economic outlook is changing quickly, and not for the better.
With rising costs and wage increase demands from staff, and the potential impact of the cost of living crisis on the ability of some clients to pay lawyers’ fees, law firm owners need to act quickly to protect their current levels of fee income and profits, and ensure they can continue to thrive regardless of external issues.
Here are 3 Critical Steps to take in the next few weeks:
1. PROTECT
It’s essential to protect your firm from the increasing economic pressures of higher running costs, wage inflation, and the cost of living crisis that will impact the ability of some clients to pay your fees.
This means assessing whether you have the right client-generation systems in place to attract enquiries from high-paying clients in profitable areas of your firm and then to convert those enquiries without having to lower your fees. What’s already working that you could do more of? Or what worked in the past that you could do again?
It also means ensuring that the work you do for your clients remains profitable despite your rising costs. Raising your fees could be one option to maintain profitability, but other measures like increasing the productivity and efficiency of your team could be alternative solutions.
2. PIVOT
The next step is to decide where you need to change direction or strategy to ensure continuity of both current fee income and profit levels and to support future profitable growth.Even if you already have good client and profit-generating strategies in place, you will undoubtedly need to adapt or update them to make sure they continue to work throughout the coming period of economic uncertainty. How will your clients’ needs change during the coming months, and how can you adapt your marketing and delivery of your services to meet those needs?
3. PLAN
Once you’ve considered the above issues, it’s time to put together a specific plan setting out the steps you need to take. Your plan should clearly identify the order of priority for the areas you need to protect, and the areas where you need to pivot. Start with what will give you the biggest result in the shortest time – for example, raising your fees, or improving your conversion rates for new enquiries.
The key to success in this fast changing economic climate is to act quickly – a good offence is the best form of defence.
We recommend a ‘3 Step Accelerator’ planning process which enables you to quickly identify the most vulnerable areas of your law firm, and the biggest opportunities for profitable growth. This means you can avoid being overwhelmed or spending time on the wrong things and instead focus on what’s most important and what will bring the biggest results in the shortest time. If you’d like help to create your plan using this process then join our free online webinar on 13th or 26th October by registering here: www.thebusinessinstructor.com/protect