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5 Steps Every Law Firm Leader Should Take Now To Prepare For 2019

Law firm leaders: it’s time for New Year’s resolutions. Here’s where to start.

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The champagne bottles have all been popped and the party hats are back in the box at the top of the closet. Earth has started one more revolution around the sun. But if you’ve been following this column, you know that Times Square isn’t the only place that’s dropping the ball. Law firm leaders everywhere are due for a long look at themselves in the mirror, and some New Year’s Resolutions aimed toward a stronger, more profitable 2019. My humble recommendations are as follows.

Prepare For A Potential Downturn

It’s not if, it’s when. The U.S. has been on a 115-month-long trend of economic expansion, the second-longest it’s ever experienced. If it continues into June, we’ll have set a new record. But the fundamentals of economics remain in play. Every economic expansion in history has been followed by a downturn, and we have no reason to suspect the laws of financial nature have changed overnight. Any student of economics could tell you a recession is likely on the horizon, and that’s without even considering the looming macro issues of cold trade wars, Brexit, and all the other instabilities primed to drag on the world economy.

Whether it arrives in the next two years or the next two weeks, the market is in for a makeover, and that means the kinds of legal services we need to stand ready to provide will be changing substantially. Boom-period practices like real estate and finance will likely get quieter, while counter-cyclical practices like bankruptcy and litigation will probably heat up. Smart practice managers will adjust their staffing accordingly, to hopefully attract future superstars before their practices explode, or to help attorneys with vulnerable books prepare and adapt for the slowdown. And if it hasn’t been done recently, now is the time to evaluate and cut ongoing expenses, avoid new debt, and sock cash away for a rainy day.

Build Up Your Non-Legal Network And Knowledge

We lawyers have a bad habit of spending way too much time in our own company. It’s fun and easy to talk shop, and it makes sense that fellow attorneys would be the prime hubs on our business and social networks. But if you want to take your book, your practice, and your firm to the next level in the coming year, a focus on non-legal networking is a great start.

Many, if not most, law firm leaders have little to no business training. We see plenty of business deals go through, and the litigators amongst us may see them go wrong, but we rarely have any experience in the trenches of running a non-legal business. We do our clients a disservice if we can only see their business through our Biglaw lens. Getting outside the legal bubble means exposing ourselves to new ideas, new ways of getting things done.

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Take a free business course online through a resource like EdX.org. Join a non-attorney networking group like Vistage or Toastmasters. Find mentors who don’t have “J.D.” at the end of their nameplate. If nothing else, it’s a more efficient way to generate clients than grabbing drinks with your law school buddies for the millionth time. Who’s more likely to send work your way, the CFO of a major regional business, or one of the 50 attorneys you know who directly compete in your area of practice? Let’s bust out of our social comfort zones and make some new connections.

Stop Wasting People’s Time

We all likely attend plenty of meetings that didn’t need to happen, or that took hours to successfully address 15 minutes of content. We only have so many hours in the day, and Biglaw bureaucracy bloat tends to suck those hours up. Firm gatherings are vital to maintaining culture and connectedness, but it’s equally important for those gatherings to have purpose and focus.

If the purpose of a meeting is to go over important firm business, have an agenda, stick to it, and table any issues not on that agenda. If the meeting is intended to be a chance for the team to hang out and bond, keep work out of the conversation and let everyone focus on the team-building they’re supposed to be working on. If the standing monthly meeting doesn’t need to happen, scratch it for this month and let everyone stay focused on productivity. We bill our clients hundreds of dollars for an hour of our time; why not treat it with that same value ourselves?

Listen More, Listen Better

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Communication between management and staff is a constant source of tension across every sector of the business world, but we have less excuse for it now than ever. We have so many ways to communicate amongst ourselves, and we need to be taking advantage of it.

Fifty years ago, if firm management wanted to gauge job satisfaction, it would have to visit every attorney in the firm, one at a time, and engage them in a conversation. Today, firm management can send out an email blast in a few seconds, either with in-house listservs or dedicated web tools, that enable firm members to provide fast, candid feedback in seconds. Try taking the pulse of the firm by sending out a one-line question to all hands: what could we be doing better? Ideas for improvement may come across your radar that never would have gotten there otherwise.

Watch Your Head

Finally, the job isn’t getting any easier. Market competition is going up and clients want more for less every month. The weight of the world will crush you if you let it. So don’t let it.

Engage in self-care. Take a break every once in a while. Hit the gym. Sneak off for an afternoon and go see a movie with friends or family. Delegate or farm out everything that isn’t your core business. Talk openly and honestly about the stresses of your work with someone you trust. Take care of the people around you, because we’re all in this together.

It’s gonna be a good year if we make it that way. Let’s have some fun.

James Goodnow

James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of an NLJ 250 law firm. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management category. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

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