If you own a small law firm like I do, it’s hard to pull your attention away from the obligation to bill. Billing is to lawyers like breathing is to normal humans: It’s what keeps us alive. But in the meantime, other goals and priorities of your firm can get swept under the rug with the single-minded focus on billing. Sure, we have regular owner’s meetings, but even those are rushed over the lunch hour with our eyes on the clock. Issues are discussed, but decisions are rarely made in exchange for the usually unfulfilled promise to “follow up by email.”
Historically, my firm used to schedule a weekend retreat off-site to allow us to get away from the office both physically and mentally and focus on long-term planning. However, just scheduling a weekend that works for everyone can become its own challenge. It also can be expensive, which is sort of ridiculous given that the purpose of a retreat is often to find ways to save money or make more of it.
One solution to the cost and scheduling problems is a “mini-retreat.” By that, I mean blocking out a few hours during a work day when everyone will be in the office anyway, during which the owners or attorneys have a chance to discuss more big-picture items. We scheduled four hours, which gave us the chance to get some billing done that day.
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I still suggest scheduling a mini retreat somewhere other than the office. But it doesn’t have to be far away, as travel time is a consideration. My office building, for example, has a conference room available for tenants. It has a view of a different part of the city, so we could pretend we weren’t just higher up in the same structure. Order box lunches so people have something to look forward to (make sure it’s the kind that comes with a cookie… based on personal experience, I can attest that it keeps morale up).
Have someone prepare an agenda ahead of time. Plan on talking about high-level questions — like “where do we want to be as a firm in five years?” — along with more concrete inquiries, such as “how much should we provide employees for parking or bus passes?” If you have time, discuss each employee with respect to how they provide value to the firm, and how the professional relationship between the firm and that employee can be improved to the benefit of both. Other topics depend on the issues concerning your particular firm: They could include items like transition of ownership, insurance coverage, budgeting, marketing, and the physical space in which you work. (For example, could you maximize income by subleasing open offices? If so, what would be required to make that happen?)
Stick to your agenda. Busy lawyers are sometimes inclined to treat partner meetings and retreats as recess from billing. And while everyone deserves a break once in a while, that opportunity only comes to lawyers upon retirement. When you wander away from the agenda items, probably to talk about industry gossip, be sure to get back to business.
As an individual owner or attorney, don’t just sit back and wait for your chopped salad to arrive. Actively participate, or risk losing the opportunity to have your voice heard. If you don’t speak up, you can’t complain about the decisions made later. (Sort of like that presidential election we had that didn’t go so well.) But avoid pointing out only objections or negatives: A primary purpose of a retreat is to come up with solutions to problems. Plus it’s just annoying to have someone at a meeting crushing everyone else’s ideas.
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Plan on actually making decisions at the retreat instead of just kicking them down the road. Toward the end of the retreat, if you don’t otherwise plan on having staff present, bring in your person who actually gets stuff done (for us, our firm administrator) and provide her with a list of decisions made and tasks required to implement those decisions. Also make sure you personally do any follow-up work on your plate to make the mini retreat worth its time. That could be sending out an email to employees notifying them of a new policy, or checking subleasing rights under your office rental agreement.
In the meantime, use a mini retreat as an opportunity to reflect on the personal goals for your own career. Often we are so tied up with billable work that our sights are limited to merely hitting our billable requirements and surviving a phone call with a mansplaining opposing lawyer. But the fact is that your career is not inextricably tied to your law firm, and as a law-firm owner, you need to focus on both thriving as an entity and as an individual. In fact, our mini retreat prompted me to finally sign up for mediation training, which has been on my non-billable to-do list since I was four years old and resolved problems by throwing things.
The fact is that firm partners have to think long-term as business owners. And, day to day, often it is hard to see farther than our individual billable hour requirements. But setting aside the time for a mini retreat can give you the chance to step back from the daily grind and focus on the bigger picture. And you’ll also get a cookie out of the deal.
Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at [email protected].