How to Scale Your Law Firm for Real Freedom This Summer

So this summer, when you take a vacation with your family, are you gonna be stuck, plugged into your cell phone and your laptop, checking into the office on a regular basis, justifying your decision while everybody else is hanging out, having fun and. You are still having to work a little bit from the room, work a little bit in the morning before everybody gets started.

Work a little bit when everybody goes to bed and you kind of get to enjoy some downtime in between.

And you see that as a break, but secretly, you know that that sucks.

Wouldn't it be great if it was possible to not have to be plugged into your cell phone and your laptop while you're on vacation with your family, your friends, or by yourself, and you can actually enjoy a completely.

Unplugged vacation.

Look, I know this is possible.

When I built this firm on the heels of building a law firm, I did so using the same plan. The law firm that I built, the goal was to build it to be as profitable as he had it before. 'cause he came from another law firm and then it was to get him so he could take his first month long vacation.

AY finalist, that were in the: 2024

I have done it for a law firm owner, then I now do it for myself. When I built this business, I decided to take July and December off completely. I've been able to manage that most of the way through exceptions to be sure COVID one of 'em. I'm sure there was exceptions there for you too. and now you know, Joel Silverman, entrepreneur, attorney of the year, finalist, was able to do the exact same thing by rising to that CEO level.

And so the question is what is it that you have to do? the answer is, there are just a few simple steps, but the first starts with, some analysis and a decision. if you are not able to take a vacation without being plugged into your cell phone or your laptop without having to check in with your office every day, multiple times a day, and that's not able to happen for you.

I want you to stop lying to yourself. what's normal is for business owners to actually be able to take a break. Maybe the business owners you hang around with, do it the way that you are doing it. That doesn't mean they're right, The truth is you can actually build your practice in a way that you can take a vacation. I challenge you that at the end of this video, you're gonna make some decisions so that you are gonna be able to take maybe your first vacation, even if it's a weekend without your cell phone and your laptop, without checking in with your office, without checking what's going on in your messages.

Oh my gosh. You're like, wait, what? Yeah, I don't want you to check email. Well, who's gonna check it? Exactly. So let's break it down. you have a decision to make first. the first thing I want you to determine is where you are. Let me break this down for you. when it comes to taking a vacation, this is the reason why you're not able to take a vacation without your cell phone and your laptop, without being completely plugged in.

This is why, most law firm owners don't understand where they are right now. you think you want to get to the place where you can take a vacation without your cell phone and laptop plugged into your rear end? Right? Okay. Well there's this C and this is the journey that you have to take to get there, and you have to identify where you are.

Now there are four possible levels where you could be as a law firm owner. There's level one, level two, level three, and level four. I'll give you the last one first. This is the investor level. some people tell me they want to be here. This is where they're not doing the law.

They're not being the CEO, they're not running the practice at all. Somebody else is running the practice, and they're just realizing the profits in order for you to do this. You've gotta be generating at least one to $2 million in EBITDA owners benefit profit, from your firm.

That's not gross revenues, that's the profit, which means you have to be at probably 4 million plus, possibly five to 6 million depending on practice area in order to be able to get here. And then there are companies that will step in. And help rich people become richer. That's just the reality there.

There are companies who will step in, manage your firm and help rich people become richer. you can also do it yourself and hire professional leadership, and that's harder. it needs more structure. some of you don't have the systems and structure in place to accomplish that.

You have what you need to get you to where you are, but for you to go from 5 million to 10 million's, a whole nother skillset. there are companies that know how to do that if that's something you're interested in, reach out, let us know. We can connect you. and yes, we are absolutely affiliated.

now the first level is the attorney level, and that's where, everybody's reporting to you. You have one to maybe five people on your firm and that they all report to you and you're probably doing all the law yourself. most of you are doing this poorly. you're at a hundred thousand dollars, or you're at, 300 or 400,000, maybe 500,000 and, you feel stuck.

to maximize this you need to be doing, more than 750,000 and somewhere up to about. 1.2 million, depending on practice area. You really want to be in this sweet zone, to maximize your profit. You want to do something that we call, keep it.

small. Keep it all. Kiss Kia. I actually have a company called Kiss Kia. It will be a title of a book someday for me. Don't go buying that book title on me now. You wanna maximize your profitability, you wanna be able to take December and July off.

You wanna be able to take vacation at yourself on your laptop. You can do that. the level three attorney is what we call the CEO. most attorneys, call this freedom when they get here because, what this means is You're not doing the legal work, you've got a team of people running it.

the firm operates at a high level of profitability. all of these should be between 30 to 50%, maybe even more, profitability, meaning total owners benefit. if you're not there, there's already a problem, the CEO level is also known as freedom. the idea of getting there is that you could live your life as you choose to live it while still running the firm.

You still have responsibilities. difficult days for sure. You still have management client responsibilities or customer service, communication issues to deal with, but you're dealing with a team, you're not doing the work yourself. leading's hard.

I'm not gonna deny that. running a business is difficult and running a law firm is even harder. But, but you're, you're out of level two. And, and that's really, this is the manager level. most attorneys, call this hell. And, and so if you're not able to take that, vacation.

without yourself on your laptop, it, it's probably because you're, below seven 50 mark, you're, you're under this, right? You're less than the seven 50 mark and you're not profitable like you should be. you're doing everything and you feel like if you stop, your business stops and you're scared to death to do that.

'cause you got bills to pay or whatever. or you're just, in a lousy place you're not maximizing it. You're, you haven't crossed the threshold of that. 20, 30, $40,000 a month where you can start to really gain some traction or, you're stuck in this hell level. I'm sorry if you're there, I'm not shaming you, I'm not throwing shit on you. I've been there. if you're not able to get to where you want to get to it's really because you're there.

You have to decide, right? So you have to decide if you're in the manager level, are you gonna go up or back down, to the attorney level. if you're here like you're at that 1.24 or 5, 6, 7 level and you're in hell, maybe even up to 1.8 in that range, depending on practice area, if you're in here.

You gotta decide, are you gonna go back down to the attorney level and maximize profitability and shrink it, we'll call it contraction. That's healthy. There's nothing wrong with that. Or, are you gonna ascend to the CEO level?

Now here's the thing, it's a math equation. It's an effort equation. if you're at 1.2 or 1.5 million and I need you to get to 3 million 'cause of your practice area because this CEO level, just to be clear, let's get rid of this, this CEO level, to get, to get here, depending on practice area is greater than 2.5 and you know, you're somewhere in the five ish million mark.

and once you get to the 5 million mark, you're really poised to be able to get to the investor level if you want. You may not want to, but you're poised to get there. 'cause it does take a different skill set to get from 5 million to 10 million. the honest truth is most firms I know, they don't actually want to get there.

they just want a firm that makes them more money than they spend, and they have their kids' child, you know, college, paid for retirement, paid for, and they wanna plan for the firm to continue forward without them. Most firms are not trying to get to five or 10 million For those who are, it's okay. I've, got plenty of firms that are doing that. Bert ER's, gonna do multiple eight figures. with 60% profitability. I've got other firms that are doing similar type numbers and that, and that's good. And, and they can do that. And, and that's their goal. all the formulas are the same, you just have to do them at a bigger, broader level.

you gotta decide, are you gonna go, up or down? are you gonna go back to the attorney level or try to go up. To the CEO level. Now, if you're at 1.5 and I need you to get to 3 million, that's a hundred percent growth. Where if you're at 1.5 and I need you to get down to like, you know, a million, well now only gotta get 33% reduction.

Lot easier to get a 33% reduction in maximize pro profitability than it is to grow to, $3 million. Now if you're at 2.1, 2.2, depending on practice area, you're kind of at that threshold where you're stuck. you probably need to keep going forward as long as your profitability is strong.

If your profitability sucks, like if you're not keeping that 30 to 50% and you're like, man, I keep like 9% or 10%. you may want to consider going back down. but you may be able to also just make some real quick fixes, to your sales processes or your advertising scenarios. and I've talked about that in another video where I give you a calculator.

it depends, but it starts with your decision as to what you want to do. you gotta know where you are know where you want to go, and then devise a plan to get there.

Alright, so let's talk for a second. if you wanna grow and you're trying to get from the level two attorney to the level three attorney ownership. so you wanna go from the manager level to the CEO level and you've decided that's where I want to go. Maybe even you're at level one and you're ready to take the leap.

Well, here's the thing. I need you to be in level two as short of a time period as possible. 'cause it's called hell for a reason. You can't avoid it. You're gonna go through it, but you just want to minimize the time you spend there. here's a clear plan of action for you.

first thing you need to do is make sure you replace yourself in the sales role. Get out of sales because in the sales role where you're doing the initial consultations or you're answering the phone you are the bottleneck. You're not able to be the CEO, you're not able to make CEO decisions.

You're reactive, and quite frankly, you're probably not as good at as it somebody else would be. I know you're probably awesome at it, but there's somebody else that can do it as well as you can. Maybe better. the second thing you need to do is if you wanna get to the CEO level, you need to give up doing the day-to-day legal work.

You're gonna have to replace yourself as the attorney. that's hard for some of you to hear 'cause you went to law school to be an attorney and maybe you said what? I like being an attorney. Great. Pick and choose a couple of cases to manage, but otherwise you gotta get out of, if you wanna go to the CEO level, you're gonna have to get out of being the attorney, or you're gonna have to pony up and hire a CEO.

which case you're not free 'cause you're now the widget, right? you've gotta do the billing and so that doesn't help you get the vacation in the summer. Typically, if that was the case, I'd rather just stay at level one. Completely honest with you. if you don't want to get outta the attorney level role and you still want to be the attorney, that's a pretty clear indicator.

you should stay at level one and be the best level one. Keep it small, keep it all law firm owner that you possibly can be and maximize that revenue, maximize that profitability and build, optimize for freedom. if you are a, if you do however, want to go to that next level, that, that you def, you definitely have to get out of being the attorney.

So replace yourself in sales, replace yourself in law. And, and get yourself an extremely good executive assistant chief inspection officer, marketing manager that can help you, start to go to the next level, can start help you digest, justify di digest justify that can start helping you identify what you need in your marketing plan and sales.

Another video for another time. But that's a role that you really need, that can help you get to that next level. if you do those things. you'll get there. obviously you also need to invest in coaching. you need somebody to help you. you're probably not gonna know how to do it on your own and there's already a pretty worn path done by, other people

So why not go figure out what they've done? Now, if you want to keep it small and you want to contract, okay, you want to contract. if you're at level two ownership and want to contract down to level one ownership. I would say be prepared to go back and doing some of the legal work, unless you hate it.

then get the attorney and be prepared to do the sales work, one or the other. You're probably gonna have to do one of those two jobs, and do them really well and be excellently trained at it and have a chief inspection officer, somebody who's not an executive assistant, not a marketing manager, but a chief inspection officer.

They're gonna help you inspect all the roles. You probably also need to raise your fees. If you're billing at 350 an hour, you need to go to almost 500 an hour. If you're at $2,500, I need you to figure out how to get to, three to $4,000 for average case value.

you need to increase your fees. You need to make sure you're getting paid. you need to make sure you maximize your conversions in every one of these arguments. You gotta maximize your conversions. You gotta be an expert at sales, and you probably need some coaching to help you understand how to go from level two to level one and retract or contract down.

And, you gotta get over your head trash, right? so I'm just gonna be straight with you. A lot of law firm owners what they really need is a therapist. you have been screwed up since an early age by everybody around you.

Your teachers thought you were the smartest person in the room I'm sure there are exceptions, but for most of you, you excelled at everything you did educationally. you probably had extracurricular activities to help you get into the schools you wanted to go to, you performed well in school.

Clients think you're the smartest person in the room. You're friends. Turn to you and think you're the smartest person in the room on many subjects, even though they have jokes about you being a lawyer behind your back. the judges have an opinion of you. your clients have an opinion of you.

Opposing counsel has an opinion of you, and they think you should act a certain way and be a certain thing. Society has. Taught you that you should be a certain thing. Movies have taught you as an attorney, you should be a certain thing, you should act a certain way. And and they're all wrong.

and the problem is it's impounded on you your whole career. you probably need to break through one or the other. Is a really good therapist that you can work through where this came from. Did it come from mom or dad? Probably did, Or a lack thereof in my case.

did it come from what you went through to become an attorney? you have to make some hard decisions, and if you're having a hard time making those decisions. You probably need some help Whether you're gonna try to scale up or scale down.

You might be stuck where you are because you're not willing to decide, or because you have a vision of yourself or you're trying to look good to society because you're worried what people think about you. And you need to figure out how to overcome that crap. 'cause that mental crap is in your way. and I can try to convince you of it, but at the end of the day, I can tell you, listen, I've been through this.

I come from a divorce family. that's not a dig against my mom or my dad. But, I was two years old when that happened and then married again and another divorce, and then married again and watched my dad get another divorce. And brothers and sisters from different parents and the whole nine yards and raised by grandparents.

I got a pretty interesting story. some abuse along the way. threw in the mix, a good way to screw you up. raised in northeast Pennsylvania coal country a challenging place to grow up. I had a lot of things that made me who I was.

It made me strong, it made me resilient, but it also screwed me up in a lot of ways So I've got a lot of hours of therapy working through that stuff. where I was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, they pointed to the can of Budweiser, a bottle of Budweiser, and said, well this is a, you know, cheap man psychologist.

I get that. that was my solution for years too. But it didn't work as well for me to get to the next level of entrepreneurship. I had to become more self-aware and get to that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I needed help to do that. if this message was for you, mental health wise, there's a reason why attorneys have high levels of addiction alcoholism suicide burnout and divorce and all that stuff, and it has an awful lot to do with this. And it's some of the same reasons why you're stuck where you are right now. I highly implore you to get the help that you need.

if you need a coach to help you with the tactics and strategies of how to move from one level to the next, how to make the decisions you have to make. our firm is perfectly poised to do that. You can go ahead and grab a link at, the law firm secrets.com and get connected with us.

Book a call and if we're a match, great. we'll take the next step. If not, it's no big deal. by watching these videos, you know who we are. we're a family business and we keep it small around here. we don't wanna be a 50, a hundred million dollars company.

That's not our goal. we are definitely optimizing for profit and lifestyle. if you need some help give us a ring by going to the link, schedule a call and we'll have a conversation.

make a decision. What level? You know, find out where you're at, what level you're at. Make a decision as to where you want to go. take the steps I told you, and if those steps, have you stuck. Recognize that you're stuck and get some help with getting the unstuck. If the getting help is tactical come to us, strategy come to us.

If getting unstuck is psychological and you can be honest with yourself and you got some head trash going on, get some help.

coaches are valuable in all aspects of life, and coaches with our skull is something that's extremely valuable. Trust me, mine is bald and shiny, and I need all the help I can get.

I hope you found this helpful.