Ready to Launch:

Practical Tips for Starting

(and Growing) Your Law

Firm

Presented By:

James K. Cowan, Jr.540.443.2860 Direct

jcowan@cowanperry.com

Introduction• We started our new firm’s journey a little over three years

ago. We’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way, and

gotten some excellent advice. In our time this morning we are

going to discuss a few of those:

I. Start with the End in Mind;

II. Cash Flow is King the First Six Months;

III. The Nuts and Bolts of Establishing a New

Firm;

IV. Office Space and Initial Equipment;

V. Budgeting, Accounting and Outsourcing; and

VI. Start-up Marketing, Retaining Your Current

Clients and Growing your Firm

Start with the End in Mind

• What is your vision for the firm five years from now?

• First Impressions Matter:

when you are starting a firm, you introduce yourself to so many people, each of which create a perception of what the firm is, what its practice areas and strengths are….

Start with the End in Mind

• Professional services, like the other markets, are

segmenting into:

(i) high service level/unique or segmented value

proposition/perception; and

(ii) more of a commodity/value and efficiency focus

looking to volume in a specific practice area to generate

profits.

• It is important to know what you are building a platform to

service

• Your budget, staffing assumptions, location, hardware and

software choices will all be affected by your answer.

Questions we asked ourselves:• Why should a client follow us to the new firm, when we were leaving a

larger, more established firm?

• What did we want them to know about our expertise?

• How would we meet their legal needs in a way that making a change

was a “safe” choice for their business or for their legal matter or piece of

litigation.

• When another lawyer in our market was asked about us, how would

they describe our firm and practice?

• What was realistic given our size and resources to attempt– given that

we have ethical duties not to exaggerate our capabilities to prospective

clients.

• How would we try to differentiate the firm in a crowded legal market?

The result…

• An Introductory letter:

• Defining our practice areas and goals for the firm

• Our mission/differentiating statement from other

providers

• A call to action

• The letter was the first step in a branding exercise

that we continue to this day:

• Our footer on every letter tells people what we do

(and what work we want referred to us)

• Consistent messaging and staking out who we

want to be in our market, and defining that market

for the client.

• If you looked at our website you will see it builds

and reinforces each of these messages

Cash Flow is King the First Six

Months• So how are we going to fund this

endeavor?• What are the costs to operate for the first six months?

• Do you need to pay yourself?

• What is the payment cycle for your practice mix?

• Our backup plan was to have three months operating expenses

in cash, three months available on a line of credit…

• But the key piece of our plan – that kept us from needing to dip

into those reserves was to have retainer based monthly income to

cover all the fixed costs

• We probably underestimated the payment cycle and found out

that while we were busy, it took longer than we thought to get set

up and paid from larger clients…

The Nuts and Bolts of Establishing a New Firm

A. Entity Formation

B. Hire a Lawyer

C. Insurance

D. Agreements You Will Need

on Day One

Office Space and Initial Equipment

• Initial Considerations in Choosing an Office

• Location, image, cost, renovations,

expansion…

• Technology Choices:

• Computers- PC or Mac?

• Cloud-based or local/onsite file storage?

• Practice Management Software

• Security of Client Data

• Copier/Printing Scanning Solutions

Budgeting, Accounting and Outsourcing

• Detailed Budgeting is the key to fiscal discipline

and a good night’s sleep…

• You need a game plan to insure good reporting

and forecasting:

• Outsourcing accounting, payroll and payables is an

option that has worked well for us.

• What information do you need on your

dashboard?

• weekly cash balance reports that show a projection

of our available cash ninety days out

• monthly profit and loss statement

• monthly balance sheet

• month and year to date budget reports

• Vendors payables

The Final Lap…

• Start-up Marketing. Making the most of

your first 100 days.

• Retaining Your Current Clients. How

do you transition clients from your

current firm?

• Growing your Firm.

• Referral sources v.

advertising/marketing

• Follow up is the key

• What questions or aspects

have we not touched on?

• Thank You for Attending

Today’s CLE Presentation

250 South Main Street, Suite 226

Blacksburg, Virginia 24060

p: 540.443.2850

1328 3rd Street, SW

Roanoke, Virginia 24016

p: 540.777.3450

www.cowanperry.com