Practice management is both one of the most important and one of the most frequently neglected aspects of being a lawyer. The imperatives of doing the clients’ work too often mean that practice management takes a back seat and the future direction, expansion and profitability of the firm becomes an afterthought.

The 11 Habits of highly successful small law firms is an article by Richard Hugo-Hamman, the Executive Chairman of LEAP Legal Software, who has been helping small law firms to make more money for over 25 years. This very informative and inspirational article was recently published on LinkedIn and Richard has kindly permitted us to reproduce it within the Reference Materials folder in the By Lawyers Practice Management guide.

The article contains numerous valuable insights for anyone running a small law firm or thinking of doing so. Richard draws on his enormous international experience to distil the key habits that define highly successful small law firms.  In summary he concludes that:

1. They are efficient;
2. They enjoy practising law;
3. They employ smart people and treat them really well;
4. They have selected areas of law they like and focus on them;
5. They dedicate time to building the firm as a business;
6. They are early adopters of technology;
7. They confront the challenges of getting paid and solve them;
8. They have standard processes and procedures in place for all matters;
9. They make compliance a natural consequence of running a firm well;
10. They become experts in customer service;
11. They understand their finances.

We highly recommend reading Richard’s article, which calls upon you to ACT!