Seven Sample Attorney Business Plans: Why Attorneys Must Have Business Plans
[00:00:00] So today I'm going to be talking about a business plans, which is actually, I was when I heard we were going to, I was going to be doing this. Webinar's a little upset, cause it's a topic that I think probably a lot of people may not be that interested in hearing about.
And and I will review some of these business plans real quickly. But one of the things that I think is important for everyone to understand is and this is an ongoing. Sir, feature in your career is typically whether you're an associate or a partner, you will either follow someone else's plan or you'll follow your own plan.
And and too many people get stuck in the whole kind of process of following someone else's plan. And the whole idea of applying to work for someone is, and what I help people do. But it's the whole idea of going to work for someone else's basically going to work for someone with a plan.
So people with plans are the ones that control the world and they control their careers. They make the most money. They typically have [00:01:00] the most career success. They have the most the, the most career satisfaction they feel the most secure. And there's just a lot of very strong reasons for you to have a plan for your career and also for your life.
And I spend personally a lot of. Planning and the more I plan I find the more I spend time planning as opposed to working many times the better that I do. And and pretty much every manager in our company has plans every I have plans. I have planning books, all around me.
There's, here's one, there's, and every week I spend planning, so there's lots of ways to plan your career and plan your bit, your business. But th the most important thing is to have a plan. And, I've talked a lot before about the importance of planning and different studies that have been done.
But for the most part anytime I've met someone that's been very successful. They've always had a plan. I met one guy recently that had sold a liquor company. He started. So that in, I don't know, 10 [00:02:00] years or no, not 10 years. I'm sorry. Then in five years after starting it, for the amount of money that he had said he would sell this liquor company for when he actually started the liquor company.
So it's, when you have a plan for what you're doing it makes a huge difference. And and most people with plans do well in those without don't. And this is what's important for your career. So you need to come up with a plan and and know what you want to do. You don't necessarily need to know, right?
When you start that you want to be a partner in a law firm or going house, or, but you need to have a plan. And once you have a plan everything is going to start. Falling into place for your career. You can have a plan for yourself in terms of what you're going to do. You should also have a plan personally for the things, you want to do.
And that, that can make a big difference. I have I also have a personal blog and and, counting of council people for a long time personally, in addition to in the business role. And I don't certainly have time to do that sort of stuff really much anymore.
[00:03:00] But when you're coaching people all the successful people that I've coached that have been, the most successful attorneys. Making, while under the seven figures and having big books of business and so forth, those people all had plans. They didn't just, suddenly become a partner and then everything fell into place.
They had plans for the type of clients. They had plans for their, the type of work they wanted to do and how they want to specialize in and all sorts of things. And law firms also have plans, the best law firms. I have plans the best businesses have plans. And so if you're just winging it in your career and you're doing and following other people's plans, some people like that because they feel protected doing that.
As a matter of fact, that's what most of the world does. Most of the world does not really have a plan. And and that's fine. You don't necessarily need to have a plan. And if you land in the right law firm you may do very well following their plan, but the odds are that you want the odds are that.
Without a plan. Things are just going to happen to you. You're going to have a lot of insecurity. You're not going to know where you're [00:04:00] going. And and you're going to be in in, in much worse shape than you would without a plan. One thing I wanted to say too is I, I love doing everybody should have some portion of their time dedicated to, self-improvement things like listening to what I'm talking about right now, and also doing readings.
Self-improvement related things. And but one of the biggest objects of self-improvement and it's actually found through all religions that have caught on most religions in some respect, whether it's Christianity or Judaism, or, regardless of the religion, they all have something in them that says, what you concentrate on will be what you become what you practice, you will get better at it, achieve what you which the reality that you envisioned for yourself is what will happen.
And it's true. I can tell you that it's absolutely true, but that's the only way to get what you want is to constantly remind yourself of that's what you want. Famous book that I recommend you read. It's on my blog for [00:05:00] free called hair. That's on Harrison barnes.com and it's called think and grow rich.
And and they have a very simple formula and it's basically you write down what you want and and you look at it every night or twice a day or something. And and then that become, it comes true. And that's actually true. The more you concentrate on. The more those things are likely to come true.
So that's kinda my preamble for you. And I will talk about all these business plans and get started. Cause I know that's something you'd probably want to hear about, but it's important to realize that without a plan things happen to you. And the other thing that's funny too, but with planning is most people when you set your kind of wildest expectations of your plan, you know what you want, you may say, I want to have, 10 of the largest companies in the country as my clients within 10 years or five years or whatever.
And most people don't even th these ideas that they give for themselves are so large. And so unbelievable, that they think it will never possibly happen. And then they don't even have the self-confidence. So the other thing that goes along with having a [00:06:00] really good plan is working on your self-confidence and there's all sorts of books about self-confidence and you can do self meditation, and there's great stuff on YouTube for meditation, but you need the self-confidence.
So most firms, by the way, do not have a business plans. They just hope that people will contact them. And a lot of practice groups don't have business plans. Individual attorneys don't have business plans. And if a business plan firm does have a business plan, you might not even be aware of it.
And not included, you're just a tool and part of it. And and so you may be operating under someone's else's business plan. You may have spent time operating under someone's business plan. And the thing about law firms to buy. It's because you're selling labor and it's just your work and it's marked up.
And there's not like a lot of costs associated with that other than office space and so forth. Law firms can many times get away without having business plans and knowing where they're going, but most businesses can't. You do need to have a business plan and even as a law student, you should have a plan about what you want to do and remind yourself of that.
And then as an [00:07:00] attorney, you should have a business plan and remind yourself of what you want to do, because if you don't do this, then you're just going to be searching for someone with a plan and their plan may not be a good one. When you start planning your business and what you want it's not really about writing a huge, long object of things about what you want.
You don't need. Really spend a lot of time deciding what you want to do over the next, every day and every year for the next 10 years, it's really any sort of business plan can be very simple and make it what you want. One thing I will say you is that you don't you don't necessarily need to call it a business plan.
You can call it a career plan, but a lot of law firms, when they're interviewing people they may interview attorneys that have once you start having 5, 6, 7, 8 years of experience, they want to get a sense that you have some ideas about where you're going with your career and that, what you want to do in the future.
And so they, they may, they will want in many cases of business plan and they'll ask you for it. And most business plans that people do, aren't very good. And that's one of [00:08:00] the reasons I'm going to talk about this today. A law firm, having a business plan is really giving you. Confidence that you're going to, you're going to be able to do something and you're, you've set your mind to it.
And just having a plan is not enough. You need to believe in it. And you need to believe that, you're going to achieve it. You need to take inventory of where you are. You need to turn where you want to go and then you have to help have a roadmap for getting there. I've had a lot of mentors and that have been very good throughout the years.
And you certainly I'm happy to mentor you with this sort of information or you can find other people, but there's people like Tony Robbins, for example, that w one of my mentors and he had his ideas, like the ultimate success formula. So you need to know where you want to go.
Then you need to, course correct and fix yourself and just keep pointing yourself in a direction. And one of the I believe it's him that gives us an analogy is, when an airplane takes off and. It just doesn't take off. It takes off and it starts flying in a general direction, but when it's flying, it's making thousands of adjustments before it [00:09:00] gets to where it's going.
If you don't have your autopilot on, and if you're in, you're fine from Los Angeles to Oakland or something a, pilot's going to make, hundreds and hundreds of corrections to get where they want to go, because everything keeps getting stared off court. So the idea of a business plan is you look at that each week and you look at it and it tells you where you want to go.
And and then you revisit it periodically to make sure you're going and making sure you're on the right course. And everybody, you, what you should do really as you, you need to write down what is it that you want? And a lot of times you'll get the idea of what you want, baby.
What around you, the people around you, the people that are successful versus not successful around you what makes you happy, where you could, add things and so forth. You need to spend some time thinking about that, but once you have that, and you're able to think about, who you are and what you want and what's going to matter to you.
Then you can start chartering your career course, and you can do things that, where you realize you're going to get off track and [00:10:00] constantly push yourself back on track. And that's very powerful by the way, if you're able to, know when you're making a mistake.
So my part of my business plan is to be beyond the best in the world at what I do. And then, which is what, I'm the thing, in talking to you right now, and then other things to do with, candidates and Finding firms and finding candidates and, so every day in terms of my goal I'm making hundreds, of course, corrections.
And I start every morning, very early and talk, and have write down goals and look at what my overall goals are and all these things help you. It's helping you to be better and making sure you're not getting off track because everyone has, certain you have multiple opportunities to get off track.
You have jobs to you'll get off, or they'll get you off track. You have taking sides with people that are going to hurt you or getting involved in things that, that are going to get you off track. And so you need to, make sure you're always on track and it can take a long time to do that.
And I'm telling you, it just, everybody that. That is very successful. And [00:11:00] when I say very successful, I mean that, his is very like very fulfilled from a career standpoint, meaning doing very well to practice a law and then also doing very well personally and professionally personally as well, they all have business plans.
They have, are they in some people don't actually have a written business plan, but their goal is to be like the best, this type of lawyer and they think about it and it's all they do. And they've written it down somewhere and just having this focuses you on what you need to do.
And to make sure you're not going to get off track, and I'm going to give a lot of examples of all this today, but it's just helps you focus and and you need to know where you're going because a lot of people like, I have no idea where they're going. So they may do a certain type of work.
And then if another type of work comes along, we'll try that. And and then they'll do this and that, and they'll take this job and that job and most people there's a word for it. And it's called, I don't know what it's called meandering or just not committing, not, not doing anything.
And so most people are not focused on anything. And if you think about the people that are focused, [00:12:00] it's very very minimal. There's very few people that are focused and and and you're going to constantly be presented with all sorts of opportunities. You're probably presented with them on a daily basis.
I talk to people, just, I dunno, not too long ago, I was working with with a patent litigator and he had a job offer that was paying, I don't know, 300 and some thousand dollars a year. And and he was, I don't know how many years out of law school, but not many. And and then all of a sudden there's friend said, Hey, I got this idea to start this.
And and this person's going to give us money to start it. So he decided, instead of taking one of the several offers that I got him, he decided that he was going to go do that. And and then, of course he's taking care of his wife and family. And within a couple months the company was bankrupt.
And then, he had look for a job again or out of business. I don't think went bankrupt, but this is just how it is. If you don't have a plan like this guy could have been said, I'm going to be a partner, just type of firm. If you want to be a partner in a firm, you're going to choose firms based on that.
If you want to be happy and have a time with [00:13:00] your family, you're going to choose firms and locations based on that. So you need to choose things and come up with a plan. That's going to work for you. And if you want to be in house and have a stable job, you're going to go to an in-house job. That's going to be stable.
And but most people, because they don't have plans that are acted upon and they're acted to by meaning they choose firms that they'd never make partner. They choose. In-house jobs where they never could stay, then it just, all these sorts of things. And and this is a major cause of failure. The major cause of failure is allowing other people to act on you.
And I'm telling you like, like you're just like a planes flying somewhere. You're are faced with decisions day in and day out every day, you're faced with decisions that are relevant to your career. And if you have a plan it's going to make a huge difference. You have to trust me that that there's really nothing more important and it's it takes time to do.
And many times when you do a business plan, you may think, Hey, I'm not, it's not working. I'm not, but it will work. It always works. It works for the glory and success of mankind, [00:14:00] which is what they say in the Napoleon hill book. It definitely works. So here's some steps that you can take to build your own personal business.
And I'll tell you also at some point today, a little bit about how I plan but it's not really that important to understand where I'm at, but I will go over that with you guys a little bit. So the first step you need to do, when anytime you do any sort of business plan is you need to survey your situation and you need to have some sort of way where you can ask yourself a bunch of questions.
And one of the things I was talking to a guy that had just graduated from he'd done it, gone to business school, I dunno, in his late thirties or something. And and he'd just gotten up. I dunno, an MBA or something from Berkeley, I think. And I was asking him what his favorite part of getting an MBA was.
And and he said the party liked about it was the, interpersonal like learning about himself. And and and that's something I never thought of, with MBAs. Cause a lot of it is just, finance and marketing classes and [00:15:00] spreadsheets, but I never thought about that.
And and so I liked it when I, when he told me about that, I thought that seemed very useful, but you need to ask yourself what your strengths and weaknesses are and that's called a SWOT analysis. So certain people are good at certain things, any type of business plan that you do should not make use of your weaknesses if you're I'm a, have my strengths are, I have certain strengths and I have certain weaknesses and you probably do too.
If you're very good interpersonally, then you shouldn't consider. I know one guy that thought it would be cool to be an appellate. That had some of the best interpersonal skills I've ever seen. So he was working at Quinn Emanuel and made partner and everybody liked him and and he had clients and I'll start to things.
And then he decided this is just a lot of work going into court all the time. And all this fighting about discovery and stuff. I'd think I'd prefer to be an appellate attorney. And you got a job working for, one of the biggest law firms in the country as a partner doing appellate work well that primarily sitting in a room, writing and researching, and that was.[00:16:00]
A good fit and wasn't a good move for him. And so he didn't take advantage of his strengths. So you need to understand what your strengths are and there's all sorts of inventories that you can do. There's things like there's disc profiles which I've been doing for a long time.
And there's you can, and you can do them online and we're putting one live on our site shortly. There's all sorts of online personality test and things there's I don't know, there's something called like 11 personalities or 11. Th there's a bunch of tests online, but you need to understand what you're comfortable with, because anything that you like you'll do naturally, and the things that you liked and you do naturally will expand.
I was telling someone yesterday about when about the difference, like th one of the things they say is the difference between a really good computer programmer which is someone that you know, programmer in the difference of an average programmer is like a really good programmer is not just, like two times better than an average programmer.
There's something like a hundred times or 200 times better because they can see [00:17:00] things and understand things so much more effectively that it makes a huge difference and they can do something like one time I was working with a programmer and he had the kind of PhD, I think, in astrophysics from USC, which is incredibly smart guy.
And and we were working on this huge program that took months to, we had three or four people working on it. He was able to come in and think about what we were doing and look at it. And in 15 minutes, four or five lines of code that did all this work that this team of programmers had been working on for months.
And did the same. That they were doing and did it more efficiently and faster. And this is how what happens with really smart people do things. I had another experience that I was telling this person about yesterday when I was at the when I was in college, like for some reason I, I placed in advanced, like not just advanced, but like super advanced calculus, like the highest level that they had.
And and and I showed up in this class at university Chicago and I had, it was, very easy, like the first [00:18:00] week or so, but then it got to the point where I was, I would sit in the library for several hours, like trying to understand just one problem.
I would be like miffed. And then I wouldn't still wouldn't understand. I would go back at night and then finally back, okay, I get this. And then, some of the people in that class were so smart, they would literally look at this thing and they would think about it for 30 seconds and maybe take some notes.
Boom, they'd be ended on the next thing. So this is what really smart people do that have really good strengths in something. And of course I didn't stay in that class. Thank God. But but it taught me something that, people have strengths and some people are really good at math and some people, these people were, I think.
20 people that may be out of the entire, thousand person class at placing this stupid calculus thing. It was unbelievable how difficult it was and it wasn't anything that I was even remotely qualified for. But the point is that some people are very smart at certain things and have natural gifts.
Everybody is by the way, has natural gifts. And you do too. And I don't know what they are that could be about people. They could be about [00:19:00] information. It could be interest, it could be, but you need to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. And then you need to try to work on those strengths because your strengths will expand and you'll doing that stuff.
And and your weaknesses will shrink you'll never going to fix your weaknesses or be just as good as other people in your weaknesses. If you're trying to be something, if I was trying to be a mathematician that would have been a really fricking stupid. Because I just don't have it.
And then you have to see, what interests you, the same thing with your practice here is like, what kind of practice areas, interest you the most. And so you need to write that down and think about it. I don't know, what it is that interests you the most, but something does and professional activities, most interests you.
What do you gravitate towards naturally when no one's telling you what to do. You have to ask yourself, what is it that you do? What do you want to do in your free time? What kind of books do you like to read? There's nothing wrong. If you like reading comics, because you may be like a really, there may be a, there's a market for people to do things like that, but everything you do should make use of your your skillset.
I know a person that was in the fashion industry and and became an attorney [00:20:00] and then was very interested in representing other people that were in fashion and, and their immigration work. So it's just, it depends on, what interests you and you have. Work on that and you have to gravitate towards what's interest.
You like, and if you don't, if you do try to do things that don't interest you, then you know, then you're never going to succeed. And you're never going to be happy. So you have to think about your strengths. You have to think about what interests you and you have to think about your network and people that can help you.
And if you don't even have a network and are you interested in building a network? One example may be, if I wanted to be a a sports attorney I personally like sports, so certain sports I like, but I'm not I'm not gung ho I don't want to get out there and I wouldn't meet athletes and things.
It's not my thing. So that would be a really fricking bad move for me to do something like that. I would be better off doing something and then you have to ask yourself with your business plan, whatever it is you're interested. What are your firm's goals and objectives. In most cases, your firm's gonna want you to be, if you're a young attorney [00:21:00] or an associate or something, your firm's gonna want you to be a soldier.
And and even if you're a partner in a law firm without business, your firm's gonna want you to be a soldier. And and and that, that means they're going to act upon you. What happens to soldiers? Soldiers are the first to go. They get killed. They don't survive. The ones that survive are the ones that have business and law firms and have plans, which are the generals and the, those sorts of people because they they're doing the planning.
So you need to be in a situation where you're the one doing the planning, and you need to make sure that your goals that whatever it is, your goals are in line with the objectives of your firm. If working in a law firm is not your thing, then get out and set another business plan. It doesn't have.
It could be your own law firm. It could be all sorts of things. You just have to, understand what your goals are. One, one story. That I've told that I like to tell quite often is it's just about different types of celebrities. So what if Kanye west for example, had decided instead of being a musician, he wanted to be a [00:22:00] dentist would that be a good use of his, would that be a good use of his skills?
Maybe he saw a dentist in his community and thought the dentist was really cool. And some girl said you should be a dentist when you grow up. And so what if Kanye west decided to be a dentist? Or what if I'm a famous football player decided instead that he wanted to be a a painter and had no painting skills.
You have to understand what your skills are. You shouldn't be acted upon by other people and you should be doing things that are in in line with your skills. The other thing is competition. Any type of goal you have to be competing with you. You want to be at the top of your game.
So you want to be competing. You don't want to be competing with people that are going to blow you out of the water. So I want to go back to this example of me taking super duper honors calculus at the university of Chicago with, for some reason, one of 20 students or whatever, and out of a thousand or 800 person class that placed into this, that would be, that would have been insanity, like who would do something like that?
I would, there's no [00:23:00] way I would ever be able to compete. I'm just, I'm not smart enough. I'm not interested enough. I don't have the, th that's absolutely that's absolute insanity. So if you're competing and you're trying to compete and you're right now at a major level, Like that's so competitive.
There's no way that the objective that you're not interested enough in the practice of law and your practice here, that you're ever going to become something, then what are you doing? Is that a smart use of your time? I don't know. And maybe and you certainly can rise to the challenge, but but if you're trying to do something, that's not, doesn't fit your nature and your interest.
That's not good. People become litigators all the time that are afraid of conflict. Good idea. No, litigators need to be able to do conflict. People become corporate attorneys all the time that who loved to write and argue is that a good use of someone being coming a corporate attorney? So you need to understand, where you're at.
You need to understand what the competition. And you need to understand all these things. Cause if you don't understand them and you're not doing a good job with them, [00:24:00] you're going to literally get blown out of the water. So your business plan should take into account, what are you going to be best at?
A lot of people do very well in practice areas. I know a lot of family law attorneys that are very good at conflict and stuff, and it's not a lot of complexity for a lot of family law attorneys with writing and so far, so they can do well or immigration attorneys or worker's comp attorneys or different types of attorneys that would probably not be very good antitrust attorneys.
They would get blown out of the water. They wouldn't be able to keep up with the complexity of that type of work, but they're very good at what they do. You need to have, make sure your personality is right. You need to understand that if you're competing to be someone that you're doing so in the right market, one of the things I don't know.
About sometimes have large markets New York, city's an example. Los Angeles is an example. It's no different markets, sometimes large markets, is it, you may never know. The your potential in those markets, because you're going to be up against people that just have a different level of skill.
Going to Harvard law school in a major law firm in Los Angeles is [00:25:00] no one cares. It's not they care if you went to Yale I'll give them that. But Stanford and Harvard, not so much, it's people are just whatever it's that is that something is that the kind of competition you want to be up against?
I don't know. It may be. But you have to be careful. So you have to be careful the size firm you're competing in. You have to be comparable what your goals are, the size market. There's good loss. Las Vegas was a good market. If you want to be successful. There's a lot of opportunity there.
So you just need to understand, all of this stuff. And you're not going to succeed many times in a firm, packed with attorneys that are all have the same goals that are very. It's just going to be difficult. You're going to have hard time in different geographic regions.
If you go into a geographic region that is very competitive you may get a very cold reception why would and it's going to be harder for you to get ahead. And that may be a good idea for you. You definitely need to aim high but you need to be careful.
I was talking to him, I talked to partners around the country all the time, every day that, are desperate for people. I was talking to someone yesterday [00:26:00] and North Carolina. I actually talked to a couple people there that are desperate for people. There's certain areas of the country that, are more busier than others and where you can do well.
Where your goals are more likely to come true. And so you need to think about that and and you need to make sure that you're capitalizing on different trends. If you put your your email in the the chat, we'll make sure that that we email you this after.
I'm not sure that we I know I said that we would do that last week, but I will email you that if you put it in the chat, because you should take a look at the, these different things and you need to understand, what to avoid and how to capitalize on what your strengths are. And let me be very clear.
Everybody has strengths every single person out there has strengths. It does not matter what law school you went to. It doesn't matter what's happened up until today. It doesn't matter. And in fact of bad things have happened to you in the past. That's probably a good thing because you know what to avoid and, the dangers of not planning, it doesn't matter what, and none of the stuff matters.
All that matters is what's going, what are you doing? W what your [00:27:00] experience is and what's happening now in the future. And these are the things that you need to work on and you need to capitalize on, but I'm telling you I, I encounter extremely successful attorneys all the time, even around LA. And I'm like, this person went where to law school and these are like unaccredited law schools, where you were when they were, people were graduating, they were taking exams by mail.
It's there's very successful attorneys out there. It doesn't matter. But these people had goals. They knew they wanted it to be this type of attorney. They knew they wanted to do this or that. And so that's what you need to think about. You need to think about having goals and you think about making the most of your skills.
And I just, I want to just encourage everybody to take inventory of your strengths, your weaknesses. What are you interested in? What sort of things do you gravitate towards naturally? What is it that appeals to you? What are you interested in? Are you interested in some people are interested in I saw a great business plan, not too long ago from a from I know it was not an African-American attorney that wanted to bring in all these, African-American businesses into a major law firm and it was a great business plan.
And that was what really [00:28:00] interested in them because I felt that what they were serving under served communities, there was something the person was very passionate about. I've seen business plans from people that want to bring in technology companies that are working on, solar power I've seen.
Whatever it is you're interested in, you need to think about it very closely. And I was also listening to another lecture. There's a interesting book out that I was reading. I think it's been out for a long time, but somebody brought it up and I was on some kind of lecture and it was called essentialism.
And and it's and I just, whenever I'm driving, I'd like to listen to books on tape because it gives me ideas. And this centralism, basically there was a a statement in. This father his daughter wanted to go to Harvard or something. And so he said, okay you need to, in order to get into Harvard, by the way you are as a college student or a lot of very competitive schools, you need to not just be smart, but you need to have some sort of edge.
And so a couple of years before me, there was a guy that came from my high school that went to Harvard that was an expert in bugs. He just really liked [00:29:00] bugs and wrote articles about bugs. There was a guy that I knew in, in college that got into my school by being an expert in how Bobcat's digest bones and their stomachs.
Being experts and interested in something makes a difference. So this guy said to his daughter, like you, if you're going to go to this Harvard school, you're going to have to be really good at something. So she kept trying all these extracurricular activities and each one, she did, some of them, she was good at some of them, she wasn't.
And he said, if you're not going to be exceptional at it. So eventually they found something that she was just outstanding at. And I don't remember what it was, but it was a natural skill. And then they went all in. So she tried all these different. And until she became really good at something and she got into the school, so you need to be good at something and whatever you're capitalizing on, you need to commit to it.
You may be very interested in being an expert in e-discovery, as it relates to a pharmaceutical company, I don't know, or, whatever it is, but anything that you're really interested in, you need to [00:30:00] be the absolute best at and that and then you need to have that.
Then if you are that interested in it, then that's going to attract clients. Because I was looking yesterday for an attorney that had an appellate skills in a certain practice area. And when I looked into it, I only found four people in all of California that had that. And, and so that was very easy and very few people would hold themselves out as being experts in something like that.
And that's what you need. So the next thing you need to do is you need to determine where you want to go. If you know who you are, which I hope you do, I hope you can look, everything I said and have an understanding of the sort of person you are and who you are by the way is important.
Certain people like, you have to take your personal experience into account. You should be, people have things happen to them, or they have experiences. Certain people, may have had very tough childhood. They're very good childhoods, or I know two people, I know I'm, I was just thinking about one experience.
I know one girl that grew up in Connecticut and very wealthy and and ended up becoming a trust in the state's attorney at [00:31:00] a huge firm in New York city. And so that was a world that she knew and she's very kind of culture then spoke well, and then I knew another.
Woman that was I don't know, had some very serious family problems growing up and with problems with their parents, she became a family law attorney. So you just, you have to your experience and very good both of those people, you have to use your experience and so forth.
And you need to think about creating a mission statement for yourself. And there's a lot of stuff out there about mission statements, but mission statements work. And and there's people that will help you create your own mission statements. There's also books about mission statements.
There's a really good book on tape with by I think it's Earl Nightingale about missions and goals and but you need to have mission and and and you need to have a mission statement. And the mission statement is basically something that you can write down and look at it.
And it says, this is who I am, and this is where I'm going in this. What I stand for. And and so a mission statement may be, why are you practicing law? What are you trying to achieve? And you have to ask yourself that what are you [00:32:00] doing right now? Why are you doing what you're doing?
Is it really, is it because you are enjoying what you do and you like helping companies or people in whatever your practice area is? Is it because you couldn't think of anything else to do? Where do you want this to lead? You want it to lead to a house and a retirement, or do you want it to lead to you becoming, and no one has to be famous.
No one has to be anything other than what you are, but you should know at least what it is. Some people want a very calm life. They want to be they want a job that they can go to and they want to have a family and they, and that's what makes them happy. Other people want to be very successful on top of the world.
And there was someone I was actually talking to the other day that was saying something like, you basically have four burners. You have one of your burners as your. The other is your friends and family or your friends or your, your outside friends, the other one is your family and the other one is your health.
And and most people can only do two at a time, so you have to choose, what are you going to do is you're going to put everything on your career which, which is going to harm your family. Are you going to [00:33:00] put everything? And so I'm not suggesting that you go out there and take on, take over the world as an attorney.
I will tell you that, that thing about the ovens and, or the different burners, almost every super successful attorney. I know, and there's a lot of exceptions, but a lot of them, they neglect their health and they die early. I've seen that happen a lot. Others neglect their family and they get, they all these divorces and very unhappy things.
So you need to understand where are you going to put your effort? That's one of the reasons, by the way, I like smaller markets because people tend to. They don't have to put all their marbles in one basket and be the most successful attorney. They can do other things. There's something for you to think about.
You don't have to be acted upon and have a very difficult career all the time. But it doesn't have to be unique. You just have to understand where is all this going? What do you want? Cause everybody deep down myself included wants to be happy. That's what we all want.
We want to be happy and we want to be loved. And in order for you to be loved do you have. Be the best attorney of possible. I don't [00:34:00] know, to be happy. Do you have to do that or do you, is there something else that you need and what is it you're getting out of the practice lie and what you should be if you are practicing law you should be interested.
One of the things I will say, and this is, I said this I say this every week, but to be really unique something that someone should be doing this, you should be actually interested in helping other people and clients, and you should take an interest in it and that should make you feel good.
But regardless of what you want you have to have a mission and and you need a mission and the mission should guide your decisions and everything you do. And if you don't have a mission, then you're going to be acted upon by someone else's mission. Because once you get a mission, you're going to bring in other people to help you and so forth.
And they're going to help you with your mission, but most people with missions, by the way if you're a part of someone else's mission, most of the. I'm just going to tell you if you're part of someone else's mission most of the time, it's not going to end well for you. And and all I'm meaning by that is, if you buy into the company's mission, then that's the right thing.
But if you're, working for [00:35:00] someone and you're just trying to buy into their mission, that may not be the best use, you have to buy into their mission too. And then that becomes your mission, but you cannot be controlled just by someone's mission, but, and you can become anything you want.
But you have to have a mission. And and so many people have and I've seen so many people succeed with this once they realize it and I hope you do too. All right. So let's talk a little bit about how to build a map to get there. As you've Think about this process you write down the things that are important to you and understand who you are and what your strengths are.
Then you understand your weaknesses and you typically do not. I want to be very clear. You don't want to build up and fix your weaknesses. You're not going to, you're never, you can be, operational and your weaknesses, but you're partying much never going to completely fix your weaknesses, especially, when you get old, if your, one of your weaknesses is exploding and getting mad at people, then you can probably fix that.
Or one of your weaknesses of being careless and making typos, you can fix that. But, I'm talking about bigger things like, your [00:36:00] people skills or your your interest in things. And and then you need to figure out and then you have a mission statement that talks about where you want to go.
And I don't know where you want to go. Most people come up with an idea about where they want. Based on their experience and something that happened to them. And in my case, I'm doing what I'm doing now. I decided to jump all into this because I saw other people doing it and I realized that lawyers, that I felt like I had something to offer that other people didn't.
And I had a mission about it, but some people have missions and I really want to caution you to a lot of people will talk about, a lot of people are focused on money and making money and sort of thing. And and that becomes their mission. Thank you want to make money part of your mission.
I think anybody that's good at something it'll, you'll always end up making a good living, but your happiness comes not from money. Your happiness comes from, how you feel inside and and pursuing something that you like and people become [00:37:00] extraordinarily well off doing things that they like.
And whether it's financial or otherwise, but you just want to think about that. The best way, again, to map this out is start at the end their way, and then work your way back to your situation. So here's how it might work. The first thing is you have long-term goals. If you are but I know that's very successful has long-term goals.
So I was talking to a woman the other day that was in her mid sixties, and she has a goal of retiring at 80 and selling her business or something. I don't know, she's got some kind of lighting business or something selling it. When she's, I don't know, 80 years old and that's fine. That's a long-term goal.
You can have long-term goals regardless of your stage of your career. Your goals may be you just need to think about it. What are your long-term goals you need? And if your goal is to become a partner in a certain law firm, then you need to understand, what is it going to require to do that?
So one of the long-term goals might be developing a certain amount of business or becoming an expert in the practice area or, getting the best reviews, but you have to have that and you have to know [00:38:00] that these are components that are going to make that happen. And and then you may in order to.
To make those long-term goals happen. You always need to know what the rules are like, what do you need to do in order to achieve those goals and what is it that you, that needs to happen. And and I'll tell you a quick story for whatever reason when I was in college my girlfriend at the time her some guy that she was friends with her ex boyfriend or something, I don't remember what it was, but I had gone to the same law school I went to.
And so I decided, all right, I'll go to this, I'll go to that law school. I didn't really know much about it, but she seemed to think it was great. And so I actually called up the Dean of admissions of the school when I was like a sophomore junior and said, what do I need to do to get into this law school and spent, 15, 20 minutes talking to him and then even called him when I was.
A junior getting ready to choose classes for one semester. So the idea is, and which sounds just completely lunacy. And it is, but I was following [00:39:00] this whole thing of, Tony Robbins and Napoleon hill, and the idea that you need to know what the rules are.
And Tony Robbins talks about modeling people and understanding, but you need to understand the rule. So speaking with people that are responsible for things and asking them what you need to do and what is it, what are the rules of this is, are very important. And then and so you need to any goal you set, if your goal is to be a professional athlete, if your goal is to be whatever your goal is, you need to understand what is it going to take for me to become that person?
Because if you become that person, if you follow those rules and you become that person then then you can do it. And everything may sound incredibly insane at that point. Make sense to you when you get farther along. So an example, like a famous example about is a lot of times when you start establishing long-term goals for yourself, you think they're impossible.
So for the longest period of time, and I'm sure you've heard this example the, they said it was impossible to run a four minute mile. And doctors talked about how the human body wasn't capable of it and everything. And so [00:40:00] everyone talked about how it was just an absolute impossible thing to do it.
And then of course, Roger banister ran a four minute mile. And and I don't remember when it was exactly. And then all of a sudden all these other people started being able to run a mile in less than four minutes within, weeks of him being able to do the same thing. So the idea is a lot of times we put false.
When you set goals you believe that something's not possible. So you need to talk to other people that have achieved the same goals and understand What w what is important. So if you really want to be a partner in a firm and you go to senior partners and you ask them, what does it take and so forth, they're actually going to respect you for that.
And they'll probably help you if your goal is to be a judge, you might want to talk to judges about what it's going to take. If your goal is to be a professor in a law school, you may want to talk to professors about what it's going to take. I had a funny experience when I was my first summer I worked in the justice department and in Washington, DC, it was very hard to get a job there.
And and, I went to talk to different attorneys there, and they were so excited to tell me about how, what you needed to [00:41:00] do if you wanted to get a job and they would go out of their way to help me in things. And so you need to do the same thing. You need to talk to people about that are doing what you want to do and ask them once you decide what you're interested in, because they will not only help you, but they'll tell you what the rules are and you need to know the rules.
And then if your goal is to be a top Rainmaker, then, Probably talk to other big rainmakers at your firm and other P other firms and see what they're doing. And, you can't do everything, but if they say stuff like I've done very well, with podcasts and if you like doing podcasts and you can do podcasts, or I've done very well getting clients by going to Kowanas clubs, events, I don't know.
You just, you need to learn what other people are doing and you need to learn these rules. And that's one of the big mistakes that people make. They make this in every area of their life. If you have a lot of anxiety right now, and you're unhappy, if you're not doing as well as you think you could do in your career, it's probably because you're in your head.
And and if the worst person to advise you on your career is you [00:42:00] because, you can certainly pick up information, but you need to get other people. You need to talk to other people and ask questions of other people. And you need to talk to people that have already succeeded and older people in their.
To give you advice. I had the strangest experience. This is a pretty funny thing. I was a while ago I was I went car racing or just a stupid thing, but I went car racing with this girl just for fun, like driving to the Speedway. And and you, when you go to the speedways, you have to drive late at night because of the track times cheaper.
And so we were done at like 1130 and I'm getting ready to to go back to anyway, to come back to the hotel and everything. And she said, hold on, I have to make a call. And I said, what are you talking about? And this woman's an attorney by the way, a very successful one.
And she said, I need to call my mentor. I call in and I check in with them every night. And so this is someone and the guy with the one guy was in Hong Kong and this isn't in LA. And so she calls the sky and, I'm sitting there this abandoned parking lot, and middle of the [00:43:00] night and not after midnight.
And she's talking to this guy and and this guy's a retired partner from a major American law firm that she calls every night to talk about her career and other stuff. And I couldn't believe it. And but this is what a lot of very successful people do. They have mentors and other people that they rely upon to get the rules of how to succeed.
And this is an, and that's as extreme as I've ever seen to be honest with you, but calling the same person very late every night like that, but that's just that's her. But you need to talk to other people. So that's the first thing you need to understand what the rules are.
I had the same thing happened. I had I'm giving you kind of very simple examples, like a company that wants to go public, we'll talk to someone and say, what is the revenues that we need to do? How much growth do we have to make have on an ongoing basis to do that.
And then they'll measure it because what you measure, if you can't measure something and know where you're going, you won't do well. And then and then and then I remember even in my and I'm just giving legal examples, cause this is, will be helpful to you. But I remember when I was in my first [00:44:00] year of college, I had an advisor and, and she said I was like, oh, what kind of grades?
You need to go to law school? And she's you need to have a, a 3.5 and the college I went to at the time. She's if you want to go to a top 10 law school, and at the time the average grade point average was like a 2.7 I'm in college. And, in a 3.5 was like, almost impossible.
And and but learning that was very helpful. So you need to have a map and know what it's going to take. And if you think $300,000 is enough business to become a partner at your firm, it may be 5 million. You don't know me, but you need to know the rules. You need to talk to other people.
Then you need to set objectives and you should have annual objectives. A lot of people our company will use quarterly goals. So people, we set quarterly goals about things and have those. And so you should have quarterly goals of possible. That'll be very helpful for you.
And and you can and then in order to have that, then you can have long-term goals, but you need to have, quarterly goals. And then, but the main ones are annual goals. So once you know where you want to go, what your long-term goals. [00:45:00] Then you set quarterly, then you set annual goals and you reviewed them each year.
There's all sorts of online programs you can do, but if your long-term goals includes developing a certain amount of new business you might make it your objective doing two new clients this year and that they represent, a certain percentage and to hold onto those clients.
And this is what people do by the way. I know I talked to very successful attorneys all day. Not all day. But because I'm doing stuff like this too, but the point is that the very, very successful people will do this and they'll do it on an ongoing basis. And so you need to set goals.
And then when you, the thing about doing that is if you say I'm definitely going to have this amount of gold mine of clients by this period of time and you set a deadline, you'll make things happen. There's a story in the book think and grow rich about I believe it's in 10 core rituals.
It's about the founding of the Illinois Institute of technology and by Phillip or more I believe. And and what happened there is he had set a goal of coming up with a million million dollars by a certain date. And he was a preacher. And [00:46:00] as he became closer to that day, he realized he, he didn't have it, but he kept reminding himself.
And and so then he decided he was going to talk on Sunday in church. Give a thing about what I would do if I had a million dollars. And so he just got up and he talked, and this was like a couple of days before he was actually supposed to, but before he'd set the goal and I don't know how long the goal was to start and come up with a million dollars for the school.
And he gave a talk and someone walked up to him after and said, my name is I actually, I think our Maura was the guy that gave him the million dollars. But anyways, this is I'm and I will give you, I believe you, that you'll do what you say and I'll give you a million dollars. That set goals like that do so you have to set goals for yourself.
You need to set deadlines, I would say annual deadlines and then remind yourself of that on an ongoing basis. And and and just really followed this framework and, again, your goal may be to have a certain number of face-to-face meetings. I know lots of young attorneys there's a lot of very successful young attorneys out there.
When I say young, they're, they're in their mid thirties, early thirties and that have developed large books of business. [00:47:00] And a lot of these people what they've done is they set goals like I'm going to go out and, try to meet or, wanna make 10 phone calls a day to potential clients.
I'm going to have at least one dinner meeting with someone per week. I'm going to join this group and get involved. And so they do things like that. And then they start implementing their strategies. So they think about, what kind of short-term strategies can you take to make these things happen.
And and that's very important. You may for clients, you may need a referral network. You may need to become more visible in your practice area. There's just all sorts of things. But you come up with ideas and you set goals. And the thing is if your goal is to do a certain thing, like if your goal is to develop a certain amount of business, if your goal is to become a judge, if your goal is to go in house by a certain date, then you, and you'll, you're going to go out and you're going to talk to people that have done it.
And people that have succeeded, you're going to learn how they did it. You're going to take what they did and you're going to learn from it. And you're going to become very good at it. And learn from the things that they [00:48:00] show that they've talked to you about. And then and then you're going to integrate.
And to a plan. So you can go out and do these things yourself to become a successful that way. And that's it. It's not really that hard and you'll find opportunities. You're going to find opportunities to do things that you normally wouldn't. And that's the thing it's people that get things done and become successful, like they find ways of making it happen.
People don't just, become leaders and organizations and by, by chance they do by, making it a goal and building kind of a persona for themselves to make that happened. I knew a woman by the way, they wanted to become a judge and she was, she became a judge.
And in order to do that, she would became president of the LA bar association. She did all these things. That people that were just passive observers that were going to these events might not, I've known people that became Toastmasters. There's a public speaker thing that, want it to be great.
Great in court and things and great public speakers. And they did that. And, so you just in, in terms of writing, like I [00:49:00] remember I wanted to write an article that would get published when I was in law school. So all I did is I went to a a very famous guy in the faculty and I said, what's a good article to write about this.
And he told me, and I did. And it's just as simple as that. You, you need to, you need to develop. Ideas and things to to try to get to where you're going. You need to use other people by the way, as part of what you're doing. And I know I said that before, but using other people is extremely important because if you use other people have already thought about these things and they know things that you don't and and they can help you.
The most successful people. I, one of the things I noticed early on, it was funny. I used to be in this recruiting firm years ago I used to think that the most important thing for hiring the best recruiters, which is actually wrong, but I'll just be telling you about it real quickly was hiring people with the best educational pedigree as possible.
So I hired people that, went to Yale law school and I don't know, Stanford law school and Harvard and Chicago and all these great law [00:50:00] schools to be recruiters. Should give you a sense. It is completely irrelevant to being good at recruiting. Someone that's good at recruiting is actually interested in, but anyway, these are very smart people that I hired.
And and one of the things I noticed is many times the smartest person, the smartest people that you hire are the smart, I'm the smartest people you work with will be the best at asking questions and and listening because that's how they get information. And so you need to get, you need to get out there and ask questions and listen.
And so that's one of the things I always noticed. And I, after five years of hiring, like these super smart people I started to realize that, the reason that they did so well, many times was because they were asking and listening to the best and people that don't listen that talk the most that think they know everything.
The ones that are at least successful, the most successful people are often the best listeners and ask the most questions. Anyway, so you just need to do all these things and it's going to help you and you [00:51:00] need to become a very good at of understanding where you want to go and how you want to get there.
And everybody at every level, Have some sort of mentor with experience and I needed a mentor every self-help program, every program about th that's any good, any long-term program religions programs to help people with addiction. They all have mentor systems built into them and they do because they work, it's every, everybody needs a mentor.
It doesn't matter. Mo most people have parents that are the mentors, but you also need professional mentors and people you can ask questions to. And then and then if you want to become an expert in something. You need to seek opportunities they're going to help develop those.
I hesitate to talk about this, but I'm going to just talk about it real briefly, because I think it's useful for you to understand. So I know a guy that is a a very successful or was a very successful family law attorney. And but he was extremely unhappy. He was unhappy because he hated all the [00:52:00] conflict.
He didn't no one was ever happy. It was very difficult for him. And his background was, he was a musician and and he'd been a musician and and went to an unaccredited California law school. And and I was out to dinner with him one night. And and and I guess he'd been so unhappy that he'd been drinking all day and he just we're standing there talking to him.
He seemed perfectly fine to me. And then he just, fell down like a. To the ground I'm passed out and so it was very unhappy practicing law. And that may be you. You, people use substances. They, they, it can be when you don't like what you're doing, it can be very unpleasant.
I spoke to him but I'm certainly not the one. I don't take credit for his the things that he did cause he actually fixed it himself. He started going joining music associations for attorneys, going to events taking classes. I think he went to and got an LLM or something.
And and now he's, became a music attorney and and he set a new goal for that. And I'm talking when I say he was successful. He had a practice that he individually was generating probably, at least a million dollars a [00:53:00] year just working on his own representing people so you can do well.
You have to, but you have to do what you're interested in. And that's what he did. And then he went and talked to other music attorneys and then he started playing in a band again and met other people. And so you can do well. And then, other things, you can these are just some examples.
If you have business meeting with them or your clients more and learning from them learning, asking people what's going on their industries and learning that sort of information. And and then reading about them and and just, these are all things that you need to do.
You need to get out of your head. That's the biggest mistake that you need to do, and then you need to understand the other thing is, who your competitors, if you ask your clients that and just take a real interest in different sorts of things related to this. And, if your goal by the way is to have a million dollar book of business or a $5 million book of business, once you have that as your goal, you're going to find ways to do that.
So if that's what your goal, I'm not saying that it has to be your goal might be to be a judge. Your goal might be to go in house in a [00:54:00] certain type of company B for goals to develop a certain type of business. It's not just getting work from your existing clients. It's, it's getting work from there.
Client, similar types of clients are getting more work from your existing clients by figuring out different needs and things that they have. And these are, this is the way people think once they have goals, if you're not thinking that way, things are just happening to you. And I just really need you to get in the framework where you stop allowing things to happen to you, and you make things you make things happen instead, and anybody can do this.
I'm thinking in the back of my mind right now, and I just want to make sure I bring this to your attention. Is that.
Most attorneys that I know almost every one of them is being acted upon by others. And that means that, people are controlling them, they're make controlling how confident
