Practice growth, client acquisition, and community — for solos and small firms.
The first meeting is where you decide whether to take the case and the client decides whether to hire you. Ask the wrong questions and you learn too little to judge either. Here are the questions that make a first meeting productive.
Your intake form is the first line of defense against conflicts, missing facts, and bad-fit clients, and most solos throw one together without thinking it through. Here is how to build an intake form that actually does its job.
Plenty of solos could not tell you their profit margin, because they never read their own financials. The profit and loss statement is the one report that tells you whether your firm is actually working. Here is how to read it.
Bookkeeping is the task solos avoid until it causes a trust problem or a tax mess. It is not hard, but it has legal-specific requirements a generic approach misses. Here are the basics every solo law firm needs from day one.
When you go solo, no employer withholds your taxes, and the government still wants its money four times a year. Attorneys who do not plan for this get a brutal surprise. Here is how to handle quarterly taxes without the April panic.
Clients increasingly expect to pay by card, and firms that accept them get paid faster and more fully. But credit cards intersect with trust accounting and surcharge rules in ways that trip up the unwary. Here is what to know before you turn them on.
Every time you pay a filing fee or an expert on a client's behalf, your firm becomes a short-term lender. Without a policy, advanced costs pile up and cash flow suffers. Here is how to advance and recover costs without financing your practice into trouble.
Case costs are not the same as fees, and hard costs are not the same as soft costs. Getting the distinction wrong muddles your books and can create ethics problems. Here is what new attorneys need to know about handling case expenses.
The same hour of work can get paid in full or written down to nothing depending on how you describe it. Vague, jargon-filled, or block-billed entries invite disputes and cuts. Here is how to write descriptions clients understand and pay.
The time you do not record is invisible revenue leaking out of your practice, and most attorneys lose far more than they realize. Here is how to capture every billable hour with habits and tools that make timekeeping effortless.
You cannot outspend a firm that pours a fortune into advertising, and you do not need to. Small firms win on the ground where budget does not help: relationships, referrals, niche focus, and service. Here is how.
Vetting is the trust engine of a referral network. When you refer a client through a network, its screening is part of what protects your reputation. Here is how networks verify attorneys and what to look for in their standards.
