The best time to prepare a to-do list for your day is 15 minutes before you go home the night before.

Why 15 minutes before?  Because it may never happen if you leave it as the last thing to do before you go home.  By the time you do just a few last minute jobs wishfully thinking “this won’t take me long” it starts to get late.  Then you are rushing out the door.  The list might not get done.

15 minutes before makes it more likely that you actually do it and give it the time it deserves.  It …

Poor delegations skills are a real time-waster, and poor delegation is usually brought on by the attitude “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.” This is an attitude that lawyers seem to have in over-abundance.

As the author and psychology professor Dr. Amiram Elwork explains in Stress Management for Lawyers, poor delegation skills can really hinder a lawyer’s career advancement and create great stress, too. If you cannot effectively delegate work, you will never be able to maximize your achievement through the efforts of other people., limiting your ability to leverage your own talents. …

If you spend any time at all with practicing lawyers, you will invariably hear one or more complain that the practice of law would be wonderful “… if it were not for having to deal with those darn clients.”

Many lawyers view their clients as an obstacle standing between them and getting the “real work” of practicing law done. The day is busy enough without all those clients calling, coming by the office without an appointment and needing to have their hands held.

While being available to your clients when they need, or think they need, you will, of necessity, …

As Richard Ferguson, a lawyer friend of ours says on his email message:

“People may forget what you said….
People may forget what you did….
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Despite the fact that we lawyers make our living communicating, many of us don’t take steps to optimize client communications. This is a shame, because highly effective client communications leads to both great case outcomes that satisfy the client’s legal goals and a great lawyer-client relationship that can result in higher work satisfaction and repeat business and referrals. Accordingly, here are our suggested steps to …

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating” was said once by Oscar Wilde.

The final tip in this series is the capstone issue in our Top 10 Financial Mistakes posts – and one that we feel is facing most firms today.

This capstone issue is how to deal with the introduction of new partners while funding the buyout of existing but aging partners. Without a succession plan that compensates aging partners over time by establishing a retirement fund, the firm might be unable to attract new partners. The reason is that prospective partners who are …

Max Amsterdam once said: “Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.”

The purpose of having a written agreement between all parties in the firm is that everyone then knows the terms of the arrangement between them: the expectations, the consequences and the means to implement those consequences. Failing to have such an agreement between lawyers is the equivalent of a shoemaker’s children running around barefoot.

Office-sharing agreements cover issues between solos sharing the same office suite. Common issues include management of the suite, lease payments, confidentiality, signage and sharing of …

You should assess whether you can accept the financial risks associated with taking the matter, just as clients will assess whether they can (and will) pay your fee. Spend time at the beginning of the relationship to learn if the client is able and willing to pay a reasonable fee for the legal work the client wants done.

When everyone in the firm is required to report monthly to all other partners, you instill a culture in the firm that is self-correcting. If someone fails to regularly meet their financial goals, you have a decision to make and a forum within which it can be made.

It is a huge financial mistake to not record in writing the very nature of the contractual relationship with each and every one of your clients.

By the time I have money to burn, my fire will have burnt out.  ~Author Unknown

There is much talk today about lawyers moving to alternative billing. We happen to be in favour of trying to bring the practice of law back to its roots in terms of delivering value to clients (ie results-based billing) rather than just time spent on the file (input-based billing). But does that mean that you as a lawyer can give up tracking your time? To those who say yes, we respectfully disagree. While you may not bill by the hour, tracking your time does …