Table of Contents

• Top 5 Financial Must-Dos for New Law Firm Owners

• Transform Your Office

• Why You MUST Be on LinkedIn

• Want Your Meetings to be Great? Invite < 8

Top 5 Financial Must-Dos for New Law Firm Owners

by Alicyn McLeod, CPA, CPF®

There’s so much to learn transitioning from working for another firm to running your own. Here are the top 5 things to know on the financial side.

1. You need a solid practice management platform.

Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and even your accounting software aren’t a replacement for a viable practice management solution.

Whatever it costs you in software subscriptions and time spent learning the platform is trivial compared to the cost of low conversion rates, losing clients, being out of compliance with trust accounting rules, etc, due to lack of an appropriate practice management platform.

2. Make it as easy as possible for clients to pay you.

Your practice management platform may have options included or you may need to integrate payment processing in.

Provide as many straightforward options as possible. You can decide later that credit card fees are too high or checks are too manual, but for now you need cash in the door.

Don’t make it hard for your clients to pay you.

3. Generate invoices regularly.

Speaking of client payments, unbilled work in progress doesn’t keep the lights on. If you charge by the hour, keep track of your time daily.

Generate invoices regularly, timely, and accurately. Monitor accounts receivable like a hawk. If funds in trust have been earned, they need to be moved to your operating account ASAP.

4. Be vigilant with trust accounts.

Perform 3-way trust account reconciliations monthly. Know the trust accounting rules for your applicable state(s) and practice area(s) – and follow them.

Don’t pay firm operating expenses from your trust accounts.

5. Learn how to read your firm’s financial statements.

Read and look at your firm’s financial statements every month. You don’t need to be an accountant, but you do need to understand your firm’s accounting.

Investigate bank and credit card balances that seem odd. Look for revenue and expenses that seem out of line monthly. Be planning for how your net profit impacts your tax situation.

Bonus: Ensure you’re working with an accountant who can help you with all the above.

Alicyn McLeod is a partner at Agate CPA where she helps attorneys with accounting, tax, and wealth management.

Transform Your Office

Boost your motivation by 32% with art in your workspace!

White walls stealing your motivation? Let’s fix that.

Did you know workplaces with cool art see a 32% productivity boost? (Thanks, University of Exeter!)

I’m Hunter, and I create art that transforms your office or home into a space that makes you feel amazing.

Why You MUST Be on LinkedIn

Can you guess which social media platform has these impressive statistics?

• 40% scroll it daily.

• Two new members every second.

• Over one billion members internationally.

• Its best-read feature, “Who’s Viewed Your Profile.”

• One million members have published at least one article.

You guessed right! 

It’s Linkedin.

Get ready to uncover LinkedIn’s hidden secrets and transform your prospecting game!

Darlene Petrie, Lead Generation Strategist, and Nancy Zare, The LinkedIn Whisperer, announce A Secret Podcast, Client Builderz.

In just 5 short episodes, you get:

✅ Exclusive insights and tips on LinkedIn

✅ Proven strategies to attract the right clients 

✅ Actionable advice to make your LI Profile a magnet

To your sales success,
Nancy Zare, Ph.D.
The Sales Whisperer and Author

Want Your Meetings to be Great? Invite < 8

by Mike O’Neill

“Meetings are at the heart of an effective organization, and each meeting is an opportunity to clarify issues, set new directions, sharpen focus, create alignment and move objectives forward.” – Paul Axtell

What’s the ideal meeting size?

Stanford University’s Robert Sutton says it’s between 5-8. He found that when well-intended managers are too inclusive with their meeting invites:

• There is not enough time for everyone to participate in the conversation.

• Shallow comments replace Rich's back-and-forth debate.

• Catch-ups distract from addressing higher-priority issues.

• People become more guarded and less candid.

• Tough topics & decisions are not put on the agenda, then are dealt with off-line instead.

As a result, people often lose respect for the meeting, which leads to less preparation, participation, and action. It can become a vicious downward cycle.

Smaller groups, on the other hand, help build a sense of intimacy that opens the floor to a meaningful and candid discussion. Fewer people means more time to listen to and consider each team member's perspective. Clarity and candor emerge. If this makes sense for you…

First, tell your team that you’re making a change. Be transparent. Let them know that, moving forward, your meetings will be smaller to make them more effective. You know how much time and energy everyone spends in meetings, and you want to implement a strategy that will yield the best results. Tell them the research says smaller groups lead to richer discussions and better decisions.

Be thoughtful with your invite list. You must know precisely what you will address to ensure you have the right people in the room. Have a clear agenda and ensure you’ve allotted enough time to each topic of discussion. From there, ask yourself: Who must be present for the discussion to yield results? For who would you cancel the meeting if they could not attend? Start with this core group. Add more people only if you think they will add value to the conversation or gain value by being there.

To avoid confusion, share the criteria by which you will extend invitations with your team. Explain what it is based on:

• Who has the most knowledge about the topic of discussion?

• Who will have a lot to do with the implementation?

• Who will be directly impacted?

• Who might learn from participating?

Remind participants to consider the perspectives of those who are not present.

• What questions would they ask?

• What would they like to be informed about?

• What would they like to be consulted on?

• What actions would they like to be involved in going forward?

• What should be communicated to them afterward?

Measure your success. Once you’ve implemented these changes into the structure of your meetings, track and manage their effectiveness and how your team is handling the change. Collect feedback and continue tweaking until you’ve nailed down the best system for your organization.

Keeping meetings to eight or fewer people is a guiding principle to help you be more deliberate about who attends. With skilled facilitation and good meeting practices, it’s possible to have effective meetings of twenty people or more. But that should be the exception, not the rule. Ultimately, you may have fewer people in the meetings themselves, but your team — and your company — will benefit as a whole.