No matter how big or small your firm, if you want a more profitable, productive, and rewarding practice, you can’t just punch the clock and do billable work. In addition to discharging your obligations to your clients, you need to make time for three key things every week.

Want to watch this tip instead?

First, you need to allocate time for active business development. You’ve got to keep that funnel full, especially now. You should already have a business development strategy in place for your firm that reflects the new and strange reality we’re all living in. If you don’t, start there! Then, block time in your calendar every week to act on your strategy.

If you don’t have a strategy, or you want advice about how to develop business now when we’re all still in isolation or just starting to reopen, come to this afternoon’s Virtual Coffeehouse. I’ll be talking to Tea Hoffman. She’s a legal business development expert and a certified life coach. She’ll be sharing her top tips on keeping your funnel full. Don’t miss it. It’s free, and there’s a link to register down below.

Second, you need to set aside time for practice management. Most lawyers spend far more time than they should on non-billable work. You need to dedicate some time to making that non-billable work more efficient, so you’ve got time for other things.

Every week, identify one small thing that frustrates you, seems harder than it should or takes longer than you want…and then change it. Create a single template. Reorganize one folder on your computer. Write a quick script for routine calls.

It’ll take some time before these mini-improvements become automatic, but if you do a little every single week, the results will compound. Remember David’s blog on building good habits?

Commit to making your work, your office space, or yourself one percent better every week. If you haven’t already done it, download our free Eight Wastes Workbook. It will help you identify a long list of targets for your continuous improvement efforts.

And finally, take some time for your own professional development. It could be as simple as reading that article you’ve set aside about your practice area or that new bit of tech that looks like it might help you. Or it might be a webinar about developments in your practice, or an online course (like this one on matter management).

It’s easy to get bogged down on client work and the nuts and bolts of keeping your business running. Yet these questions will be hanging over your head like the sword of Damocles:

• Do I have enough work scheduled for the coming months?
• Why am I wasting so much time on that simple process?
• What skills have I learned that makes me a better lawyer?

And these questions are going to stay hanging over your head unless you take steps to tackle them every week. When you do, you’ll be able to look back every Friday night and say, “here’s what I did to move my practice forward this week.”

But if you don’t, your business can’t grow…and you probably can’t truly relax.

That’s it for this week. Thanks a lot everybody!