A DVA N C E PR A IS E

“Lawyerist.com spearheaded the movement to build a com-

munity of solo and small firm lawyers striving to revitalize
and revamp the practice of law. In a shockingly short time, the
community Lawyerist.com built and the ideas it nurtured
turned my practice on its head—all for the better. The Law-
yerist.com team has organized an overwhelming number of
aspirations into actionable steps that any solo or small firm
lawyer can implement to dramatically improve the running
of their firm.”
—M E G A N ZAV I E H, Z AV IE H L AW, G A; L AW Y E R I S T
L A B M E MBE R ; GUE S T ON L AW YE RIST
P OD C AST # 1 1 0, #1 26, AN D #164

“The team of Aaron Street, Sam Glover, Stephanie Everett,

and Marshall Lichty are managing the amazing Lawyerist
community that is not only helping small-firm lawyers
nationwide learn how to be successful entrepreneurs, but
making them enthusiastic about running their own businesses.
Twenty-five years ago, I left a large law firm to establish a solo
immigration law practice. I had no business training and,
consequently, I made a lot of mistakes in managing my prac-
tice. I’ve often thought that getting an MBA along with my
law degree would have been pretty useful. Lawyer entrepre-
neurs today now have a pretty useful alternative to getting a
business degree—Lawyerist. Whether it’s attending their great
conferences, joining one of its mastermind groups, getting
one-on-one coaching, tuning in to its podcasts, consuming
the fantastic content at Lawyerist.com—and now reading
this book—today’s lawyer entrepreneurs have the tools to
become not just successful legal professionals, but successful
business managers as well. Kudos to Aaron, Sam, Stephanie,
and Marshall on this latest offering from Lawyerist.”
— G R E G S I SK IN D, S I SK IN D S U S S E R , T N; AU T HOR
OF T H E L AWY E R S GU IDE T O MARKE T ING ON
T HE IN TERNET; L AWYERIST L AB M E MBER ;
GUE ST ON L AW Y E RIST P OD CAST #94

“Far more than a business book, The Small Firm Roadmap is

a sanity manual. Many, many entrepreneurial attorneys live
with burnout, anxiety, addiction, and broken relationships.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. If you want to run a
successful firm and maintain your personal well-being, this
is the book to read.”
— SH E RRY WA LL ING , PH D, E N T REPREN EU R
P SYC HOLO G IS T AT Z E N FOUN DE R , AU T HOR OF THE
E N TR EP R E NE UR’S GUI DE TO K E EPI NG Y OUR SH * T
TO G E TH E R , GUE ST ON L AW Y E R IST P OD CAST # 2 04
“The Lawyerist community is where passion for law firm
excellence meets intellectual horsepower. The Lawyerist
has curated a group of extraordinary attorneys with bold
notions for the future of the legal practice and provided a
space for practitioners to not only share but enhance their
ideas together. The Lawyerist team has uncovered and evalu-
ated every business, wellness, and design-thinking resource to
create a unique and invaluable perspective on how law firms
do and will continue to thrive in the future. The Small Firm
Roadmap is an absolute must-read. If you are just starting
your practice, or you are simply frustrated with the archaic
traditions of the law firms of yesterday and ache for a more
modern experience, this is the book you have been waiting for.”
— ERI N G E R S T E NZ A NG, E HG L AW F IR M, G A; L AW Y E R I S T
L A B M E M BE R ; GUE ST ON L AWY E RIST P OD CAST #1 1 7

“Everyone is always looking for ‘the answer’ for how to build a

successful small firm, but nobody has had it, until now. This
book is as close to ‘the answer’ as you will find. Spoiler alert:
at the end you win big.

The recipe for building a successful firm has been a closely

held secret of a few brilliant lawyers. However, after years of
working with hundreds of firms, the Lawyerist team explains
the keys step by step in this first-of-its-kind book. This is a
million-dollar read you can’t afford to miss.

I read it. I did it. It works. This will be the new bible for law
firms.
I’ve never been good at following roadmaps. But this Road-
map is one that every small firm lawyer can and should
follow if you are serious about not just surviving but thriving
in today’s new legal economy. Read this book because it’s best
that you know how to drive toward success, otherwise you
might wind up somewhere else.”
— PAT R IC K PA L AC E , PA L AC E L AW, WA; FOR M ER
PRE S I DE N T OF T HE WA S H I NGT ON S TATE BAR
A S S O C I AT ION; L AWY E RI S T L A B M EM BE R ; GUE ST
ON L AW Y E R IST P OD C AST #9 1 AND # 169

“Lawyerist is the essential online resource for twenty-first-

century solo and small-firm lawyers in the United States.
The Lawyerist team balances practical guidance about
the business of law with forward-looking insight on legal
technology and socially responsible advice for tomorrow’s
community-minded lawyer. If you want to know what the
future of small-firm law looks like and how to get there, The
Small Firm Roadmap should be your counsel of choice.”
— JORDAN F UR LONG , L AW 2 1, AU THOR OF
L AW IS A BU YER’S M AR KE T, GU E S T ON
L AW Y E R IST P OD C AST #12 4 AND #18 5

“For most lawyers, business + law = ‘blaw,’ or some other

painfully disinterested noise they generate from their vis-
ceral depths. But it’s not really disinterest, it’s more akin to
fear—fear that this lawyer can’t be that businessperson. And
that’s crap. Business is just another collection of precedent
 and procedure that, once mastered, allows you to pursue
business opportunities as deftly as legal ones. The Lawyerist
folks understand this at their own visceral level—so much so
that they decided to write a book about it. It’s their ‘summary
judgement’ from over ten-plus years of helping thousands of
lawyers replace ‘blaw’ with action.”
— M A RK BRI T T ON, F OU N DE R & F ORM ER CE O, AV VO.
C OM ; GUE ST ON L AW Y E RIST P OD CAST #2 2 3

“It’s incredibly difficult to be a solo/small firm lawyer (trust

me, I know—I practiced in a three lawyer firm for years). As if
tending to case research, filing requirements, court deadlines,
and communications from opposing counsel wasn’t enough,
you need to take care of your clients’ needs and wants as well!
It would also be wonderful if you enjoyed what you were doing
in the process—but is that even possible? How much easier
would all of this be if you had a clear roadmap for focusing on
the things that you didn’t learn in law school, yet are crucial
to the long-term success of your firm? Guess what—the team
at Lawyerist has done the work for you. All you need to do is
purchase, read, and implement the techniques in this book
and you’ll be well on your way to creating the law firm you’ve
always wanted.”
— JOE Y C OL E M A N, AU T HOR OF WSJ BE ST SE L L ER
N E V E R LO SE A C U S T OME R AGAI N, GU E ST
ON L AW Y E R IST P OD CAST # 16 2
“In many ways, I’ve ‘grown up’ as a lawyer with Lawyerist—I
remember when the platform launched not long after I
cofounded a small firm, and have watched Lawyerist evolve
into a tremendous resource for solo and small firm lawyers.
I’m excited to see the Lawyerist folks share proven methods
for building a fulfilling and sustainable practice through a
holistic, client-centric focus with The Small Firm Roadmap.
My twenty-plus years in practice affirms this approach!”
— PROFE SS OR C A IT LI N “C AT ” MOON, DIRE C T OR
OF I N NOVAT ION DE S IGN, VAN DERBILT L AW
S C HO OL , GUE ST ON L AW Y E R IST P OD CAST # 2 1 1
THE S MA LL FI RM R OA DMAP
 THE

SMALL FIRM
ROADMAP
A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE
FUTURE OF YOUR LAW PRACTICE

A A R O N S T R E E T, S A M G LOV E R ,
S T E P H A N I E E V E R E T T, A N D M A R S H A L L L I C H T Y
COPYRIGHT © 2019 LAWYERIST MEDIA LLC

All rights reserved. Lawyerist, Lawyerist Lab, Small Firm Roadmap,

and Small Firm Scorecard are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Lawyerist.com and may not be used without written permission.

THE SMALL FIRM ROADMAP

A Survival Guide to the Future of Your Law Practice

I S BN 978-1-5445-0481-0 Hardcover
978-1-5445-0479-7 Paperback
978-1-5445-0480-3 Ebook
For Kevin
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ........................................................... 15

PART 1: HOW WE GOT HERE

1. LAWYERS ARE FALLING BEHIND ........................... 29
2. A LOOK TOWARD THE FUTURE ..............................41
3. RETHINKING LAW AS A BUSINESS ........................ 63
4. THE LAWYERIST VISION .......................................... 79
5. INTRODUCING THE SMALL FIRM SCORECARD ... 93

PART 2: THE SMALL FIRM ROADMAP

6. PERSONAL GOALS ..................................................... 111
7. BUSINESS STRATEGY .............................................. 133
8. CLIENT-CENTERED SERVICES ...............................173
9. CLIENT ACQUISITION .............................................. 199
10. SYSTEMS AND PROCEDURES ...............................239
11. TECHNOLOGY .......................................................... 269
12. FINANCES ..................................................................293
13. PEOPLE AND STAFFING ..........................................317
14. THE FUTURE OF LAW IS YOURS ......................... 369

ABOUT THE AUTHORS ............................................ 375

 INTRODUCTION
W H AT D O YO U WA N T O U T
O F YO U R L AW P R A C T I C E ?

Many lawyers we work with in our Lawyerist Lab program

(we lovingly call them “Labsters”) have set clear goals
for their small firms and have figured out how to make
their goals reality.

For instance, Megan wanted a solo practice, but she also

wanted to be able to take regular vacations without put-
ting her practice on hold every time. To make that happen,
she built a thoughtful, hardworking team around her.
Now, even when she’s on a four-week (!) European vaca-
tion with her family, she’s able to come back and pick up
right where she left off.

When Erin started her own practice, she realized she

I N T R O D U C T I O N ! · ! 15
would no longer have the luxury of a large team behind
her. But while she didn’t have the resources to staff a full
team, she did have the resources to adopt a few tech solu-
tions. Soon, she had learned to automate all the work of
signing up a new client with just the press of a few buttons
to work as effectively as she had with a team.

For Emily, the challenge was to find a way to represent

clients with limited means. By being proactive and con-
sidering her ideal clients’ needs, she launched a series
of client-friendly solutions—such as limited-scope rep-
resentation and payment plans. These days, her family
law practice thrives entirely off flat fees. She offers clients
a menu for every part of every case type. She knows pre-
cisely how much everything will cost and offers her clients
the services they need at prices they can afford.

Lawyers like Megan, Erin, and Emily are paving the way
for the future of law and of small-firm practice. But for
every one of these success stories, there are twice as
many stories of lawyers struggling to make their dream
of successful small-firm ownership a reality.

Many lawyers are like Todd, who left his big-firm job to
start his own practice. It didn’t take him long to realize
he had no model to build the kind of practice he wanted.
Unsure how else to go about it, he essentially recreated
the big-firm model and tried to graft it onto his small firm,

16  ·  T H E S M A L L F I R M R O A D M A P
unnecessarily adopting all the same expensive tools and
resources that his former employer used. All this did was
create a big monster to feed with tons of overhead and
endless administrative responsibilities. Despite his best
intentions, Todd had left himself no opportunity for the
sort of creativity and openness he’d originally envisioned
for his firm.

Many of the lawyers we work with have shared similar

stories. Buoyed by visions of a practice where they can do
things their way, where they can have more flexibility and
control over their practice, these lawyers set out to create
something uniquely their own. Along the way, however,
the challenges begin to mount:

• Their work feels unending.

• The demands of both firm management and client
work never stop.
• They’re under constant stress, always feeling like
there is more to do.
• They have trouble finding new clients. The phone
rings all the time, but most can’t afford their fee. It
feels like every lawyer they know is competing for the
same 10 percent of clients.
• They have problems hiring and retaining staff and
associates.
• Associates they do hire just can’t seem to live up to
their standards, leaving them to redo everything.

I N T R O D U C T I O N  ·  17
No wonder so many small-firm owners feel stuck. On
the one hand, they’re overwhelmed and struggling to
stay above water. On the other hand, they don’t know
how to get the help they need to relieve that burden.
As a result, these lawyers end up feeling frustrated and
alone. They believe in their vision and their ability as
lawyers, but they just can’t shake one single, inescap-
able fact.

They have no idea how to run a successful law firm.

THE PATH TO SMALL-FIRM PRACTICE

If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably encoun-

tered struggles of your own on your way to setting up
and sustaining your own small firm. While the details of
your challenges are unique to your journey, we’ve found
that most small-firm owners have a lot in common. For
instance, the majority became small-firm owners by fol-
lowing one of a few common paths:

• The Default Option. You went to law school, didn’t

get the job you wanted when you graduated, and set
up your small firm because you had little other choice.
• Plan B. After working at another firm for a while, you
decided you’d rather have your own firm instead.
• Entrepreneurship. From the get-go, you’ve been

18  ·  T H E S M A L L F I R M R O A D M A P
 hungry to build and grow your own thing. As soon as
you could, you launched your own practice.
• Deliberately Self-Employed. You might not be an
entrepreneur, working to master the craft of growing
a business, but you know you’d rather work for your-
self than someone else.
• Legacy. Either your parent or your mentor owned a
small firm, and you’ve always known it would be your
path too.

However you came to small-firm ownership, we’re will-

ing to bet that it was no less filled with uncertainty and
frustration. Uncertainty about its viability or desirability.
Frustration over a system that often struggles to accom-
modate what you want to build and frustration over a
culture that’s stuck in the past and unwilling to experi-
ment to better serve clients.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is that you know exactly

what the problem is; you’re just unsure how to move your-
self or your profession forward.

The fact is, whether explicitly or implicitly, most lawyers

are discouraged from directing their own careers. We’re
presented a narrow field of options, each with a prepro-
grammed path that we’re expected to follow. Once we
graduate, we’re expected to either hitch our futures to

I N T R O D U C T I O N  ·  1 9
a larger firm’s wagon or start our own firm based on a
traditional model.

Those choosing the latter option quickly face an important

truth: we have little idea how to run a law firm, manage a
business, market or sell professional services, bill clients,
or earn a decent living.

Fortunately, there is a better way. You can own and build

a thriving, client-centric law firm.

STANDARD SMALL-FIRM GOALS

Often when we ask lawyers what they want out of their

practice, they state their goal in terms of clients, revenue,
and billable hours. That’s fine. But your goals can be so
much more than that.

For some, their goal is working forty hours a week, not

the sixty (or more) hours others often work. For others,
it’s about never having to choose between helping people
and making money. For still others, it’s about refusing
to accept the model they’ve been given and creating a
practice that works for us instead. These are reasonable,
attainable goals that make us better at our jobs and create
more fulfillment in our lives.

And yet, lawyers tend to think that these reasonable goals

20  ·   T H E S M A L L F I R M R O A D M A P
don’t apply to us—or at least they don’t apply to us right
now. Sure, they may sound like good ideas, but we’ll worry
about them later.

Your job is hard. We respect that. We respect that you

have clients to serve and bills to pay. But the truth is, this
mindset isn’t doing any of us any good.

Look, we get it. We’ve each lived the lawyer trap ourselves
and seen how damaging it can be for a healthy life. For
each of us, there came a point in our legal career when we
realized that the profession as it currently stands wasn’t
working for us.

For Aaron, it was seeing the huge disparity between

two of his passions: business and law. An entrepreneur
since he was a teenager, Aaron has a lifelong curios-
ity about growing good businesses. After graduating
law school and entering the legal profession, he was
frustrated by the disparity between the best practices
of other businesses and the lack of business thinking
in small law firms.

For Sam, it was the guilt he felt working from his laptop
as he sat in the delivery room while waiting for his first
daughter’s birth. From that moment, he vowed to rethink
the way he practiced law so that he could be fully present
for his family when they needed him.

I N T R O D U C T I O N  ·  21
For Stephanie, it was the false choice between a career
as a public interest lawyer or a career that actually made
money. Resenting that choice but seeing no other option,
she chose the latter. As this money-first mindset slowly
began to consume her, she finally realized she could
never truly escape her work. If she took off early on a
Friday to enjoy herself for the day, the guilt of not billing
would drive her right back to work on Sunday. Something
had to change.

For Marshall, it was the slow realization that he could do

more in the world. Being a good student had seen him
through law school and landed him good jobs at success-
ful firms. But despite his success, he wasn’t satisfied. The
firms he worked for were either ineffectively run or not
set up for sustainable long-term success. Everywhere he
turned, he saw a disordered system plagued with indif-
ference and inefficiency. Convinced there was a better
way, he set out to find it.

One by one, our paths led us to our work at Lawyerist. For

over a decade, Lawyerist’s mission has been to create a
community centered around trailblazers like you to val-
idate your work, help you refine your efforts, and share
your story with others so they can learn from your journey
and apply it to their own.

Driving this work is our belief in community. We believe

22 ·   T H E S M A L L F I R M R O A D M A P
that the only way to create a new future for the legal pro-
fession is to build it together. Lawyers who surround
themselves with mentors, coaches, and supportive peers
will see this shared future and will work together to create
it.

GETTING STARTED

We wrote this book to teach lawyers how to build success-

ful, future-oriented, client-centered law firms. In solo
firms and small practices across the country, lawyers are
building a vision of the law that is empathetic, self-aware,
and adaptable. This book will show you how to join this
community and create a law practice that works for you.

This is not a book about how to build a law practice in the

old model. The old model is broken. Instead, this book
presents our vision for what a successful law practice can
be. Whether you already manage a small firm or are con-
sidering starting one, this book offers you a path forward.

That said, this book is not a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all

manual. There is no magic set of steps to implement in
your firm that will guarantee success. This isn’t a silver
bullet. But it is a chance for a new beginning. The Small
Firm Roadmap lays out a comprehensive set of tools and
ideas you can implement in your own practice. But the
details and execution of that process? Those are up to you.

I N T R O D U C T I O N   ·  23
Having the small firm of the future isn’t about technology
adoption. While it is important that you understand how
to use modern tools, this is not a book about software
tips. Nor is this a book about running a “cheap” practice.
Finding cost-cutting opportunities can be great, but they
are inconsequential if you’re not focused on creating a
client-centered experience and a sustainable, growing,
and profitable business.

Finally, this book offers you the chance to build a practice

that allows you to live the life you want and find joy in
your profession. There is a lot of negativity and burnout
in this industry, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Some of you may resist the ideas in this book or dismiss

them as too good to be true. You may get through the first
two or three chapters and decide that you’d rather stick
with the status quo. And why not? After all, the status
quo has worked fine for decades, right? Why shouldn’t
it work for you too?

Unfortunately, the status quo is no longer good enough.

For reasons we will explore in part 1, the coming decade
will see a perfect storm of social, economic, and tech-
nological changes that will profoundly affect how we do
our jobs. In other words, change is coming whether we
like it or not. We can resist this change and spend our
entire careers playing catch-up, or we can use the Small

24 ·  T H E S M A L L F I R M R O A D M A P
Firm Roadmap outlined in part 2 to become drivers of
that change.

This isn’t going to be easy. Change is often complicated

and painful—especially for an institution as old and
established as the legal profession. But change is much
more painful when we aren’t ready for it and don’t under-
stand it.

In the rest of this book, we’ll help you find clarity about
your personal and career goals as an owner of a small firm.
We’ll teach you the business and entrepreneurship skills
you never learned in law school. We’ll show you how to
prepare for the coming disruptions in the legal industry.
And we’ll introduce you to a community of supportive
peers and mentors who would love to help you create a
better law practice.

I N T R O D U C T I O N  ·  25
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to read the first chapter of
The Small Firm Roadmap. We hope you enjoyed the first
few pages of the book and now have a sense for how the
rest of the book might benefit you and your law practice.

Get a Copy of the Book

If you are ready to read the rest of the book, it is available
for purchase in multiple formats on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Small-Firm-Roadmap-
Survival-Practice/dp/1544504799/

You can also learn more about the book on our website:

http://lawyerist.com/roadmap/

We’re grateful for your support!

-Aaron Street, Sam Glover, Stephanie Everett & Marshall

Lichty