Best Practice: Should a law firm have a budget?

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. I am the managing partner of our six attorney firm in Fresno, California. I recently went to a management seminar that stressed the importance of creating a budget for the firm. We currently do not have one. The budgeting process looks like a lot of work. Is it really worth the effort?

A. I believe that a revenue goal budget is the most important aspect of the budget and it does not take that much time to develop. It establishes revenue accountabilities for the revenue producers (attorneys). Insufficient revenue is the most common financial challenge that most law firms face.

While expenses are important and should be managed as well - the bulk of a law firm's expenses are office rent and employee cost. Some firms also have high marketing expenses. Most of these costs are fixed and once set in motion can't be managed.

Unless you have an office administrator that you want to hold accountable for managing the operations of the firm and the expense side of the ledger - you could start by just budgeting the revenue and see how that works for you. If you have an administrator, a revenue and expense budget is important so that you can delegate and allow the administrator to manage operations without having to second guess each and every operational decision they need to make. The budget provides the accountability tool.

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC,(www.olmsteadassoc.com) is a past chair and member of the ISBA Standing Committee on Law Office Management and Economics. For more information on law office management please direct questions to the ISBA listserver, which John and other committee members review, or view archived copies of The Bottom Line Newsletters. Contact John at jolmstead@olmsteadassoc.com.