Best Practice Tips: Personal Injury Law Firm Strategic Planning
Asked and Answered
By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
Q. I am a partner in a four-attorney plaintiff-side personal injury firm in Illinois. Three of us are partners and we have one associate attorney. We handle run of the mill slip and fall, vehicle, and premises accidents; products liability cases; and workers’ compensation cases. We have a very aggressive advertising and marketing program. We are having issues with reduced case flow and dwindling and diminishing profits and earnings. For the past year the partners have been living off our credit line. We believe that we need to be thinking about doing something different and are not sure as to what that should be. However, we have agreed to start doing some long-term planning. We would appreciate your thoughts.
A. I believe that the very process of developing a strategic plan would be very helpful, beneficial, and enlightening. Strategic planning does not need to be the involved and complicated process that sometimes it becomes. It a nutshell it is nothing more than a series of logical steps. The process is often more important than the written plan. Most workable strategic plans are put in writing at the end of the process, and then often in summary or outline form. Generally, the steps include:
- Develop the mission statement
- Develop the vision statement
- Develop the long-range goals statement
- Develop specific objectives
- Gather information – internal and external – and identify the firm’s strengths and weaknesses
- Identify key issues
- Formulate strategies
- Develop detailed action plans
- Write-up the plan
- Implement the plan and monitor
Your first step will be the mission statement – you should take a hard look at who you are as a firm and who you are serving when clients. Many of our personal injury law firm clients across the country are facing similar problems that you are and they have been forced to take a hard look at their their practice and geographic area segments. Some firms have tried to balance the cash flow ups and downs of contingency fee work by adding time billing practice areas that provide consistent cash flow such as employment, family law, criminal, and bankruptcy. Other firms are extending their geographical reach through additional offices and some are getting involved in mass-tort cases.
I think this is the most important step if you don’t do anything else. You may have to consider expanding and diversifying your practice.
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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 and author of The Lawyers Guide to Succession Planning published by the ABA. 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.