How much do you value what you do?
Can you honestly see yourself doing the same or even a similar thing in the next 10 years?
You would like things to remain in perpetual stasis, but nothing lasts forever. If you are not constantly moving forward then you are slowly dying.
What do you do that is special, unique or different to your nearest competitor?
Is your service so remarkable that your competitors have practically given up?
Is your technical brilliance beyond reproach?
Are you flavour of the month, year, decade?
Or are you the ‘Go To’ person in your practice area?
In short, are you working on your craft every day, or are you stuck doing it, doing it, doing it (see The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E Gerber)? My guess is that you are glued to your time-sheet: billing talks.
Earlier this year Seth Godin wrote a provocative book called Poke the Box (apologies for the quality of sound of the video attached as a link). I strongly suggest you read it.
Are you Poking the Box?
Or better still, have you thought how you can blow up the fee earner model and throw out (as far as possible) the baby and the bathwater?
I am on a mission:
a) to ask you to put your people more first than your clients;
b) to put the soft stuff ahead of the numbers;
c) to reconnect with your passion for the ‘job’;
d) to consider how you and everyone in your firm can be the most of anything. Period.
You went into law to be rich, partner or to have the status?
But is that going to sustain you over the long haul?
The happiest people I have ever met have worked out how to coalesce their love for the work with their passion(s). I wonder how many of you can say the same?
Am I living in cloud cuckoo land thinking that the delivery of legal services can never change? All I know is that the profession has so much more to give.
By and large the people care even though some of the love for the work has been elided by years of stressful billing.
And they have a soul.
Do you want to swim in a sea of sameness?
My vote: out with old in double-quick time and in with the new. Technology will help but ultimately it’s a people thing.
Make sure your values align with those that you serve. If not you might as well put a mask on and play dumb.
But even if you decide that my recommendations counts for nought, what does Poking the Box look like?