I don’t have time to grow my practice

The best time to raise the profile of your practice is when you’re busy.  This is how to do it without compromising on the quality of your fee-earning work.

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”   Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Level out the peaks and troughs

Raising your profile this month will help you connect with clients who need your expertise next month. This is the way to level out the peaks and troughs of life at The Bar and keep your practice growing. But consistency in your business development requires a commitment of time.  

Prioritise what’s important

Everyone has 24 hours in the day. Even Beyonce. Finding time to grow your practice is a matter of prioritisation.

Eisenhower devised a method for time management which is useful for barristers.  In his method all tasks are categorised as Urgent or Important. For example, prep for tomorrow’s hearing is urgent but marketing your practice is important. To keep moving your practice forward you need to do both.

Urgent tasks tend to get done at the expense of the Important tasks. So try doing the Important Tasks first, even for just a few minutes.  For example, before rehearsing your opening remarks for tomorrow, book time in the diary to meet a potential future client for the day after the hearing is complete.

Be consistent

If you are a regular reader of my posts you’ll know I’m evangelistic about the power of habit and automation. 

You don’t need to spend hours every day promoting your practice. You’re the only one fulfilling ‘orders’ after all, so you don’t need a marketing machine to generate high volumes of work you can’t do yourself.

But a system is helpful. Showing up in the same place regularly is the way to get noticed, both in person and online.  When you’re busy, five minutes of consistent action every day can be enough to bring in a consistent flow of instructions.

Devise a five-minute plan

A haphazard plan to growing your practice is not as bad as not having a plan at all, but it will be stressful to implement.  Don’t add more stress to the days when you’re in court.

When you’re busy, you need to know exactly what to do so you don’t waste time figuring out what to do first. That’s how nothing gets done. Consider creating a list of five-minute practice development tasks in your phone., so you can pick one when you have five minutes to spare.

For example: share a Tweet written by someone who fits the profile of your Ideal Client; pose a question to your network on LinkedIn; update your Chambers profile; decide on the titles of three blog posts you’ll write after the next hearing; set up a Google Alert on a client who could instruct you.

One thing you can do today to grow your practice

Log on to LinkedIn and connect with three people who match the profile of your Ideal Client.  When they accept, acknowledge the connection and attach a PDF of an article which demonstrates your expertise. 

Do you need help automating the tasks which distract you from fee-earning work?

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By Heidi Smith
Creator of Jurilogical.com