Law firms don't pick practice areas, They pick clients.
Every lawyer has experienced it: a satisfied client returning to you with a request for more legal work, but it's outside your traditional practice area.
Of course, you can refer them to trusted colleagues. But increasingly, firms are exploring ways to expand their offerings and say "yes" to more clients.
Clients today expect more from their law firms. As clients' lives evolve and they experience new legal needs, they want firms that can handle more sophisticated work across an expanding range of practice areas. Firms that offer narrow expertise risk losing business to competitors with broader capabilities able to serve various client needs. But firms that expand alongside client needs can benefit from previously established relationships of trust with satisfied clients.
Expanding into new practice areas allows firms to capture more of each client's legal spend. When firms become a one-stop shop across interrelated areas like litigation, compliance, and transactions, they capture more of their clients' legal wallet and benefit from lasting advisory relationships.
In this article, you'll find:
- Tips for growing a law firm by sustainably adding services.
- Specific practices to ensure resources are not overextended during expansion.
- Guidance for using case management software to make your expansion easier and more lucrative.
4 Ways to Build Capabilities for New Practice Areas
Expanding into a new legal practice area requires developing genuine expertise to ensure quality client service. Law firms should build capabilities through a mix of the following:
1. Recruit Lateral Hires
Bringing in lateral hires from established practices in the new area jumpstarts capabilities quickly. Initially hiring just 1-2 specialists allows gradual capability buildup without overexpanding. For example, hiring one paralegal from a reputed family law practice plants the seed for an emergent domestic relations practice with specialized skills.
2. Provide Training and Mentorship
New hires need structured integration. Tailored training through continuing education and senior attorney mentoring accelerates their productivity. Rotating lateral hires through various matters and partners exposes them to firm culture and expands collective know-how.
3. Develop Internal Knowledge Banks
Centralized databases of templates, clauses, workflows, and documentation best practices are vital for codifying knowledge. Leveraging bar associations and reputable online libraries gives high-quality precedent documents to reference rather than reinventing from scratch.
4. Organically Grow Talent
Retaining and promoting promising junior associates over time builds loyalty and firm expertise. Mentoring programs, training sessions, and cross-staffing sow organic talent.
Undertaking a balanced capability buildup through lateral hiring along with structured training, mentoring, and knowledge sharing sets up new practice areas for sustainable success. This gradual approach cost-effectively integrates new expertise with existing firm strengths.
How to Execute a Gradual Launch Process
Take a Phased Approach
Initially test a limited pilot offering before widespread launch. This might entail just 1-2 specialists focusing on an adjacent area or specific client needs. This experiment reveals capability gaps that need to be addressed before scaling up.
Once you get started, begin promoting new services through websites, seminars, alerts and social media. Nurture referrer relationships. Cross-sell subtly within appropriate existing client scenarios.
Monitor Financial Returns
Before you can measure the return on your investment, you need to clarify which metric you'll be measuring. Then be sure that each team member is inputting that information in the right place in your system of record.
The challenge here is that different case types have very different workflows, deadlines, templates, and case phases. But you still want to be able to clearly understand your ROI (return on investment) across various case types, to understand how new practice areas are affecting your firm's financial position.
With a highly flexible and customizable case management system like Filevine, you can monitor all your firm's billings and case status across all practice areas in one place. This allows you to pull all that data into a single table, where you can compare them across case type, time, and individuals involved.
Filevine's advanced reporting allows you to track utilization rates, billings, and profitability of the new practice using accurate data filters. Crucially, with Filevine Payments, you can also track how much is actually being collected and how promptly, to better assess matter profitability.
Avoid the Big Bang Trap
Resist overhiring before you receive positive indicators. Be willing to pivot the expansion approach if projections significantly lag. Bring tight feedback loops between practice leaders, marketing, and finance to match talent supply with pipeline demand.
Gradual controlled growth is lower risk and financially prudent. Methodical fine-tuning safeguards quality and sustains morale versus reckless expansion dashing expectations. Patience pays dividends.
The key is approaching additional practices as "products" requiring iterative testing and refinement based on market indicators. Don't let exuberance undermine your long-term strategy.
Successful practice area expansion is a marathon, not a sprint. With a smart launch process that prioritizes measured progress over immediate results, you can mitigate risk, ensure smooth integration of new practice areas, and ultimately achieve sustainable growth for your firm.
Leveraging Case Management Software
To scale legal services responsibly, technology enablement is vital. Modern legal case management systems like Filevine provide:
Robust Reporting
Insightful dashboards track key operational and financial performance indicators like collection rates, profitability per matter, and productivity by timekeeper. This empowers data-driven decisions on profitable practice areas and optimal resourcing allocation to fuel growth. With the full case lifecycle supported by one integrated system, you can measure performance via marketing source and see the full return on investment for your efforts.
Flexible Billing Arrangements
Different practice areas require different billing arrangements. Make sure to invest in software that supports all the billing and payment models that your expanding clientele might need. Filevine puts no limits on billing models, supporting hourly, flat fee, and contingency arrangements within the same system. Automated notices and multiple payment options make receiving client payments easy.
Centralized Matter Management
Filevine consolidates documents, deadlines, tasks, contacts, texts, and emails for each matter in one searchable system accessible to authorized staff from anywhere. This mitigates scattershot data across disconnected tools.
Smooth Workflows
Configurable process flows, templates, deadline management, and automation reduce manual tasks for higher timekeeper productivity. LeadDocket client intake, document assembly, and customizable questionnaires simplify routine legal work. As demand evolves across practice areas, Filevine enables law firms to scale delivery while maintaining organization, compliance, and realized revenue.
Centralized data plus workflow flexibility is the formula for managing growth efficiently.
Embrace Growth, Transform Your Firm
Expanding services meets client needs. But done poorly, growth can strain resources and lead to poorer outcomes for clients.
But with strategic planning, phased investments, and the right technology, law firms can successfully offer new practice areas and become indispensable partners to a broader clientele. Versatile legal technology and case management systems can empower your firm to handle diverse matters with clarity and ease.