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Author: Mark Powers

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By Michael Hammond & Mark Powers Effective time management brings better clients, more profits "I don’t have the time. I’m swamped here at work. I’m telling you, I have no time to contact referral sources — let alone meet with one — I have to be in the office." Congratulations. You’re the hero, indispensable. Where's that getting you? Are nights and weekends free? Do you have the best clients? Are profits up? Probably not. But you can change your firm’s trajectory, have more time off, better clients and higher profits. All it takes is getting a handle on your time and making time for referral-based marketing. (You’re probably thinking, Easier said than done. But it’s not, really. We can help.) Even if you’re the best lawyer you know, all of that technical skill and professional expertise means nothing without good clients who need your services. Keeping your practice viable depends on your ability to generate a steady stream of new business. Client development is one of the highest and best uses of your time, and to be effective at referral-based marketing, you need to practice effective time management. Shift your mindset Here at Atticus, we’ve heard all the excuses. You’re too busy. You’re struggling to keep the lights on. You just don’t have the energy. When it comes...

How does the average solo and small firm partner think about the profit their firm produces each year? In very simple terms, their mental equation probably looks something like this: Revenue – Expenses = Profit This is the traditional and very rational view of how profit is produced. And the traditional result is that profit is incidental. Basically, what’s surplus after the bills are paid. But, according to the book Profit First: A Simple System to Transform Any Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by former Wall Street Journal columnist Mike Machalowicz, the right equation should look something like this: Revenue – Profit = Expenses This new approach turns the traditional "profit is what’s leftover after overhead and expenses are paid" method on its head. According to Machalowicz, a much more proactive approach is needed to guarantee that a profit will be there at the end of the year. He advocates that when revenues come in a portion is immediately set aside for profit and the rest covers overhead and expenses. To do this successfully means profit is budgeted for in advance.  How is that done? We believe you do this by looking at the last several years of gross revenues and profit percentages to...