How Mark Metzger Grew His Law Firm Tenfold (And How You Can Do The Same)
Mark Metzger is an attorney, law firm owner, and my good friend. He started out working for a huge law firm in Chicago and went out on his own in early 2006.
When he first began his solo practice, it was just him and his computer. However, in less than seven years, Mark grew his practice tenfold.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mark and he shared the strategies that allowed him to grow his law firm so exponentially. Let’s dive into the three changes you can make to grow your law firm.
Hire Strategically
The first thing you need to do to start seeing amazing growth in your firm is hire help. The ironic thing is that most solo practitioners have so much work on their desks that they could probably hire multiple people to help them out. They’re just terrified to do it. They don’t know how to pay for it and they don’t know whether they should pay for it.
Additionally, everybody wants revenue first. Nobody wants to invest in capacity first. We say things like, “Just give me the money, and then I’ll hire somebody.” However, it doesn’t work that way. You have to hire to create capacity.
The good news is, once you increase your capacity, you can increase your revenue, and your firm can grow.
The key is to hire strategically. Don’t take just anyone off the street. You have to put in the work to find qualified, hard-working team members who will truly take work off your plate and increase the capacity of your firm.
Build Systems and Processes
Once you hire team members, you need to teach them how to do more of what you’re currently doing so that you can keep delegating more things to them. This eventually boils down to building processes and procedures and providing support.
Mark built an amazing system in his practice that has cut down his work time and improved the efficiency of his firm dramatically. Creating software tools like that to rely on may be helpful for you, as well. However, also make the time to work on systems and processes so your team can perform at a higher level.
Mind The Gap
Finally, Mark encourages his fellow law firm owners to “mind the gap.” This is one of the things he learned in preparing to become a group trainer. He realized that there were things that he was about to teach people to do that he wasn’t currently doing (or at least not doing as well as he could).
Eventually, Mark came to refer to this policy as minding the gap. That phrase became a war cry to pay attention to what he was going to tell people to do that he was not doing.
When he first embraced this, he diligently went back through to clean up the way he was doing things so that he was in alignment with what he was teaching. This led to a monumental increase in his firm.
If you want to learn more about how to grow your law firm, check out Episode 003: How to Grow Your Law Firm Tenfold with Mark Metzger.
Steve Riley
Certified Practice Advisor & Attorney
Steve Riley has coached attorneys for more than 20 years. His one-on-one coaching focuses on a limited number of top producing attorneys committed to taking their practices to new levels of excellence, profit, and personal success. He also presents at group coaching workshops around the country for individual law firms, state bar associations, and other legal organizations.