We all know the cliches and the tropes: Lawyers are terrible business people, lawyers went to law school to avoid math, law firms aren’t businesses, etc . . . .
Many of these statements are true in some pretty fundamental ways. But they’re also really damaging. Even if we take the most mission-driven do-goodery lawyer in private practice the simple facts remain that (a) they can’t help others if they, themselves, can’t survive financially, (b) they can’t help others very well if they’re constantly scrimping, saving, cutting corners, working late, and losing sleep due to financial issues, and (c) they’ll help more people with a larger law firm.
Superaccountant-to-law-firms extraordinaire, Chelsea Williams, has the remedy. Combining her dozen-plus years of accounting experience with the eye that she’s trained on legal in the form of her company, Core Solutions Group, Inc, which provides tax, accounting and cash management services exclusively for lawyers and law firms, Chelsea’s developed a course called “Law Firm Money Mastery” that’s designed to help all small firm lawyers - but particularly those just getting started up to those with $1M in annual revenue - to not only get their financial houses in order but to help them figure out how to make the money in their law firms work for them.
Chelsea and I dove in deep and right off the bat on the money mindset. We talked about how and why lawyers often struggle with running a business. Next, we moved to books and financials - what kinds of information should a lawyer or law firm be looking at and why? After that, we talked law firm KPIs and tried to sum it all up. And we had a ball doing it.