How I Bootstrapped & Launched My Fourth Divorce & Family Law Firm

Last week I was proud to launch my fourth practice within US Legal Groups, Kansas Legal Group, located outside of Kansas City in Overland Park. This is our ninth location overall, but it had been a few years since I last expanded to a new state so this was a really fun challenge to tackle and if you’re interested in expanding your practice across state-lines, here’s some key planning points.

Budgeting & Financing

When it comes to the budgeting and financing for a new law practice, I use a three-step approach. First, I determine a “break even” budget. This mean I project the baseline costs for overhead and a minimum viable marketing budget. Next, I determine the dollar amount the firm will lose leading up to breaking even. Finally, I determine how to cover that shortfall. If it is small enough, I turn to the cash flow and the cash reserves from my other law firms. If that number is too big I turn to private financing, almost always looking first to one of our lines of credit. If the finance number is too big for a line of credit, I may also look to an SBA loan, which is what we used to open our Denver office.

Location Selection & Recruitment

I decided on Kansas City as our newest market for a couple of reasons. First, it made sense geographically with its proximity to my Omaha practice to leverage operational infrastructure and convenience for my COO. Then, the market size, demographics, and cost of doing business made it very attractive. 

When launching a practice in a new market it is critical to find an anchoring attorney that is well established within the community. Finding a highly skilled and highly regarded attorney to join a start-up can be challenging. Be prepared to offer a robust compensation package to attract top talent. The higher compensation package for this type of anchor attorney will pay massive dividends in terms of referrals, future recruiting, and your ability to become profitable ahead of schedule. I also staff this attorney with a dedicated paralegal who can generate billable hours for revenue and alleviate stress on the attorney while also managing basic office duties. If possible, I try to find a paralegal who may also have the skills and background to move into an operations position once the firm begins to scale.

Marketing & Client Acquisition

This is the fuel that drives your law firm’s engine so to ensure a successful launch, it is critical to have a strategy that will succeed in acquiring new and existing business. Before we launch our digital marketing plan, we first set up a process to maximize the number of clients our anchor attorney can bring from their existing practice. At the same time, we create a referral marketing plan in which we reach out to the attorney’s friends, colleagues, and referral sources to begin utilizing referrals immediately.

When it comes to our digital marketing plan, we launch with a comprehensive PPC, SEO, and social media strategy. BUT, it is usually the case that early on, we will rely very heavily on paid search to acquire clients as it will likely take months to begin consistently generating clients from organic search. Thanks to our Launch and Earn™ Google Ads campaigns I can confidently forecast the return on investment of this spend while we build up a caseload. 

Next Steps

Now that we’re fully launched and operational, our focus is on scaling. It’s important to remember that sometimes you must take one step back to take two, three, four steps forward. Ideally the firm will reach positive cash flow within six months. Beyond that, we create a plan to scale based on what we see from our initial marketing results.

I’m super excited about this because the Cardinal Concepts team executed a near flawless rollout with the most sophisticated marketing plan we have put together to date, making me confident this firm will be a massive success. 

Want to expand your practice to a new market or state but don’t know where to start? Schedule a 30 minute 1-on-1 session and we can personally discuss how to create a plan of action to grow your law firm.