Steps I Took to Turn Around My Worst Performing Office

I believe there are real risks to law firms that aren’t in a constant growth mindset. One of my preferred growth strategies is expanding to new markets in states I already operate in to leverage existing business, marketing, and operational infrastructure.

In May of 2023 I opened a new office in Colorado Springs, a mere 63 miles from our Colorado Legal Group headquarters in Denver. I plan a six-month ramp up period for every office I launch and for the first time, we did not scale profitability as quickly as I expected. Within one year of opening, it was our intent to have three attorneys on staff which we did accomplish but we were missing our revenue targets.

We were generating over 100 qualified leads a month, booking paid consultations at above average conversion rates, but we were not getting retained by clients.

So what was going wrong?

1. Market Research: Colorado Springs is anchored by the Air Force community, something we were aware of. With military divorce experience, this was not something that we were concerned about from a service perspective. We looked at divorce rates in El Paso County, household income, and other demographic indicators that led us to believe this was a highly attractive market matching our customer avatar. What we didn’t anticipate was the VOLUME of enlisted Airman leads skewing our initial performance numbers.
2. Community Connection: While I hired an extremely talented Managing Attorney, she was relocating from Grand Junction and new to the local legal and community at large. The biggest challenge that presents a startup law firm is the lack of referral sources. Those relationships take time to develop and nurture. We were able to recruit two established associate attorneys in the area but neither had consistent referral sources.
3. Managerial Oversight: As mentioned, our Managing Attorney was transitioning from Grand Junction to Colorado Springs and I was based in Denver so there was not a senior leader always on-site to monitor how business was being handled. We were feeding associates consultations but they were converting only 25% into clients when we expect to see a 50% conversion rate. Both associates had done consultations at their past firms so we expected them to simply hit the ground running. Leadership allowed their underperformance to go on for too long before stepping in.

How did I turnaround performance?

First, we evaluated the data. CMO Brent Harkins did a deep-dive of analysis to confirm lead volume and quality were not the problem. While we have tested and proven Launch and Earn™ campaigns, we’re always hyper-critical of our marketing efforts. Our intake team was converting over 30% of our leads into paid consultations also indicating lead quality was not a problem and the initial sales conversations were effective.

As previously mentioned, the real problem was consult to client conversion rates. As you can guess, this then has a downstream effect on the ability to meet hourly-billing and total revenue goals.

Effective immediately I had our most experienced attorney begin taking all consults. While this is not something I generally recommend due to an inability to sustain and scale, I needed a short-term solution and proof that we did not have a lead quality problem. We saw our client acquisition rate increase to 40% with her taking consults from the same lead pool.

I then provided a series of consultation training sessions with our two associates so that they were better equipped to handle consults. I’m happy to say the last two months have seen a massive turnaround and we’re now on-track to hit our revenue goals.

Running a law firm is not easy. Running a multi-state, multi-office practice is even more challenging but this is what I love to do. I love helping teams address and overcome their problems. If you’re facing any challenges and would like to personally discuss, book time directly on my calendar and we can work on a solution together.