9 Guiding Principles for a High-Impact Law Firm Strategy

When successful people talk about their accomplishments, you don’t usually hear them say, “I don’t have a clue how it happened …” or “Beats me.” What you are more likely to hear is, “I had a vision that I turned into a plan.” They planned to succeed – they set themselves up for it and execution made it happen.

So, if planning is the key to success, why does strategic planning have such a high fail rate in law firms? Are lawyers simply bad at long-term planning? Do political, compensation, or other cultural issues get in the way?

Perhaps there’s truth to much of this. But there is another, easily forgotten explanation for failure of law firms’ strategic plans: Clients are the engines of a law firm, and yet, together, strategic plans are primarily inward-facing; they are more operational than strategic. By listening and connecting to clients, you can create a strategic roadmap that puts clients first, to get where you want to go. Here is how you do it.