Improving Your Bottom Line: Why Every Attorney Needs a Freelancer
If you’re a practicing attorney visiting this site, you may already realize that hiring an associate is not your only option for handling heavy workload. You may also know about the expenses you avoid by using a freelancer instead of hiring an employee. But are there other ways that a freelancer can actually increase your profitability? In short, yes.
Having someone else perform work for your clients allows you to bill for their time, as well as your own. In fact, you may even mark up time spent by a freelancer in the bill to your client, a topic that will be explained soon in conjunction with our ethics series. But the potential to improve your business by having a go-to freelancer extends beyond simply increasing the fees that you bill.
What could you be doing with your time if you made regular use of a freelance attorney for the tasks that you would love to delegate, but that don’t warrant hiring an employee? With the flexibility that a freelance attorney can offer to your practice, you will have the time to work on your business, rather than in your business. You can use your time to develop new marketing strategies, new areas of practice, or more efficient ways of performing work for your clients. According to the E-Myth school of thought, this strategic work is the way to build a business that meets your needs, without draining you in the process.
The bottom line? Grow your practice by expanding your capacity, even if you can’t hire an employee. Get to know a freelancer. Spend your extra hours designing a business that runs smoothly and efficiently, even without you. Then, take a day off, just because you can.
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2 Responsesto “Improving Your Bottom Line: Why Every Attorney Needs a Freelancer”
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Great post Lynn! As a new solo, I was stunned at how much work my business needed – both “on” and “in.” There’s a lot to learn and not much time to learn it. Whatever the task, often, someone else can get it done sooner and more efficiently than me. The first step is figuring out what can be delegated; the second is finding someone you trust to do it. Working with freelancers you trust is a great way for a solo to increase their most finite resource – time.
Thanks for the post, Lynn. Having worked at both large and medium size firms, I saw first hand how freelance attorneys can quickly assist litigation projects and take the pressure off the law firm lawyers. It is a great way to staff a project and not worry about what happens when the case ends.