Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 233 | Do This is You Hate Your Practice Area

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233 | Do This is You Hate Your Practice Area · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:01
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve, and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams.
• 0:47
  Now here's to Vina.
• 0:58
  Davina: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick. And lately, I've had a few conversations with women law firm owner owners who tell me they hate their practice area. And since I hate it when someone tells me that they are stuck in a career that they hate, I thought I'd provide some ways to deal with that issue that you may find helpful if you feel the same way. Let me start out by saying this.
• 1:22
  Life is way too short to spend the majority of your time doing something you don't love to do or you don't even like, in fact, you hate. If you choose to do that, you're likely gonna be filled with regret later in life when you look back on your life and career and the years you wasted, involved in a career that you really don't like. That said, I also know it can be difficult to disentangle yourself from an area of practice to which you've spent years devoting your life. And frankly, the number one reason people tell me they struggle to leave a particular practice area is because they've built a lucrative business around it, and it's hard to remove golden handcuffs. But if you want to be happy, I encourage you to try.
• 2:05
  The second reason is that while they are an expert in their current practice area, if they wanted to learn a new practice area, they would no longer be an expert, and that might make them feel like they were starting at the bottom. And quite frankly, nobody likes to be a newbie. Nobody wants to start at the bottom again, and especially once we've had a view from the top. Right? So that is another deterrent to people leaving a practice area they hate and going into a new practice area.
• 2:33
  Lastly, some have told me it's difficult to switch practice areas because they built a reputation in their current practice area as the go to attorney. And now they don't know how to stop people from referring them business in their old practice area and get them to switch over to start referring business in their new practice area. So all of these arguments, because we know as lawyers, we'd love to make arguments for staying stuck, staying where we are. All of them are valid. I mean, there's truth in them.
• 3:04
  Right? There's just one problem. You hate it. And so how much of your life are you willing to continue trading in to for the bluker, for the money, for the, fear of starting over and looking like a fool? How much are you willing to make that exchange?
• 3:26
  Will it be a challenge to to change practice areas? Sure. Will it require putting in some extra money, some thoughts, some time to learn a new practice area and make that switch? Absolutely. Will it require educating people about your career change?
• 3:40
  Will it require facing disapproval from some people we respect? So yes to all of those. But the real question is you you that you need to be asking yourself is, will it be worth it never to have to do the thing that I hate doing the most ever again? Will I be happier in my life as a whole if I make a change? If the answer to that is yes, then you know what you need to do next.
• 4:06
  What you need to do next is create a strategic plan to make that shift and then implement your plan. So here are some ways I think you can go about it that might make the transition a little bit easier. And this is, what I've learned not only from making transition myself, but also from coaching other women who have transitioned into new practice areas. The way I see it, you have three main options. Option number one is stop taking cases immediately in your current practice area and start marketing your services to a new practice area.
• 4:41
  The advantage to this approach is to stop immediately taking cases in your old practice area and begin marketing new practice area. The advantage is you begin immediately to change your life by saying no to what you don't want to do and saying yes to what you do want to do. All you have to do is clear up the old cases on your docket that you have already committed to, and then you'll be out and you'll be free. Now the disadvantage is that your firm may feel an immediate or near immediate financial impact if you do this. If you have other streams of income, perhaps you have a spouse who could hold down the financial fort for a while, or maybe you have a selfie a healthy savings account or cushion in your business, or maybe a lucrative real estate investment, then this will be more than doable because you'll be able to ride out that potential dip in your revenue.
• 5:34
  The other challenge, though, will be the steep learning curve. Because if you take this approach, you'll need to get the work first and then learn as you go. So your priority will need to be to get the new work in for your new practice area and learn as you go. And, of course, any extra time that it takes you to learn cannot be billed to your client. You need to do that on your own dime.
• 5:59
  So you really need to be willing to put in that extra time and effort on your own dime to learn your new practice area. But, hey, that should not stop you because that's how you probably learned your first area of practice. If you were a solo starting out, you got cases and you learned through additional study and experience over time and maybe some mentoring how to do them. And if you work for someone else, you were assigned cases, and you had to learn how to execute on them through additional study on the job experience, and maybe you got some mentoring. So you've been down this road before.
• 6:33
  You know what it takes to learn a new practice area. If you have learned, your other practice areas, you can learn a new one. And I have a pro tip for you. Do not let naysayers with years of experience in the practice area you want to move discourage you. Many will tell you that they hate dealing with newbies to their practice area, but the real secret is that they were once newbies themselves.
• 6:57
  So everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts at the bottom to learn a new practice area. I have a colleague who is in has been in bankruptcy for years and years and years and years, and she hates it when new people try to learn bankruptcy, practice. And, of course, that makes absolutely no sense because everyone has to start somewhere to learn the bankruptcy practice. We don't start inherently knowing all of those things.
• 7:24
  So don't let people like that get in your head. They just, may feel threatened, perhaps, but the reality is is they're not going to you're not gonna take business from them if they've been in it for years. Alright. Option number two is make a transition, a slower transition, by being more selective in the cases you take in your old practice area so you have more time to learn your new desirable practice area. So for example, if you are a family law attorney and you hate it because there's so much drama and you don't like dealing with those clients and dealing with relationship issues and you wanna switch to business law, estate planning, trademarks, whatever, you may wanna take a couple of CLEs before you jump into the deep end of marketing yourself as a law firm that handles such matters.
• 8:12
  And you might wanna start by offering these services to existing clients as an extension of your current services instead of immediately marketing to the world at large. The advantage to this approach is that you will likely feel more confident offering the new services if you've had some training before you do. You'll also have the security of still having cases in your old practice area, cases that you feel super comfortable handling and that you will continue to generate that will continue to generate reliable revenue for you as you make the switch. The obvious disadvantage is that you will still need to continue spending some portion of your time doing something that you don't like, and it will probably be a while before you can fully transition out. However, this is a very viable option.
• 8:58
  Here's my pro tip for this option. Do not use the excuse, quote, I need more course. I need one more course or one more certification before you begin marketing your services in a new practice area. There are some, attorneys who grew up in big firms who are out there coaching, solo lawyers who are growing law practices, telling them you need to spend all this time learning all these CLEs before you can start marketing this area of practice. And that is simply not viable for a solo lawyer.
• 9:29
  You can't spend years and years, learning services and not marketing them to people and getting that experience. You can learn as you go. So take a couple of CLEs. Absolutely. There is not there is absolutely nothing wrong with continuing education.
• 9:44
  In fact, I recommend it. But every attorney learns from on the job experience. You can study all day long. You will not know what it means to work in a practice area until you market yourself, get clients, take cases, and learn how to do them. You are plenty educated already.
• 10:05
  The bar in your jurisdiction has already deemed you competent to practice law. Don't forget all the legal skills and experience you already possess having worked as an attorney for some period of time. Most of those skills are going to apply to your new practice areas as well. So while you're gonna need to learn maybe some new rules and cases and conventions, you're still a very experienced attorney. So don't feel like, oh, I'm a complete newbie, and I have to go get a whole other degree to learn how to work this practice area or mentor with somebody for a year.
• 10:38
  It's absolutely not the case. So stop telling yourself that story, get the cases, get in, do your do what good attorneys do, do the research, and do the work. Alright. Option number three. And so you know upfront, this is my favorite option.
• 10:52
  Hire other attorneys to work for your firm and take over your work so you can focus on developing another practice area and maybe even just solely be the CEO of the firm. You don't even have to develop another practice area. If you hate what you're doing, you could hire other lawyers to do it. The obvious advantage of this strategy is you don't lose money. In fact, you likely are to make even more money with this approach.
• 11:16
  Also, your hard built reputation as the field's go to expert will continue to benefit the law firm even if the other attorneys within the law firm are assigned the work. There is a a technique to this approach. You do have to learn how to begin to speak differently about your years of experience and in terms of your law firm. You can no longer have the belief that, oh, people are coming here to hire me. No.
• 11:43
  They're not. They're coming to hire a law firm that is confident and will solve their legal problem, but your reputation may be what gets them in the door. So here's my pro tip. If you take this approach, I recommend you go all in and you hire more than one attorneys, preferably several attorneys, not just one other attorney to take the work you no longer want to do. In other words, you should build a law firm business with a team of people who could take over the work so you could free up your time to pursue whatever interests you, whether that's starting another practice area or just running the law firm or something else.
• 12:18
  The idea is you're gonna hire other people. You'll need a full team because in the event someone leaves your firm. So if you just hire one attorney, they leave, you're gonna get sucked right back into that daily legal work. So this really is a build out a law firm team approach, and it does work. I have coached many clients through this process.
• 12:38
  The only disadvantage to this approach is you'll still be held responsible for the reputation of the law firm, and you'll need to learn how to be a good leader to your team so they can take over the cases and also handle new cases coming into the firm. This approach requires you to trust other people to invest in training and to learn to be an effective manager and leader. When I say invest in training, I mean invest in training for your team members and also for you to be an effective manager and leader. So if you are not willing to do that, this approach may not be the best one for you. So the fourth and fifth options I'm going to throw out here are to leave the law altogether and pursue an alternate career path or to sell your law firm business and join another law firm that will support you as you learn a new practice area.
• 13:28
  There may be some other options out there. I don't know. Leave and go be a cowboy. I think that would fall under the fourth option. But the purpose of this podcast episode is to illustrate that there are options available you to you.
• 13:41
  You do not need to continue practicing in an area that makes you unhappy. If you are miserable getting up every day and going to work because you hate your area of practice, then you absolutely should consider making that change. Some people absolutely despise litigation even if they're good at it. Other people are not natural hand holders, and therefore, they're not great in practice areas that require a lot of client engagement. And still others get bored beyond belief if they are required to sit behind a desk all day and collect, review, and write documents.
• 14:17
  It's okay if what once served you no longer does. You don't need anyone else's permission to pursue the life of your dreams. Let me repeat that. You do not need anyone else's permission or approval to pursue the life of your dreams. When it comes to work, though, just remember, there are a lot of people out there selling courses to train you in their practice area, and they are selling these practice areas as though they are the key to lifestyle freedom.
• 14:45
  And perhaps for for them, those practice areas were the key to lifestyle freedom. However, every practice area has upsides and downsides, and not every practice area is the right for every personality. Just because it has worked well for someone else does not mean that it will work well for you. So what I invite you to do is when you're considering entering a new practice area, talk to several people who practice in the area that you're thinking of moving into so you have a better understanding of what it is really like. Don't just make assumptions based on what one person is telling you has worked for them.
• 15:22
  And I will give you this example. I I know a lot of people who've told me stories over the years. I've had this experience myself when you're growing up and you're watching all those shows about lawyers and what it is like to be a lawyer. Suits come to mind. LA Law comes to mind.
• 15:39
  Ali Macbiel comes to mind. I mean, all the different shows through the years that portrayed Matlock, you know, what it was like to be a lawyer. And then we actually went through law school and we became lawyers, and we realized that that's not what it looks like for every area of practice of law. In fact, it's not like what it looks like for anything because they have people writing scripts, and we go into courtrooms carrying loads of boxes, and they go in carrying nothing. So remember, just like that is a false narrative, so too is it a false narrative that another practice area may be the be all, end all.
• 16:17
  It's really important for you to talk with people who are in those area practice and really understand what it means for them on a day to day basis. Alright. So that's it for today's episode of Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Every five star review tells Apple that more women law firm owners should hear this podcast.
• 16:38
  Currently, we are the number one podcast for women in law in The US, and it's all thanks to you, our listeners. So we appreciate you so much for liking, reviewing, and sharing Wealthy Woman Lawyer. Also, if you'd like to help if you would like help as you transition your law firm business from from one practice area to another, then let's chat. We may be able to coach you through that process and make it easier for you. So check out the link in the show notes to book an appointment with me to discuss your law firm growth goals and how I may be able to help you.
• 17:08
  I'll be back next week with more great content. Thanks so much for listening.
• 17:12
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at Wealthy Woman Lawyer dot com to learn more about how we help clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.