Firm Strategy Planning Checklist

Convene the equity partners and senior of-counsel to revisit the firm's stated values. Surface drift between the formal statement and how the partnership actually behaves on origination credit, lateral integration, and pro bono allocation — these are where strategy-vs-culture friction usually lives.

State headcount, practice mix, and geography you intend the firm to have in three years. Vague vision statements ("be the leading firm in our market") fail to drive lateral, real-estate, and technology decisions later in the cycle.

Each practice group leader (litigation, transactional, family, IP, real estate, etc.) submits group-level strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Aggregate at the firm level rather than averaging — a single practice's existential threat (e.g., a key client offshoring deal work) shouldn't get hidden in the mean.

Pull state-bar referral data, Chambers / Best Lawyers rankings, and Martindale ratings for each practice area in your geography. Note rate cards where you can get them (Bloomberg Law Real Rate Report, anecdotes from laterals). Identify which competitors target the same client segments.

Pull realization, utilization, and write-off data per practice area from the PMS (Clio, Centerbase, Tabs3, etc.). A practice area with high origination but 78% realization is hiding a write-down problem worth fixing before expanding it.

Break down hourly, flat-fee, contingency, and AFA work by practice area. Note where the market is moving away from billable hour (estate planning, immigration, simple transactional) and whether your fee mix matches client expectations.

Based on the SWOT and profitability audit, the managing committee decides whether to launch a new practice area in the upcoming year. Common candidates for boutiques: data privacy, cannabis, employment counseling, trusts and estates. Document the rationale either way.

Cover lateral hire or internal lead, conflicts implications under Rule 1.10 (especially if you bring a partner from a competitor), engagement-letter templates, malpractice carrier notice (most carriers require notification when adding a practice area), and target year-one revenue.

Run a Pareto across the prior 24 months: which 20% of clients drive 80% of revenue, and which industries do they cluster in? Note one-shot vs repeat-matter clients separately — they need different retention strategies.

For PI and consumer practices, set lead-volume targets via Lead Docket / Lawmatics. For B2B practices, set named-account targets and origination credits. Watch state Rule 7.x advertising rules — including the 30-day post-incident solicitation bar that applies to PI in most states.

Time the path from initial-contact through conflicts-clear through engagement-letter-signed. Anything over 7 business days suggests bottleneck — usually the conflicts review or the partner-signature step. Identify whether IntApp Open, Clio Conflicts, or a manual database is the rate-limiter.

Decide on practice management (Clio, MyCase, Centerbase, Smokeball) and document management (NetDocuments, iManage, Worldox) investments. Migration projects routinely take 6 months — schedule them around trial calendar and tax-season transactional spikes.

Revise written SOPs for intake / conflicts, pre-bill edit, and three-way IOLTA reconciliation. Bar examiners ask for these on audit; missing or stale SOPs are an easy citation. Date-stamp and version-control them in the DMS.

Set firm-wide annual revenue, billable-hour, realization, and utilization targets. A common small-firm trap is setting headline revenue without a matching realization target — driving billable hours up while collections fall.

Build operating budget in QuickBooks or Xero with line items for compensation, occupancy, technology, malpractice premium, bar dues, CLE, and litigation cost advances. Capital plan covers DMS migration, hardware refresh, and any office build-out.

Forecast trust account volume — settlement-heavy practices (PI, employment) drive significant IOLTA throughput. Confirm three-way reconciliation (book, bank, client ledger sum) is monthly with partner sign-off; this is the single biggest Rule 1.15 risk.

Project demand by class year and practice. Note any 2L summer associate offers that need to land in August. For lateral targets, build conflicts pre-checks into the hiring funnel — surfacing a Rule 1.10 imputation problem after offer-acceptance is expensive.

Revisit base salary scales by class, billable bonus thresholds, origination credit, and any cross-selling or pro-bono credit. Communicate the framework before bonus season; mid-year surprises are a top reason associates leave for competitors.

Map exposure: missed SOL deadlines, conflicts gaps, IOLTA discipline, lateral imputation under Rule 1.10, data-breach risk under Rule 1.6(c), and inadvertent disclosure during eDiscovery. Each gets an owner and a control on the risk register.

Tighten the search scope: client, related entities, opposing parties, witnesses, key non-parties. For laterals, document the ethical wall protocol (system access controls, physical file segregation, signed acknowledgments) so a Rule 1.10 challenge has a paper trail.

Review per-claim and aggregate limits against the largest matters opened this year. Adding a new practice area (especially trusts and estates or class action) usually requires carrier notice and a coverage adjustment.

Request quotes from at least two alternate carriers (ALPS, CNA, Liberty, Travelers) with the updated practice mix and revenue projection. Renewal applications ask about disciplinary history, prior claims, and supervisory practices — answer truthfully or risk rescission.

Audit the website, attorney bios, and intake-form copy against state Rule 7.x advertising rules — no "specialist" language unless certified, required disclaimers on prior-results pages, and accurate jurisdiction listings.

Schedule attorney-authored articles, podcast appearances, and CLE presentations through state and local bar associations. CLE-presenting attorneys earn referrals from peers — a more durable lead source than paid advertising.

Configure alerts on Google, Avvo, Martindale, and Yelp. Responding to a negative review is a Rule 1.6 minefield — confidentiality survives the engagement, so most ethics opinions bar disclosing facts of the representation even in self-defense. Build a templated, content-free response.

Walk the equity partners through the consolidated plan, financial targets, hiring forecast, and risk register. Allow a one-week comment window for written feedback before requesting formal sign-off.

Each practice group leader receives the plan with their group's targets pulled out — revenue, hires, fee mix, business development goals. Schedule quarterly check-ins on the firm-wide calendar so the plan drives execution rather than sitting in the DMS.