When most attorneys hear “business plan,” they often think of “lateral move” next. You put one together because you’re leaving, or at least thinking about it. It’s the document that goes to firms and makes the case for why they should want you.
That mindset means most attorneys don’t create a business plan until they have to.
But a business plan isn’t just a job-search document. It’s a way to plan your practice intentionally. It helps you understand where revenue is coming from, what opportunities are available (or have been missed), and what you’d need to grow your practice.
And treating it as a task you get to when you’re considering going to another firm means you’re missing most of its value.
What a business plan actually outlines
A business plan for a rainmaker pulls together a picture of who you are and what you do, your client picture, your time allocation, your business development (BD) activity, and your practice trajectory.
When you look at all of it together, you have what you need to make intentional decisions about where your practice is going and how you spend your time. To do that, though, it needs to capture information in several categories beyond an executive summary.
Your revenue and client picture
Who your clients are, where each relationship came from, what you’re collecting on your bills, and what revenue you’re not capturing. These are the foundations of your business plan.
It’s especially important to capture information like:
- Work turned away because of conflicts
- Matters referred out because your firm doesn’t have the right capabilities
- Origination credit going to someone else for a client you developed
If you’re not capturing it, you’re working with an incomplete picture of what your practice is actually worth.
How you spend your time
A business plan tracks not just billable hours but how the rest of your time is being used. For example, how many hours are going toward business development? Are those hours serving your practice?
Many attorneys haven’t looked at where their time goes beyond the timesheet until they go through this exercise.
What your BD activity is actually producing
Business development takes investment, whether in conferences, networking, sponsorships, or memberships. (It also just takes time, which is at a premium for busy rainmakers.)
A plan documents what each of those activities has produced in revenue, so you can make deliberate choices about what to keep doing and what to stop. A $50,000 conference that brought in an $800,000 client is worth repeating, but if it produced nothing, it isn’t.
Where your practice could go
A plan also looks forward. This is where you set goals for your practice and think through how to get there. Some questions worth working through:
- Where do you want your practice to be in three to five years in terms of revenue, client base, and practice areas?
- Who is your ideal client, and are you currently serving them? If not, what would it take to get there?
- Are there service areas your clients keep needing that you’re currently referring out?
- Are there skills you could develop that would let you retain that work and deepen those relationships?
- Which BD activities do you want to double down on, and which do you want to retire?
- What would you need from your firm, in terms of resources, staffing, or platform, to get there?
Identifying what your clients need and where you want to take your practice is where attorneys often find the clearest path to intentionally growing their book.
Why every attorney (not just the ones thinking of moving) needs a business plan
Many attorneys don’t think that they need a documented business plan until they start thinking about leaving their firm, but that’s a misconception. A well-structured business plan for law firm partners is useful no matter whether you’re staying or going.
If you’re staying put
For attorneys staying put, having your numbers documented means you’ve documented your leverage. Things like compensation discussions, requests for additional resources, and making a business case for additional support carry more weight when you can show what your BD investment has produced and where your practice is headed.
If you’re considering a move
Having your numbers documented gives you a clear picture of what you want from a new platform. An attorney who has documented $500,000 in work that was turned away because of conflicts knows what to look for in their next firm and which firms are worth talking to in the first place.
The plan also shapes how you think about fit. When you know:
- Which clients would follow you
- What platform limitations have been costing you work
- What your practice could look like with the right resources behind it
This means you can focus your energy on finding the right-fit firm, not just another firm.
Why are business plans hard to start (and finish)?
A business plan doesn’t come together overnight. It requires setting aside time and mental bandwidth, two things most law firm partners are running short on. Besides too few hours in the day, there are a few other reasons business plan development stalls out.
The data isn’t in one place
A business plan requires numbers that many attorneys haven’t pulled into one place. That information lives in accounting reports, email threads, and memory, which means accessing and documenting it can take significant bandwidth.
The right things aren’t being tracked day to day
Data points like realization rate, BD activity ROI, and referred-out work aren’t necessarily monitored by attorneys. When it’s time to build a plan, the data either doesn’t exist or must be reconstructed from scratch.
There’s no clear place to start
Even attorneys who want to do this don’t always know where to begin. Without a defined structure for what goes into the plan, how it’s ordered, and how to interpret the numbers, the blank document stays blank.
Or a clear vision of what you want
A business plan requires more than financial data. It also asks you to think through your goals, like where you want your practice to be, what kind of work you want to do, and what success looks like for you.
For attorneys who have been focused on executing rather than planning, that’s not always a question they’ve sat down to answer. Without it, even a blank document with the right structure can feel hard to fill in.
Six steps to building your business plan
Building a business plan takes time and real mental effort, but approaching it in a structured way makes the process more manageable. Here is where to begin:
1. Start with a professional overview
Before you get into the numbers, write a summary of your practice, e.g., your background, areas of focus, the types of clients you serve, and any leadership roles or notable work that gives context to what follows.
2. Pull your numbers
If you feel comfortable, start with a revenue run from accounting. Don’t estimate if you can pull the actual data. This is the foundation everything else builds on.
3. Map your top 10 clients
For each one, identify where the relationship came from. A referral, a conference, a cold introduction fifteen years ago. If you can’t trace it, that’s worth noting too.
4. Look at how your time breaks down
How many hours are you billing versus putting toward business development? How many are going toward firm-citizenship activities, such as interviewing or mentoring? This tells you whether your current setup is letting you do the work that grows your practice.
5. Document what you turned away
Note the work you declined or referred out in the last year and why. Conflicts, platform limitations, practice areas you don’t cover. For many attorneys, this number is higher than expected.
6. Assess your BD activity
Which two or three activities produced work and are worth repeating? Which two or three didn’t and are worth stopping? This is where you build next year’s BD plan.
7. Set your forward-looking goals
Where do you want your practice to be in three to five years? What do you want to be doing more of, and what do you want to stop doing? What would your ideal platform look like? Writing this down, even roughly, is what turns a financial snapshot into an actual plan.
8. If you’re considering a move, add one more question
What does your current firm’s platform not provide, and what would you do with it if you had it?
Once you have a plan, update it at least annually and review your numbers at least quarterly.
The next step
If you haven’t done this before, the Book of Business Calculator is a good place to start. It walks you through the numbers that matter and helps you get a realistic picture of what your book is worth. From there, the Six Pillars Assessment shows you how your practice is doing across the other areas a business plan covers, such as how you’re spending your time, where you’re developing business, and where you want your practice to go.
If you’re ready to talk through what you’re seeing in your numbers, whether you’re staying put or considering a move, book a call. That’s what I’m here for.
