When Should You Hire an Associate Attorney?

So I went through basically my fundamental questionnaire that asks, are you at the attorney level? Are you at the manager level, the CEO level, or the investor level? So if you're at the attorney level, that means we are, what I call, keeping it small, keeping it all.

What that means is we're keeping north of 40%, and really I'd like to see it in upwards of 50% or higher of gross revenues that are maxing out somewhere around $1.2 million in revenue.

That's about the max level where you can keep it small, keep it all.

You're still gonna be able to keep a high margin, a high total owner's benefit, and have a relatively small number of team members.

Now, are you at the level one and you're trying to max out level one, or have you surpassed level one and you're maybe in level two? The manager level is where we are somewhere between 1.2 and, say, $3 million.

Okay? So that's about the revenue space.

Now, there's a nickname for this manager level, and we call this hell, because this is where life kind of really sucks for you as a law firm owner.

This is where it's at its hardest.

Y- you're likely still an associate at some point, or you're overseeing the legal moving parts, and you're still the marketing director, and you're still the sales manager, and you're still the customer service manager, and you're still oftentimes covering for the lawyers and going to court.

Like, you're still very, very busy because you're trying to perfect and learn how to grow and run your business whilst still doing these other things.

And so this feels like hell.

The path is to get through this as fast as possible, and the way you do that is by, quite frankly, selling your way to success.

I gotta get you past that $3 million mark.

The next level is what we call the CEO level, and I would call the CEO level and the investor level, you're first starting to taste of freedom.

At the CEO level, you're still working, so you're not ultimately free, but you've started to taste what freedom is like.

You're generating somewhere between three and, say, $6 million in revenue.

This is where you have enough cash flow, because in this hell stage you should still be keeping 25-ish to 30% range.

Now, the reason it's called hell is 'cause you're spending money, you're learning things, you're making mistakes, and your margins aren't maybe where they should be, but y- you know, you're still keeping that 250 to 600 to $700,000 in income to the bottom line.

At the CEO level, that three to six, I still want you to be at that 30-plus percent mark, and so you should be keeping 900,000 to 1.8 million to the bottom line.

This allows you to buy your higher level team members, and you're gonna need to start hiring them and developing them so they can run the other teams.

Now, whether you develop them from within or you bring them from the outside, it doesn't matter.

It's still going to cost you money.

So at the investor level, this is where you started to build north of the $6 million, and now you're finding a way to go to the $10 million level and the $15 million level, the $20 million level.

And so you should be able to keep north of 25% still, owner's benefit, maybe higher.

But point is, at every stage here, I wanna make sure we're profitable, right? At every single stage, I'm paying attention to profit.