Who Do You Talk Your Decisions Through With
One of the things I've noticed about small law firms is how many decisions end up on one desk.
In a large firm, decisions get spread around. Partners vote on the big ones. A practice manager handles the lease, HR runs the pay review, finance chases the debtors, and someone in IT renews the software. Nobody carries all of it.
In a firm with one or two partners, all of it ends with the principal. In a single week that might be a client disputing a bill, a solicitor asking for a pay rise, a new enquiry that feels a bit off, a fixed fee to set on a matter type you haven't priced before and the rent review on your office. Any one of them is manageable. What wears people down is carrying all of them at once, every week, on top of the legal work.
Isolation that comes with being the owner
What strikes me most is how lonely the role can be, and how rarely principals say so.
When I map out who a principal can actually talk a decision through with, the list is short.
The team is usually out, because the decision often affects them. Sharing a worry about cash or a hire with the people whose jobs depend on it can unsettle a good team.
Clients are out, for obvious reasons.
Family will listen, and that matters a lot. But a partner at home can't weigh in on whether 90 days of lockup is a problem, or whether the new associate is recovering enough of their time.
Other lawyers are either competitors or have never run a firm. A senior partner at a large firm has been through plenty, but not the question of whether a firm of three can afford a fourth.
So the biggest decisions in the business tend to get made in the principal's own head, often late at night, with nobody to test them against.
Why it gets confusing
The loneliness is one part. The other part is that, from the principal's seat, it can be genuinely hard to tell what's going on.
That isn't about ability. The principals I meet are some of the most capable people I know. The confusion comes from the seat itself.
There's no reference point. When you only ever see one firm's numbers, it's hard to know whether your lockup, your rates or your write-offs are normal, or whether every owner feels this stretched. Every number is just a number.
There's a lot of noise. Software vendors, LinkedIn, CPD presenters and well-meaning friends all have a view, and the views often contradict each other.
It's very close up. From inside the firm, the problem you see is usually the one on the surface. "We need more clients" feels true. Sometimes the real issue is that the firm is already busy and the work is leaking out through write-offs and discounting, so more clients would just mean more leakage. That's very hard to see from where the principal sits.
And a decision made alone is hard to stand behind. When nobody has tested the thinking, it's easy to keep reopening it, and that uses up the energy needed for the next one.
Where I've landed
I don't think the answer is getting better at making decisions alone. What I've seen work is having the right person to make them with.
I'm no different. I have a couple of people I call when I'm stuck on something, and I'm not sure I'd make good decisions without them.
The people who are most useful to a principal seem to have five things in common.
They know the numbers of firms like yours. So when you ask "is this normal?", you get a real answer instead of a guess.
They have no stake in telling you what you want to hear. They're not your employee, your client or your competitor, so they can say the thing others won't.
They show up on a rhythm and remember what you said you'd do. The important things that aren't urgent stop drifting from one month to the next.
They're someone to think out loud with. They bring what they're seeing across other firms and the wider industry, so you're not working everything out from scratch.
They give you direction when you're stuck, and steady you when it's heavy. Some weeks you need a strategy. Some weeks you just need someone who understands the job.
That person can come in different forms. For some principals it's a peer group of other owners. For some it's a mentor who has run a firm. For others it's an adviser. The form matters less than those five things.
It's also the part of my own work I enjoy most. The numbers and systems matter, but a lot of the value in my conversations with principals comes from simply being the person they can think out loud with.
A good adviser doesn't make your decisions for you. You still make the call. You just don't make it alone.
The decisions don't get smaller as the firm grows. What changes is whether you carry them on your own.
If there's a decision you're sitting on at the moment, feel free to email me at [email protected] and tell me about it. I'm always happy to think it through with you.
More next Tuesday,
Gordon