Need cash quickly?

Revenue from new clients paid within 60-90 days at a law firm is nearly impossible, as the average billing cycle once you do new work is 120 days.

If you really need revenue in 60-90 days, you should look to collecting existing accounts receivable as the first threshold, then focus on doing work for existing clients who pay their bills promptly. To be more effective, you must manage accounts receivable and focus attorneys’ attention on doing work for “paying clients.”

Getting new work in 60-90 days is a very different question. In fact, it’s several different questions, depending on what type of firm you run and what type of work you do. If you predominantly do M&A work, the idea of generating new work in 60-90 days is a bit like asking an athelete to go win an Olympic medal in an odd-numbered year. It’s not always going to be up to the attorney.

That holds true for many types of legal work; it ain’t always up to the lawyers. Not that I’m defending sloth in the marketing/sales arena. Just that for lots of corporate-side, business-heavy work, 60-90 days is a very short window. The ramp-up time from “Hello, my name is,” to “Great, we’ll get started on that new piece of work,” can realistically be 18 months.

Work with shorter turn-around time, though, usually has a shorter ramp-up time, and can start billing more quickly. Though, as I said, probably not in 60-90 days.

Right now, though, my number one strategy to get more of whatever kind of work you’re doing is to start blogging on a regular basis before your competition does. Whoever gets there first and starts putting out good, solid content and building their in-bound linking networks most quickly will have a huge advantage. And in 60-90 days, you’ll have tons more traffic than you ever had from your static firm web site.

Categorized in: Cash Flow - Finances