The Three Year Rule – er, Guidepost

When it comes to building a law practice, I don’t like to use the word “rule,” because for every rule – e.g., “You must never work for free” or “You must commit to building a firm full time,” there are always plenty of exceptions. Still, based on others’ experience, you can glean certain guideposts or observations to help guide your practice and make decisions. And based on my own experience and those of a number of colleague, I’ve always regarded the three year mark as the time that most solo practices – even those that begin with the utmost success – truly begin to soar.

I’d always believed that the three year guidepost was merely a product of timing: You spend most of Year One simply scrambling to get the practice up and running and pull in whatever matters you can to generate cash flow. Year Two, you start to reap the benefits of Year One marketing so that more profitable cases find their way through the door. And by Year Two/early Year Three, you gain enough confidence to shed practice areas and/or clients that consume your time and energy but don’t produce much revenue. So by the middle to end of Year Three, you’ve finally got a good sense of where your firm is going and you can truly take off for the stars. And in fact, many solos I know who’ve started a practice after leaving a firm report a drop in income for Year One, steady growth in Year Two and meeting or surpassing earlier income from previous employment by Year Three.

I’ve found some confirmation of the three year guidepost in another, seemingly unrelated source: this post Tips for Succeeding as a TV Writer in Hollywood by Gretchen Rubin (a former lawyer), of the Happiness Project Rubin writes:

You have to live in L.A. for three years before anything much happens.”
People told my sister this when she moved out there, and indeed, after she’d been there for three years, her career really picked up speed. This is largely because relationships are so important in L.A., and it takes about three years to work up a serious network.

Rubin’s advice made me re-examine the three year guidepost in a different light. Maybe the three years aren’t really a matter of timing, but a matter of relationship building. And in law, networking is just as important as it is in L.A. Yet, many lawyers don’t bother to network and build relationships until they turn solo and thus, need the full three years to get a practice up and running because that’s the time it takes for them to establish relationships.

The lesson here? If you’re thinking of starting a law practice – today or five years down the line, start building relationships with other lawyers and potential clients right now before you start your firm. In that way, you can ensure that you’re an exception to the three year guidepost for law firm success.

3 Comments

  1. Susan Cartier Liebel on July 8, 2007 at 8:56 am

    This is true. And a huge part is the networking AND establishing your credibility within your practice areas. It is also at this juncture that you sit back and reevaluate the direction you are taking your practice. Are you on course? Do you wish to shift gears? Are you profitable in the way you want to be? Three years is a solid benchmark for all of these issues. Great post.



  2. Gretchen Rubin on July 9, 2007 at 5:56 am

    Hi — it’s Gretchen from the Happiness Project. I was very interested to see that the three year rule holds true for solo law practice, too. Maybe it’s a rule of thumb across many different areas…though I remember asking my mother and father when they really felt at home in Kansas City, after moving there from out of town, and they said it took 15 years to really feel that they’d settled in. That’s a much higher bar, however. 3 years may be what it takes in a professional setting. Very interesting issue…



  3. Gary Zeiss, Esq. on July 24, 2007 at 10:35 am

    Well, I’m in month three now – and things are going reasonably well – but three years seems like an awfully long time 😉 The good news is that I have some relationships already built from my firm practice and my in-house practice… so maybe there’s a bit of a jump start.
    The question that I have, as a Los Angeles Lawyer, is whether I have to add, multiply or divide the three years of Los Angeles and the three years of solo, or whether they can happen simultaneously 😉
    I’m hoping for the “divide” option, as my income will then exceed my big-firm income at the end of this year. Add is troubling – as six years will put my second child in college, too. Multiply – well, I can retire now ;). Simultaneous would be OK, I guess… but wouldn’t divide be nice?
    Gary.



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