Starting a Law Firm | Randomness

I've been sitting here for about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what I was going to write about starting a law firm, and I can't really think of anything. None of you out there in the "blogosphere" are writing me with any questions, so I don't have anything to write about. Because of that, I'm just going to write. If you don't like it, ask me a question so I have something to write about. Here we go.

I Watch Entirely Too Much TV

I think we all have vices, little things that pull us away from being productive. For me, it's TV. I can get sucked into any number of shows at any time of the day. Movie, reality television, documentary, sports event, it doesn't matter. If I can see the least bit of potential for it to be interesting, I'm watching. And I need to stop.

One of my goals for the upcoming year is going to be to watch TV differently. No more plopping down to see what is on and getting sucked in for hours. I'm going to have several shows that I TiVO and I'll watch them whenever I sit down. If there aren't any of those, I'm going to go do something else.

My Website Hasn't Been Working Properly

One thing that gets lost in the shuffle pretty quickly when you start a law firm are all of the things that need to be maintained once they are up and running. For me, my website is integral to my business success. I've been in the top position for some important search terms in my area for a while now, which is great. The only problem, though is that my web hosting service sucks, and my site isn't loading much of the time. That is potentially costing me thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

So, to remedy that, we're switching hosting providers as soon as we can. Hopefully the site will be fully functional soon, and I'll be fielding a bunch of potential client calls because of it.

My Phone System Hasn't Been Running Smoothly Either

Some of this has to do with the new assistant I've got (who is crushing it, by the way - oh, and she's stumbled onto this site, I think to spy on me, so I'll turn the tables on her here - now go watch Christmas Vacation!). When she came on I wanted to have a set up where she was on the phones while she was here and the virtual assistant was on the phones when she wasn't. It's taken a little tweaking, but I think we've finally got the right set up. What are we doing? Glad you asked.

I have two Google Voice numbers, one for the east side and one for the west side. Until recently, I just had both numbers routing to my cell phone. I'd answer them when they rang, and I had it set up so I knew it was coming from the Google Voice numbers. When I got the virtual receptionist I forwarded the main number to them and kept the little used one forwarding to my cell phone.

When I hired Kelsey, I set us up on Skype. I wanted to have a phone system that would allow us to transfer calls between us, to forward to a cell phone if necessary, and one that could grow and shrink with our needs. And Skype seemed to work perfectly for that (plus it's really cheap). I'd never used Skype before so it took a little getting used to. And it took a little tweaking to get the phones to ring long enough before going to voice mail and to set up the system so that going from real life assistant to virtual assistant was seamless. We've finally got that done, and here' what we do.

I've got the Google voice numbers now set up to forward to the Skype numbers at all times. When Kelsey is here, the phone just rings in the office. But when she's gone, she clicks one button and all calls that come into our Skype account are forwarded if they aren't answered within 5 seconds. This ensures enough time for the call to reach the virtual receptionist, and makes switching between people seamless and easy.

By the way, you have no idea how much tweaking that actually took to execute.

Accountant

I'm in the market for an accountant. For more reasons than just this firm.

Here's the thing, I think that once you start one business, you can't help but constantly have your eyes open for other opportunities to get into new ventures. And that's exactly what's happened to me. In addition to the law firm, I've got a budding search engine optimization business going (and, technically, one I could start if I wanted to that would help law firms actually get the search engine results they were looking for), and I've got another business in the works related to helping lawyers get paid by their clients (wouldn't we all like to make this process easier?).

Two of the ventures I'm doing on my own, but the third is with a partner. And with all of that activity means there is going to be a lot of money coming and going to and from a lot of different places. And I'm not smart enough to keep track of it all. So I need an accountant. Know one?

Okay, that's all for now. If you have questions, ask. Have a Merry Christmas!