Lawyers Do You Have The Will To Win In 2016

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers Lawyers: Do You Have the Will to Win in 2016? This week we finish the first half of 2016. It’s gone by really quickly. What have you been doing with your non-billable time in the first three months? In 2008, I posted a blog  The Will to Prepare To Win. I noted that most lawyers I know enjoy the opportunities to serve clients and help those clients achieve their goals. I certainly enjoyed that part of my practice. Yet, many lawyers do not have the will to prepare to get those opportunities they enjoy. Recently I gave a presentation to about 50 young lawyers. I began as I frequently do by asking: How many of you have a business plan or development plan and written goals for this year? Five lawyers raised their hands. How about you? Do you have a written plan for this year? I am always searching for ways to convince young lawyers to prepare a business plan. Several years ago, I conducted a Planning for Success in 2010 webinar. I think about 500 lawyers participated. I talked about how I did my plan from the time I was a young lawyer. My plan included my own development and client development. I did it from the top (goals) to the bottom (non-billable hours) and bottom (non-billable hours) to the top (goals). I had to do it both ways because I had to choose among activities I wanted to do to achieve my goals. For each goal I asked why it was important to achieve it and if I did not have a good answer, I reconsidered the goal. For the goals that survived the why question, I prepared detail actions. Then, each 90 days I would list the actions for that quarter. Finally, I planned the activities I would do each week. My 2016 planning presentation slides are available on SlideShare here. One more thing: Preparing a plan is part of my career workbook shown above-  Prepare to Win. Click on the title and you will have a sample of the book. You can get the Kindle version on Amazon here for only $2.99. I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.