Law firms, like lots of businesses, stagnate as they get older. It’s easy to get fat and tired. It’s appealing to put up our feet and push back in the recliner. An entire firm can adopt that posture.

A mature law firm is a very different place than a law firm in its infancy. New law firms are like babies. They flail, cry, erupt, and are in a constant state of change. They evolve as they face challenges. They bump into obstacles and work their way around.

It’s one thing to get the ball rolling and the business humming along. The beginning is a challenge, and it’s rarely easy. But it’s just the first challenge.

Maturity is a challenge as well.

How Do You Keep It Going?

How do you maintain an exceptional law firm once the energy of the first year, or even the first five or ten years, has passed?

How do you maintain strong profitability, productivity, and success when the business is 20 or more years old?

Things look different after you’ve had a couple of decades of success. It’s easy to assume that the business will take care of itself. It’s easy to believe that you’ll always meet payroll because you’ve always met the payroll. It’s easy to believe you’ll continue to grow because you’ve always continued to grow.

It’s easy to lull yourself into a drunken stupor where you lie down in a hammock, close your eyes, and let your entire body relax.

But what if, as you rock gently back and forth in the hammock…

…the hammock collapses and you smash into the sharp, pointed cactus bush that someone planted right beneath the soft, flabby part of your lower back?

What happened yesterday does not indicate what’s going to happen tomorrow.

You’ve read the warning a thousand times—“Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results”—and you know it’s true.

How do you counteract the tendency to slow down as the law firm matures? What can you do?

How do you keep the business strong over time? How do you maintain an exceptional business? How do you keep it going for 20 years? 30 years? Or even longer?

Maintaining the success necessary to stay on top requires leadership. It requires taking action to continue to lead the market. Leadership must focus on four core issues if there’s any chance of the future looking better than the past.

1. Maintain an energized team.

First and foremost, you’ve got to maintain an energized, dynamic team. Ditch those who are done.

Some lawyers wear out. They spend their days telling the stories of past victories as the days since they’ve done anything that matters fade into history. They’re living on the dividends of clients brought in years ago, but they’re not bringing anything new.

Slice them out like a surgeon removing a tumor. Use their space to energize the business with new life.

Find those who are smart, passionate, and energized, and bring them in. It’s time for some new blood. People come and people go. It’s an essential element of keeping the business fresh, empowered, and hungry.

There’s value in loyalty, and it makes sense to carry team members through personal issues and tough times. But when a player can’t bring the “A game,” it’s time for the player to get cut. There’s value in loyalty to the team, but there’s more value in being loyal to the business. You can’t put one team member ahead of everyone working for the business. The business needs to come first.

2. Change with the market.

Change as the market changes. Watch your clients as well as the competition. Be aware of the trends with respect to marketing, technology, management, and financial tools. Watch your clients’ businesses and lives, and stay abreast of the developments affecting their needs.

Find new needs to meet as the market evolves. What problems need solving today that didn’t exist five years ago? What economic and business issues and concerns are on the table today that you didn’t factor in before? What governmental concerns and interests have developed? What new problems do your clients have today that they didn’t have yesterday?

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And find new solutions as well. How can you employ the latest management trends and technology advances to solve your clients’ problems and better run your business? Can better technology solve client problems better, faster, or cheaper than before? Does your team have the expertise to implement those solutions?

3. Invest in growth.

Thriving businesses have a research and development budget. Back in the beginning, you invested much of your budget in thinking, striving, reaching out, and finding problems to solve. Most of the budget was spent on growth through research and development, even if you didn’t see it that way. You were a research and development machine.

Today, as a mature business, the money and time that would have gone to experimenting and searching now flows to the bottom line. It’s profit instead of research. That’s a path to a slow, quiet death. Investment is how you breathe life into the organism.

You’ve got to commit people, run experiments, reach out, and actively listen and find the latest problems as well as their solutions. Don’t expect growth without investment. If you want to thrive, you’ve got to be willing to provide the fuel necessary to reignite the fire.

4. Ignore yesterday.

Yesterday is so, well, yesterday. It’s over. It’s done. Sadly, no one remembers, and few, if any, care.

Your team members were the leading experts in something no one cares about anymore. Your group worked with the leaders of the latest thing to bring it to the mass market. You were the guy who did whatever it was first.

Yesterday was awesome, but it’s over, and no one cares.

When you find yourself talking about the great victories of the past, be aware that no one is listening. People care about today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

That’s why you’ve got to keep the services fresh. The offering must be linked to the latest developments. The solutions must relate to the current problems, and the methodologies employed must be technologically and economically sound.

Look around. Look at the younger, newer, fresher groups of professionals and be afraid. Paranoia isn’t just for the paranoid. Watch what’s happening, jump on, and then get ahead. Yesterday is bogging you down. It’s pulling you backward instead of propelling you forward. Let yesterday go because it’s not good enough to compete in the market that exists today.

Don’t Let It Happen to You

Put the recliner in the sitting-up position, stand up, and get moving.

Energizing the law firm once the business is mature presents challenges. But now, you’re facing those challenges with the benefit of maturity. Maturity is a good thing.

1. Maturity allows law firm leaders to better appreciate opportunities, obstacles, and challenges.
2. Maturity allows law firm leaders the perspective to understand the choices they make as they refine the team.
3. Maturity helps the leadership sort out opportunities for growth from wasteful distractions.

Most old law firms die along with their founders, if not sooner. There aren’t many law firms that survive their original owners and continue to grow and thrive beyond that initial lifespan.

In a mature law firm, continued growth only happens when the law firm leadership refuses to lie down in the recliner. It only happens when the leadership keeps the business fresh with new people, ideas, and investment. It only happens when the focus is on tomorrow instead of yesterday. Tomorrow can be bigger and better if the leadership of the firm points the focus to the future.