Legal services business plan

Are you a lawyer or a lawyer? For some reason, are you already fed up with legal practice and are you looking for alternative ways to earn money where you can still use your education and knowledge? Or do you enjoy your job but want to move forward looking for additional income? Or maybe you are a law student looking to start a business alongside your day-to-day legal practice?

If any of the above questions seem to describe you, then this article can help you as it reveals the best business ideas for lawyers and attorneys.

Business ideas for lawyers

Legal Consulting

Many commercial organizations are too small to hire lawyers permanently. However, they still have a responsibility to ensure that their companies' policies and practices are in line with labor and other laws. Some organizations may hire you to review the documentation and the activity itself from a legal point of view. Others may hire you to edit company working papers to ensure they comply with the law.

If you want to become a legal business owner, you can create your own legal consulting firm.

If you have enough free time, it might be worth starting a blog. Write informative articles on legal issues that can help businesses and individuals. You can share your experience and give advice on how to effectively resolve legal issues.

If you consistently post valuable content, you will have a large subscriber base. Once you see that your blog is generating a lot of traffic, you can monetize it. Thus, along with your content, you will show ads from third-party advertisers or advertise your products.

Public speaking

Since most lawyers are very eloquent, they can confidently speak to the public. You may be a good fit for a position that requires a good speaker. Even if you are looking for other business ideas, consider this option as another idea for extra money and popularity.

Career Coaching

You can offer your career coaching services to young lawyers. If you have worked as a lawyer for many years, then you will have a lot of knowledge about both the negative and positive aspects of your profession.

Lawyer services are always in high demand. According to statistics, each of us at least once every 3 years turned to an experienced legal specialist for help. This is largely due to the frequent change of laws, amendments to it. All this makes opening your own law firm a very promising way of earning money, especially if you have a law degree.

Company registration

Before registering a company, be sure to think about the name of the company. It should not only be bright and memorable, but also indicate the type of activity of the company.

It is desirable to register an enterprise as a limited liability company and choose the taxation system of the ONS.

In this case, the tax rate will be 15% of net profit (that is, the difference between profit and cost), which is very beneficial. A license and permission to provide services will be required if the agency provides advice:

• detective ;
• notary ;
• lawyer.

Selection of premises and equipment

It is necessary to start opening your own company with the selection of premises. Depending on its size and location, the number of employees, the list and cost of services provided will depend.

It doesn't matter whether the office will be located in the center or on the outskirts - you will find clients everywhere. Another thing is important - the offices of competitors should not be located nearby, and the office should be located on a more or less busy street, not in the courtyards of residential yards. It is advisable to rent a room in business centers or in houses where the first and second floors are rented out for offices.

The cost of renting premises in the center will be significantly higher than in the periphery. The ideal option is an office not far from the city center, two or three stops from the main road junction.

Working for a “boss”, minimum opportunities, gradual gaining experience and slow career growth: stable and unhurried, it will take years to succeed in your field, and you may not earn a name for yourself at all. There is another way - your own business. The risk, the need to invest money, and the main problem - there is practically nothing to do without your own name. However, the modern development of Internet technologies significantly expands our capabilities! So, the Internet allows you to start legal practice, create a decent reputation for yourself and unobtrusively advertise your own business. How? For example, by providing free legal aid.

A good visual example of how this can function is the onlinejurist site. et, where you can get legal help for free.

The idea of ​​organizing the provision of legal services via the Internet

Your legal specialization does not really matter to implement your plans - all areas of legal assistance are in demand among people. So let's say you are a family lawyer. You create an informational site where you answer questions asked by visitors. Of course, within the site it is free. Free legal aid should be announced on the site itself, ideally in its name.

The essence of human psychology is that everything is free, whether it be goods or services, quickly finds a response and gains popularity. Consequently, your site, after minimal promotion, will “promote” itself, thanks to the growth in the number of visitors and word of mouth. Meanwhile, the site is gradually accumulating a huge number of questions and answers, you can gradually add them to the site's archive, sort them there by headings, supplement the site with useful articles on family law, thereby turning it into a useful and necessary information resource that will be deservedly popular among visitors who invariably find the necessary information on its pages.

How to make money on free legal services?

The services are free, what then is the earnings? - you ask.

In fact, you can make money on such a site, and not bad. Moreover, in addition to material benefits, first of all, you will earn reputation, authority and respect - all those components from which the good name of a lawyer is gradually built, brick by brick. Moreover, if the construction of this name in “real life” may take years, on the Internet, with this powerful engine of progress, you can cope in just a few months.

Now about the benefits. Information is definitely worth the money. And by giving part of it to customers for free, you always reserve the opportunity to sell the rest of it to them. Family law (as, indeed, many other areas of jurisprudence) is a complex area, in many cases painful for the client. In the overwhelming majority of cases, after discussing the main points of the problem in an online conversation and making sure of the qualifications of a lawyer, the client prefers to continue the conversation at an individual consultation at the reception of this lawyer. Of course, it will already be paid, as well as the management of the client's case.

Therefore, on your site you are actually advertising yourself as a professional and your private office - as a place that helps people to successfully solve their problems. And thus you find yourself in a better position than lawyers who do not have Internet support. In any case, a person is more interested in continuing a conversation with a specialist whom he already trusts and feels his competence than to go to a lawyer whom he sees for the first time.

Financial model of legal services

Brief Investment Memorandum

In this business plan, we will consider a law firm that specializes in issuing SRO approvals and certificates for quality management systems, occupational health and safety, environmental management and food safety.

The main activity is the registration of SRO admissions and the issuance of certificates to legal entities, LLCs and individual entrepreneurs.

Target audience - organizations and individual entrepreneurs operating in the field of construction, import and export, production, etc.

The advantages of working in this area are that SRO approval is required for the implementation of construction, design and survey activities. Obtaining certificates is also in demand in the market, since the availability of these documents gives enterprises a number of advantages described in the business plan.

The business of issuing SRO permits and ISO certificates can be built according to both active and passive development and promotion models. Active business development involves an active search for customers and more significant advertising costs (printing of handouts, online promotion, the use of traditional advertising channels). With a passive approach to promoting services, it is necessary to pay great attention to the correct location of the office - in places with high pedestrian traffic or close to large business centers of the profile type.

Initial investment amount - 304,500 rubles

The breakeven point is 5 months

Payback period - 5 months

Average monthly profit - 160,000

Starting your own business is something that any practicing lawyer sooner or later begins to think about. To do this, you will need not only to understand the laws, but also to navigate in marketing, finance and accounting.

It is possible to start a legal business without specialized education, taking on only organizational work. But be prepared for the fact that it will be difficult to control the business.

Business does not require a license, which means that anyone can do it, but in order to survive among a large number of competitors in the market, you need to pay enough attention to drawing up a business plan.

Relevance and types

Legal services are one of the few types of entrepreneurial activity that remains relevant at any time, including periods of crises and falling income levels. And in recent years in the world and in Russia, in particular, there has been a tendency of increasing interest in competent protection of their labor and social rights.

With the improvement of the economic situation, the demand for the services of lawyers and notaries is only growing. So, if you have deep knowledge of the issue and a well-prepared business plan, you can make very good money on the provision of legal assistance and advice. Even if there are already large companies on the market that can compete.

Legal firms are classified by size and number of employees. Summing up both factors, we get the following varieties:

• Boutiques - specialize in solving highly specialized issues for a lot of money. The company employs from 5 to 10 highly qualified full-time lawyers.
• Large companies - the staff has about 50 employees. Provides services in various areas of law.
• Specialized firms are small organizations that specialize in one area. Basically, they provide support in the preparation and execution of documents, registration of rights.

Market description and analysis

Researching competitors and demand is an important part of the opening plan, since the chosen direction of activity will largely depend on it. The legal services market is huge and includes more and more different areas. When drawing up a plan, be aware that no new company can fully cover all possible directions.

Many experts even believe that at the beginning of the activity it is worth concentrating on one specific direction, gaining a reputation in it and gaining a foothold in the business. Only after that is it worth expanding the offer. On the other hand, if you plan to work in one direction only, you run the risk of facing a high level of competition.

Clients prefer to apply for one service to companies that already have experience in solving such issues and have a good business reputation. From this point of view, a more advantageous plan would be to open a universal office. You can choose the usual popular directions: