One of the things that I did that I wish I didn’t when I started my law firm was to do a whole lot of useless tasks that I thought would be helpful to me. And in an effort to try to get some certainty around things that are uncertain, I tried to control maybe a little bit too much some of the things that maybe I needed to hold a little bit more loosely. And I’ll give one example, and it’s the creation of a whole different variety of engagement agreements that I was going to use for a whole bunch of different client avatars. I think at one point at the beginning, I had 20 engagement agreements for what if it’s a business? What if it’s a joint venture? What if it’s an individual? What if it’s an individual that has somebody else that’s paying and there’s a second signature that’s necessary?

And what if I’m taking a retainer and what if I’m not taking a retainer? And what happens if whatever? I had all these different engagement agreements and I built them into my CRM and I had all these different form fills and I mapped everything out. And as soon as I opened up on the first day and I started to use the engagement agreements, it was like, uh-oh, this typo is repeated throughout all of them and I’m not going to go correct them on all of them, so I’m just going to live inside this one. And then it’s like, oh, I saw something else that isn’t in here. It’d be a good idea to put this thing in here. And all of a sudden, I had one or two or three that became my go- tos and there was no sense in me going back and trying to fix up the other 17.

And so I spent all this time creating all of these different documents and I mapped everything out and I mapped it out, meaning I took the time to create when the client fills out this part of this form, it is going to zip the data over to there. And I spent all this wasted time creating a lot of stuff that I never used. And I’m definitely a planner and I don’t regret all the planning that I did before I started my law firm, but have an engagement agreement form, get it in your CRM. Don’t overcomplicate it. Avoid a lot of useless planning. A lot of these things will drive themselves and they will solve themselves. And don’t put off starting your firm because you feel like you need to line every single thing up exactly. I’m saying this and I’m a planner, but I’m six years out and on some level I am still building the plane as I fly it and there’s some element of that that you’re just going to get, you’re just going to have to get comfortable with.

So if you’re ready to launch, go ahead and launch. And get your CRM, get your practice management software, know what your hourly rate’s going to be, have an idea for marketing, have your engagement agreement. On launch day, get ready to spread the word, understand minimum requirements about your operating accountant taxes and your IOLTA account. But there is a kind of planning that is useless planning. And a lot of people that are scared and uncertain about what’s going to happen once they launch can defer the launch for a very long period of time and it doesn’t do them any good. And so I would encourage people that are just about ready to go. Don’t engage in any useless planning, don’t engage in any useless tasks. You’ll probably have more time than money at the beginning when you launch your firm, unless you’re bringing a lot of partners and a lot of associates and a lot of work.

You can do a lot of this stuff once you’re underway. I spent dozens and dozens of hours doing things that helped me not even one little bit. And so avoid that useless planning and go ahead and get started if you’re ready to launch.