Your Firm Got Bigger. Did It Actually Get Better?

A growing firm isn't always a better firm.

You can be signing more cases, making more money, and hiring more people while things inside the business are getting worse.

That's the part of growth I don't think we talk about enough.

The issues don't always show up in the numbers. They show up when clients start waiting longer for a response or when a process that worked fine with 15 people doesn't work as well with 40. Sometimes your employees notice those changes before you do because they're dealing with them every day.

Meanwhile, the firm is still growing.

That's what makes this dangerous.

As owners, we naturally pay attention to what's easiest to measure. You know whether you're signing more cases, making more money, and getting a return on your marketing. Those numbers matter, but they don't always tell you whether the firm is actually getting better as it gets bigger.

And if you're trying to scale, I think that's one of the harder questions you have to keep asking yourself:

Is the business growing, or is the business actually getting better?

Seth Bader has experienced both sides of that.

Seth is the founder of Bader Law in Atlanta, where he practices personal injury and workers' compensation. He's been practicing since 2008 and has grown the firm through several different stages over the years.

Historically, the firm reached around 150 employees, and Seth is pretty open about the fact that not every decision made worked out the way he hoped.

Seth remembers when the firm had 10 or 15 people and still felt small. As they grew past 20 and eventually 30, maintaining that same level of service became harder.

Looking back, he admits the quality of the client experience started to slip, and there were times he was hesitant to hold people accountable because the firm was growing quickly and he felt like he needed them.

I think a lot of owners can relate to that last part.

You can know someone isn't meeting the standard, but when you're already understaffed, replacing them feels like it could make things worse. You can see that a process isn't working anymore, but the team is busy and there's always something more urgent to deal with.

So you tell yourself you'll deal with it later.

The problem is that your clients don't experience your revenue growth.

They experience your firm.

They know whether someone calls them back, whether they understand what's happening with their case, and whether the experience they're getting matches what they were promised when they signed with you.

Your best employees experience it too.

Seth and I talked about how difficult it is to keep A players when the standard around them starts slipping. Great people generally want to work with other great people. If they're constantly cleaning up mistakes or watching the quality of the work deteriorate, eventually you're asking them to attach their reputation to something they're no longer proud of.

That's why I think growth has to come with a higher standard, not a lower one.

Seth said something during our conversation that I think anyone trying to scale should hear:

Protect your reputation at all costs.

And he wasn't talking about your logo or your advertising.

He was talking about the reputation you have with your clients and your team. The stuff that takes years to build and can change quickly when standards start slipping.

I'm a huge believer in running a law firm like a business. I talk about it constantly.

But you still have to run a great legal practice.

As the firm gets bigger, more of your attention naturally goes toward running the business. You're thinking about hiring, marketing, technology, profitability, and how to keep everything moving.

You should be thinking about those things.

But none of it matters if the actual service gets worse along the way.

We've learned versions of that lesson at Array too. I've lost good clients, including people I considered friends, because we messed something up.

Those experiences suck.

But they also force you to figure out what went wrong and fix it. Growth can't become the reason you start accepting things you wouldn't have accepted before.

So if your firm is growing right now, I'd spend some time looking past the numbers.

Where is the client experience getting harder to maintain? What are you okay with today that you wouldn't have been okay with when the firm was smaller?

And maybe the most important one:

If you asked your best people whether the firm has actually gotten better as it's grown, what would they say?

Growth is great.

Just make sure the business you're building is still one you're proud to put your name on.

Until next week,
Kevin

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