Managing a bankruptcy practice is hard work.  You’re working with clients, bringing in new business, and doing the heavy lifting.  Starting a bankruptcy practice is also difficult, and for different reasons.  But what if you need to start a bankruptcy practice while managing the existing one?  In other word, re-creating a law firm from within?

I’m in the process of arranging to have some work done in my apartment.  We moved in about 12 years ago at a time when we really had no business getting a mortgage in the first place.  With little money behind us and just starting out, my wife (then girlfriend) and I opted to take the place as-is.  And though it was decent enough at the time, the years have taken their toll on our corner of the world.

Specifically, the wood floors need to be re-done.  12 years and a dog have conspired against out (once) lovely floor.  Now it looks like something out of a haunted house.  No choice, we need to get the floors sanded and polished.

Suddenly our lives are turned inside out.  Boxes to be packed, stuff to be moved around, dust curtains to be installed.

But life will go on.  It will be inconvenient but we know that once it’s all done we won’t have to worry about dodging splinters when we walk through the living room.

I always talk about new marketing and practice management ideas for the law firm; most of it comes from running a profitable bankruptcy law firm, which is my perspective as a consumer bankruptcy lawyer.  But how do you implement new ideas and strategies without destroying what may otherwise be a fully-functioning practice?

It’s a question I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately.  After all, most bankruptcy lawyers are solos or in small firms and don’t have the luxury of ripping out half the practice at a time and leaving the rest undisturbed.  If you’re shutting down, you’re done.  With the transactional nature of consumer bankruptcy work, that’s not an option.

Change needs to come in small bits and pieces, not all at once.  Want to go to an electronic faxing method, scrapping the fax machine entirely?  Open the new account with MaxEMail (my preferred vendor), eFax, or whatever service you choose.  Test it out for a week by forwarding your existing fax number.  Then, after you’ve made sure it works, you can start giving out the new number to clients.  Keep the old one forwarding for a year; then you can disconnect it.

Employees taking too much time off?  Need new policies?  Draft up the manual and pass it around for review and comments.  Let it sink in for a few weeks.  Then, after you’ve made sure everyone’s seen it, announce an effective date a month int the future.  Announce the date and send out periodic emails to staffers to remind them.

Thinking about a virtual assistant to help with the bankruptcy petition drafting?  Find someone you like, train them and give them one petition.  Just one.  Review it, file it, and then give them a second to handle.  Don’t fire your existing paralegal until the virtual assistant has done enough for you to know that he or she is reliable and capable.

See, it’s all a question of transition.  If you make these enormous and jarring changes they’re bound to backfire on you.  You don’t need to move out of the house to get the floors refinished, you can do it room by room.  It takes more time to get done, but you won’t need to worry about being homeless.  The rest of the house will continue to chug along even while the work continues.

Photo courtesy of isnoop.