Feb. 4, 2009 – Small-firm practitioners are both lawyers and small business owners – a mix of skills with correspondingly complicated personalities. A financial and relationship counselor offers insights into this type of person and tips for them to better manage their businesses and personal lives.

Practicing law isn’t for everyone and neither is running one’s own business. To do both requires a special type of personality that is not always understood by clients, family, or even the small firm practitioner him or herself. Consequently, problems can arise in personal and professional relationships.

There is no clear line of division between a small firm practitioner’s professional life and personal relationships, according to Connie Kilmark, a financial and relationship counselor in Madison. The traits that one must have to be self-employed can hardly be exclusive to the office, she said. Consequently, addressing business and professional issues requires holistic self-examination encompassing attitudes toward money as well as life and career expectations, she said.

Your “financial personality”

Money itself, Kilmark observes, has no inherent meaning. It symbolizes value in an economic exchange, she said. But, depending upon a person’s ethnic, religious, family background, or even brain chemistry, money can also be a proxy for life struggles such as seeking recognition and status.

Awareness of what exactly money means to you can yield insight into how you run an office and maintain a personal life, she said. For instance, this “financial personality” may have a distinct bent toward frugality or a propensity for generous gifts. In turn, this can lead a small firm practitioner to favor certain parts of the job – such as bringing in new clients – over others, like ordering office supplies. Yet, a lack of pens and paper is a challenge to retaining clients. When hiring staff or associates, Kilmark recommends finding those people who bring the attributes you lack.

“As people start small businesses, they fail not because of a lack of talent, but because they do not recognize what part of a necessary skill set or range of competence is missing,” Kilmark said. “I call it ‘having a cookie with a bite missing.’ Almost no one is a complete ‘cookie.’ We all have parts missing. The key is to know what parts you lack and hire them.”

At the same time, Kilmark warned that either an intimate relationship or business partnership of dissimilar personalities requires “exquisite communication skills” to sustain.

The quality you once valued as ‘laid back’ in the person to whom you were attracted because it was different from you becomes criticized as ‘lazy’ after awhile,” she said. “Economically, this can be a tinder box at home as well as at a law office,” Kilmark said.

Be a better manager at work…

• Do not confuse “busy” with “productive.” When starting a firm, any work seems better than sitting idle, Kilmark said. But as the practice matures, she said, an attorney needs to keep careful track of billable hours to identify the type of work that is actually turning a profit.

“Some attorneys believe that because the work seems worthwhile and it took a long time to do, it must be valuable,” Kilmark said. “But if you can’t put profits down on paper, it’s only a high-priced hobby – not a business.”

This can be a particular challenge for lawyers who view themselves as “social work-type helpers,” Kilmark said. These small firm practitioners need to allocate a set number of hours for pro bono or community service and stay within them, she said.

• Be a boss first, friend second. The intimacy of a small firm with just a few employees can make it hard for small firm practitioners to exercise real supervision. An attorney needs to set ground rules and limits, Kilmark said. But just as importantly, she said, the small firm practitioner needs to set an example. “The attorney had better look like he is using his time constructively if he expects the hourly employees to do the same,” she said.

• Invoice often and collect timely. “The clients do not see you working and often cannot even imagine what you do,” Kilmark said. “You need to invoice along the way to educate them. Otherwise, it’s like not telling a story but at the end you give them a big bill.”

Likewise, Kilmark warned, “Do not get complacent with the idea that money is in the pipeline and you just need to get around to billing for it. As they say in collections, ‘the older, the colder.’”

… and at home

• Prize your personal relationships. Kilmark said that although a high volume of work is a blessing, a person works to live rather than lives to work. Too often a small firm practitioner allows work to intrude upon time that should be spent with family and the consequences can be terrible, she said. Kilmark suggested adopting a “transition ritual” that signals to you that you are no longer at work. For example, she said, upon return to the home one might observe “a ‘zone of silence’ so no one asks for anything and you don’t speak for 15 minutes – then you indicate you are fully present.”

After all, Kilmark points out, a spouse or other family members make as valuable an investment in the self-employed attorney as any financial contributor. They provide for a lawyer’s emotional wellbeing and they deserve a return on investment in the form of time and focused attention.

• Live a proportionate life. Kilmark advises that a small firm practitioner invest in the firm by not overspending at home. A smaller mortgage and other steps toward a pay-as-you-go lifestyle protects against fluctuations of business income. A good social network of family and friends should help guard against the temptation to indulge in grandiosity following a big court win, Kilmark said.

“They know you best,” she said. “They keep you humble.”