Page 11 - Strategic Planning for Law Firms

Strategic Planning for Law Firms
What is Strategic Planning
At its most basic, strategic planning is setting priorities and devising a plan to pursue them. Said another way, you create a vision, set goals to achieve your vision, and implement a strategy to pursue and accomplish those goals. You assess where you were, where you think you are, where you are in reality, and where you want to be. Many companies
and law firms use this process to define their mission, vision, values, principles and goals and create a plan with concrete tasks to achieve their objective. The process has been used, developed, tweaked and applied in business for decades.
What is a Strategic Plan
A strategic plan forces a company, firm or organization to think about its future and how it plans to embrace and tackle that future. A strategic plan puts a mirror up to the organization so it can see what’s working, what’s not, what challenges it faces, and what opportunities are available. And a strategic plan helps an organization innovate, dream, evolve, and grow to identify and meet the needs of its team and clients.
The exercise of sitting down and thinking through the rationale for your firm – why it exists – who it serves – its purpose – starts a dialogue and spurs the imagination about what’s possible, about how the firm not only survives, but thrives.
A strategic plan typically consists of
◗ An Executive Summary
◗ Mission and Vision Statements
◗ Values and Principles
◗ Analysis in the form of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
◗ Goals
◗ An Action Plan with concrete steps
◗ A Budget
◗ Accountability – monitoring and evaluation of each goal and each step
◗ A Timeline for Completion of Each Goal and Each Step
A written plan serves as a map for the future. It is the blueprint which directs every member on the team toward the same mission, vision and goals. It’s importance cannot be overstated.
©2021 Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel
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SECTION 01 WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING