Page 71 - Strategic Planning for Law Firms

Strategic Planning for Law Firms
A Foreword About Firm Retreats
It is a misconception if you believe that you must have a firm retreat in order to draft a strategic plan. A well managed and disciplined strategic planning committee can create a draft of a plan that is sufficiently comprehensive so that a retreat is merely needed to ratify a plan. However, most firms are impatient and quite often their lawyers do not wish to spend hours in planning. So, in most firms the preferred model is to use a consultant and committee to lay groundwork and then have a well organized retreat to actually flesh out a plan. Either model works, and, as we have said, no one size fits all.
Why Have a Firm Retreat?
If you’re going to craft a strategic plan without substantial committee work in advance, then it is advisable to hold a firm retreat of your firm leaders to discuss and draft a strategic plan. However, you can also decide to bring all of your lawyers into the retreat.
Before the retreat, you should have conducted and analyzed the firm’s surveys, reviewed the key firm documents, and you may have already discussed which issues
you want to tackle and created an agenda for the firm retreat to tackle those issues (although the retreat may prove to be the place for a group SWOT analysis, and that may produce the 3-5 goals). By having a firm retreat, preferably over the weekend, the leaders can get away from the work day distractions, get together, and work in an intimate, creative way to procure a strategic plan.
©2021 Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel
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SECTION 11 STRATEGIC PLANNING RETREAT