Featured · Personal Brand
A one-page plan for your own practice, not the firm's
Firms write marketing plans for the firm. Almost no attorney writes one for themselves, which is why so many capable fee-earners reach year ten with a full caseload and no independent source of work.
A personal plan is not a smaller version of the firm's. It has a different objective, a fraction of the resource, and a time horizon measured in years rather than quarters — and it fits on one page.
The four decisions the page contains
Everything else is detail. Get these four right and the plan writes itself; get them wrong and no amount of activity compensates.
The one thing you want to be known for. Narrower than is comfortable, because specificity is what makes you referable.
The twenty people best placed to meet that problem before you do — by name, not by category.
What you will do every month regardless of workload, expressed as a habit rather than a target.
The one number you will look at in a year: matters that came to you personally, and where they came from.
That is the plan. Four lines, and most attorneys cannot currently answer any of them.
The reason to write it down is not organisation. It is that these decisions get made by default if they are not made deliberately — you become known for whatever walked through the door, and your network becomes whoever happened to call.
It also gives you something to say no with. An attorney who has written down what they are building declines the speaking invitation to the wrong room without agonising about it.
Why personal plans fail
The failures are different from a firm's, because the constraint is attention rather than money.
Targets instead of habits. Ten new clients this year is not actionable; contacting two referrers a month is.
A plan that assumes free time, which will be consumed by billable work every single time.
Everything at once — writing, speaking, social, networking — which lasts about six weeks.
Being known for the whole of your practice area rather than one part of it.
No record of where matters came from, so after two years you still cannot tell what worked.
And abandoning it in month eight, which is roughly when it would have started to show.
Writing and running it
An hour to write, an hour a fortnight to run. That is the entire commitment, and it is the maximum most practices can actually sustain.
Write the four lines. Do not expand them into a document; the brevity is what makes it survive.
Turn each into a habit with a frequency attached — two referrer contacts a month, one written piece a quarter.
Put the fortnightly hour in the diary and treat it as fixed.
Start a source record today, even as a spreadsheet, because the year-one review is worthless without it.
Tell one colleague what you are building. It makes it real and occasionally produces an introduction.
Review at twelve months against the one number, and change at most one of the four lines.
Expect very little in year one. The attorneys who stop are almost always the ones who stopped just before it worked.
And keep the page. In three years it is the only record of why you made the choices you did.
A one-page plan you actually run beats a firm-quality document you admire once. The constraint here was never the quality of the plan; it was whether anything happened on the second Tuesday.
FAQs
How is a personal plan different from the firm's?
Different objective, a fraction of the resource, and a horizon in years rather than quarters. The firm's plan builds the firm's pipeline; yours builds a book that travels with you. It fits on one page and contains four decisions.
What are the four decisions?
The one thing you want to be known for, the twenty people best placed to meet that problem, what you will do monthly regardless of workload, and the single number you will judge it on in a year.
Why habits rather than targets?
Because targets are not actionable and habits are. Ten new clients this year tells you nothing about Tuesday; contacting two referrers a month tells you exactly what to do and can survive a busy quarter.
How much time does it take?
An hour to write and an hour a fortnight to run, in the diary and defended. That is the maximum most practices can sustain, and sustaining it is the entire difficulty.
When should we expect results?
Very little in year one and a great deal by year three. Attorneys who abandon these plans almost always do so around month eight, which is shortly before the compounding starts.
End Note
Every firm has a marketing plan and almost no attorney inside it has one of their own, which is why so many arrive at year ten with a full diary and nothing portable.
Write the four lines, turn them into habits, defend an hour a fortnight, and keep a record of where the work came from. Then wait longer than feels reasonable.
Key Takeaways
One page, four decisions — anything longer will not survive.
Habits with a frequency, never targets.
Write down the twenty people by name, not by category.
Start a source record today or the year-one review is worthless.
Most who quit do so at month eight, just before it works.
