Most legal professionals begin their annual planning by itemizing objectives like:

  • Hit $1M
  • Rent an affiliate
  • Add a brand new apply space
  • Enhance advertising
  • Increase charges

These objectives matter. They belong in a plan.
However objectives alone don’t give your agency course.

They inform you what you need—with out defining how you’ll get there or what you’re keen to cease doing to create space for progress.

That’s the hole the place most corporations stall out.

At Lawyerist, our enterprise strategist work with regulation agency house owners in our Lab program to create significant strategic plans. These plans join their objectives to the alternatives, trade-offs, and bounds that give these objectives course. Under is the best option to perceive that distinction and the selections each agency should make earlier than their objectives really imply one thing.

What’s Legislation Agency Technique?

A regulation agency technique is the set of deliberate selections that outline the enterprise you’re constructing.

It clarifies:

  • Who you serve
  • What work you do (and don’t do)
  • The way you ship worth
  • What you refuse, even when it’s tempting
  • Which trade-offs you’re accepting to maneuver ahead

Technique is course, not a process record.

It defines the form of agency you’re changing into and aligns your objectives, pricing, techniques, crew, and selections round that course.

When technique is evident, the complete enterprise pulls in the identical course as a substitute of drifting throughout competing priorities.

Why “Develop Income” Isn’t a Technique

That is the place most corporations slip.

They set objectives—good objectives—however by no means join them to the selections that give these objectives which means. So they find yourself with plans that look bold on paper and chaotic in apply.

Right here’s the inform: Your objectives level a technique, however your shoppers, companies, pricing, crew construction, and each day selections are all pulling sideways.

A income goal doesn’t reply:

  • Who’re we rising for?
  • What work really suits our future?
  • What is going to we cease taking over to create area?
  • What trade-offs are we selecting on objective?

With out these selections, a purpose is only a quantity.

Targets set the vacation spot.
Technique makes the vacation spot doable.

A method aligns your objectives, crew, pricing, techniques, and selections so the complete enterprise is pointed in the identical course.

What Actual Technique Appears to be like Like

When you perceive the hole between objectives and technique, the subsequent step is straightforward:
shift from what you need to what you’re selecting.

Actual technique reveals up within the selections that form your agency’s course:

  • Which shoppers outline your future
  • Which companies strengthen your mannequin
  • What work you’ll cease accepting, even when it’s worthwhile
  • What boundaries you’ll implement for consumption, pricing, and timelines
  • Which trade-offs you’ll make to create readability and capability

These selections flip a listing of objectives into an precise plan.
They create alignment.
And so they give your crew a transparent method to execute.

Most corporations by no means do that work. Those that do look—and function—fully otherwise.

The place This Work Truly Occurs

I see this play out each week inside Lawyerist Lab.

A agency is available in with a set of objectives—hit a income quantity, develop a apply space, rent somebody new. Affordable objectives. Vital objectives.

However the actual shift begins after we dig beneath the objectives and uncover the alternatives the agency hasn’t made but.

I labored with a small litigation agency proprietor who joined Lab annoyed that progress felt tougher yearly. They saved including: extra issues, extra individuals, extra advertising. But their stress curve by no means moved.

A couple of conversations in, it grew to become apparent why.

They had objectives.
That they had exercise.
That they had nearly no strategic selections.

As soon as we clarified who they had been really constructing the agency for, what work would outline their future, and what they wanted to cease doing, the whole lot modified. Their hiring plan simplified. Their pricing aligned. Their caseload shrank—whereas income went up.

That’s what occurs when objectives lastly meet technique.

It’s the form of work most corporations by no means give themselves area to do alone—and precisely the work we do with house owners inside Lab.

The Strategic Query That Issues Most

A strategic plan constructed on actual selections adjustments the whole lot.

It narrows your focus.
It strengthens your online business mannequin.
It offers your crew a transparent course as a substitute of a rising record of duties.

Targets nonetheless matter—however as soon as they’re anchored to the selections that outline your agency’s future, they lastly begin to work.

So as you propose for 2026, don’t begin by asking what you must add.
Begin by asking what you’re selecting.

That’s the place readability begins.

Final up to date December tenth, 2025