Unlocking profit potential comes from hiring the right mix of professionals.

I’ll Tell You A Secret

For years, when speaking to groups of entrepreneurs and business owners, I have pointed out that there is a big difference between what you do and the business of what you do. Another way to put this is: there is a difference between working in your business and working on your business. There is nothing secret about this observation. Nevertheless, stating this simple wisdom to a group of business-oriented people rarely fails to impress a good number of them.

The secret I want to tell you is this: without profitable, preventive legal support, even if you are otherwise good at what you do and the business of what you do, your small business is almost certainly not going to reach its full potential in terms of profitability, (equity) value, ease of operations, or stability.

Most small businesses simply go without legal support. Even when confronted with a significant legal event, 80% of small businesses don’t hire a lawyer. Because small businesses forego legal services, they have major systemic problems that keep them from reaching their potential.

They tend to be less valuable, because they don’t develop and protect the high-value assets they should. Most are more stressed than they should be, because they struggle to manage relationships and processes. Nearly all are at higher risk than necessary, because they can’t see their legal blind spots, much less proactively address them.

With disadvantages like these, how can a small business unlock its full profit potential?

Increasing Potential

A small business’s potential will remain small until they do two things. First, they must start focusing on profitability in all they do. Second, they must obtain support from the right professionals. If a small business hires the right business lawyer, that lawyer can provide profitable, preventive legal support. This can dramatically increase the business’s profit and value potential. Legal support can also increase the business’s potential to run easily and experience fewer disruptions.

Business legal support tends to come in two flavors. The first is in-house legal departments, while the second is “outside general counsel”. Both approaches have pros and cons. Whichever you choose, however, you should complement it by a legal service force multiplier, so to speak. This force multiplier is a legal operations (“legal ops”) consultant or team.

Use The Force Multiplier

Lawyers often struggle to communicate with business leaders what specific value they bring to the table. Therefore, legal departments get reputations as cost centers, instead of as high-value operational assets. Legal ops professionals bridge the gap between business and legal perspectives. They assist decision-makers to understand and use legal services in a profitable, proactive way.

“Legal ops or Legal operations focus on how legal services are delivered today by taking bits of the organization which are pre-existing and putting them together in one place, one team. These teams bring together people from diverse backgrounds and allow them to collaborate and augment the service they provide to their clients. Legal operations officers and their units bring together leadership, knowledge and experience necessary to help align legal services with enterprise objectives.”

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When a small business hires legal support and uses legal ops professionals to integrate legal services into business operations, the results can be amazing. Efficiencies increase. These teams expose legal blind spots and proactively address the revealed risks. They improve reporting processes, and enhance the quality of information decision-makers receive. They augment and clarify communication between teams. Legal ops make it far more likely the business will use legal support to unlock its profit potential.

You Must Complete the Training

Everyone has to make a few adjustments when starting to work with a legal operations team. These adjustments tend to take the form of specialized training for C-level employees, General Counsel, and other management staff. Most small business owners and decision-makers struggling to imagine what integrating legal services into their operational workflows would look like. Therefore, they must complete a training regimen that shows how to get the most out of a legal ops team.

ExecutiveLP® is launching a new business-legal development regimen called Profit from Legal™. In the Profit from Legal™ program, we train business decision-makers how to work with a legal ops team and how to get more out of their legal service providers. When a business engages with Profit from Legal™ their in-house legal department or outside general counsel transforms from a mere cost center to high-value operational asset. We can work with businesses that have in-house legal departments, outside general counsel, or no legal support provider at all.

If you want to your business to unlock its profit potential, you need ongoing legal support; you need a legal ops force multiplier; and you need to complete the training that will show you how to get the most out of both of them.