Turning Small and Boutique Law Firms into ‘Freedom Firms‘
(Higher Profits, More Time Off)

I was hesitant to instruct a business coach as I was adamant I knew my business better than anyone. However, after my first ‘Gameplan’ session with Michelle, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. We mapped out where the business was heading, where I wanted it to go and what I needed to do to get there. I felt anxious about the size of the goals we’d set, but exuberant and ready to achieve the impossible with Michelle’s guidance, so I decided to join the Profitable Practice Programme to get help implementing my Gameplan.

I never thought this would be possible but with guidance from Michelle, her patience, her steer and her motivation to keep me aiming higher, I have achieved an increase of 140% in fee income and 471% in profits so far – so nearly 5x profits compared to the start figure. Needless to say, I will be working with Michelle for many years to come!

We have been working with Michelle Peters for five years and have just renewed for the next year of ‘Profitable Practice’. Recent successes include doubling our conversion rate of new enquiries, adopting specific ideas of Michelle to generate new work resulting in greatly increased volumes of work in the targeted areas, and helping us develop strategies to spread good marketing practice throughout the firm. Michelle has real-life experience of working with a wide variety of solicitor firms and has knowledge and opinions that she willingly shares, bringing new expertise, techniques, and strategies to our discussions. Our results show that this works.

I have just signed up for my second year with Michelle’s Profitable Practice Programme, as in my first year of the programme I almost doubled my fee income, took on my first employee and grew in confidence in marketing my business.  Within the first couple of months of signing up, I used Michelle’s ‘Magic Words’ training to update my LinkedIn profile which attracted a new client worth £36k which meant that the programme more than paid for itself.  In addition to the excellent content and materials, there is also a camaraderie and a team spirit within the programme which I really enjoy.

Having just signed up for another year, I can honestly say that the programme has been invaluable. Not only has it provided the structure, focus, and direction which I was looking for.

I have also found that talking to other members of the programme equally beneficial. It is really good to know that there are lots of lawyers out there who are dealing or have dealt with similar issues and so useful to get their point of view.

Actual tangible outputs that I can directly link to the PPP are: Doubling monthly profit; Increasing fee earner rates across the board (by up to 27%); and Confidence to employ an extra fee earner.

I decided to join the Profitable Practice Programme after attending one of Michelle’s Profitable Practice Secrets 1 day workshops. I immediately got the impression that her approach is very results-orientated and not just about theory. I am pleased to say that my initial instincts were spot on. Within 6 months of joining the Profitable Practice Programme, our business achieved a 20% increase in fee income by implementing small changes to our existing systems. These changes were simple to do once Michelle helped us identify what we needed to do and gave us the step-by-step of how to do it. Within the same period an email marketing campaign generated an additional £12k in income by sending just one email to 20 of our previous clients. Michelle understands the challenges of running a legal practice and I have found that her Profitable Practice Programme has the tools to help us to become more profitable.

I was attracted by Michelle’s experience and understanding of the commercial legal services market, and asked her to review my firm’s marketing and advise what could be improved. She proposed a more coherent strategic approach, based around knowledge/education based marketing. In the succeeding months we have been working together to implement those plans. She has proved to be as good at looking at the detail as at the big picture. It is still early days but I can already see a significant increase in the number of new enquiries, and the percentage who become clients. In the first 6 months of this year, enquiries have increased by 30% and the percentage of those enquiries becoming clients has increased by 36%. Michelle gives good value and I would recommend her to anyone running a practice similar to mine.

“Michelle is a first class business strategist, very result-oriented, keeps you up to the mark and has improved my ratio of time spent on chargeable work by at least 50%.”

“In a nutshell the whole course [The 5 Step Client Conversion Programme] is extremely valuable – like a revelation, as if one has been working in a perpetual fog all these years and now it has cleared to reveal crystal clear scenery. Every client meeting that we have had since/ during the course has converted!”

Michelle Peters has provided impeccable guidance and advice to me on business strategy and marketing. Following and implementing this advice over the 90 day programme has resulted in a 40% increase in turnover and a 90% increase in new enquiries leading to 4 new clients. I can’t recommend Michelle, The Business Instructor, highly enough.

“I decided to attend the online (virtual) version of The Profitable Practice Secrets Workshop because I’m based in Australia. I wanted help to improve and grow and I wasn’t disappointed. Michelle has clearly put a lot of thought into presenting her information in a format that is understandable and ready to be applied, highlighting key issues without being overly complex, and using catch phrases, diagrams and tools. She is a good presenter, and I enjoyed the format of the online workshop, including the opportunity to interact with other lawyers in break out “rooms”and open discussions. Although attending the workshop helped me see that my practice was probably in worse shape that I had initially thought, it also gave me valuable tools and the knowledge that improvement was feasible though a systematic approach targeting the right areas. I am very happy to recommend Michelle’s workshop to other lawyers.”