Based on reviews from ReviewsBird.com, lawyers are said to be great in so many things, but business is not one of these many things. This is because most law schools do not tend to teach law their students how to run a successful business.
However based on research made on this article and some reviews of legal services, SWOT and its major importance on law firms was discovered and how it helps law firms meet their business goals. SWOT is an acronym for strength, weaknesses, opportunity and threat. It is an efficient tool used in evaluating an organization’s strength, weakness, opportunities and threats.
Here are five major importance of SWOT analysis for your law firm whether big or small.
1. Helps to Know More about Your Firm’s Strengths:
SWOT helps to examine the strength that already exists within your firm. An important part of your firm’s strength comes from the characteristics of your employees and note that the outside market does not make any difference to it. Also if your firm uses third party legal support services to improve your activities and reduce the workload on the firm, this service provider will also be regarded as your firm’s strength. Every other strength can be counted as materialistic strengths, like the computer system that provides the operational efficiency and brand the images, or the reputation achieved by delivering the best standard of client’s services.
2. Helps to Figure out Your Firm’s Weakness:
Your firm’s weakness is determined by its internal aspects. Reducing the cost of your services to stay in the legal industry competition is a weakness. Also, when you depend on your clients payment for the management of your operational cost, is even a bigger weakness. And when the marketing department is unable to get more clients for the firm, is another weakness. There are so many other negativities that can arise due to lack of appropriate systems and insufficient staff for better services.
3. Helps to Achieve Attainable Opportunities:
Opportunities are important factors in SWOT analysis that your law firm really depends upon for sustainability of the business. Joining hands together with another firm that is more established can be said to be an opportunity, or adding media attention to your firm, is also an opportunity. These opportunities can help your brand rise up high, resulting in more businesses from existing and new clients.
4. Helps to Notice the Threats in Your Firm:
SWOT helps you to discover things that can become your firm’s weakness in future. Competition is one of the biggest threats of law firms. Just like new laws can become a threat to your law firm. Some other threats could be closure of your clients business or some clients no longer interested in your services.
5. It Helps to Give Your Business an Active Plan:
SWOT analysis allows you to discuss with other board members of your firm. It is a simple method that efficiently helps you solve many business problems if applied appropriately.
Conclusion
In a law school, you are being taught to analyze cases and make effective legal arguments. We all have our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats but we all need to sit and identify them and know how they will help our business plans. A Law firm tends to benefit from SWOT analysis just like any other enterprise does. It helps us to have better control over our legal business.