Where to begin

The hero of our article, Demid Emelyanov, created his company while studying in his fourth year at university. He, acting as a manager, registered the company and hired several employees - including a fairly experienced head of the legal department. Of course, you will need the education of a lawyer, but, as our hero says, theory is very different from practice, and knowledge of your business comes with experience. Therefore, if you are not yet very confident in your abilities, then you will need more experienced employees, whose work will be organized by you. For the latter, you must have leadership qualities. And do not limit yourself to this role only: the leader must be a highly qualified lawyer.

Demid Emelyanov

When I opened the company, I did not conduct market analysis. I had acquaintances in this field, and I knew that there is a lot of work on the market, a good lawyer is always in demand. In the future, of course, as we developed, we began to study the market, analyze niches. It's one thing to be a generalist lawyer, it's another thing to lead a certain legal direction. There is no point in doing everything. To be a professional, you need to hone your skills in several directions, otherwise you will not be able to provide a quality service. You need to choose several niches. We did just that. Gradually we mastered several niches and we work in them. We are focused only on small and medium-sized businesses - liquidation and registration of firms, bankruptcy. Sometimes we take on the personal affairs of clients-owners of the business as an exception. To determine which niches were the most profitable, temporary marketers were hired to conduct research. For beginners, I advise you to immediately hire marketers, if funds allow, or contact a third-party organization. Or go, as we did at the beginning, by trial and error.

The legal services market is saturated. Many new firms are opened every year, many lawyers believe they are ready to open their own company. But, experts say, few market participants provide quality services. However, in order to occupy a certain percentage of the market, you need to provide services competently and be competent. Currently, the quality and price in the market are not comparable: often firms charge a lot of money for their services, but do not complete the work. If you want to work long and fruitfully, do not repeat their mistake: know that the higher the quality of your services, the more regular customers you will have.

What other nuances of the market do you need to know? It is necessary to constantly monitor changes in legislation. Because the relevance of the service line directly depends on these changes. For example, over the past few years, we have noticed that the legislation changes very often, this is due to the economic crisis and the government's attempts to reach a new level of interaction with business. In order to stay afloat in such a situation, you must always be in trend, study innovations, create and practice new directions, “reshape” your services to the changes in the law and always provide an up-to-date and new product to the client.

Investment size

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

8 years ago, when we opened the company, it took only 50 thousand rubles to invest. We rented an office, bought inexpensive furniture, sat down ourselves, hired a lawyer and started working. This was enough to start moving. We hired promoters who handed out leaflets with information about our company. This is how we started getting our first clients.

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

Nobody taught me to do business, I studied literature on my own. We started with an office of 12 sq.m., paid 400 rubles per sq.m., five people sat in this nook. Now we have an office of 200 sq.m., a staff of qualified lawyers and partners throughout Russia.

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

Previously, I held multiple positions. He himself was a secretary and answered calls. But after some time, I realized that my time is precious, and I can bring in more money if I hire a secretary. Therefore, it is better not to optimize the work, but to increase incoming traffic.

Step-by-step instruction

In your activities, you will, of course, interact with representatives of government agencies, as well as with stationery suppliers, a cleaning service and a courier service. A law firm has a lot of paperwork, and you need to find a good courier service that can deliver these papers to the right place on time - and often these are other cities. As a rule, the most famous courier company works better than others. But you still have to choose by trial and error: if they don’t have time to do everything on time, change the counterparty.

Relations with government agencies do not need to be specially established. The longer you work, the more officials will learn about you. But this is not always good for a lawyer. After all, you may also not be loved, knowing how persistently you are fighting for a client.

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

When recruiting employees, the main criteria for us are education, experience, and psychological qualities. We already have an image - a psychological portrait of the person we need. The team is friendly, and we need a person to join it. When the company is small, this is important. The most important thing is the climate in the company. I am against employees being friends, but psychotypes must match. For a lawyer, such qualities as purposefulness, perseverance, and a desire to achieve goals are important. I like extraordinary people who have their own point of view and are ready to defend it, ready to prove their competence in work and learn.

We usually post vacancies on the HR website. After that, we determine suitable candidates. But I have this rule: until I see about a hundred people, we will not close the vacancy. Usually 50-70 people come out. It happens that already at the fifth or sixth interview the same person comes, but as long as there is an incoming stream, we definitely look at everyone. There are two interviews - primary and secondary, then a three-month trial period. If a person shows himself earlier, within a month, we are ready for a permanent relationship.

What do we attract to work? We have good wages, everything is designed to ensure that the employee receives the necessary work experience, we have all the necessary tools. In some companies, an employee is simply given a Yellow Pages directory and the task is to search for “I don’t know what”. We have training. Some specialists for 3-4 years catch our vacancies in order to get to us for an interview. In general, lawyers with experience know the status of companies in the market and understand where they want to get a job.

The work schedule for a law firm is standard - from 8 to 17 or 9 to 18, five days a week. Overtime hours can be, but by agreement with employees. Sometimes you may need to meet with clients on Saturday and Sunday.

You can also create your own club card. According to them, regular customers receive several services for free (for example, an extract and the Unified State Register of Legal Entities) or at a discount. Naturally, customers who will close your monthly revenue with one order will need a special approach.

If your company is aimed at serving small and medium-sized businesses, then it is convenient to be located next to the registration authority - IFTS, since you will often need to go there. But the IFTS is not always located in a place convenient for customers. Of course, a regular client will come to you anywhere, but if you have few of them yet, then the best option is to open an office in the city center, where it is easier for people to get to.

There are no special requirements for the premises. But, the hero of our article notes, as you develop, you should have at least a reception room where the secretary sits, the legal department, managers, and management should be in separate rooms. You also need a cozy meeting room. This is very important, because a regular client comes to a lawyer as a psychologist, and in order for him to entrust his problems to you, you need an inviting environment.

The documents

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

Our center was first registered as a sole proprietorship, and then an LLC was opened. In society, it is customary to take such a form as an individual entrepreneur lightly. However, from a legal point of view, an individual entrepreneur bears more responsibility in the event of litigation, while a legal entity has ways to avoid liability. However, individual entrepreneurs are easier to maintain: it is easier to report on tax - to choose UTII and have an outsourced accountant. For example, we did not have an accountant on staff for five years.

You do not need to obtain a license to open a law firm. A license is required only for the provision of specific services - for example, if you are involved in the bankruptcy of individuals, the employee in charge of this area must obtain the status of an arbitration manager, be a member of an SRO, and pay membership fees.

Opening checklist

Is it profitable to open

In order to correctly set prices for your services, you need to constantly monitor the market and find out the prices of competitors for similar services. You also need to properly assess the quality of your service.

Demid Emelyanov

General Director of the legal center "KNOW"

Sometimes we do not break the price, we do not even go down to the level of the average market price, because we know that the quality of our service is very good. And people come to us - albeit a little, but they know that with us they will achieve a positive result. New companies, entering the market, resort to dumping, lower prices, because they do not have customers. But, as a rule, the quality of the service provided suffers from this.

If you start with small investments and small expenses, with an office of 10 sq.m., then you will reach the “zero” point in the first month. If you rented an office in the city center, hired about 10 people, spend 700 thousand rubles a month, then you can reach zero no earlier than in a couple of years, initially investing at least 10 million rubles.