Small Firm Operations
Running a small firm on your own is very different from working at a large or mid-sized firm. In a larger firm system, all of the business operations are more or less taken care of for you. You don’t need to think about accounting, trust account management, taxes, conflict checks, etc., as all of that is looked after for you by the system that is already in place in the firm. Running your own practice though, is a different story. You need to make the decisions and implement the system(s) that work for you. It can be daunting trying to figure out where to start. To that end, here are some resources that should get you well on your way to successfully managing your own firm:
British Columbia
BC Law Society Online Learning Centre – offers a Small Firm Practice Course online, which goes through all the fundamentals of running your own firm in BC (accounting system, trust accounts, taxation and employee deductions, PST, GST, retainers, file retention and disposal, conflicts, etc.)
Continuing Legal Education BC – provides practice manuals on practice management covering topics such as billing, client development, trust accounting, etc. There are also short articles on various topics relevant to small firm practices from the Solo and Small Firm Practice Conference.