Many lawyers who work hard to be successful at what they do are actually training themselves to be successful entrepreneurs as well. If you have been working as a successful lawyer, you may have what it takes to move from offering legal counsel and protection to your clients to working for yourself in a completely different business. Take a look at the different characteristics that a good lawyer has that applies to owning a business and consider whether they apply to you or not. Who knows, you could be the perfect entrepreneur in the wrong career.
They Know What to Look For
As a lawyer it is your job to look out for different areas where a business could fail. Although it’s possible that this could lead to an overly negative mindset when first launching a business, it also means that a lawyer can avoid common pitfalls that most entrepreneurs don’t even know to look for.
Many lawyers already have a firm grasp on business law, and that means that they can make sure that the business isn’t going to be hit by legal issues later after things get rolling.
Lawyers are Thorough
Lawyers are trained to be thorough with what they do. When they go into a courtroom they have everything planned out and know what they are going to say. One of the main things that entrepreneurs do wrong when jumping into a business is not planning it out well enough. They get into their business and then end up with problems they didn’t expect. They burn through money faster than they were supposed to. They don’t have enough customers to support their business model.
Most lawyers will come up with a detailed business plan and test out different elements of that plan before moving ahead and investing a significant amount of money in the business. This means that they know their business model will work before they take a major risk on it.
Lawyers are Persuasive
When you’re a business owner it helps to be a good salesman. If you can convince people to buy your product then you are going to make money. When you are a lawyer it also helps to be a good salesman. If you can convince the jury that the man you are defending is innocent then you look better and have a better payday later on. Being in that legal world for a while often trains lawyers to become more effective at selling ideas to people, and this skillset translates well into running a business.
Lawyers are Persistent
Being a lawyer is very competitive, and in order to be successful at it you need to be persistent. Starting off as a lawyer on your own means that you need to work hard to build up a list of clients who are going to pay you. This often takes a significant investment of your time, and it can be very discouraging when you spend months or even years without getting the work that you are vying for. Most lawyers who have some degree of success have learned to be persistent. You also need persistence when starting a business because businesses are rarely an overnight success. Most of the time you come up with a good idea for a business, and then spend at least a few years laying the groundwork to actually profit off that idea. If you quit too early you won’t see the benefits from that hard labor and that’s what most failed entrepreneurs do wrong.
Not every lawyer will have all of these qualities that would make him or her good for business, but many of them do. This is why lawyers are well suited to starting their own businesses, and that’s good news for any lawyer looking to make a career change.
About the Author: Andrew Deen is a writer who creates informative articles relating to law. In this article, he explains how entrepreneurs benefit from law degrees and aims to encourage further study with a degree in trial advocacy.