Succession Planning Part 4: Is your firm ready for sale?

Preparation is key to successfully selling your law firm on good terms.

You can only sell your law firm once, and so, it is worth investing the time to make sure your firm is sale-ready to maximise your result.

Outlined below are some tips to help you get your practice ready for sale:

• Ensure appropriate policies and procedures are in place, both internally (such as leave policies) and externally (such as making sure all clients pay for disbursements).
• Ensure the practice has good work records.  Start recording time or fees on all matters so you have an accurate value for WIP.
• Tighten up debtors.
• Ensure you have a marketing plan in place, and if not, we suggest you create one.   Also make sure you have established strong relationships with people that refer you work.
• Ensure you have an up to date software system to allow for better management and analysis.

If you have good records, good systems and a good client work mix, you will attract the maximum price for your practice, as well as multiple purchasers.  Good systems also make it easier to do a hand over and if in 12 months time there has been a smooth transaction, it also serves well for a positive outcome regarding any retention clauses you may have negotiated.

If you would like more information about selling your practice please contact John Castello on 0407 112 612 or email john@gatehouselegal.com.au.

Further information about law firm sales can be found here.

You may also be interested in reading about:

• Succession Planning Part 1: What are my options to exit?
• Succession Planning Part 2: Who are my buyers?
• Succession Planning Part 3: What are purchasers looking for?