Putting together a suitable pitch, he detailed, through which a firm outlines competitive pricing structures and speaks more to the prospective client’s needs than one’s firm’s accomplishments, allows boutiques to compete for work they may not otherwise get, he said.

However, the biggest hurdle in being able to properly map out and create such pitches to desired clients, Mr Withane ceded, is finding time in the day for it, given the many hats that boutique law firm owners have to wear.

“For now, the truth is that a lot of production work happens in the evenings and on weekends,” he mused. “There’s no real shortcuts to that.”

In order to ensure one has enough time for substantive pitches and still tick off all other boxes on the to-do list, Mr Withane said, proper investment in technology and limiting one’s practice to chosen areas of expertise will be critical.

“There are, for example, a lot of support services to be accessed whereby you can pay-as-you-go. I try to delegate as much of the accounting work as possible to people who can do that much more competently than I can. Where I can buy-in services, I’ll do that,” he said.

Such an approach is essential not only in freeing up time for tasks, but in vacating space in one’s mind to focus on more important decisions.

“I try to reduce as many decisions I have to make in a day as possible. Steve Jobs said that the reason he wore a black turtleneck every day was because he had a billion decisions to make, and he needed to reduce or eliminate as many decisions as possible, and his wardrobe was one of them. I too try to remove decisions from my pile and delegate tasks where possible,” he said.

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When it comes to operating a more niche practice, Mr Withane pointed to advice he’d received from a friend, who told him: “Stick to your knitting”.

“That’s exactly what we’ve sought to do,” he said.

“We know that we are excellent, highly specialised litigators and insolvency lawyers, and we want to be able to say to the market that they can trust us with their matters, that we’ll do it right and get the best possible outcome for them. That’s why we decided to go down the route of specialisation rather than generalisation.

“I think it also helps us define who our market is.

“We know that insolvency matters will come to us through liquidators and secured lenders, for example, on receivership style work or restructuring matters. And we can therefore identify all of the liquidators or all the secured lenders and have a highly targeted approach to our connection to them, business development, relationship development, to marketing.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Trevor Withane, click below: