As an owner of a small firm herself, Ms White said there are a number of mistakes lawyers tend to make when it comes to contracts — and recommended thinking about contracts in “a few different buckets”.

“There’s kind of your structural contracts, which are your business terms, whether or not how you’re set up structurally as a business, whether you’ve got a company or a sole trader or a proprietary limited set-up. So, a lot of small boutique firms might start out as a sole trader, then move to a company, then move to a trust or some other configuration.

“And those structural contracts can be really important depending on how much growth you see your law firm having. Talking with your accountant or a lawyer to help understand how to structure your business so that you don’t end up on the wrong side of tax bills or on the wrong side of if you’ve got co-founders and just the different models that you could set up. Then there’s kind of those more administrative-type agreements and contracts [that] relate more to insurance and business name registration and trademarks,” she explained.

“There [are] lots of different intellectual property bits and pieces that you might want to look into or that companies might want to look into and make sure that you’ve got all of your regulatory requirements in place. Obviously, lawyers have lots of information at their fingertips with the LPLC, but depending on the different areas that you work in, there might be other ones.”

One of Ms White’s favourite areas is revenue-generating contracts, which include not only client agreements but also website terms and conditions, licensing agreements, and looking at the different client policies.

“Then, on the other side of that, there’s the supply-side contracts. So, depending on whether or not you’ve got independent contractors that are working for your firm, whether or not you’ve got employees looking at different confidentiality agreements, you might have in place or leasing or licensing arrangements, that’s kind of that supply bucket. And often, I think a lot of lawyers don’t have their own. They might just get a template and kind of hope for the best.

“But I think definitely having a look at things like independent contractor agreements, making sure you are owning the intellectual property when you are buying things from designers or from different people that are working with you, making sure that you’re owning it. Then the other one is kind of marketing,” she said.

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“I think lawyers are probably a bit more conservative when it comes to all the marketing messages, but I still have seen a few interesting Facebook ads and whatnot that get kind of pushed at me sometimes. And all your competition terms and conditions on that marketing side are also important to have in place because most marketing laws that apply to consumers also apply whether or not you’re working with businesses or consumers.”

As a result, there are a number of practice principles boutique firm owners can — and should — be aware of, such as when it’s important to draft a contract or simply use a template.

“If something is really, really important, even if you don’t use it much, that could be something like a shareholders agreement or a company constitution or something like that. You might want to get a specialist to have a look over it, and that might be spending a little bit of time and money on it. Then really important, really frequent, that’s your client agreements, that’s your bread and butter, that’s how you earn money, and that’s what you want to make sure it’s really smooth,” Ms White explained.

“The process is perfect. You’re really happy with how it’s going and then going in and tweaking it from time to time … But you just need to have a look at it every year or so and kind of tweak it a little bit, especially for those really important contracts.”

These largely apply to all types of firms — despite different-sized firms being likely to focus on different contracts.

“If you’re a large firm with lots of employees, then maybe you’re going to have more of an employee agreement focus. And I still think if you are dealing with family law, or with children’s matters, then that ... or consumers, it’s even more important to have clear, understandable terms because that’s where you can have problems down the track,” Ms White added.

“If they either haven’t understood things, then you don’t feel comfortable enforcing them, and then that kind of delays you making a decision. Or if you don’t have a good process to change the scope of a matter when new things crop up, then that’s when you start kind of doing work that’s kind of expanded outside the scope.”

And in terms of getting those fundamental principles right, Ms White said there are a number of first steps law firms can be taking.

“I love redesigning contracts; I love having a look at the documents. I’ll start with the document. But if the pain point for you in your law firm is the process, kind of having a look at where the pain points are. If its clients aren’t paying on time, then looking at your payment terms can be a really good one to try and make all of that clearer. Can you automate anything? Can you kind of chunk up those aspects to make it understandable or easier to enforce?” she added.

“Where if you’re getting lots of questions or if it’s slow and you have to chase people up to sign contracts or get started, then that can be an area to start with. Maybe you need to explain things a little bit more. If you can make that front, the easing in part easier, then that can be also a really good place to start. But I like to just have a look at the document.”

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