How to Franchise Your Law Practice
If you have a successful law practice, you may be interested in helping other attorneys launch successful practices by franchising your practice. To turn your practice into a franchise, you have to plan and prepare several documents, manuals and procedures before starting to sell the law-practice concept to franchisees.
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Instructions
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Create proven financials. Franchisees franchise businesses because the law practice is up, running, successful and lucrative. To ensure your practice is ready for franchising and to create a financial picture that shows potential franchisees how successful the business is, gather and compile financial statements for at least the past three to five years that the practice has been operating.
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Register a trademark for your business. Contact the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register your law practice name, logo and any symbols or law-practice representations you use. Registering these trademarks protects them from being used by anyone except a franchisee.
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Create marketing materials. Each franchise for the law firm uses the same marketing materials to attract clients to the firm. Before you can sell franchises, you have to create the templates for marketing materials such as brochures, business cards, letterhead, print advertisements, billboard advertisements, commercials, website and any other marketing material you use to promote the firm.
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Put together an operations manual. Document all of the policies and procedures for operating the law practice. This includes operating hours, number of employees and support staff, the title of each person and the job responsibilities of each employee. The operations manual is a blueprint that the franchisee follows line by line to run the practice the same way.
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Draw up a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD). Write the Franchise Disclosure Document or hire a contract or franchise attorney to draw one up for you. The agreement spells out how the franchise works, including the operating officers, law-practice history and financial reporting practices of the firm. The disclosure purpose is to reveal the facts in the FDD to potential investors so they know what they are getting into when buying a franchise.
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Promote franchise opportunity. Once you have all of your documents, manuals and information together, you can start to promote the law-practice franchise opportunity. Franchise listing sites are one option; you also can list the law-practice opportunity in law schools across the country or by building a website that promotes the franchise opportunity.
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References
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