With the ongoing advancements in legaltech, generative artificial intelligence solutions (AI), and constantly evolving rules and regulations for law firms, lawyers need to have a game plan. You need to have clear, meaningful goals that give you a benchmark to adapt and adjust. Setting goals for lawyers can be tricky, but by understanding the different types of goals and how they work together, you can create an effective plan to ensure you succeed.
In this guide, we’ll talk about a few different types of goals you can set, why setting lawyer goals is important, and how you can measure your progress.
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Why setting goals is important for lawyers
Whether you’re a solo practitioner or work in a larger firm, goal setting is an essential tool that can shape your career and law firm development. Goal setting can help you achieve your personal and professional objectives by:
- Providing clarity and focus, allowing you to concentrate your efforts where they matter (be that more on legal practice, or on growing your law firm) by reducing distractions.
- Improving motivation by giving you a clear endpoint to work toward. This makes it easier to track and celebrate progress.
- Facilitating the development of new skills, for example, if your goal is to learn more about law firm finances.
- Improving decision-making by giving you a clear focus to strategically align decisions around.
- Encouraging accountability to regularly review your goals and track your progress.
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Is your firm ready to stay ahead in 2025? Success starts with a solid plan—and we’re here to help you craft it! From emerging legal trends like AI and flat-fee billing to strategies that align your team and metrics to track your success, we offer tips for every step of the way.
Watch the recordingTypes of goals lawyers should consider
Setting goals is important, but to truly move forward you need to balance setting different types of goals. By understanding and implementing a diverse range of goals for your law firm—short-term and long-term, personal and professional, financial and business—you can create a well-rounded and strategic approach to your law firm’s growth and/or your career development.
Short-term and long-term goals for lawyers
Short-term goals are immediate goals that you can typically achieve within a year. They may not require extensive planning or specific steps, but they will help you to achieve your overall goals.
For example:
Short-term goals might include completing a specific continuing legal education (CLE) course to develop your knowledge in a particular practice area.
Alternatively, a solo practitioner might focus on setting a goal to revamp their client intake office procedures within three months to improve onboarding. Meanwhile, a lawyer in a larger firm might set a short-term goal of completing a specific project ahead of schedule to foster a stronger relationship with that client.
Long-term goals are larger objectives that usually take several years to achieve. They’ll often require sustained effort and planning and may need to be broken down into short-term goals or smaller steps. For example, you may set a long-term goal of achieving partnership status or significantly expanding your client base.
Personal and professional development goals
Personal development goals generally focus on your personal growth and well-being. These can be important professionally because, ultimately, your personal well-being and growth impact your professional life. However, they are not specifically targeted to professional development.
Lawyers may benefit from setting goals such as exercising regularly (perhaps running a marathon?) or devoting more time to a new hobby. The legal profession is a stressful one, and setting wellness goals can positivly impact your personal and work-life.
Professional development goals, on the other hand, focus on enhancing your legal skills, knowledge, or credentials. As a lawyer, your goal may be to become specialized in a new legal area or taking leadership courses to prepare for future roles in your firm.
Financial and business objectives for lawyers
Financial goals involve your revenue, profits, and financial growth, for your practice or your department.
For example, a financial goal for solo practitioners might be to increase monthly revenue by 10% over the next six months using targeted marketing efforts. Lawyers in larger firms might set goals around maximizing billable hours while maintaining client satisfaction.
Business objectives refer to the overall strategic direction of a legal practice or legal department. These objectives could include areas like client acquisition, service offerings, and operational improvements.
For example, a business objective for a solo practitioner might be to diversify client services, while a lawyer in a larger firm might set goals focused on adopting AI technologies to enhance their department’s client offerings.
It’s a good idea to have a mix of short-term and long-term goals related to personal and professional development, and financial and business aspects. If you have too many short-term goals, you likely won’t be working towards an overall vision of your firm or department. On the other hand, too many long-term goals can seem distant, which can lead to procrastination or stagnation.
If you’re trying to decide what goals to set for yourself, here’s a look at some important legal statistics for 2025.
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Creating SMART goals for lawyers
Lawyer goals need to be clear and measurable to be effective, which is why we recommend using the SMART method of creating goals for lawyers.
SMART goals are:
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Specific
A specific goal clearly defines what you want to achieve, with no room for ambiguity. It answers the who, what, where, and why, making your goal easier to understand and pursue.
For example, rather than setting a goal of “expanding practice areas,” you could say, “I will develop and launch estate planning services within my firm in the next year.” If you’re in a larger firm, instead of saying, “I will have more meetings with my clients,” you could have a goal of “I will schedule quarterly meetings with each of my top 10 clients to discuss their legal needs.”
1. Measurable
How will you know if you’ve accomplished your goal? Or how will you know how close or far you are from achieving it? A SMART goal must be measurable. This means you can track and assess the goal’s progress with quantifiable milestones.
For example, if your goal is to increase firm collection rates, make it measurable by setting out to increase firm collection rates by a percentage—say 5%. Then, by tracking changes in collection rates, you’ll know with certainty when you’ve reached the goal.
2. Achievable
Setting big goals is a worthy endeavor, but unrealistic and unattainable goals quickly become demoralizing. If your goal is to increase firm collection rates by 2,000%, or adopt a brand new AI tool across your firm within a week, you aren’t giving yourself a realistic, achievable framework. This erodes the goal’s effectiveness.
On the other hand, you don’t want to set goals that are so easy that they’re equally meaningless. For example, a goal to increase collection rates by 0.0005% may not be challenging enough to follow through. Consider both ends of the spectrum and set a goal that balances being challenging with being attainable.
3. Relevant
While career goals for lawyers—and goals for law firms—should be specific, they also need to tie in with your larger vision. A goal of increasing firm collection rates by 5% is relevant to the larger vision of increasing firm revenue and business success.
Your short-term goals should mostly be relevant to your long-term goals. For example, if your goal over the next five years is to build a reputation as a leading expert in environmental law, a relevant short-term goal would be to complete an advanced course in environmental law to enhance your knowledge and credentials. An irrelevant goal would be to upgrade your office technology.
4. Time-bound
Set a time frame for each of your goals. Your prescribed time frame should be an honest, realistic deadline from the outset to boost your chances of success. Choosing an unrealistic time limit for your goal reduces its effectiveness.
In our example, you could give your goal of increasing firm collection rates by 5% a time limit of one year. This way, at the end of 2025, you can assess, evaluate, and tweak your goal accordingly.
What are SMART goals for lawyers?
SMART goals for lawyers are clear, focused objectives that help you achieve specific outcomes related to your practice, law firm, or career. They keep you on track for success, establish benchmarks and milestones, align with your priorities and values, and enable you to adjust your strategies if necessary.
Examples of SMART goals for lawyers
1. Enhancing client retention for solo practitioners
Goal: Within the next six months, I will implement a client feedback system and follow-up process to increase repeat business, aiming to achieve a 10% increase in client retention rates by December 31.
2. Leveraging AI for efficiency in a law firm
Goal: By December 31, I will integrate an AI-based legal research tool into our department’s workflow, reducing research time by 20% and enabling associates to focus more on client-facing tasks and case strategies.
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3. Expanding your professional network
Goal: In the next quarter, I will attend at least three industry networking events and connect with five potential referral partners to expand my professional network and increase referrals by 20%.
4. Achieving revenue milestones
Goal: By the close of Q3, I will increase my department’s revenue by 15% by developing tailored legal solutions for our top five clients, focusing on cross-selling opportunities for additional services.
5. Improving work-life balance
Goal: Over the next six months, I will establish a routine that includes at least one hour of daily personal time.
Tracking progress and adjusting goals
An important aspect of having goals is tracking your progress toward them. Having a way to track and monitor your progress, and adjust your goals increases your chances of success (especially with long-term goals, where you may feel tempted to procrastinate).
Progress can be tracked by setting KPIs (key performance indicators). For example, if you want to get 10 new clients by December 31, you could set smaller goals of adding 2-3 new clients each quarter. At the end of each quarter, evaluating your progress will let you know if you need to put more effort in (if you only added one new client that quarter), or if you’re ahead. That information can also tell you if your goal is unachievable or too low.
Read more about KPIs your law firm needs to measure.
Conclusion
There are many KPIs you can track, but you don’t have to track all of them. Choose those that are relevant to your goals and align with your firm’s priorities. Check to see if those KPIs are already being measured. If not, you’ll want to take a baseline of them so you know where you’re starting from. If, for example, your goal is to increase your client list by 10 clients, you need to know how many clients you currently have, so you know if you’ve increased by 10.
Setting lawyer goals and adjusting them as necessary are pivotal for any lawyer or law firm hoping to have sustained success and growth. Make sure you have goals that align with your firm’s priorities, set KPIs to track and measure your progress, and revise your goals as needed.
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What are two goals as a lawyer you should have at a new firm?
Lawyers should invest in learning how to set SMART goals. This framework ensures accountability and strategy to help you actually stick to your goals and monitor progress.
What are your long term goals as a lawyer?
SMART goals help lawyers with goal setting to keep themselves on track and accountable. SMART goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The SMART goals framework works for both long-term and short-term goals.
What are short term goals for a lawyer?
Examples of short-term goals for lawyers might include: increasing their billable hours for the quarter, opening a certain number of new cases each month, or investing in legal practice management software this year.
What is the difference between a goal and a resolution?
While goals and resolutions identify areas for improvement, goals are specific, measurable outcomes you want to achieve. Resolutions are usually more vague and open-ended, and lack a clear strategy. Resolutions can still be helpful because they identify areas you want to change, but your goals set out the plan to achieve objectives.
For example, a resolution might be to commit to enhancing client relationships and growing the firm’s client list throughout the year. An example of a goal based on the same idea is to increase the firm’s client base by 20% within the next 12 months by implementing targeted marketing strategies, expanding online presence, and providing exceptional customer service.
We published this blog post in January 2024. Last updated: .
Categorized in: Business
New Trends and Tools to Drive Success in 2025
Is your firm ready to stay ahead in 2025? Success starts with a solid plan—and we’re here to help you craft it! From emerging legal trends like AI and flat-fee billing to strategies that align your team and metrics to track your success, we offer tips for every step of the way.
Watch the recording