No offense intended, but if you'd taken business classes, and not classes purporting to be business-related, you wouldn't be asking the questions you've asked (and you would have the resources to not ask them on a forum about a video game, because you would have put together the contacts and the resources that would obviate the need for a desperate shot in the dark). That said, you're not entirely on the wrong track, though you (and most of your profession) are stuck thirty years ago.
If you're smart, you will remember that law, at the end of the day, is a simple service. You are a service provider that has some special qualities and issues (restrictive professional ethics, debt burden, etc.), but at the end of the day you do the same thing that a barber does--people are willing to pay more for it, but you compete with other lawyers in the
exact same way as a barber competes with the one across the street. If you understand that, and you treat your customers accordingly, you'll do alright.
(Nothing I say below is esoteric. Anything that's not immediately apparent can probably be found in a Google search.)
Websites:
This is the most important tool you have. I assume you'll write the copy yourself, which is fine. Get someone to build you a solid, CMS-backed site on a virtual private server (VPS). Shared solutions like Dreamhost seem nice, until you realize the same webserver that's serving your content is serving another 400 websites at minimum and they don't exactly offer uptime guarantees. A VPS generally has few uptime guarantees as well, but the machine it's running on isn't getting pummeled by all those sites.
Keep in mind that for most solutions you will end up contracting a designer, who provides an HTML/CSS or Photoshop template, and an implementor, who takes the designer's deliverables and integrates them with the content management system. Most designers can recommend implementors, and vice versa. Finding a decent one generally isn't hard; always ask for bona fides long before you sign anything and look at their portfolio carefully.
You will need to find a sysadmin or a company you can contract out to. Every area has them. Make some contacts and ask around. Most are a flat per-month fee--for what you need it shouldn't exceed maybe $500/month, adjusted for location.
By the way, rule #1 of technology: Don't hire friends. Even if they're working in the industry. You might be the one in a thousand who hires a friend and
doesn't end up chasing them around for deliverables or putting up with half-assed crap because "eh, he's a friend, he'll understand," but it's more likely you're one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine. Paying the money reduces this risk, and small businesses are
all about risk management.
Technology:
How can you be below the age of 30 and not know what a smartphone is or why it's useful? I mean, no offense, but are you living in a cave in Afghanistan? (I say a cave, because you can buy iPhones on the streets of Kabul.) Get into an AT&T or a Verizon store or whatever and play with what they've got, and the value of a decent smartphone in terms of email, calendaring, etc. will become immediately apparent. Your competitors all use them, and for a reason. (I would avoid BlackBerry mostly due to the hassle of administration, especially as you're not going to be running a large-scale shop. iPhones are good. Windows Phone 7 is good. Android is acceptable. Find what's reasonably priced and what works for you.)
Infrastructure is also a concern. The 1980's called and they want the standard methods of legal filing to come back, they're sorely missed. Here in 2011, however, you're going to want to invest in a real, legacy-free information system. Just one example, off the top of my head: you don't need reams of paper documents in the overwhelming majority of cases, and investing in a decent scanner (this means "not one bolted onto an inkjet printer") and OCR software will save you a lot of time when you need to find something. There's lots of stuff like this that can be done to improve your own workflow and, by extension, reduce the need for other staff. You aren't going to want to expand until your revenue is at least approaching 2x-2.2x your minimum acceptable take-home salary, and that's probably a long way off, so do as much as you can to maximize what you can do.
Office Space:
Good office space in a reasonably upscale building--possibly important, given the expectations of people in your industry--is never cheap, because those buildings are rarely lacking for tenants. If you primarily work for clients that may not be able to afford standard law pricing (as it sounds like you are), you might be able to get away without much in this area for a while. Most urban areas have startup incubators where you can rent offices on a weekly basis for very reasonable rates, which may be a viable alternative in those cases. If you attempt to move more upscale, you're going to be biting the bullet and paying the money.
Furnishings:
Important, but not important enough to wank over. Especially, as noted above, if your clientele isn't expecting the Ritz. The time you spend thinking about this is time you could be spending on other stuff.
Advertising:
Newspaper ads, locally-targeted Google ads, etc. are worth a look, but most services generate business from word of mouth and referrals, as you note later.
Suppliers/Vendors:
Important, and it's good that you've thought of this. LexisNexis is a big one. Some of the other legal networks are worth it took. Basic supplies, however, may be avoidable depending on the office situation, as mentioned above.
Customer Service/Relations Tracking:
Operations Tracking:
These are essentially the same thing, and the conventional answer is Salesforce. They're $25/user/month for their Group Edition, which doesn't have all the bells and whistles but has essentially everything you'll want.
Taxes:
You can't run QuickBooks? I billed at $125-$175/hr. when I was running my own consultancy, which isn't quite legal rates but is not insubstantial, and I handled my own business through QuickBooks--took me maybe an hour a month, and an accountant wanted to soak me $400/month for the same thing. This is the future--you can automate this shit.
Payroll:
Also automatable. Intuit Payroll is a solid product that doesn't require too much attention on its own. Like I said, you're stuck in the 1980's. Most of the basic business ops tasks you're thinking of are solved problems. You just need to babysit a computer process here or there.
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Topic: Starting a business. Questions on operations and marketing. (Read 1825 times)