With a new financial year just one month away, now is the time for sole practitioners and small-firm owners to take stock of the year that was and plan for the year ahead. For this award-winning practitioner, not losing sight of what one wants to achieve and living life and one’s business by design is front of mind in ensuring ongoing success.

In this episode of The Boutique Lawyer Show, host Jerome Doraisamy welcomes back Conveyed founder and chief overlord Melissa Barlas – who won the Sole Practitioner of the Year category at the 2023 Australian Law Awards – about her primary reflections on FY2023–24 and what has been learnt, meaningfully triaging urgent priorities, striking a balance between proactivity and reactivity in formulating a business plan, and the importance of aligning one’s personal life with the objectives and outcomes of a legal business.

Barlas also delves into what FY2024–25 will look like for her firm and what her headline focus will be, how she determined the pathway forward and why, the questions SME firm owners need to be asking of themselves and their businesses in building a strategy, looking after one’s self, the extent to which one can take notice of what’s happening socioculturally or politically, opportunities on the horizon, and what she’s looking forward to in the coming year.

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