Test the water. Before I set up Kemp Little in November, 1997, I’d been getting more entrepreneurial and adventurous for a while: I set up the company and commercial group at Hopkins and Wood before moving on to Hammonds Suddards, where I established the London office. Still, I didn’t quite feel fulfilled. I was 40 and I thought to myself, “It’s now or never.” It was the right time.

Get your nearest and dearest onside. My family knew that starting my own firm was what I really wanted to do. Their emotional support was absolutely crucial. My wife’s assistance with the accounting was also very useful.

The world won’t conform to your business plan, but you still need one. The more prepared you are, the better equipped you’ll be to deal with random things happening. I did a lot of planning during the summer before I set up, taking two weeks off work to speak to the bank, check insurance issues and meet recruitment people. It’s also worth getting some legal advice as there are sometimes restrictive covenants in place preventing lawyers from taking clients with them when they leave a firm. Think about everything. Leave no stone unturned.

Of course, luck still plays a part. I didn’t realise it, but I was starting out just as the dot-com boom was getting into full swing. A very good piece of economic timing, that.

Location, location, location. The rent may be a bit higher, but I’ve always thought that having an EC2 address gives London-based commercial firms a bit of extra cachet. And when you’re starting out you need all the cachet you can get.

You also need all the cash you can get. I was lucky in that I’d paid off my mortgage and was able to put in £100,000 of my own money. Still, I was very careful about finances. Running a business in the early days is a bit like dealing with glorified pocket money. But I still got accountants in every month to check that we weren’t making mistakes.

Let everyone know pretty bloody quickly that the doors are open for business. Professional duties prevent you from speaking to clients before setting up. So you need to get as much publicity early on as possible. The press like new things and a plucky law firm start up is a good story. I prepared a brochure and a press release for the launch, which led to mentions in The Times, The Lawyer and Legal Week. I also sent out between five and six hundred letters telling contacts what I was doing.

Like the world needs another law firm . . . Before I started, I spent hours role-playing the conversation that I’d have with clients. Make your spiel compelling. Lower rates could be a factor. Or maybe it’s expertise: I had more experience of most of my clients’ businesses than other people at my old firm. And let clients know damn well that when they say jump, you’ll say, “How high?”

Keep your nerve. After setting up, I had a really busy December, so I got a couple of guys in to join me. January was very quiet. I remember thinking to myself, “Oh dear.” What kept me calm at that point, and during other difficult times, was knowing that I hadn’t gambled more than I could afford to lose and that I could always go back to my previous job. Fortunately, from then on we just got busier and busier, and by May we were up to eight lawyers.

Harness the early energy. When you start, this amazing amount of energy and positivity is unshackled. It’s a well-known phenomenon. I’ve never worked as hard in my life as during those first two years, but I’ve also never felt so engaged and dynamic.

Embrace the self-questioning mechanism in your personal operating system. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the technology analogy. What I mean is that it’s important to be constantly analysing how the firm is working and looking ahead for the next thing to worry about. Bringing in other people allows you to consider the bigger picture. On reflection, I probably spent too long on the administration details in the early days, but I’ve since managed to take several steps back. Having set up on my own, the firm now has finance directors, IT and HR staff, and 17 partners.

The river looks wide before you cross it, but from the other side you realise it’s easily forded. At school, lawyers were generally the bookish, conservative types. Being entrepreneurial comes less easy to us — there’s probably a higher comfort threshold to overcome. But if you get the plan right and join up all the dots, starting your own firm isn’t as big a deal as it seems.

Richard Kemp is senior partner at Kemp Little, a specialist technology law firm that celebrated its tenth anniversary in November

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