You’re an associate at a firm. You’d like to do your own thing. You’re ready to head out on your own.

Slow down, Cowgirl.

Inhale. Exhale. Breathe deeply.

Don’t jump the gun. Let’s do some things in preparation for the big move.

You must take the required steps BEFORE you leave your present job:

1. Get a reputation.

Spend time getting others to refer to you. You’re going to want a steady stream of business coming from other professionals who think highly of you. You need that stream now before you go. Get to know others who can send you business. Use Networking 101 as your guide if you don’t already have a plan.

Measure the revenue you’re generating from your personal efforts. If you’re not generating five times your current salary, then you better identify the location of the food stamp office so you’ll be able to find it quickly after opening your new office.

2. Close some deals.

Learn how to turn a referral into a client. Figure out a way to do initial client meetings in your existing firm (usually, generating referrals will be the way to make that happen). Demonstrate to yourself that you can take a client meeting and turn it into a check or credit card swipe. Show me the money!

Check your efforts against others in your practice area. Are they closing 50 percent of their prospects? Are you doing better or worse than the competition? Take their self-reporting with a grain of salt, but do some digging and compare yourself. If you’re only closing 10 or 20 percent of your meetings, you’ll also want to locate the soup kitchen for when the food stamps run out.

3. Do the work.

Figure out how to practice law in your practice area. Learn from those in your firm and others. Master the law. Notice this isn’t number one on the list. That’s because it’s a commodity. There are lots of good lawyers and the first two items above are the keys to your survival. Doing the work is essential after you have a client, but getting the work is where you win or lose the game.

Do an internal audit of your life in the firm. Are you asking questions, or are you the one answering them? Are you the teacher or the student? Be the teacher before you pack up your laptop and iPhone and strike out on your own because you won’t have a teacher in the room next door or a phone call away once you hit the road.

4. Stop making excuses.

You’ll believe there are a host of reasons why being on your own will make things different from your current situation and will allow you to blossom. You believe with your newfound freedom that you’ll be effective at marketing and selling. Don’t believe your own baloney. Figure out the marketing and selling before you leave. It’ll get harder, not easier, after you’re gone.

But, but, wait: “My situation is different,” you whine. No, it’s not. Sure, your supervising attorney is married to the managing attorney, and you get treated badly. Yes, they won’t let you talk to clients, and they never let you do any marketing. Of course, you’re being forced to do work you don’t want to do. The excuses are counterproductive. They don’t reflect a reality that matters. The only reality that matters is the one where you’re getting referrals, closing deals, and mastering your area of the law. Everything else is your fantasy to help you feel better. Don’t believe yourself.

5. Save.

Save some money for year two. Here’s the deal: lawyers leave the firm and take some clients with them. Life is good—at first. Then they finish the work for those clients, and the money stops flowing. Sometimes it’s six months down the road, but more often it’s at the end of the first year. If you’re living on the old clients and are “too busy” to bring in some new business, then you can expect year two to be awful. That’s when you need the savings. Sorry.

How These Five Things Make a Difference

That’s it. Do those five things before you leave, and you’ll have an amazing experience. Don’t do them, and you’ll soon find yourself driving a school bus and teaching a high school civics class instead of practicing law.

The sad thing is that most associates leaving firms won’t do these things before they leave. They’ll do them after they leave the law firm once they’re in a debt-induced panic, if ever. They could have done them in their current jobs and saved themselves tremendous stress and agony.

The oddly ironic thing is that had they done these things before leaving, they might never have felt the need to leave.