My Shingle : MyShingle : Solo and Small Law Firm Management and Marketing

Yesterday, while driving home from the mall with my daughters, they began fantasizing about the day that my older daughter would get her license (still four years off) so that they could go shopping together, sans mom.   My daughters then asked if I'd let them take the car to the mall or other destinations when they get their licenses.  I responded that it would depend on various factors, but that at a minimum, they'd have to spend a decent amount of time practice driving under supervision of their dad or me, they'd have to stay off interstates and not drive during rush hour and avoid distractions, like a carload of chatty friends or talking on the cell phone.  To which my daughters retorted in unison - but mommy, you talk on the cell phone in the car.  You're a hypocrite!

My daughters are right, at least insofar as the cell phone goes.  Though I try to avoid talking when they're in the back seat, sometimes, because of my crazy schedule and compressed days, it can't be helped.  Most frequently, fear of outbursts from the girls limits my cell phone calls to either status calls with close colleagues or my publisher who don't judge me negatively for background noise, or to conference calls where I can participate with the mute button on most of the time. 

My daughters' questions got me to thinking whether working and living a  seamless life inherently breeds hypocrisy.  I recall of all of the times that I've left dishes on the table or in the sink so that I could race back to the computer to finish up a brief, or after a hellish day, tossed my suit jackets and dress shoes on the couch or the floor where they linger for days because I can't find the energy to pick them up.  Does work - especially when it's work that gives me more time to spend with my daughters - justify cutting corners?  And how do I explain away my deficiencies that to my daughters when I want them to pick up after themselves?  After all, their school day is equally tiring.

For cell phones and driving at least, my answer comes more easily.  I explain that I always use a headset, I limit cell phone use to familiar roads and that my quarter of century of driving experience (with only 2 tickets) gives me more latitude with regard to a cell phone than a newbie 16 year old deserves.  For other questions, I'm not so sure except to try harder to set an example and hope for the best.

What's your answer?

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A few years back, I highlighted a small firm specializing in veterans' issues.  Now, four years later demand for legal services for veterans remains high.  Fortunately, for solos considering veterans rights and benefits as a practice area, there are multiple opportunities for first rate, hands on training.

Today, the Maryland Daily Record discusses the HPRP Veterans' Benefits Project, which launched last year.  The program trains lawyers in the benefits process, and in turn the lawyers agree to help at least one veteran with the claims process.  Forty-four lawyers have taken part in training sessions since the program began with thirty clients obtaining assistance.  And if appellate work, rather than benefits applications is your thing, you can volunteer for the National Veterans' Legal Services Program in Washington D.C. where you'll receive training and have an opportunity to brief and argue a case before the Veterans' Court of Appeals.

As a solo, you're probably thinking that this pro bono all sounds great for laid off biglaw associates with generous severance packages but that it's not much value for lawyers who need to earn a living.  That's where your'e wrong.  First, handling a case pro bono is small compensation for the kinds of training that these pro bono programs provide - training that is transferable to a for-fee practice.  After all, these pro bono programs barely scratch the surface of demand, and turn away dozens of veterans who could become paying clients.   And if you don't think veterans' practice can be profitable, why not consider reducing overhead through the kind of virtual practice described here at VLOTech which focuses on needs of the military overseas.  Since veterans' issues general involve federal law, you're not limited to a regional practice and can draw clients from all over the country.

 Second, even if you take on a pro bono case, you never know where it could lead.  Years back, I represented a homeless man pro bono in a lawsuit against a hotel for ejecting him from the cafe, even though he was dressed nicely and had money to pay.  I won the man a modest settlement which he used as a down payment on an apartment.  He found a job at the Better Business Bureau and referred me several paying matters, including one the produced a high five figure jury verdict (triple the settlement initially offered).  In short, don't discount the ability of pro bono clients to refer paying cases. 

Pro bono cases give you a chance to get out and work with other lawyers and lose the isolation that you can feel as a solo.   And they give you a chance to sample a new practice area without commitment.  If you don't enjoy veterans' work or find it too complicated, just finish up your pro bono work and move on to another practice area.

So why not think about serving those who've served? 

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The Total Attorney's Practice Management Association Get a Life conference begins this Wednesday, May 27 and continues through May 28.  There's a great line up of speakers who don't typically present at these kinds of events (at least, not all in one place!) including my colleague and friend Allison Shields and some fun activities as well.  I had hoped to attend for the first day, but unfortunately, a judge in one of my cases had other plans for me!  But I'm looking forward to following the Tweets and hearing about the conference.

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At the request of my blogging colleague, Jordan Furlong of Law21 and Chair of the College of Law Practice Management Innovaction program, I'm somewhat belatedly posting this call for nominations for this year's Innovaction Awards sponsored by the College of Law Practice Management.  The awards are given to law firms or other legal services providers that have come up with really innovative and game-changing initiatives in any area of legal service provision: law firm management, marketing, client service, automation, etc. The above link will take you to lists of previous winners, admission criteria and application, which is available here - though be aware, there is an application fee of $325. For more details about the award, you can view this Press Release.  Deadline for submissions is June 1 so you'll need to act quickly.
 

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Many of you may know what it's like to stand up when the jury verdict's about to be read.  Your heart pounds, your palms sweat and you get weak in the knees.   The seconds seem like an eternity as you wait to learn the result.

Before I became a mom, I could think of nothing more stressful than awaiting a jury verdict, followed by the same heart-pounding nervousness of opening an appellate decision.  But nerve-wracking as those situations are, nothing compares to the stress of watching the clock in a courtroom, trying to figure out whether you can race back home to meet your kids at the bus or pick them up from daycare.  Or sitting on a morning train out of town, wondering if your two daughters caught the bus to school.  Or getting ready to say something on the conference call, silently praying that there won't be screams of children tormenting each other or cursing loudly in the background.

Anyway, it's been one of those kinds of weeks for me and I'm looking forward to a somewhat relaxing long weekend.  I've got one more assignment to polish off and then I'm off to celebrate my niece's graduation.  Enjoy the weekend and I'll see you all back here on the other side.  

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I'm not flashy about marketing, nor am I a believer in those pricey "silver bullet" systems, where the only people who win are the experts selling their products.  Still, I do cover marketing issues, both here at my blog in the Marketing & Making Money category and at the Nolo Legal Marketing Blawg (Nolo is a valued sponsor of this site).  I've got around 20 posts up over there, on a range of topics from eBooks to video to article archiving and how to hire a marketing expert or delegate marketing responsibilities, and more, as listed in the archives.  If there's a topic that you'd like to see covered let me kno.

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Over at my Legal Blogwatch beat, I posted about an ongoing lawsuit against biglaw firm Chadbourne Park, alleging that Chadbourne wrongfully billed the client $20,000 for online research services when the actual cost to the firm was only around $5000.   The suit alleges that the firm engaged in deceptive trade practices in violation of state law and committed fraud. 

The case raises a couple of important questions for solos:

1.  Should you mark up the cost of online legal research when you pass the charges on to your clients as a disbursement (i.e., expense item)? 

2.    Should you pass on costs of online legal research to clients as a separate "line item" expense, or treat the costs as overheard, encompassed in your overall billing rate or flat fee?

As to the first question, ethics rules govern the permissibility of mark-ups of out-of-pocket expenses.  ABA Model Rule 1.5 provides that for costs such as telephone or copying charges or other out-of-pocket expenses, lawyers can charge a reasonable amount to which the client agrees in advance or an amount that reflects costs incurred by the lawyer.  So, back in the day when law firms operated copy rooms as profit centers (and maybe the same is true now), they'd typically include a provision in the retainer agreement stating that clients would be charged .25/copy, without noting that copies only cost the firm a few cents.

Still, even where you pass on actual costs to clients, as opposed to mark-up costs, should you do so?  Generally speaking, clients who receive a bill for $1000 for legal services often feel that they've been nickel-and-dimed when a lawyer tacks on fifty cents for the cost of postage or $2.50 for the cost of a file folder.  Of course, where you incur an extraordinary expense like an airline ticket or several hundred dollars worth of copying, seeking reimbursement is fair and a client won't likely begrudge you for it.  But collecting smaller expenses just makes you look cheap.

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A few weeks back, a reader, discouraged after having failed the bar exam yet again, asked whether he should give up on his dream of starting his own practice.  Of the advice that I offered, what resonated most with the reader was my reminder that no matter how many times he passed the bar, once he passed, he'd be a full fledged lawyer, no different from me or any other solo or even the Justices on the Supreme Court.  Moreover, clients would never have to know how long he needed to become a lawyer, only that he was a duly licensed member of the bar.

Starting your own law firm means that you have a chance to cast aside a less than successful past and reinvent yourself.  If you've been laid off from your firm, no one ever needs to know.  When I started my practice in the wake of my own termination, I told colleagues that I'd left the firm (true) because I wanted to more courtroom experience (true) and an opportunities to advance (true).  Soon, what I considered a "cover" story became my official story instead, so much so I often forgot that I'd left my firm under less than voluntary circumstances.  And in fact, the only reason that I mention my layoff today is to reassure other lawyers that they too can forge a new life for themselves in the law.

Failures, whether not passing the bar or getting laid off can have a lasting psychological toll, long after the the event becomes a distance memory.  This recent New York Magazine piece talks about the personal effects of unemployment, noting that they're more devastating than other adverse experiences:

Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick, has collected happiness data from hundreds of thousands of people both here and in the United Kingdom, and what he's consistently seen is that people recover more quickly from becoming disabled, even widowed, than from the long-term loss of a job. “People may draw their benefits from the government,” he says, “but they don't seem to psychologically acclimate.” Everyone tends to have a natural hedonic set-point, a zone within which their internal mood-thermostat tends to hover, just like their weight. Sustained unemployment is one of life’s few upsets that seems to permanently depress it.

Call me irrationally optimistic, but I don't think unemployment or multiple bar failures or negative feedback from past employwers or other career-related adversities have to have a lasting effect if we don't allow them to.  Solo practice provides a second chance for us to recreate ourselves; it gives us a fresh start - that is, if we let it.   To paraphrase that cringe-inducing line from Love Story (video at 3:38), going solo means never having to say you were fired and in time, you forget that you ever were.

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Lawyers may not be fans of ratings systems, as I've posted previously.  But what lawyers, or bar associations think about ratings doesn't matter, if clients think otherwise.  And as the Washington Post  reports, increasingly, consumers are turning to ratings to make decisions about service providers like real estate agents, plumbers and movers.  Moreover, at least one of the sites discussed -- Angies List -- now reviews dentists and doctors.

In contrast to lawyers, you won't find other service providers complaining about ratings services or trying to shut them down.  In fact, the Post points out that companies find feedback as just as important as consumers:  "The good and bad reviews keep us on our toes," said 1-800-GOT-JUNK? spokeswoman Shaye Hoobanoff. "During these tough real estate times, customers are more cautious about what service they use and base much of their decision on real customer feedback, not just the stuff that people pick and choose to advertise on their Web site."According to O'Keefe of VCU, the growth of consumer reviews can improve the quality of services."It tends to raise the level of everyone's game. The weak are getting found out, the strong companies are being rewarded, and it's raising those in the vast middle," he said.

But what about the potential for complaints by disgruntled customers or sabotage by competitors?  Thus far, the ratings companies are dealing with the potential for mischief by spot checking reviews and using computer programs to weed out false comments.

Lawyers had better wake up - we can't insulate ourselves from ratings systems much longer.   After all, why should lawyers be exempt from ratings when real estate agents or plumbers or doctors or dentists aren't?  Instead of trying to shut down ratings systems, which are inevitable, lawyers should  instead develop strategies to encourage positive feedback and minimize the adverse effects of negative impacts.

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October 21, 1996 marks the day that I qualified to celebrate Mothers' Day with the birth of my first daughter, Elana.  Exactly a week to the day of my daughter's birth, I donned the one non-maternity work skirt that still fit me (albeit with the top button open), slipped a boxy red blazer over my swollen, leaky chest and left Elana in the care of her adoring grandparents so that I could head downtown to give a seminar on A Practitioner's Guide to Energy Resources on the World Wide Web.  I'd committed to the date months in advance, back when I believed that babies arrived promptly on their designated due dates instead of two full weeks late - and I'd never mentioned my pregnancy or my daughter's birth to the organizers.  I just wasn't sure of what to say and feared that they wouldn't take me seriously or might cancel the event if I let on that I'd just had a baby.  So I showed up on schedule, clad in my lawyer's uniform which concealed my identity as a new mom.

Today, my behavior seems silly, but for that era, compartmentalization of work life and home life; the professional and personal was common place for lawyer-moms.   Work meant business suits and talking shop, home meant babies and juggling play dates and park outings and other kinds of child-related activities.  Rarely, if ever did the twain meet. 

After a few weeks following my daughter's birth, I realized two things.  First, I simply wasn't going to be able to leave Elana in anyone's care full time.  Second, I wasn't ready to shutter my three year old law practice at a time when I was gaining momentum.   After a month at home, I realized a third - and seemingly obvious thing:  I could do both: stay home and practice law at the same time.  Sure, I'd have to wake up at 5 am to squeeze in an hour of work before my daughter roused, and learn how to one-hand type and to nurse while engaged in a conference call.  I'd have to tweek the nature of my practice to focus more heavily on appeals and regulatory work instead of the unpredictable criminal and litigation matters that demanded face time.   And I'd have to tolerate a messy house and late nights and working weekends while my husband watched our daughter and eventually her sister, but yes, it could be done.  And so I moved from a life of limits, compartmentalized between my lawyer's suit and my comfy mom sweats to a life without seams.

Twelve years later, the world has changed and for the better.  Where I spent many years wandering alone between the world of the stay-at-home-moms and the full-time moms, today, many more lawyer-moms straddle this now populated intersection.  How we've arrived here, I don't know - certainly, technology has facilitated the seamless life for lawyer-moms, but so too have changing attitudes among women and men about what matters and what's possible. 

Still, I didn't fully appreciate how much  realize that the world had changed until I ran across this photo of Michelle Obama a few months ago that distills the essence of many of today's lawyer-moms.  On the one hand, the picture depicts motherhood, with Mrs. Obama comforting her tired young daughter and - likely, silently praying that she doesn't have some kind of a melt down.  And while of course, Mrs. Obama looks great, she's also just a little bit dishevilled with her dress hiked up a little bit more than it probably should be.  But there's another side to Mrs. Obama in this picture as well.  She's sitting ramrod straight, and there's a look of intent concentration on her face - you know that if her husband missed a beat in his speech, that Mrs. Obama could leap up to the podium and recite it for him.  Just as the picture depicts Mrs. Obama as a mom, it shows her equally as the consummate professional.

How many times have you used your lawyer voice on the phone while making funny faces to keep your three year old quiet?  Or pecked out a winning brief on the keyboard, while feeding the baby with your other hand?  In those moments, we are, emphatically, lawyers, but we're just as emphatically moms.  We can't peel those pieces apart anymore than we can cut our hearts in two.  And what's best about today's world, is that perhaps, we no longer have to make that choice.

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How is that solo and small firm lawyers are thriving at a time when biglaw is crumbling?  Why does the the spirit of optimism still prevail among most solos even as our large firm colleagues experience hopelessness and panic?

Over the past few months, I've pondered these questions, but I've never seen the answers articulated as powerfully as in this inspiring New Yorker piece by Malcolm Gladwell, forwarded to me by a reader, on How David Beats Goliath. (Full disclosure: I'm a raving Gladwell fan as evidenced by earlier posts, here and here).  As Gladwell explains, David beats Goliath for the same reasons that solos succeed:  (a) by playing by their own rules  and (b) through sheer grit and dogged effort which trumps ability every time.

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With home offices increasing in popularity, what better niche for a home office lawyer than advising home based businesses.  I've shared this idea before, but was reminded of it again after reading this piece from a Colorado publication which describes that:

Douglas County [Colorado] is home to one of the largest populations of home-based businesses in the state, with a whopping 40 percent to 50 percent of all businesses in the county being based in a residence. The highly educated, wealthy residents are taking advantage of the wide range of resources available in their own backyard.

“These are not Tupperware salesmen. They are international consultants, software developers,” Martin said. “They have been pretty successful without an office.”

Home based businesses are a growing niche, particularly in a down economy.  In Colorado, there's an expected increase, with experts saying that roughly seven percent of employees who are laid off will try to start their own business. 

As for legal issues relating to home businesses, there's plenty to keep lawyers busy.  Among other things, home based businesses need to consider corporate formation issues, zoning questions, tax issues related to home office deductions, assistance with contracts and employment matters. 

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Even though I practice in Washington D.C., I don't know much about David Wilmot, the local attorney representing the 82 year old winner of a $144 million Power Ball jackpot.  (As an aside to the D.C. Bar, if it weren't for Avvo listing lawyer in D.C., I wouldn't have been able to hyperlink Wilmot's name because he doesn't have much of a web presence).  Still, I've got to assume that Wilmot has an impeccable reputation for being trustworthy and discrete.  What else would explain the Power Ball jackpot winner's willingness to entrust Wilmot to set up an LLC to accept the prize on his behalf  (to preserve anonymity) and well as trust accounts to provide health and educational benefits for the winner's ten children and 47 grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well as another for philanthropy?  And, to do all of this while fielding 80 phone calls about the prize winner (as the Post reports), while keeping his identity completely confidential. 

Wouldn't you want to be the kind of lawyer clients would call or colleagues would recommend in this kind of matter? 

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