MyShingle : Solo and Small Law Firm Management and Marketing

Everyone starts somewhere, law firms included.  Consider this story from Forbes about Jere Beasley, one of the nation's most successful personal injury lawyer who's secured multimillion dollar settlements and verdicts against some of the largest corporations in the country.   According to the story, Beasley started a solo practice because he couldn't find a job.  Today, Beasley's little law practice that occupied a couple of rooms in an old house fills three buildings, with 44 lawyers and 225 support workers.

I realize that personal injury work isn't everyone's cup of tea.  But my point is simply that there are opportunities to grow your law practice beyond just one or two lawyers if that's what you want to do.

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What do large law firms have in common with Sesame Street's Kermit the Frog?  For both, it's not easy being green.  Take a look at the hoops that mega-firm Reed Smith had to jump through when its clients started inquiring about the firm's green initiatives.  As described in this article, Reed Smith first created an internal green management committee to provide a list of green suppliers to employees and to manage the firm's $5 million travel expenditure with green goals in mind.   Eventually the firm made a carbon offset donation of $22,000 to account for 13.7 million miles flown.  The firm's goal wasn't to eliminate the miles traveled, but to make a donation to offset miles used.   Aside from travel issues, the article does not mention any other efforts by the firm to go green - such as encouraging telecommuting, going paperless or substituting web based meetings for in-person ones.

In contrast to large firms, green is something that we solo and small firm practitioners are rather than something we do.   Many of us work from home at least part of the time, which keeps cars off the road.  And we employ virtual assistants or contract lawyers who also work from home, further cutting down on traffic and the corresponding emissions.   Working from home allows us to dress as we like, so we can limit the cost of dry-cleaning, which isn't even slightly green (some would argue that you don't even need to change your clothes regularly when working from home, but that's taking environmentalism too far in my view!).   Many solo and small firm lawyers are also cutting down on travel costs by utilizing video depositions or affiliating with counsel in other cities who can handle local matters where face to face contact is required. 

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When I sat down to write Solo by Choice, the context mattered most.  One of the my goals in starting MyShingle was to discuss solo pratice not so much as a category of law practice unto itself , but rather to view the role of, and opportunities for, solo and small firm practitioners in the broader legal profession.  The Epilogue to my book describes my view of this context, and how it's changing but here is the much more extensive version.   I'd be interested in hearing your feedback:

When I started law school  back in 1985, most of my classmates were headed to  Biglaw, where they could look forward to a coveted partnership after seven years of hard labor.   But the Wall Street crash of 1987 changed all that. Summer associate programs were cancelled, and students who had lined up jobs suddenly found themselves out of work.   When the economy recovered, those same classmates did find positions at large firms. But by then, the seven-year partnership track had stretched to nine years ... even 11. Soon after, the country suffered another economic blow ... a recession ... and some of the most talented or hardworking of my peers were unceremoniously downsized or informed they were “not fit” for the partnership track. Again, the economy rebounded, and again firms scrambled to hire attorneys, this time to handle a glut of IPO work, only to dump most of the new-hires in the dot.com bust of the early 2000's. And, so it goes, as novelist Kurt Vonnegut used to say.
   
In less than 20 years, what had been a fairly smooth path to partnership had become rocky and uncertain. But it’s just one of the many factors responsible for the new and growing popularity of law firm start-ups. 

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Two factors are conspiring to make 2008 a break out year for starting a law firm. Factor 1: rapidly weakening credit and financial markets are causing law firms like McKee Nelson to offer voluntary severance packages to associates and leading other firms Thacher Profitt to give notice of impending layoffs. Factor 2: rapidly increasing hourly rates at large firms - now up to one thousand dollars an hour are spurring some lawyers to start their own practices to attract clients who can't afford big firm rates.

So, if you're affected by one of these factors - if your job is in jeopardy because you practice in an area that's going under, or if you can't find clients with sufficiently deep pockets to pay your current overhead, why not consider starting your own firm? Sure, there are other options - you could move to a smaller firm, switch practice areas, move to another firm or consider employment in academia or in house. Just be sure to that as you consider these options, think about solo practice right along with them.

And stay tuned for my upcoming book, Solo by Choice which contains a specific section on "Biglaw to Yourlaw," as well as several examples of lawyers who've taken that route, and found financial success and personal satisfaction.

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I knew that many law schools and bar associations were developing programs to help women who've left the law re-enter the profession. But have to admit that until I read this New York Times story (hat tip to Lisa Solomon), I had no idea how much these programs cost - as much as $9000. For that price, you could almost go back to law school - or start yourself a pretty nice shingle!

Do these pricy programs really provide women lawyers with the tools they need for re-entry. According to the Timesarticle, the program offers lectures on the law, advice on explaining resume gaps and computer training. And lawyers are also set up with an unpaid internship which can help them make contacts even if it doesn't result in a paying job. At the same time, I felt that at some level, this kind of program exploits women lawyers' fears that they'll never find a job in the law once they've left the profession - and charges extortionist rates to assist them.

As I've posted here for some time, today, there are plenty of options for women who want to work part tiem and keep a foot in the door, or for those who leave the law to raise a family. And you don't have to pay $9000 for them either. My upcoming book , Solo By Choice will have some materials on a part time practice. And you can also check out my past posts here at MyShingle on work life balance and on women lawyers, including Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor who found amazing success through alternative career paths. Finally, you can also check out my article on how young women lawyers can take charge of their careers.

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Since women lawyers pull their own weight in the genre of solo and small firm blogs (along with me, there are my colleagues and friends, Susan Cartier Liebel and Inspired Solo's Sheryl Schelin, I was surprised to learn that Few Women Choose to Practice Solo (NLJ 9/13/07). A recent study released by NALP revealed that women comprise only 34 percent of solo practitioners, while 77 percent of lawyers working for public interest groups are women.

Why don't more women choose solo practice? After all, you'd think that women looking for work life balance would find solo practice appealing, because when you work for yourself, you gain control over the hours you work and the hours you handle. My own belief is that women themselves are driving lawyers away from solo practice. As I posted here previously, when women demand equality in the profession, they're usually referring to equality at big law firms. Women who start and head their own practices, no matter how prominent, simply don't count. As a result, younger women don't view solo practice as an option.

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At the Ms. JD conference that I attended last week, one woman responded to various remarks on the benefits of starting a firm (by some of us troublemakers in the picture) by saying something to the effect that "Starting a firm is all well and good, but if everyone flees biglaw life, firms will be left stranded as the last bastions of male dominated hierarchy." That comment has been bearing heavily in my mind since, making me wonder whether lawyers have an obligation to fix biglaw.

In fact, from what I gleaned from Ms. JD, part of its mission is to ensure that female lawyers are represented in the upper echelon, power branches of the legal profession, such as the judiciary and biglaw. In other words, at least part of Ms. JD's goals is to help women with fight, not flight. And as I posted here at Legal Blogwatch, another group, Students Building a Better Legal Profession just formed, with a mission of changing the modern law firm business model to make it more sustainable and profitable and also allow for a more balanced lifestyle. I support these students and wish them the best. I'm impressed that they're taking charge of their future and that they're optimistic enough to believe they can change it. That passion will serve them well whether they succeed or not. And in fact, back when I was a student, I would have done the same - and indeed, in some cases, I did. But now, I'd rather just practice law than fight or rescue a system that's comprised of lawyers who ought to be smart enough and savvy enough to save themselves if indeed the system is failing (and I'm not convinced we're at that point).

What's your view? Are these students on the right track in trying to change biglaw from within? Or if you don't like how biglaw works, should you choose another option?

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Susan Cartier Liebel posts about how Gen Y women are saying no to biglaw because it doesn't afford the kind of work life balance they demand.  I've posted on and written about this theme before, as well.  But what I don't think I've emphasized sufficiently is that for women, starting a firm isn't just a great way to accommodate work and family, but it also provides far greater business opportunities than are available at firms to begin with.

Consider this article, Three Longtime Buchanan Shareholders to Start Own Firm , (Legal Intelligencer, 2/7/07), which reports that Mary Kay Brown, Antoinette R. Stone and Jami B. Nimeroff will leave Buchanan Ingersoll Friday to start their own boutique on Monday.  And here's one of the reasons:  as a woman-owned business, the firm can qualify for set-asides and capitalize on large corporation's desires to increase diversity among outside counsel.  In fact, that's why other  women and minority lawyers have started law firms: to capture new business, either through diversity opportunities or the ability to avoid conflicts.  So despite all of the complaints about glass ceilings at biglaw for women and minorities, from where I sit, there's never been more opportunity for these groups than now.

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Over at my Legal Blogwatch beat, I wrote about Cisco GC Mark Chandler's speech taking big law firms to task for their "guild" mentality and lack of responsiveness to clients.  You ought to read the whole post, which excerpts the speech, but Chandler argues that companies like his are concerned about legal costs, want fixed fees and access to information without having to pay someone to find it. 

You may think that if you represent consumers, that Chandler's speech doesn't apply.  But it does, even more so.  Consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated.  Many want information about their case provided regularly, and expect that lawyers have the technology to provide it at no cost.  (Grant Griffiths and Greatest American Lawyer both recognize that, and they've each implemented Base Camp to facilitate client access to information).  And as David Giacalone points out here at Shlep (self help law express), as technology increases, more and more clients may start taking matters into their own hands. 

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It's not clear whether it's too soon to call this a trend, but Joel Schoenmeyer at the Death and Taxes blog notes that at least one large firm, Chicago-based Sonnenschein has decided to get rid of its estates group.  Shoenmeyer writes:

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see other big law firms start to follow suit (an exception might be firms like McDermott, which are built around their estate planning and probate practices). I enjoyed my experience at Sidley & Austin, but it was clear that the estate planning department generally was treated as second class citizens. My understanding is that compensation for estate planning partners is lower than for litigators and corporate attorneys. I suspect this is true at a number of big firms, many of which view estate planning as a "service group" (there to provide support to other groups, or planning to the firm's attorneys).

Schoenmeyer writes that part of this is money - estate planning, even the largest matters, don't generate the same million dollars in fees as do large corporate clients. 
It may be that big firms don't need estate planning groups.  But at this point, it doesn't matter, suggests Schoenmeyer, because "good estate planners don't need big firms either."  Trusts and estates boutiques are likely to be the wave of the future.

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Whether you like Harvard Law School or not, you have to agree that virtually every HLS graduate can write their own ticket to whatever job they want.  So it's gratifying to see that with so many career options, young HLS grads are still choosing solo practice, as reported in this article from the HLS Bulletin, The Coming Wave  (11/5/06).  The article profiles  Luz Herrera and Eric Castelblanco, HLS grads who each opened solo practices to serve underserved, Hispanic communities.  From the article:

For both Castelblanco and Herrera, there was no road map for an Ivy-educated lawyer to start a viable law practice for low-income clients. "Traditionally, if you want to do public service, you are directed to apply for a Skadden fellowship, work for the government or go to a civil rights impact litigation organization," said Herrera. "But for me, none of those options seemed like the right choice. I did not want to spend 90 percent of my time doing research or working in a direct-service organization whose approach I did not completely buy into. Working in my own law office allows me to provide legal services to individuals who may not otherwise have an attorney and tap into my entrepreneurial spirit while being an active member of the community."

But before Herrera could help people navigate the legal system, she had to figure out the nuts and bolts of running a law practice, including how to set up a billing system--problems that a first-year associate at a major firm would never have to worry about. "The first year is very hard," she said. "No one tells you how to set up a practice in law school."

Now, Herrerra has taken a break from her practice and has joined the Community Enterprise Project at Hale & Dorr to develop a fellowship that will help law graduates learn how to start law practices in underserved communities (a project which sounds similar to the Law School Consortium).

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I've always likened the rise of modern day independent practice (call it the Third Wave if you will) to the dotcom era.  Before dotcoms, small entrepreneurship wasn't cool.  But the success of little garage companies forced our profession to look at law firm start ups in a different light.

And because law firm start ups have much in common with tech start ups, from shoe string budgets, to competing in areas traditionally handled by larger players, I was thrilled to read this outstanding post by Jeff Lipshaw at the Legal Profession Blog.  Lipshaw writes about a paper in the Journal of Financial Economics, authored by David Kirsch which suggests that the actual failure rate of dot.com start ups was far lower than perceived - roughly 20 percent.  But the steady survival of smaller companies was overshadowed by massive failures of sites like eToys and pets.com. (the post goes on to discuss potential business development ideas that might follow from these statistics, so read the whole thing).

So what does this mean for potential law firm start ups?  Simply, your chances of success are greater than you think!  Get out there and get started.   

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The impact of solo and small firm practice is far reaching, so much so that in my view, it's helping women attorneys succeed at biglaw.  Don't believe it?  Consider these two stories that ran in today's news.  The first, Deciding to Go It Alone, (San Fernando Valley Business 11/4/06) reports on how more and more, women lawyers are choosing solo practice to accomodate families and to get to the top more quickly than they might by staying at a firm.  The article also notes that with technological advancements, it's less costly to open a firm than ever.  The second article, Part Timers Find Room at the Firm (Boston Globe 11/5/06) talks about how law firms' part time programs, some which enable women to work from home, are giving women incentive to stay at firms.

So what does one article have to do with the other?  Plenty!  Used to be that biglaw was the only option for smart women, so large firms could call the shots, demanding that women work full time or leave.  No more.  As the barriers to starting a law firm decrease, more and more women are successfully starting firms (as I've discussed here) and don't need to settle for the sham part time programs that some firms initially put in place.

The Globe article credits the firms as well as  "visionaries" who  work towards work life balance:

Effective change doesn't happen overnight, and almost always, it's powered by group efforts, policies with bite, leadership support, and visionaries, such as Williams and Henry, who keep their eyes on the ball.

But that's only a partial explanation.  Because of solo and small firm practice (and the technology to run a practice that serves biglaw clients), women have a real alternative to biglaw and they don't need to settle.  Programs like The Project for Attorney Retention  may never mention solo or small firm practice, but in truth, programs like PAR owe some of their success to the success of solo and small firm lawyers. 

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One of the best parts of being a shingler is that you can choose where you want to work.  And for many who start a firm, that means home.  Recently, there's been a spate of posts on working at home, including this guest post by Greatest American Lawyer at Grant Griffiths' Home Office Lawyer, various links to this Rocky Mountain News Story, The Good Fight about solo Curtis Kennedy, a home based lawyer who handles top dollar class action suits and other litigation against big companies (equally amazing to the fact that Kennedy works at home are his billing practices - he recently won an additional $36 million for his clients, but rather than fight for a cut, is merely seeking $40,000 in legal fees.  How's that for value billing? (not!)) Finally, though he's been blogging for  a few months now, Chuck Newton of Third Wave Law Firm on virtual law practice has plenty to say about home offices and starting a firm.

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Last week, Larry Bodine posted here on a New Jersey ethics ruling that allows a law firm to own another law firm as a wholly-owned subsidiary.  I haven't had time to read the decision closely or focus on the implications, which I believe are mixed, but here is Larry's view on what the decision could mean:

    • Law firms can buy and sell other law firms as investments.

    • Law firms can hire a pinpoint boutique to handle a spike in client demand, and then sell it off or shut it down when the demand falls off.  The owner firm wouldn't have to fire any of its own staff, as happened when the technology bubble burst.

    • The owner law firm can acquire a smaller firm without having to charge big-firm rates or pay big-firm salaries.  A large firm could own, for example, an insurance defense firm, pay the lawyers bottom dollar, and be able to bill out at $100 an hour.  This means big law firms won't leave money on the table.

    • Owner law firms can acquire less glamorous practices, like collection law firms (which are very profitable and make a 40% commission on debts collected) without having to sully its own reputation.  This can be very handy when the big firm has a bank as a client, and is happy to do its securities and acquisition work, but doesn't want to foreclose on mortgages.  It makes the owner law firm a full-service firm.

    • Big firms can get into profitable areas they won't touch now - like matrimonial law and plaintiff's personal injury law - without having to have their own lawyers do the work.  Of course, the subsidiary PI firm would be conflicted out of suing clients of its owner.

    • Law firms can market themselves like General Motors, and have separately branded divisions, like Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac and  Buick.

    • Or, law firms can market themselves like General Mills, with individual brands like Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant and Häagen-Dazs.

So what's the value for solos...?

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Dan Hull of What About the Clients speads some good cheer for us solo and small firm lawyers with this post referencing a recent study  that only 30 percent of clients would recommend their law firm and that poor client service is driving clients away.  As Dan recaps:

it's what I've been telling you for 6 months. Good news for smaller firms and boutiques willing and able to capture, serve and keep BigLaw clients.

Sounds like good news, indeed.

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This article Women Aiming for Partnership Face Persistent Problems (NYLawyer 2/10/06) reported on a New York City Bar Association Symposium, attended by a mostly female crowd of 300 that addressed a persistent question:  "When will the legal profession see sex equality throughout its ranks?"  According to the article, the Symposium apparently bemoaned what we've heard a million times - law firms' stereotypical attitudes towards women, failure to accomodate family and the disparity between the percentage of women graduating  law school (52 percent) and the percentage currently partners at biglaw (17 percent).   Yet strikingly absent from the panel of speakers was a single representative from the group of female attorneys who are partners and who practice law on their own terms:  the solos! (Nor did a single solo participate in preparation of the report, Best Practices for Women Attorneys that was also discussed at the symposium)

So where were the solo female attorneys? 

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Grant Griffiths wishes for electronic filing in his state courts after learning more about the federal e-filing system (now in place in 87 percent of federal courts) where lawyers automatically receive notice of filings .  I can't blame Grant.   Particularly for lawyers who practice from home, who may not live near the courts, there's nothing like the convenience of e-filing.

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Used to be that large firm incompetence was another dirty little secret in the bar.  I don't mean to imply that large firm lawyers are less competent than solos, because that's not the case.  My point is that incompetence and unethical conduct runs evenly throughout the bar, from top to bottom, with any lawyers capable of misteps.  And now, the rest of the bar and clients are starting to realize this, as evidenced by this article,  Lawyer vs. Lawyer Becoming Common Corporate Strategy.

The article suggests that conflict of interest and corporate scandals like Enron explain the increased trend in legal malpractice claims against large firms.  And the article also notes that disciplinary boards are less likely to go after large firms, thereby opening the door for malpractice as the only option.

But on top of these factors, with the money that large firms charge - upwards of $600-$800 an hour for top attorneys, they can't expect to remain immune from suits.  And there's yet another reason that explains this trend.  I think that like doctors who lack a "good bedside manner" are more vulnerable to lawsuits, so are attorneys.  For attorneys lack of good bedside manner means poor client service - a problem that is significant enough to have spawned several blogs on that topic (see, e.g., In Search of Perfect Client Service, What About Clients, Non-billable Hour and others) Lawyers need to realize that there's a greater cost to poor service than simply loss of the client.  It can mean increased exposure for malpractice suits as well.

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It's interesting how mobile technologies, like the cell phone or Blackberry, pager or laptop can serve as a leash or as liberation, depending on context.  This article, Blackberry:  High tech Ball and Chain for Lawyers, Boston Globe (12/22/05) reveals that law firm Burns & Levinson uses Blackberries to keep lawyers on a tight leash, always tethered to the law firm.  At least, that's according to a memo from Bill Bixby, one of the firm's partner's to firm attorneys:

''[Blackberries]  are not just accessories or collectors' items," Brian D. Bixby, cochairman of the firm's private clients group, wrote in his memo, which became public after being sent anonymously to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. ''They are not to be used only when you feel like sending an e-mail. They are supposed to make you more accessible for receiving e-mails after hours and on weekends."

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This article from the Sacramento Bee (12/26/05) reports on a new service by Legal Zoom:  online preparation of a small claims case.  According to the article, for $99.00, the company will draft up a small claims complaint based on an online questionnaire and for $60 more, will serve the defendant as well. 

So why would an attorney support this service?  Because, I sometimes get calls from clients who want to sue for a small home improvement matter or wages owed and from an economic perspective, it's not worth it for them to have to pay even $300 (which is two hours of almost any attorney's time) to recover maybe $800.  But they might be willing to pay $150 to bring the suit themselves and not have to wrestle with legal forms and figuring out service of process.

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One of the best things about a weblog is that it gives you proof that you said something first or spotted a trend way back when.  In my case, I first blogged about the outsourcing to India trend in this January 2003 post.  Now, almost three years later, outsourcing continues to grow.  As this article  from an Indian newspaper (December 25, 2005) reports:

The revenue from outsourcing of legal services from India is growing every year and is estimated to grow ten times in the next five years from the current level of US dollar 61 million.  In a recently released report 'Offshoring Legal Services to India', ValueNotes, a leading provider of intelligence and research services, estimated that the sector employs around 1,800 professionals and expects this to grow to 24,000 by 2010.

The increasing interest in offshore services shows that firms are pressured to keep costs low - and that should be good news for us solo and small firm lawyers, because it may open up new opportunities.

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Yet another article, Smaller Can Be Beautiful for Some Lawyers, (bizjournal, 11/2005) on biglaw attorneys leaving their firms for smaller - or in this case, mid-sized pastures.   But what I found so sad about this piece is the reason that some folks stay on at biglaw:  not because they prefer the work but rather, they love the view.  Here's a quote:

Jenkins, the lawyer who joined Jeffer Mangels, said that while she has fond memories of Littler Mendelson, she thinks she is a good fit with her new firm. She even finds she doesn't miss some old creature comforts. "I used to be on the 27th floor of the Littler building," which offered sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. "I used to think 'How am I going to get up in the morning?' without that view.

Seems to me that if the only reason that you're going to work is to stare out the window, that doesn't sound like reason to stay...but reason to leave.

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We frequently associate solo and small firm practice as populated with small clients who can't pay the bills.  But that's not so, at least according to this recent article, Petra Pasternak, NY Lawyer (11/7/05).  As the article reports (and not surprisingly), a recent study by Worth Magazine found that wealthy clients are "migrating...to smaller firms that heed the personal touch." (no link to original study) The article also noted that many large firms are not interested in serving wealthy clients or lawyers have left the firm to start their own practice, presumably, where they continue to service wealthy clients.

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This past post on comments by a solo deconstructing biglaw salaries (basically saying that the hourly rate is more along the lines of $30/hour if an associate works 90 hours a week) has generated many comments which I thought I'd address in an additional post.  First, thanks to readers who have pointed out that a 90 hour work week at biglaw is an exaggeration and that hours are are much actually far less.  Yale Law School's Truth About the Billable Hour shows that on average, an associate will work 50 hours a week to bill 37.5 hour.  Thus, to bill 1800 hours over a 47 week year, an associate must work around 2350 hours (the study, I think adds commute time but I've not done that here) which comes to around $58/hr based on a $135,000 salary.  My commentors said that actual time at work is less, with some calculating an hourly payment of as much as $71/hr for a sixth or seventh year associate making at least $185,000.  And they also point out that law firm associates receive benefits, including health care (a biggie), malpractice coverage, office space and CLE, all of which comes out of a solo's paycheck.

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This article, Long Law Firm Names Grow Short and Snappy (Sascha Pfeiffer, Boston Globe), 9/28/05 reports on an issue that doesn't affect us solos at all:  how to reduce the number of names in a firm's moniker.  According to the article, some firms are reducing multiple names to a mere letter - like Orrick, which for whatever reason, wants to refer to itself as O (as an aside, the Big O logo at Orrick's website resembles a zero.  Whose idea was that anyway?).

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This article, Allee Offers Business Experience, Acumen, Mary Beth Smetzer, reports on a Fairbanks, AK solo Rita Allee who's running for City Council and touting her skills as a solo as the characteristics that qualify her for office.  Says Allee:

"I feel practically my whole life's experience, education, business experience and background in Fairbanks makes me real suited to serve in this capacity," Allee said. "I think I can be a help and have considerable business acumen having run my own business since 1978 with tight budget constraints. You have to say 'no' more than you can say 'yes,' regrettably when it comes to financial issues."

Business experience and the ability to operate within a budget may seem common place to most of us solos, but they're rare qualities in government.  Maybe more solos should run for office!

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The Harvard Law School newspaper put out a career guide which included all kinds of articles like Why Not to Be A Government Lawyer (as a former FERC attorney, I've got to agree with that one), the downside of biglaw and careers in public interest.  Sorely missing from the list of possibilities is the one that's My Shingle's raison d'etre:  starting your own practice.  Maybe to figure that one out, you need to have graduated from another Boston area school like Alice of a Mad Tea Party who's just revealed her identity as a recent BU law grad who's gone solo.  (hat tip to Denise Howell for the link). 

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And yet another biglaw attorney downsizes, as reported in this article, Law Firm to Serve Smaller Businesses  (Grand Rapids Press, 9/10/05).  According to the piece, Barry Kane, a large firm partner and Vince DeYoung, former attorney for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Harrahs' have  launched a Michigan law firm that specializes in business counseling, intellectual property law and franchise law.  One of the firm's goals is to keep rates affordable for smaller business clients.  Here's Kane's description of his firm's business model and why he believes it will work:   

"By reducing your overhead . . . you can reduce your hourly rate and still be a viable business. It's pretty straightforward problem-solving to me," said Kane, a former shareholder at Miller, Johnson, Snell and Cummiskey.  And the firm's small size enables quick response to changes in the marketplace, Kane said. What stays the same, regardless of office size, is the quality of legal work, De Young said.  The practice charges $225 per hour for basic business counseling, a rate above industry norms but more than one-third less than what Kane said he has charged in the past at larger firms.

So even as law firms merge and go global, threatening to fold into four or five ginormous entities, stories like this one remind me that it's still a small [firm] world after all.

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This article, A Local Woman With A Plan (8/31/05) reports on former city attorney May Ann Karns new private practice in Edmund, Oklahoma complete with pink velvet armchair.  After serving as a fulltime city attorney for Edmund and Stillwater, another municipality, Karns' will In Edmond, represent developers and residential clients in her private practice and will also serve as a city attorney or consultant for several small rural towns.  Sounds like a successful niche practice.

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It's always bittersweet when I read articles like this one,  Work Family Divide Keeps Numbers of Women Low, Rachel Osterman (8/20/05) about women attorneys leaving firms because they find them incompatible with raising a family.  Without sounding too much like John Roberts, I'm all in favor of attorneys - male or female - who choose to forego their careers short term to stay home with children so long as they're aware of middle of the road options for balancing law and family.  But I wonder how many women leave the law without knowing about other options - like solo practice - (or those described here) that might offer the best of both worlds.

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Will we soon see a wave of new solo practice opening in the Pittsburgh area?  Perhaps, if there's any truth to the recent survey by The Vault which found that associates at Pittsburgh law firms have the least job satisfaction (Tribune-Review, August 17, 2005).  So Pittsburgh associates - maybe it's time to shingle.

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Thanks David Giacalone for this post that lead me to an article from the Washington D.C. Bar Journal entitled, Time Out, time Off:  Lawyers on Sabbatical (August 2005).  The article describes that many large firm allow lawyers to take sabbaticals but that few lawyers take advantage of them.  I had a couple of thoughts.

First, I'd always thought that the purpose of sabbaticals was to allow lawyers to pursue professional endeavors.  Seems that some lawyers are using their sabbaticals to stay home with children for a six month or year period.  Seems to me that more lawyers should be taking time off for their kids regardless of whether  a sabbatical is available or not. 

Second, I think it would be great if large firms encouraged young associates to take one to two year sabbaticals and use the time to start their own law firms.  During that period, the associates could take on court appointed work and gain court time and would develop more hands on experience at running a business and generating clients.  Associates would get real world experience, with the comfort of knowing that they could always return to the firm (though some probably never would) while law firms would save all that money they spend on mock trials and marketing classes that try to simulate business development or trial work for associates.  Sabbaticals for biglaw lawyers to try small firm practice - it's a great idea waiting to happen!

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From this Press Release, I learned about a new book, Urban Lawyers, by John Heinz and University of Chicago Professor Edward Laumann, that examines Chicago's legal profession using data gathered as part of an American Bar Foundation study conducted in 1994/95.  That's too bad, because while the book sounds intriguiging and confirms much of what I've observed about the legal profession here in D.C., it's also on the verge of being outdated because of the way that blogs are changing the practice of law.

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Tony DiRomualdo has this interesting article, Why Corporate Culture Counts, at the Wisconsin Technology Network.  (7/7/05) that discusses the relationship between corporate culture and values.  He identifies examples of companies like Southwest, where positive corporate culture boosts employee morale, giving the company a leg up on competition.  But on the other side of the scale, he uses the large law firm as an example of a corporate culture which lacks the ability to tolerate accomodation of family life.

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In the past, we've posted some articles on unbundling of legal services because it offers revenue possibilities to solo and small firm lawyers whose clients may not have the resources to fully fund legal services.  Here's another article on unbundling, Law Firms Find Revenues in Unbundling, National Law Journal,  July 6, 2005, that reports on the current status of unbundling in various states:

In the past six years, nine states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming -- have adopted unbundling rules.

New Hampshire and Utah are in the process of changing their rules. Iowa, Illinois and Ohio are not far behind, while Connecticut is in an earlier exploratory phase, the results of which are unpredictable.

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We've more news to report about former biglaw attorneys who, like the biglaw attorneys here and here, have put out their shingles.  What's unique about all of these new law firms is that they focus on practice areas like securities law, business transactions and communications which have traditionally been within the domain of large firm practitioners.  As an energy regulatory attorney who's also been competing with large firms for years, I gladly welcome the company.

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Fellow small firm lawyer and former solo, David Leffler takes readers on a trip in the Solo Time Machine (GPSolo Magazine - June 2005), revisiting key moments in the history of the Internet.  David recalls 1995 - the first year that he put an email address on his stationary (I put email on my business cards back in 1994) and how he began using email to deliver documents to clients rather than fax (email transmission became de rigeur for me in early 1997 when I started doing per diem work for a local attorney).  In 1997 and 1998, David wrote articles for the New York Law Journal on useful websites for lawyers and one piece on securities law was cited in a Senate subcommittee report.

Go and read David's piece to find out more about how the Internet changed the practice of law for him - and legal practice continues to evolve as new technologies emerge. 

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Stephen Albainy-Jenei  of Patent Baristas takes a skeptical look at whether small is the new big for law firms with a discussion of this recent post, Small Is the New Big, at Seth Godin's blog.  Here's a sampling from Godin's post:

Get Big Fast was the motto for startups, because big companies can go public and get more access to capital and use that capital to get even bigger. Big accounting firms were the place to go to get audited if you were a big company, because a big accounting firm could be trusted. Big law firms were the place to find the right lawyer, because big law firms were a one-stop shop.

And then small happened.

Enron (big) got audited by Andersen (big) and failed (big.) The World Trade Center was a target. TV advertising is collapsing so fast you can hear it. American Airlines (big) is getting creamed by Jet Blue (think small). BoingBoing (four people) has a readership growing a hundred times faster than the New Yorker (hundreds of people).

Big computers are silly. They use lots of power and are not nearly as efficient as properly networked Dell boxes (at least that's the way it works at Yahoo and Google). Big boom boxes are replaced by tiny ipod shuffles. (Yeah, I know big-screen tvs are the big thing. Can't be right all the time).

I'm writing this on a laptop at a skateboard park... that added wifi for parents. Because they wanted to. It took them a few minutes and $50. No big meetings, corporate policies or feasibility studies. They just did it.

Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. Little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones.

And Seth adds:

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they're good, not because they're big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.

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Not surprisingly, I've always believed that solo and small firm lawyers have been the ground breakers of our profession, from billing practices to advertising to technology.  And now, as this article, Lawyers Leap Into Blogosphere acknowleges, we're setting the pace in blogging as well.  As the article state:

So far, most blogs have been published by solo or small-firm lawyers. But large firms such as Shepherd Mullin are quickly jumping on the blogwagon.

The article also describes why blogs are a better and more cost effective means of achieving presence on the web than a conventional website.

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SmallFirm Business columnist Kim Fanady writes that it's  cool to be solo, while Susan Cartier-Liebel laments that law school doesn't teach students about the option solo practice.  Which all makes sense, because since when did law schools ever teach how to be cool?

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According to this Press Release of May 25, 2005 by legal placement agency Robert Half, 93 percent of lawyers polled said that they would not establish a law firm even if they had the necessary capital.   OK, I'm biased, but frankly, I don't believe the survey at all.  Here are some of the problems I see.

First, according to the press release, lawyers were asked "If you had the necessary capital, would you start your own law firm."  93 percent of respondents said no, up from 84 percent in 2002 and 78 percent in 1997.   To begin, I wonder about the phrasing of the question.   If attorneys "had the necessary capital," it's likely they'd decide to do something that's not legally related at all - or to stop work entirely.  The poll might have value if attorneys were asked to choose between starting their own firm and continuing in legal employment.  In short, the poll does not inform as to how solo practice compares to other jobs in the legal profession but rather, that it's not a top choice against many other potential career and business opportunities.

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Janell Grenier a solo who writes both Benefits Blog and Erisa Blog has let me know that the Department of Labor has included her blogs as well as others in its resource list, as she describes in this post.  As Janell has suggested (and I concur), this federal recognition of blogs, particularly those operated by solos, is "an amazing development 

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They say that necessity is the mother of invention.  But motherhood itself is also the mother of invention - or more accurately, the engine behind creative, entrepreneurial ideas to make motherhood more compatible with legal practice.  This article, The Lawyer Moms, Boston Globe (5/8/05) reports on  on such mom-lawyer-inventor, Patty Campbell Malone, who along with law partner David Lewis, has started a practice that will rely on stay at home mother lawyers as a primary source of labor.  The article doesn't discuss whether Malone with stick with this model permanently - or whether it's just a way to keep a hand in the law until her children are older.  But no matter what the future holds, Malone is able to enjoy "face time" with her children now.

The concept of mothers striking out on their own when their profession won't accomodate their schedule is not unique to the legal profession.  This Business Week article (5/4/05) notes this trend:

Working mothers who can't get employers to offer flexible working arrangements are striking out on their own. "Women are starting businesses at twice the rate of all businesses," says Sharon G. Hadary, executive director of the Center for Women's Business Research, a Washington (D.C.) nonprofit. The center also found that from 1997 to 2004, employment at female-owned companies grew by 24.2%, more than twice the rate of the 11.6% logged by all businesses, and the pace of revenue increase was also higher -- 39% vs. 33.5%.

I know many moms who believe that by working grueling schedules at law firms, they set an example for their children, particularly daughters, that women can succeed.  Maybe so.  But the message that I'd rather send I hope is one better: not just that I can succeed in my legal career, but that I can do so on my own timetable and not someone else's. 

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I came across this March 2005 article by my colleague here in the D.C. area, Mark del Bianco entitled Being on the Cutting Edge.  Among other things, the article offers both an amusing and realistic assessment of the benefits and occasional drawbacks to a small regulatory practitioner with a wide reaching Internet presence. 

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If you're a biglaw associate, do you stay at your firm and let the partners get rich off your work and credentials?  Or leave and take advantage of that market yourself?  The latter approach is the one taken by five young African American attorneys and former associates at prominent large law firms who struck out on their own to fill a niche for an African American firm to serve both Fortune 500 companies and black owned businesses in Atlanta.   (full story in Lawyers Form New Practice (2/21/05).

Almost a year ago, this article Courting Shell (American Lawyer/law.com 6/24/04) reported on how large corporations are now demanding more diversity of the lawyers who serve them.  Thus, corporations are turning to firms with female and minority attorneys - and firms are scrambling to respond by increasing diversity in the ranks.  But isn't this just a little too late?  After all, there have always been talented female and minority attorneys - but law firms never wanted them until their clients did.  And now that there's a demand for sophisticated female and minority attorneys, why should they go to large firms at all?