South Carolina Trial Law Blog

I started my practice straight out of law school and have written a few posts regarding starting a law practice and also been linked to by the incomparable Carolyn Elefant of MyShingle on starting a law practice. I get e-mails from younger attorneys that want to go out on their own asking for advice. Here is the response I gave to an attorney that is a few years out of school and wants to have a criminal defense practice in New York City.

I think you're *way* over thinking things at this stage. I think you have to just jump in and do it. Personally, I would do the following (You might do more or less. Others might give different advice):

1. Get a phone line – A commercial line, that you can keep the same number once you get an established office. The number can be forwarded to your cell phone, but you will want one number that doesn't change for as long as possible. Some people are okay with just going with the cell phone, but you're going to want the landline later and you don't want client dropout because they were calling an old number.
2. Get an office – Maybe - Share office space from another attorney, or work from your house. Grant Griffiths has a home office blog, that has lots of helpful advice. With technology this is a lot more feasible than it used to be.  The main thing is to keep your costs down. Get an executive suite, share space, work out of your house, but find *some* place to work that isn't too expensive.
3. Get Cards - Have nice ones made up. Don't scrimp. It's the best bang you will ever get for your buck. Even if you're paying $50 per thousand, get nice cards made up. ($25 for cheap ones, $30 for nice ones, $35 for real nice ones).  I think with my custom logo and 2 color cards, I pay about $65 per thousand. It's worth getting good cards.

Picture a real estate firm that has 4-5 lawyers working for them and doesn't do anything but criminal law. Offering to take their appointed cases for a flat fee of ($250, $500, $750....whatever is appropriate for your market) would be a godsend for them. If they aren't in the courtroom anyways, they don't want to be there. Also, you can afford to do it at a relatively low price because you'll already be in the courtroom.

How else do they assign appointed cases? Who at the courthouse does it? Can you talk to a clerk and find out who is always complaining about the appointed cases and offer to take theirs?

Show up at roll call and hang around. Let people know you're available. Sure it's cheesy, but if you don't have any (many) clients, it works.

Find out who *does* do criminal law in your area and tell them that you're new and willing to take their castoffs.

Where else do criminal law clients come from?  (I don't think this happens in Myrtle Beach, but in a city the size of New York it wouldn't surprise me if you could pick up work by hanging out in the hallways of the courthouse. I don't know this is a good idea, and not the best way to pick up clients, but you can check it out).

5.   Have the right attitude - Right now you have minimal experience and no clients. The key is to get clients. Get money rolling in the door. You don't want to starve. Get things moving and continually examine and upgrade from there. Doing $2,500 of legal work for $1,500 isn't smart business. But it's much, much smarter to do the work for $1,500 than sit on your thumbs doing nothing for free. Also, give people a bill for the full amount that you would normally charge and then show the discount. Let them know that you did a special favor for them. Call it a friend of the firm discount or other such wording, but let them see they got a deal. (the program automatically started the numbering over again and I don’t know how to fix it. For free advice, you’ll just have to live with the funky numbering).

Never make a big deal out of doing someone a favor, but it's very important that they are at least aware that you did them a favor. 

6.  Forget about the formal business plan and marketing plans - Your business plan can be as simple as. I plan to focus on criminal law and traffic cases in the NYC area (know where it's worth your whiile to travel to and where it's not worth your while to travel to). I am going to be a sole practitioner and going to focus on keeping expenses as low as possible until the cases come in. Your marketing plan can be as simple as I plan on doing criminal law, getting cases from referrals from attorneys that don't do criminal law, referrals for smaller criminal cases from established criminal defense attorneys and offering to take over appointed cases from attorneys that don't want to handle them.

Also, think about what ways you can pick up the kind of business you want and then things you can do to attract that business.

If you are starting with a lot of money, a lot of cases and a lot of experience, a formal business plan and marketing plan can be very helpful. At your point in the game, you want to get things rolling. Prime the pump and start getting cases and start making money. Once you've got things moving, you can make a decision about what is working, what is not and how to be more selective in your cases and clients.

Good questions to ask yourself are:

• When you die, and someone is giving a eulogy about your life, what do you want them to say about the kind of person and lawyer you are?
• At the end of your life, what do you want to be remembered for?
• At the end of your legal career, what would you have liked to accomplished?
• What attorneys do you admire the most? What do you admire about them? What can you do to emulate them?
• What kind of law practice do you eventually want to have?
• What kind of cases do you eventually want to have?
• What do you expect out of the first year of practice?
• Where do you expect to be in five years? Ten years?
• What does a successful practice look like in your mind?

You won't be able to answer all of these questions, but start asking them and thinking about them. The more you can answer them, the happier you'll be and you'll move torwards those goals. Regardless of the formulation, a 'business plan' is a plan for your business. How do you want to get to where you're going? The most important thing on determining how you want to get where you want to go, is knowing where you want to go. Most people don't ever take the time to sit down and figure that out.

Spend the time. Ask the questions. Get the answers. Some answers you will know immediately, others might take 3-12 months to figure out. It is my personal opinion that these are good questions to ask, but a formal business plan with all of the standard sections are a waste of time (at this point).

 7. Build Relationships -  Talk to friends, get on listservs, find out where the criminal defense attorneys hang out and make friends. Join the appropriate bar, trial lawyer or defense attorney  organizations. Go to meetings. Talk to the smart people. Learn. Participate. You'd be surprised, the more experienced lawyers who have worked their way up, really want someone good to refer the smaller clients to. I average about 5-10 new client calls a day, which comes out to about 25-50 leads a week. We normally accept about 2-3 cases of those. We refer the other cases somewhere.

We tend to send them to younger lawyers, or lawyers that have gone on their own relatively recently. We need to send them somewhere. I would prefer to send them to someone who is going to work hard and take care of them.

 8. Learn technology - The ahem.....younger generation is way ahead on this. But have a laptop and a printer where you can do your own documents. Print your letterhead on your computer. It's not necessary at the beginning. You can get fancy later on. Right now, you need to get things rolling.

 9. Resources - Get Jay Foonberg's book from the ABA on how to start and build your own law practice. Check out the resources on Carolyn Elefant's MyShingle. Jim Calloway has a bunch of great tips. The South Carolina Bar also has good resources. (There are probably other resources, I haven't made an exhaustive search).
 
10. Just Do It - The old Nike plan. Don't overthink things. Get out there, work hard, do competent legal work, smile, have fun and don't worry too much.

Good luck! Have fun and enjoy the ride.

I didn't know you have been linked to Carolyn Elephant. Do tell.

Seriously, I don't know what the lawyer had done that was overthinking, but I give the opposite advice. I don't think a new solo can make it through the lean times without good expectations up front and a plan to tough it out. I agree there can be analysis paralysis, but additional financial planning is key I believe.

Brian,

I think you're right. It depends on the situation. The higher you're overhead - student loans, spouse, children and other financial obligations the more planning is needed.

I started a practice with $1,500 in my pockets, but kept my overhead low. I wasn't married, didn't have any student loans and had a car that was paid for.

Nowadays, I have a wife, a small child, another one on the way and numerous financial obligations. My planning with 5 employees is totally different than it was when I just got started.

Back then, it was just me and the most important thing was jumping in with both feet. Life is different now.

I would have different advice for someone that had been practicing 8-10 years, is married with children, has a mortgage and high expenses.

Life was so simple then. August is my 10 year anniversary in taking the plunge. The Web was nothing like today (certainly no high speed access prevalent). It was me, a fax machine, an ACER P155 computer from Best Buy, my trusty HP Laserjet 5(which I still use), some rented space, and a damn good woman. OK, that's not a chart-topping country song, but it was a fun launch.

Certain practice areas require less planning than others & some people are more predisposed by temperment to "winging it" & living on nothing.

Personally, I didn't bust my ass in law school to eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches & worry about where my next mortgage payment was going to come from. But hey, that's me.

Here's a blatant offer for anyone who tried (or is still) trying Dave's "wing-it" approach, and is ready to actually learn some marketing & management skills that were specifically developed in small law firms & which have helped improve the incomes, diets & the quality of sleep for several thousand successful solo practitioners & owners of small law firms.

Indicate you are a South Carolina Trial Lawyers Blog Reader by the initials "SCTL" with your last name when you order any of my audio programs & I'll send you an invitation to audit one of our upcoming monthly teleseminars we normally charge $79 for.

And if you're too broke to buy any of my 100% money-back audio programs because you've been "winging it" for too long, then at least do yourself & your family a favor by subscribing to my FREE newsletter "How To Make It Rain...This Week!" and download my FREE e-book entitled "Ten Rainmaking Mistakes Made By Solo Practitioners."

I admire anyone who has the digestive tract to eat (insert expletive here) but if that's not you, then I just want you to know there is another way.

Respectfully,

Which litigation practice areas work best for startup solo practice? What marketing techniques have worked best for you?

Thank you for this great resource. I am a 47-year-old who graduated from Ole Miss law school in my mid 30s. I went to work in book publishing as an editor after graduating and never took the bar. Last fall I decided to take the Feb 2006 SC bar and â€"surprise, surpriseâ€"I passed. I was sworn in June 6.

As I faced the prospect of sending out my resume and embarking on the job hunt, I realized that I am so far out of the mold of what a law firm looks for in a “young� associate that even if I landed a position I probably would not be happy in it. I knew the only way I would be content practicing law would be on my own as a sole practitioner. I am at a stage in my life where I’m just not capable anymore of putting up with the sort of BS that a new associate fresh out of law school is expected to endure at most law firms.

My goal is to focus mainly on criminal, domestic, and family law. I’ve just got to get these onerous 403 requirements out of the way. Until then, I plan to do whatever comes my way (simple wills, simple real estate closings, etc.)

I’m starting out on a shoestring budget, to say the least. I’ve got about $3000 that I can safely set aside to get up and running. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I started my practice with about $25k, and I never really used much of it. The work will come if someone is always there to answer your phone.

FZ makes an excellent point. There is a *tremendous* number of lawyers that have their phone picked up by voicemail and you can't get a live person.

I don't understand how a business can operate like that.

But if you want to get the business, you have to answer the phone and talk to people.

Gary,

Good for you. Most of the advice I have is already on the blog. There are two posts on here on starting a law practice. The best advice I can give is pretty simple and basic.

1. You're starting out with limited cash. Keep your expenses and overhead low. See if you can rent office space from an established lawyer, use an executive suite, .... The main thing is to keep the costs down now.

2. Regardless of what you do for space, get a phone number that you can keep. Even if you forward it to your cell phone all of the time. Once people call that number, you want it to remain the same.

3. Care about your clients. Work hard. Tell them the truth. If there's a problem, let them know. Treat them like people. Think about how you would want to be treated. Talk to your clients. Explain things to them.

4. Don't be afraid to be yourself. If you're a new attorney and not 100% certain of how to deal with a situation, tell the client that. They'll appreciate it.

When I first started and was a lawyer for all of three months I told a client this "I want to let you know that I've only been a lawyer three months. That means that when you call and ask a question, I *might* not know the answer off the top of my head. I'll have to look it up and call you back, but I will get the answer. I've never handled a case like this, but this is the approacha I'd take. Also, if the situation gets to the point where I need to call in a more experienced attorney, I won't let my pride get in the way and make certain that you being taken care of is the most important thing".

Their response was okay, we'll hire you. I was a bit shocked. I wouldn't have hired me for that size of case, with the amount of experience I had at that point. (Of course now, I'd hire me in a heart beat).

Just be sraight up with your client and talk to them from your heart and you'll be fine.

The contents are very factual and informative for a new lawyer trying to plunge as sole practitioner