Practice areas for own law firm..EVENTUALLY! Forum

[Cupidity]

Plaintiff L&E, discovery costs are generally very low, verdicts are potentially large, and it is easy to get phone-book reference clients.

[areyouinsane]

.... and it is easy to get phone-book reference clients.

Sure, getting clients out of the phone book is beyond easy. Just take out an ad alongside the other 12,000 or so bottom feeders, and w/in minutes you're phone will be blowing up w/ calls! ROTFL!

Do you have any idea how EXPENSIVE the yellow pages are? In my area (north NJ), a tiny ad the size of a business card will set you back 5 K a year. That ad will be on a page with a dozen other lawyer ads the same size.

A full inside page is a whopping 22 K a year, and a "double truck" (two inside pages together for a "panoramic" type ad) is over 55 K. The back cover is 125 K a year.

I ran a business card-sized ad for an entire year and got a total of about 15 calls. Only two turned into clients, and both were for basic wills. So for my 5 K "investment" I made a whopping $900 bucks.

Worse yet is that your YP ad rep will call you 100 X a day trying to get you to buy bigger ads or pay for their "online" yellow pages and other crap directories. Plus all sorts of other marketing clowns call and hound you to advertise in their media. I guess they figure if you're stupid enough to be in the YP, you're a real "mark" and total sucker.

Go rustle up a copy of your local YP right now, and count just how many pathetic shitlawyers are in there. Then ask yourself: "hhm, wonder if this town/city really needs another shitlawyer."

[Grizz]

Worked for a couple crim firms. Lol @ the person that rail against keeping your phone on 24/7. Welcome to being a lawyer. The people I know at big law firms do the same thing. Also, what's up with this per hour stuff? You want cash, and you want it up front, before you even start. Sometimes we would do payment plans. But we would use the mortgage as collateral. Actually getting your clients to pay is a huge part of any small practice, but especially criminal defense.

Criminal practice can be very lucrative, what with gangs, mafia, RICO, drug trafficking, sex crimes, violent crimes, etc. Big deal clients make big money, and are more than willing to pay a $75k retainer to get off on an armed trafficking or RICO charge, and $50k more or so if the thing goes to trial. Hell, these are the guys that make finance bros models and bottles look puny by comparison. People accused of serious crimes like murder are also willig to throw down. Especially sex crimes because they don't want to be on a registry. But it takes a while to build this rep to get these clients. It's all about networking and honestly, repeat business. Court appointments can be hit or miss money-wise. You gotta be good to even get the appointments. Also, they can lose you money too. An attorney I know won a case in front of SCOTUS off a court appointed matter, but lost money.

[Cupidity]

.... and it is easy to get phone-book reference clients.

He didn't ask for a respectable area of law, he asked for one that would allow him to open up his own firm. I stand by my point, plaintiff L&E cases are both abundant and cheap to litigate. I didn't realize you had such a grudge against the Yellow Pages?

[pleasetryagain]

"Lulz dude, we dont really do this type of criminal work but we'lll find someone who can take care of you." Then they call the best/their favorite criminal attorney they know and say "Don't make us look bad."

It's really a networking game that I don't see being succesfull until at least a few years of practice

Sorry, that's wrong. What they usually do in those cases is have a 1st year associate run out and handle it. My friend had an almost identical thing happen when he was a 1st year at Weill Gotshall: a major client's kid got busted for possession of marijuana, and a partner rolled in and dumped it on his desk. So my friend called me since I was the only shitlaw bottom feeder he knew of, and I went to court in his place and handled it.

The partner was VERY happy that it got put to bed, and my friend (the associate) took me & my current GF to an amazing meal at PlataForma as a thank-you.

Pretty funny how biglaw paper pusher literally soil themselves when any type of "courtroom" is involved LOL.

ok..so your friend did exactly what I said they would do? Called his attorney friend who he knew would do a good job and you handled it? Sorry that you didn't get paid bro.. you mad?