Should I go solo? Forum

[Anonymous User]

So I was basically fired from my last firm. I’ve been an attorney for around 5 years now and I’m honestly getting really tired of working for other people. I’ve been contemplating opening my own firm for a while now and getting fired may now push me to just do it.

I am still sending out applications and will go on interviews if there is any interest.

However, at this point I’m calculating all the costs to get started and will have a virtual office to start. I’ve already made a draft website. The only thing really holding me back is making that jump and just doing it.

Any solos out there want to chime in? How did you finally get the courage to just make the jump and begin? Was it a struggle at first?

I do have some clients that I will be able to take with me to get started...and then I can go from there.

Thanks.

[AVBucks4239]

I had a somewhat similar experience -- had to quit a job due to it being a horrible fit and had to start up sooner than I expected. The difference (from what I've read in your limited post) is that I always wanted to go on my own -- so by the time I split up with my employer, I was 90% ready to go.

There is a balancing act here -- you need to plan, but you cannot plan to the point that you're in analysis paralysis mode.

I personally spent a couple weeks finishing everything up -- ordering my printer, business cards, etc. My last day with my prior employer was 04/12/2018, and while I did do some legal work that month, I didn't open up until May.

So, I think you really need to sit down and draft a business plan. And if you are serious about going on your own, you need to treat this business plan as project one. You need to work on it full time, 8-10 hours a day, tinker it, etc. This will be your roadmap, and more importantly, it will give you a ton of confidence. Mine was organized as follows:

Executive Summary
Firm Description and Practice Areas
Timeline
Firm Startup and Operations
Firm Technology
Firm Finances
Short-Term Revenue Generation and Goals
Marketing Plan
Clients and Client Satisfaction
Networking and Referral Sources
Mentors
Tax Considerations
Fee Strategy

Once I put pen to paper on all this, I was ready to go and knew I would be fine. This is most especially true when I completed the "firm finances" and "short-term revenue generation goals."

I've posted here quite a bit about my practice, but I would summarize all of it as follows:

(1) Your house needs to be in order first. I would hope you have anywhere from 4-6 months of expenses saved. Having your house in order will make life a lot easier.

(2) You need to run a lean, frugal office at first. People would laugh at me on here but I would dig into old files for binder clips rather than go buy new ones. What this means:

-Do not sign up for research software (use your bar library instead)
-Have an office share arrangement where everything (conference rooms, technology, receptionist) is already set up
-Be as paperless as possible
-Go to free CLEs when you can (Salvation Army and orgs like that offer them)
-Be mindful of all deductions

For my first year, my office operated at about $750/month; I'm up around $1,050 now with my own space.

(3) How much would you be billing those current clients monthly? If it's anything less than $5,000 then you need to find other revenue streams. Nothing is beneath you -- get on the criminal appointment list; sign up with local hearing coverage companies (Court Appearance Professionals, My Motion Calendar, etc.); perhaps do guardian ad litem work; maybe do remote work for some of the big research companies. There is tons of work out there, do it.

Your goal here is to make $400/day -- that will get you to $100k in annual revenues, and you can build from there.

(4) Technology wise -- use G Suite (Google) for email, calendar, documents, drive, etc; use Quickbooks for invoicing and accounting; use Gusto for payroll (to pay yourself if you are an S-Corp); use Ruby Receptionists for a remote call service (if you don't office share).

(5) Office-wise, I had the initial same idea as you -- work remotely. So I bought a book called "Law Office on a Laptop," and it actually motivated me to get my own office (I did an office share at first). I think it's important to meet clients, get to know them personally, etc. I also find myself to be 10x more productive at an office than at home, although I'm sure this is personal.

(6) This goes back to (2), but it's an overall bigger point -- you have to enjoy wearing a lot of hats. My Saturday routine is to come in, put on a soccer game and do the following: (a) record miles for the week; (b) review expenses in Quickbooks; (c) update IOLTA ledger; (d) pull files for next week's hearings; (e) scan and organize last week's mail into Google Drive; (f) reviewing all active matters to make sure I'm on top of upcoming deadlines.

And then, throughout the week, you're going to be pulled away from doing legal stuff. A lot of times that means getting lunches with other attorneys; sometimes it means spending an hour fixing your printer (you are the IT guy).

I actually enjoy doing not legal work, but if you don't and then cannot stay on top of it, you're in for a world of hurt.

(7) You need to get involved in your local bar community. Especially get to know lawyers who specialize. Lawyers with broad practices hold onto everything; those in niche practice areas (bankruptcy, family law, real estate, etc.) refer out a ton of stuff.

***

Books -- Solo by Choice, How to Start and Build a Law Practice, The E-Myth Attorney

Podcasts -- Your Law Firm w/ Lee Rosen, Lawyerist, The Law Entrepreneur

***

This turned into a big long rant, but honestly, I would work on a business plan (this should honestly take a solid week of really barreling down and thinking), crunch the numbers, and if you think you can make $5k profit per month, go for it.

[JOThompson]

I went solo after three years of high intensity criminal defense work. I had a lot of cases and trials under my belt, and I thought that I knew almost everything I needed to know to be a successful solo.

Being a solo was the hardest thing I've done in my life. Running the business/admin side plus doing actual legal work is a challenge. In the beginning, like the above poster mentioned, you'll need to run a very lean office. For me, that meant not being able to afford an assistant or legal secretary. I worked 14 hours a day the first six months, including weekends. I didn't take days off, didn't take vacations, because coverage was too expensive or hard to arrange. I mainly sustained myself on public defender contracts. Occasionally I'd get a referral for a restraining order or some garbage felony case that every other lawyer in town had turned down. I was starting to establish myself and get decent private clients about a year in, but I decided to wind up the practice and take a job where I could actually devote most of my time to practicing law. I haven't looked back since.

It does get better financially and from a work-life balance perspective, but I was in the red the first six months. After almost a year, I was starting to see some decent profit and it looked like it would be sustainable long-term. Your experience may vary if you're in a less competitive market or if you've managed to build up a reputation for yourself separate from your prior firm (I didn't and that was a tough thing). I'd consider criminal defense one of the easier types of practices to run, but even that was much more effort than I'd expected it to be.

[AVBucks4239]

I went solo after three years of high intensity criminal defense work. I had a lot of cases and trials under my belt, and I thought that I knew almost everything I needed to know to be a successful solo.

Being a solo was the hardest thing I've done in my life. Running the business/admin side plus doing actual legal work is a challenge. In the beginning, like the above poster mentioned, you'll need to run a very lean office. For me, that meant not being able to afford an assistant or legal secretary. I worked 14 hours a day the first six months, including weekends. I didn't take days off, didn't take vacations, because coverage was too expensive or hard to arrange. I mainly sustained myself on public defender contracts. Occasionally I'd get a referral for a restraining order or some garbage felony case that every other lawyer in town had turned down. I was starting to establish myself and get decent private clients about a year in, but I decided to wind up the practice and take a job where I could actually devote most of my time to practicing law. I haven't looked back since.

It does get better financially and from a work-life balance perspective, but I was in the red the first six months. After almost a year, I was starting to see some decent profit and it looked like it would be sustainable long-term. Your experience may vary if you're in a less competitive market or if you've managed to build up a reputation for yourself separate from your prior firm (I didn't and that was a tough thing). I'd consider criminal defense one of the easier types of practices to run, but even that was much more effort than I'd expected it to be.

I'm genuinely curious -- (1) what were your financials like in the first six months? And (2) How did you allow yourself to get so busy? I think OP can learn a lot from our differing experiences.

[JOThompson]

One thing I should have noted is that I was taking contract public defender cases as my primary source of income (not my first choice, but dictated by the reality of not having enough prospective private clients).

I received 10 to 15 new felony cases a month from my local public defender agency. Robbery, serious assaults, gun charges, but not murder or rape cases. Pay was something like $75 an hour with a cap of $1,500 per case (higher if trial). That sounds decent, but after expenses and taxes, my effective hourly rate was probably closer to $30 to $35 an hour. I was definitely working for that money. Visiting clients in jail every day, tracking down potential witnesses, writing motions.

Due to the contract payment system, public defense work is probably the only way to be both 1) extremely busy and 2) not receive any income for several months. That was likely unique to my situation.

I wasn't getting enough business through the door the first few weeks. Not even referrals because I was so new as a solo (that's despite being well regarded and sought out by name when I was part of a somewhat prestigious criminal defense firm). About six months before opening my practice, I'd created a website (with search engine optimization) and began blogging regularly. I wanted to hit the ground running. I'd spent about twos years reading about solo practice, so I think that I went into it with a decent expectation of how difficult it would be. I found that there's not a lot of meaningful advanced legwork that you can perform, aside from perhaps positioning yourself for referrals. Some of the best advice I can give, other than the obvious (such as being willing to be less selective about your clients), would be to rent an office in a building with other attorneys. The majority of my referrals came through this route. Just being in the right place, at the right time, can make a large difference.

I probably spent $5,000 to set the firm up. That includes malpractice insurance, used office equipment, used furniture, a decent search engine optimized website, hosting, etc. I could have done it cheaper. Monthly expenses would be $1,250 to $1,500, with most of that being rent and insurance. In reality, I still had to pay my student loans, car payment, home rent, etc., so I was much more in the red than just my law firm expenses. My first few months of practice, I had maybe $3,000 of revenue come in, and that was just from small oddball referrals and people who found me through a criminal defense lawyer association. If someone wanted an hour or two of legal advice on something criminal or gun-related, I'd take it and usually charge them $150 to $200 for an hour of time. It wasn't until about six months in where the public defender contracts started paying me (can only bill once a case is complete). I grossed probably $40,000 to $50,000 for a very grueling half year of PD work, and maybe another $5,000 to $7,500 in small private clients in that same timeframe. I was on track to gross about $110k for the year, and my net would have been closer to $60-65k.

If I had stuck with it, I could have seen myself getting to a comfortable spot and obtaining a decent quality of life, but only after being able to hire staff and getting to be more selective about clients. I'd estimate that I would have been grossing $150k my second year, and maybe $200,000 another year or two beyond that. But after considering the amount of work it would take to get there, and having to hire staff, the potential future payout didn't seem worth the stress and time. I imagine that criminal defense is one of the easier types of solo practices to run, and it'd be even more uphill if you were trying to establish yourself as a civil litigator or business attorney. Ultimately, it made more sense to go work for the government as a prosecutor for $70k a year ($96k next year, which will be my third year here). I wouldn't clear much more than that after expenses/taxes as a solo anytime soon. Now there are times I work 80 hours a week as a government employee, but on average it's probably closer to 60, and I don't have all the business-side stress of being a solo.

[Anonymous User]

Op here... these comments are definitely making me rethink whether I should go solo... ugh

If I can’t find another job soon I may throw in the towel and leave the practice of law.

I’m really tired of being let go and fired from my jobs. I just want to make some money and pay my bills/save for retirement but I guess that is asking for too much.

[Anonymous User]

I recently went solo. My entire practice is contingency based. I did the same type work on the defense side in big law. In my practice area, I have had no trouble getting cases. I have more calls than I can handle. I have a basic website that seems to be working and I know a bunch of lawyers who refer me cases. I have about a dozen cases that will eventually settle for six figures and about 3-6 that will settle for more than $1 million. One of them is probably a $2-5 million case but I'm always thinking worst case scenario. This all sounds great, I'm sure, but I've seen very little revenue since starting. I only get paid when cases settle. Even if you're doing hourly work, you have to be willing to weather the storm. Going from $20,000 monthly paychecks and adding to your savings and 401k every month in big law to burning your savings is a very challenging mental and emotional exercise.

Will I survive? Will I fail? It's a roller coaster. Some days I think I'll be the next titan of the plaintiff's bar, some days I think I'll have to go back to a law firm. I wasn't prepared for the emotional challenge of the whole thing. The accounting, business, marketing, business development side, is easy for me. I like that part. I'd just like it a lot more if I had a few million in my bank account.

Edit: You will get referrals though. Get out there. No one refers you work at big law firms because your rates are too high, no one cares about the client, and you're not going to refer work back. Once you're on your own, other lawyers in the same position will look to send you work. Just get out there and you'll find work to do. Ask your former employer for work. Always be telling people to refer you work. Make a joke of it, but stay on the top of their mind. If you get 50 hours a month of billable work at $300 per hour, you're clearing $15,000 per month with better tax advantages. Not bad. Working for yourself is great. You can cut out the BS of working at a law firm. You can do what you want. You can do the work you want. You've just got to be tough and persistent and believe in yourself. I went out on my own with no cases. I have over 30 current and pending cases. There's a lot of work to do. It's overwhelming, but it's better than getting Saturday emails from people who don't give a crap about you asking you to do work.

Like I said before though, whether my words are worth the pixels they're written on entirely depends on whether I weather this first cycle and am able to clear some big checks in the next 8-12 months. The proof is in the pudding!

[AVBucks4239]

***

Very candid response. My thoughts:

-You really hit home why my very first point was about having your house in order. Revenues can be unpredictable, especially early on, and you need to be able to not only weather that storm but not worry about it at all. I personally had $20,000 saved up before I started my own firm, and my wife's income largely covered home expenses (which are about $3,000/month).

-I'm not being critical here, but your experience is why I'd recommend PD work to *supplement* income rather than have it be the main revenue stream. I only do minor misdemeanors and make anywhere from $750-1,000 doing these. I actively coordinate with my county bar association on a yearly basis to make sure that I am *not* being appointed to any felony cases.

-I disagree with your civil litigation practice analysis. You can bill $200/hour doing civil work. One billable hour a day will get you $50k in revenues.

Op here... these comments are definitely making me rethink whether I should go solo... ugh

If I can’t find another job soon I may throw in the towel and leave the practice of law.

I’m really tired of being let go and fired from my jobs. I just want to make some money and pay my bills/save for retirement but I guess that is asking for too much.

I completely disagree. I love being on my own and it's going well. Almost everyone I know profits $75k a year at worst. The above post is a worst case scenario and he anticipated making $150k by year two.

[JOThompson]

I had about $10,000 in savings, which ended up unfortunately not being enough. I went into debt for a few months and had to sell personal property to make my loan payments. I was also supporting my partner at the time, who was unemployed. It would have been a lot less tight as a single person. If I could do it again, I'd have closer to $15,000 or $20,000 saved up as a new solo in a mid-sized coastal market.

Good point about not relying exclusively or primarily on public defender income. It's rough at first. There were many times I thought about quitting, but I wasn't in a position. It can be a bit of a trap. Part of that trap I think is that contract PD work is also the most reliable or easy to find (although not steady) source of income for new solos, who don't have a lot of connections or name-brand recognition.

I think if you have the ability to generate prospective civil leads and then convince them to sign on, you can bill a very livable amount as a solo. The pace of those cases is also more manageable, so coverage for court hearings is less of a hurdle. My problem was that I wasn't getting many potential civil clients, and the more lucrative ones were complex enough that I didn't feel comfortable taking them. I'd worked on a handful of moderately to highly complex personal injury cases in my first three years at a firm, but not enough that I felt comfortable taking those cases as a solo. To some degree, I self-selected and decided to focus more on criminal work, but I was also open to some of the simpler civil cases. If I'd had more traditional civil clients walking through the door (instead of the anti-harassment, protection order type), I think I would have branched out more that direction.

**EDIT**
To the OP: Don't let my post dissuade you from it. Running a criminal defense operation, especially without many connections, that's not the route the majority of solos take. In general, it can be very rewarding to be your own boss. There are also a lot of obstacles though. The more legwork you can do ahead of time, the better. But that still doesn't guarantee an easy transition. Just proceed with an open mind and realistic expectations. I'd consider myself a better than average trial attorney, with some prior experience being self-employed, and it was still a struggle the first few months. Again, part of that is that I decided to focus on criminal cases, which is where my experience was. If you are at the point of leaving the practice entirely, I think you owe it to yourself to try the solo route first.

[AVBucks4239]

I had about $10,000 in savings, which ended up unfortunately not being enough. I went into debt for a few months and had to sell personal property to make my loan payments. I was also supporting my partner at the time, who was unemployed. It would have been a lot less tight as a single person. If I could do it again, I'd have closer to $15,000 or $20,000 saved up as a new solo in a mid-sized coastal market.

Good point about not relying exclusively or primarily on public defender income. It's rough at first. There were many times I thought about quitting, but I wasn't in a position. It can be a bit of a trap. Part of that trap I think is that contract PD work is also the most reliable or easy to find (although not steady) source of income for new solos, who don't have a lot of connections or name-brand recognition.

I think if you have the ability to generate prospective civil leads and then convince them to sign on, you can bill a very livable amount as a solo. The pace of those cases is also more manageable, so coverage for court hearings is less of a hurdle. My problem was that I wasn't getting many potential civil clients, and the more lucrative ones were complex enough that I didn't feel comfortable taking them. I'd worked on a handful of moderately to highly complex personal injury cases in my first three years at a firm, but not enough that I felt comfortable taking those cases as a solo. To some degree, I self-selected and decided to focus more on criminal work, but I was also open to some of the simpler civil cases. If I'd had more traditional civil clients walking through the door (instead of the anti-harassment, protection order type), I think I would have branched out more that direction.

Agree with almost every word you wrote here.

PD work is good to have in that it is extremely reliable (it's almost scary how much like clockwork it all is), but criminals have a right to a speedy trial, and that means some cases are boom boom boom. I would want administrative help if I were doing that full time.

The civil leads thing takes work. I myself was a civil litigator for about 4 years before I went on my own, but I also worked and worked and worked at building relationships with other civil litigation attorneys. I now work very closely with three lawyers who all specialize in other areas; my income alone on these cases so far this year exceeds $25,000.

Civil leads + plus some criminal work + plus hearing coverage work = you can make a decent living. But going down the PD hole full time would be very, very difficult without help.

[Anonymous User]

Op here... thanks for these responses. I like to here success stories of solos out there.

So I do mainly real estate work...

What work can I try to get right away to keep my lights on and pay personal bills... municipal work? (Traffic offenses and DUIs for example). I did enjoy criminal law during law school... however, is this a route I should go down being that I do mostly real estate law?

How can I go about getting criminal defense work?

Should I send solicitation notices that conform with the RPC?

Thank you.

[AVBucks4239]

Op here... thanks for these responses. I like to here success stories of solos out there.

So I do mainly real estate work...

What work can I try to get right away to keep my lights on and pay personal bills... municipal work? (Traffic offenses and DUIs for example). I did enjoy criminal law during law school... however, is this a route I should go down being that I do mostly real estate law?

How can I go about getting criminal defense work?

Should I send solicitation notices that conform with the RPC?

Thank you.

Criminal appointment work is likely governed by your county bar association. Contact them and perhaps neighboring counties as well.

Regarding keeping the lights on, you want to do local hearing coverage work. Sign up for sites like My Motion Calendar, Docketly, Court Appearance Professionals, etc. These will pay you anywhere from $50-150 to attend a civil hearing of some sort.

For real estate work, I would really build a brand around that. Real estate litigation, title work, advising landlords, construction law -- there's infinite work to be done under the real estate umbrella. Telling people "I do anything involving real estate" is a nice tagline (you'd have to refine it). And you could build a reputation around that. Your logo could look like that. Your website could blog about your state's real estate laws. You could go a ton of directions.

[Anonymous User]

I'm the contingency lawyer who posted above. Specializing is key. If you try to do everything under the sun, I think it becomes much harder. I specialized. I'm also in a large city so that makes specializing easier. Real Estate is an excellent practice area for a solo. The "Everything in Real Estate" approach is the way to go. You can do real estate litigation, leases and other transactional work, HOA disputes, zoning issues, permitting. Eventually you might make your way up to putting together large real estate deals and investing in them. I've a couple of real estate lawyers leave firms, start solo practices, and in a matter of 5-10 years start investment companies to buy/manage/sell/lease real estate. They're doing very well.

[Anonymous User]

Op here... thanks for these responses. I like to here success stories of solos out there.

So I do mainly real estate work...

What work can I try to get right away to keep my lights on and pay personal bills... municipal work? (Traffic offenses and DUIs for example). I did enjoy criminal law during law school... however, is this a route I should go down being that I do mostly real estate law?

How can I go about getting criminal defense work?

Should I send solicitation notices that conform with the RPC?

Thank you.

Criminal appointment work is likely governed by your county bar association. Contact them and perhaps neighboring counties as well.

Regarding keeping the lights on, you want to do local hearing coverage work. Sign up for sites like My Motion Calendar, Docketly, Court Appearance Professionals, etc. These will pay you anywhere from $50-150 to attend a civil hearing of some sort.

For real estate work, I would really build a brand around that. Real estate litigation, title work, advising landlords, construction law -- there's infinite work to be done under the real estate umbrella. Telling people "I do anything involving real estate" is a nice tagline (you'd have to refine it). And you could build a reputation around that. Your logo could look like that. Your website could blog about your state's real estate laws. You could go a ton of directions.

Op here. Thanks for this response. How much can I expect to make each month doing local appearance work? This seems interesting. Do I literally just show up for a hearing and get paid? Is it pretty straight forward?

[AVBucks4239]

Op here. Thanks for this response. How much can I expect to make each month doing local appearance work? This seems interesting. Do I literally just show up for a hearing and get paid? Is it pretty straight forward?

What you can make each month depends on your market. I make anywhere from $1,000-1,400 a month. I used to travel more (up to an hour away if the pay was $125 or more), but now I have a kid so I only go in my tri-county area.

FWIW, I live in a relatively rural/suburban area, so there are less attorneys and the hearing companies thus pay a little bit of a higher rate per appearance. I would imagine that in bigger markets, there would be more hearings but paying a lower rate. But in a bigger market, you could probably get 3, 4, 5 hearings in a single morning making $50 a hearing.

As for how it works, they email you to see if you're available, and if you accept the hearing, they send you the relevant documents for the hearing. A lot of times it's incomplete, and that's frustrating, but who cares. The attorney of record then gives you instructions (what dates to set, what to tell the judge, etc.). You then go and cover the hearing. These hearings are usually default hearings, case management conferences, summary judgment hearings, etc. You get paid at the end of the month for all your hearings. Very easy stuff.

[Aptitude]

(2) You need to run a lean, frugal office at first. People would laugh at me on here but I would dig into old files for binder clips rather than go buy new ones. What this means:

-Do not sign up for research software (use your bar library instead)
-Have an office share arrangement where everything (conference rooms, technology, receptionist) is already set up
-Be as paperless as possible
-Go to free CLEs when you can (Salvation Army and orgs like that offer them)
-Be mindful of all deductions

For my first year, my office operated at about $750/month; I'm up around $1,050 now with my own space.

This is great advice. I posted that someone starting their own firm with no small business experience should talk to all the small business owners they know that are willing to talk with them, even in other industries (bars/restaurants, medical offices, dental practices, accounting, insurance, retail, real estate). There's a ton on expenses and revenue generation, cost-cutting, and how to survive in a saturated market that you won't get if you haven't owned a business. Those that have owned multiple small businesses really know how to survive and have faced failure with immense financial pressure.

The binder stuff is another form of cost cutting - not spending when you don't have to. Keeping un-necessary expenses down is huge. A lot of small businesses tank or struggle even if they're generating good revenue because their books are so bad. I know a few restaurant and laundromat owners (too heavily competitive industries) who got through their lean years by never spending more than they had to on anything from their own business to life (eating out, nights out etc.). But their first couple years, they didn't know english well, unexpected expenses popped up, there was so much competition, they just grinded it out week to week. Now they're millionaires a few times over, with gorgeous houses, apartment complexes, boats.

But those first couple years can be incredibly rough. OP's main advantage is, it's fairly easy to keep low overhead in a legal practice. He doesn't need a legal research database subscription - his Bar membership likely has at least 1 that they offer as part of his membership.

Depending on his practice, I'd say the office share with a receptionist/secretary might not be necessary in his 1st year. I know some small firm attorneys that represent businesses that just meet at the businesses they represent. Depending on where you live, you can book out just conference rooms.

[Anonymous User]

Op here... so I called a county bar association in my state to inquire about being placed on the referral list and the woman I talked to seemed to be very helpful.

She said they are actually short on real estate attorneys currently and I could probably expect around 5 new clients each month.

What do you all think?? This seems like a pretty good lead. She seemed genuine and it does not appear she is saying this to get me to sign up for their membership.

I would be pretty happy if I’m starting off with those many clients each month on top of doing court appearance work....

[Anonymous User]

as another commenter suggested, you can sometimes skimp on office space. Particularly if you’re doing criminal defense, you can just meet the client at the courthouse (or jail obviously). And for civil many clients are fine with or prefer you going to their office, or you can book a conference room for a day if needed. I know a couple folks who mostly work from their home and have a PO Box for mail.

On the referral list- varies by state. In my state, attorneys pay $50 a month to get on the state bar referral list and most of the leads are garbage (people who want free or unrealistically cheap advice). See if you can get the names of 2-3 attorneys on the list (maybe in a field where you wouldn’t compete) and ask them how long they’ve been on the list, quality of leads, etc.

Also, maybe the single most important thing you can do, start reading about search engine optimization (SEO) (and Google AdWords strategies). When your website goes live you want to rank as high as possible organically. If you have two very different practice areas don’t fear creating two websites (contrary to popular belief, my experience is that Google won’t punish you for this).

[Anonymous User]

Op here. Thanks for these replies all. Very helpful. Most likely I will be opening my own firm.... wish me luck....

Again, I’m reading mixed reviews on referral services; hoping I can get at least 1-2 clients a month from this....

[AVBucks4239]

Also, maybe the single most important thing you can do, start reading about search engine optimization (SEO) (and Google AdWords strategies). When your website goes live you want to rank as high as possible organically. If you have two very different practice areas don’t fear creating two websites (contrary to popular belief, my experience is that Google won’t punish you for this).

Agree with everything else, but just a note on this SEO stuff -- people get lost (in both time and expense) in being the highest ranked "(City) Criminal Defense Lawyer" searches.

Far and away the absolute most important thing with SEO is that when someone googles your name, your website is the first result. Don't get so lost in trying to SEO the shit out of your website that a Google search for your name results in your firm website being on the second page.

[QContinuum]

A lot of terrific advice ITT about how to launch a successful solo practice - many thanks to all of our contributors.

I wanted to flag an issue that I find at least potentially "red-flaggy": the fact that despite the detailed advice ITT, OP may not be fully recognizing the magnitude of the drive, planning and commitment required to succeed as a solo. Within the span of 48 hours, OP has written:

Op here... these comments are definitely making me rethink whether I should go solo... ugh

Op here. ... Most likely I will be opening my own firm.... wish me luck....

I would respectfully suggest that OP carefully consider the advice ITT about how to launch a successful solo practice, and only make the leap if and when they are fully ready and committed to doing so. I don't think OP is quite at that point yet - sounds like they would be well-served by taking some more time first to think through whether they actually want to solo.

[Anonymous User]

Are there any civil litigators who have opened firms willing to share their experience? Particularly those coming from biglaw and opening more "sophisticated" practices (i.e., business lit, employment lit, etc.). I'm not implying that criminal defense is unsophisticated, just asking for additional experiences/anecdotes.

Thanks!

[Aptitude]

OP,

There's great advice in this thread on going solo, and utlaw2007 has other great posts on his practice: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 4&t=210075

Aside from minimizing un-necessary overhead, you should also pay attention to big cost losers. A lot of attorneys take on any client that walks through the door, because they think "more clients equals more money." But you don't want to take a family law case for $2000 that ends up costing you $20,000 of billable time that your client can't/won't pay. That extra time/work would be better spent on something that would generate income or could generate income down the line. If you take 1 of those cases to learn, sure, but if you have a few of those you're losing a lot of time and money. Time and effort would be better spent elsewhere. Even go golf, at least you're not not losing a large amount of money and enjoying your time.

You'd also be surprised at how many attorneys turn away very profitable cases because they think it's too complicated or would take too much time. I know small firm attorneys making $40,000 with no benefits and clients, that turn away cases with $10,000 retainers, with clients willing to pay more ($30,000 total). They'd rather take the easy car accident case for $300 retainer that their client complains about and calls them incessantly on, because the law's actually simple. Or do a traffic ticket or quick criminal plea deal. High volume, low billable rate practices are extremely common because they're easy. And a lot of attorneys go the solo route because they want the sub-40 hour work week, working from home, and not stressing out.

There are a lot of posts online from successful solos about this - that if you're willing to take on more complicated matters, you can be very financially successful. Majority of solos do not - they'd prefer their simple divorce, car accident, or criminal plea deals. The older solo attorneys I know that make a lot of money have a specialization where they'll take more complicated stuff (tax, complex litigation, estate litigation, commercial contracts, helping investors with visas). See if you can find an attorney near retirement or out of your geographic area willing to mentor or help you on a more complex specialization you're interested in.

[AVBucks4239]

I would respectfully suggest that OP carefully consider the advice ITT about how to launch a successful solo practice, and only make the leap if and when they are fully ready and committed to doing so. I don't think OP is quite at that point yet - sounds like they would be well-served by taking some more time first to think through whether they actually want to solo.

Agree. This goes back to the very first thing I told OP to do in this thread:

So, I think you really need to sit down and draft a business plan. And if you are serious about going on your own, you need to treat this business plan as project one. You need to work on it full time, 8-10 hours a day, tinker it, etc.

It's one thing to have enthusiasm and think everything is going to be fine; it's completely another to draft a serious, detailed, and thoughtful roadmap to get there.

[AVBucks4239]

Are there any civil litigators who have opened firms willing to share their experience? Particularly those coming from biglaw and opening more "sophisticated" practices (i.e., business lit, employment lit, etc.). I'm not implying that criminal defense is unsophisticated, just asking for additional experiences/anecdotes.

Thanks!

I didn't come from big law, but do run a civil litigation practice. You can search my post history here. What more do you want to know?