The greatest enjoyment of being a solo may be compared to being in a position of a general, except you are your own soldier, messenger, mine remover, driver, etc. Still, you are the decision-maker as to how to practice your law, where to practice your law, and when to practice your law under most circumstances. You must be a person who has a lot of common sense and life experiences so that you are able to avoid making bad judgments and giving other people reliable, sound, and concrete advice beyond the scope of the law. Being a solo, you actually “practice” people, people with all kinds of problems, all kinds of characters, all kinds of ideas. If you are a people person, i.e., being willing to be patient in dealing with another soul you may not like, v.s. a non-people one, i.e., being absolutely happy with not speaking to another soul for a whole day or week, then being solo can be your cup of tea.

In my view, you must hate routines as a precondition to being a solo. A solo is a general practitioner in every sense of the term. You must stand ready for every
legal issue that arrives at your door. Therefore, your days and hours are hard to predict on a weekly and monthly basis because you have no idea who comes into your door in your next hour of life. That is the No. 1 thing I like about being a solo because i HATE and cannot tolerate a job that repeats itself every day! For this reason, having worked for our “wonderful” government, I think that those who have a government-job syndrome, whatever that is, should consider working solo or practicing law in a small firm.

Another great thing being a solo is that you do not have to “manage” another soul other than your self. No partner meetings. No human resources. You will enjoy not wasting your life dealing with others who may differ with you on how to practice law and how to operate a law firm. So no headaches. So you focus on yourself on how to help your clients achieve their legal goals in a professional way of your choice and enjoy reaping every single penny with a wholehearted joy.

Finally, if you really want to be a solo, you should prepare to be a litigator and
enjoy litigation because it is very difficult to establish a law practice by avoiding
litigation, especially at the very beginning in today’s economy.

Having said the above, I want share with all of you who is here with me that the
best example of our solos is my favorite president, Abe. Lincoln. Nothing will stop your advance merely because you are a solo, as Lincoln proved to us over 150 years ago.

What are the negative sides? I really can’t think of much. I can imagine, though, that you may feel lonely from time to time if you have caseload problems. But then you have the liberty of living your life as freely as you desire. Being smart people as we lawyers are, we are people of noble and wide interests. So we read, think, exercise, and even walk intelligently without wasting our life. We enjoy playing cards, chess, pool, golf wholeheartedly. So it is impossible to be bored as a solo.

In fact, do not be surprised when some day you see a book on solos written by Peter Y. Qiu, which, by the way, is pronounced as “Chiu,” if you do not speak another language.

Good luck to all of you.