Similarly, when I first graduated from law school, I couldn’t imagine that going solo was an immediate option for me – and this despite having had a mentor (my mother’s best friend) who went solo straight out of school and never looked back. I’d gotten trapped into thinking that I needed the structure and guidance of a firm (and probably a big firm) before I could ever practice law. Combine that with a strong suspicion that I didn’t want to practice law (that took several years to fade, and was largely fueled by having met so many unhappy firm lawyers at networking events), and I ended up in a non-law job at a company owned by a very successful entrepreneur (who did his time in the Big Accounting trenches before starting his own company). And just recently, with the help of some great law blogs (including yours), CLE courses (PLI, for instance, has some excellent, free, nuts-and-bolts training seminars for specific areas of practice – whether or not I ever practice in those areas, it’s comforting to know that there are step-by-step guides to doing so), and Carolyn Elefante’s Solo By Choice, I’ve realized that going solo is something I can do after all.