I just had the most wonderful personal and professional experience attending the ClioCon2014 conference in Chicago and I wanted to let all of you know that should the opportunity present itself and be within your budget, you should make every opportunity to attend relevant legal and legal tech conferences to help you grow your solo/small firm practice.

Here are the reasons why:

1. You get the invaluable opportunity to learn from and possibly converse with those who are regarded as knowledgeable in your chosen areas of practice and do so in person.

2. You get the equally invaluable opportunity to learn from and possibly converse with those who are regarded as knowledgeable in the business areas relevant to running the business side of your solo/small firm practice and, again, do so in person.

3. If you pick the right conference with forward thinking speakers, you will also be gaining cutting edge knowledge and this is never a bad thing in this ever-changing somewhat volatile environment.

4. These opportunities, if you take advantage of them, can lead to referred business, mentorship, clients, job opportunities, credential-building gigs such as writing, teaching and speaking engagements. You may not necessarily feel qualified if you are new, but you are just new to law, not life.  Plus, many bloggers are looking for guest posts from newbies as you build your practice. If you get an invitation, now that you’ve met people face-to-face, take it if the audience is relevant to building your client base or just to get your solo/small firm practice some exposure.

For example:  At the Clio Conference I met so many people I’ve only ‘known’ online and some who even teach at SPU but never actually met in the flesh.  This has led to a host of new guest lectures coming to SPU, more writing opportunities for me to spread the word about growing a solo/small firm practice and SPU and new and very exciting vendors ready to participate in sponsorship in our COOP which means increased member benefits for our students on products/services you will need to build your practice.

I highly encourage you to consider attending events such as ABA Tech Show in Chicago this April, the next Clio Conference in Chicago October 19-20, MiloFest and any other GP Solo/Small Firm event which might be appealing and affordable.

I confess, I don’t go to them often enough so I know how reticent you might be.  If you’re not local, it’s not inexpensive. But it’s time to find the time and the money if you can because it is well worth the effort and very invigorating especially when you feel isolated as a practicing solo.

For those of you who might be interested in attending the Clio Cloud Conference in 2015, here is a link to a super early bird price  (It will be considerably higher as you get closer to the conference date with some discounts probably around April but not as low as this price.)  Again, we collect no affiliate fees or commissions for this.  It’s simply a conference worth attending and we wanted to pass this link along to you.

Still unsure?  Read this post by Robert Ambrogi.