You’re up to your eyeballs in work, spending late nights and weekends at the office. You know that working with a freelance lawyer can help you avoid burning out and increase your firm’s profitability, but you don’t know how to get started.
As the King of Hearts said in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning.” For our purposes, the beginning is deciding what to delegate.
You need to find ways to be more efficient and cost effective to attract and keep clients. Capitalizing on technology can not only make lawyers more efficient; it can also reduce the drudgery in legal work. But how do you overcome your own internal dialogue screaming, ‘I hate technology!’
Assumptions. We all make them on a daily basis. In fact, as I see it, doing so allows most days to progress with some level of predictability. For example, I often assume all my tech will function problem free, the power will stay on, and that if I need anything from anyone at the office, they’ll be available. There’s nothing wrong with my making such assumptions unless, of course, it turns out one of them is wrong and I’m not prepared to deal with the consequences. Keeping this in mind, let’s now narrow the focus and address some of the ethical missteps that can lead to trouble for the buyer of a law practice when it’s the buyer whose running with assumptions.
Many lawyers feel trapped after taking a hiatus. You don’t have to be. In Debra Hamilton’s continuing new series of introducing lawyers who have emerged successfully on the other side of a hiatus, today you will meet Linda Mercurio who has turned entrepreneur and helping other lawyers succeed.
We all know that the use of technology has transformed the delivery of legal services. Many case management systems are cloud based systems that change the way data is stored. But how does the use of cloud based systems affect a lawyer’s ethical obligations? Consider the following scenario. The answer and explanation can be found […]
To state the obvious, being a lawyer is stressful; being a solo practitioner 10 x more so because, even if you have administrative help, you are responsible for everything in order to become successful. And so, you need to find a way to not only have a great career, but a great life as well.
This is why I suggest, and truly believe, that you must have goals in 5 different areas of life….
A few weeks ago, I had one of those days. You know, a day where things just don’t seem to make much sense. The day started out with a training session on ransomware. Unfortunately, as such programs are apt to do, it made me start to think that selling everything I have, disconnecting from the wired world, and moving to some remote island where I could live out my life selling tapas on the beach might be a really good idea. I suspect more than a few of you might have responded similarly.
Anyway, what got me going was learning about one of the new business models hackers have come up with. In short, after a computer or network is breached and the data encrypted, hackers are starting to offer their victims two choices instead of the normal one, which was to pay the ransom amount in order to obtain the decryption key and get their files back. Now the victim can either pay the ransom or they can help spread the ransomware by sharing a malicious link with two people they know. If those two unsuspecting folks become infected and pay the ransom within seven days, then the initial victim would receive the decryption key and be able to recover their files for free. Now isn’t this a heartwarming development.
While becoming a practice area specialist can result in bringing in legal matters, it is becoming harder and harder to obtain clients just because you practice law in a specific area. This is because the amount of competition out there is tremendous. For example, according to the ABA website, there are more than 25,000 members of the Labor and Employment Law Section (and remember, not every attorney in the United States is a member of the ABA, so the number of attorneys practicing labor and employment law is almost definitely considerably higher). Competition for clients can be ferocious.
Over the past five years, I have written about how to cope with many issues facing rezooming attorneys. This year I hope to inspire you by sharing the rezooming success stories of people just like you who have re-started their legal career. They decided to shift back to practicing law from a different career or a hiatus. These stories will inspire you while providing a suggested road map to success.
In 1927 when my grandfather began practicing law, this was a viable method of marketing and rainmaking. There were only 131,000 attorneys in the United States. If you averaged this out, there were only 2,620 lawyers in each state (yes, I know that some states and cities had more attorneys than others, I’m making a point here). You could literally hang a sign outside and people would hire you.
Now, 90 years later, in 2017, this method of marketing and business development is just not going to work. According to the ABA there are more than 1.3 million attorneys in the country and unless you find a way to let people know what you do, they will never hire you.
Why Going Solo as a Young Attorney Could Be the Best Decision Ever with Susan Cartier Liebel from Solo Practice University®.
On this episode of New Solo from the Legal Talk Network, Adriana Linares interviews Susan Cartier Liebel from Solo Practice University® about how to stay motivated throughout the process of starting a solo law practice.
Motivation in life is very important. I share seminal moments which have shaped me as a human being and helped me become who I am today.
On this podcast from Lawpreneur Radio, Miranda McCroskey interviews Susan Cartier Liebel from Solo Practice University® about perceptions of fear, failure and other issues facing solos.
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