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Planning a Practice

Free Products in Your Law Practice: Work Them or Shirk Them?

December 13, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Free Stuff for Going Solo; an excerpt from Launching a 21st Century Law Practice from Carolyn Elefant Free stuff abounds for lawyers starting or running a practice.  From document sharing platforms to conference call services to websites to legal research, the cost of running a law firm is nosediving.  Free products are also proliferating; my [...]

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Solo Off to A Bad Start

October 15, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Starting a law practice is hard enough, without having to defend yourself in a lawsuit.  But that’s the position that Carolyn Hartle finds herself in, according to the  Sharon Herald, after having launched her new practice while she was still working as an associate at her former law firm, Lewis and Ristvey.  But is this [...]

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The Starting a Law Firm Calculator

August 29, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Although I question the value of  business plans , starting a law firm without even a vague idea of anticipated revenue sources or expected expenses is foolhardy.   To help guide the law firm planning (or prediction) process, I’ve developed, with the help of my computer-savvy husband, a basic calculator to list and total your [...]

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Solo Practice Post-Mortem Part III: Would He Have Made It and Was Soloing a Bad Idea?

August 23, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Scott Greenfield responded to Part I and Part II on Post-Mortem of a solo practice. Scott criticizes everything from the author of the post (who left a successful practice to start a firm partly because he didn’t like the work he was doing and partly for a better work life balance) to the value of social [...]

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A Departing Solo’s Post-Mortem on the Practice That Didn’t Cross the Finish Line (Part I)

August 21, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Editor’s Note: Sometimes solo practice doesn’t work out.  Recently, a member of one of my listserves shared one of the best and most objective post-mortem analyses of a solo practice that didn’t quite make it to the finish line.  Despite increasing momentum towards the end of the second year, the author (who has a family [...]

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Companion Post to the Solo Practice That Didn’t Finish (Part II): The Marketing Plan That Started to Work

August 21, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Editor’s Note:  In the previous post, the solo lawyer who is transitioning out of his practice mentioned that his online marketing efforts were starting to bear fruit.  In this post, there’s a description of the activities that started the turn-around.  Don’t get the wrong idea – online marketing isn’t a silver bullet since if you [...]

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