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Practice Areas

Choosing a new practice area: Consider family law

December 14, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

The following is a guest post by Roy S. Ginsburg. As an attorney coach, I often counsel lawyers who are considering a move to a new practice area – helping them balance the pros and cons of such career choices. One overlooked area I often recommend is family law. Lawyers often object to the idea [...]

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Thinking about a new solo practice area?

November 3, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

The following is a guest post by Roy S. Ginsburg. When selecting the practice area that will determine how you spend the rest of your career, you can “go deep” or “go shallow.”  It is almost always better to “go deep.” “Going deep” means that you select a practice focus that you enjoy, in a [...]

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Lessons from Crowdsourced Advice for a Struggling Solo

September 26, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Ten days ago, in an effort to reply quickly to a struggling solo who’d contacted me for advice, I reached out to readers to crowdsource a response. The post touched off 40 comments, some offering sound advice to a solo in these circumstances, others not so much. The comments also spawned several sub-discussions on what’s [...]

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Crowdsourcing Advice for a Struggling Solo

September 16, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

[Update 9/23--Readers - thank you for your response.  We've collected an enormous amount of information, some very helpful, some of it obvious and some of it (diving in full force to cases by copying pleadings stood out to me as inadvisable and potential career killer but there are others). I've got to read through everything [...]

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Go Rural, Young – and Old – Solos

September 13, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Last week, the WSJ Law Blog highlighted this story reporting on South Dakota’s push to bring more lawyers to rural parts of the state. As you’d expect, the shortage arises as a result of the older lawyers in rural communities nearing retirement in combination with the departure of younger lawyers for opportunities in larger towns [...]

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Solos Take on the World!

April 3, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

If you think that global practice is the exclusive domain of behemoth law firms, think again. These days, there’s more opportunities for solos to go global than ever before, as I write in my piece, at The Xemplar, entitledA Whole New World for Solos that begins like this: While many large, national U.S. firms are [...]

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No Need to Niche Alone: Collaborative Niche, the Firm of the Future

September 7, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan niche practice. Indeed, niche practice is fast becoming a niche of its own on other solo blogs, particularly Chuck Newton’s Third Wave. But niche practices aren’t just for solos and small firms. Today, I came across this Press Release for the Redgrave LLP, a law firm serving [...]

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More on Niche Practices

June 30, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

I’ve written extensively on niche practices all over this blog – but I’d never presented on the topic until a few weeks ago, at the Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference.  It’s a popular topic these days- as I noted in this post – and I also see that Peter Olson at Solo in Chicago [...]

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What a Niche Law Practice Is (Pot Law)…And What It Is Not

June 21, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

One of my solo-centric colleagues, Susan Cartier-Liebel of Solo Practice University is running a two-part series on niche practice over at her Build a Solo Practice blog, so I didn’t want to send you into niche-overload.  But I after seeing this article from the National Law Journal on “pot law practices,” I couldn’t resist.  Though [...]

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Interested in Foreclosure Law? The Bar Is Interested in You!

October 26, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant

With the economy still floundering, foreclosure lawyers remain in demand.  In fact, according to  Time Magazine, eighty six percent of foreclosure defendants go unrepresented.  Yet as far as I can tell, few solo and small firm lawyers are fully exploring this promising practice area.   Below the jump, I discuss some of the barriers to entry [...]

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