My Shingle

Solo Practice Trends

Blogging for the Long Haul

November 16, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

My buddy Kevin O’Keefe is raising a toast to America’s blogging lawyers and their “dedication to learn, exchange information, and market themselves in an upbeat and professional way.” But there’s another part of Kevin’s post that caught my eye – the line where he adds that “Blogging lawyers, age 35, are going to be blogging [...]

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Hey, McKee Nelson Associates – There’ll Never Be A Better Opportunity Than Now to Start Your Own Law Firm

November 13, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Thanks to a lemon of a credit market, associates at McKee Nelsonhave the opportunity to make a huge vat of life-changing lemonade. Above the Law’s David Lat is reporting here that NY/DC based McKee Nelson, in an effort to avoid economically-induced, forced associate layoffs, is offering associates two options: (1) a full bonus, plus four [...]

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Solos Practice Longer…But For Love or For Money?

October 24, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

One of the benefits of running your own firm is that you don’t have a committee forcing you to retire. Perhaps that’s why some of the oldest practicing lawyers are those who work for themselves. Today, Bob Ambrogi, my co-blogger at Legal Blog Watch posted here about Reuben Landeau, a Boston lawyer who just passed [...]

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Don’t Just Step Off the Partnership Track; Bypass It Entirely

October 3, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

I’m not sure whether any of you remember the TV show LA Law . Sometime in the second or third season, the firm’s young associate, Abby, was told that she wasn’t partnership material so she left to start her own criminal defense practice. A year or so later, Abby had established her reputation as a [...]

Read more Biglaw Practice and Issues 0 comments

Why Are So Few Women Lawyers Solo?

September 13, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Since women lawyers pull their own weight in the genre of solo and small firm blogs (along with me, there are my colleagues and friends, Susan Cartier Liebel and Inspired Solo’s Sheryl Schelin, I was surprised to learn that Few Women Choose to Practice Solo (NLJ 9/13/07). A recent study released by NALP revealed that [...]

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The Other Side of Solo Practice

July 6, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

It’s difficult to fully respond to an article like this one, The Snark: Flying solothat discusses the drawbacks of solo practice because I can’t decide whether the author is trying to be funny or is truly pathetic, and pathetically uninformed. Basically, the article is intended to discourage unhappy associates from making the mistake of starting [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 12 comments

Are ethics rules biased against solos? Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but there’s proof….

May 25, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Back in 2003, I wrote a post (not presently available online) entitled the Bar’s Dirty Little Not So Secret Secret. The article highlighted how most bars’ disciplinary systems disproportionally target solos, when there’s plenty of incompetence to go around. But there’s a problem far worse than disparate enforcement – and that’s disparate impact, i.e., where [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 1 comment

Solo at Above the Law

April 24, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

When I started this blog back in December 2002, I lamented the absence of solo voices from mainstream legal media. But with blogs, we solos have come a long way. The most recent case in point: over at Above the Law, one of the most popular and widely recognized law related websites, solo Billy Merck [...]

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If you had 20 hours of law student time this summer, how would you spend it? And if you’re a law student, what would make you want to take a job with a solo?

April 23, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

This is a two part post, for my fellow shinglers, and also for law students. To my colleagues, first: Imagine that you had twenty hours of reliable law student assistance for the summer…how would you use it? Would you have the students help stock your blog with materials, like at SCOTUS Blog? Ask them to [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 21 comments

Striking It Rich by Striking Out on Your Own

April 5, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Thanks to a tip from a sharp eyed reader, here’s a link to a story that I overlooked: The Secrets of Million Dollar Solos, (GM Filisko and Meg Tebo, ABA Journal 3/29/07) that features four solos running million dollar practices. There’s much that other solos and the legal profession generally can learn from these four [...]

Read more Business Models 4 comments

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