My Shingle

Solo Trends

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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Preparing for a Life in the Law Unimagined and Uninvented

April 21, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Next week, I’ll be speaking about the starting a law firm option at Georgetown Law School here in Washington D.C.  This is my fourth law school presentation this year.  Yet the more I improve on, and deliver this talk, the more I wonder myself: how can we prepare students for a life in the law [...]

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The Future of Law from the NYSBA

April 18, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

I was pleasantly surprised to read the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA)Task Force Report on The Future of Law. For starters, the report characterized solo and small firm lawyers very even-handedly; pointing out the ways in which solos have leveraged technology to their advantage. From the report: Solo and small firm practitioners are not [...]

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Solo Incubator Launches At UMKC

November 2, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Back in June, I had the privilege of speaking at the Missouri Bar’s excellent Solo and Small Firm Conference.  In addition to the practicing lawyers in attendance – many who were eight or ten time repeat attendees, the event was also populated by a swarm of yellow-shirted students, who as it turned out, were participating [...]

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Solo Lawyers and Solo Bloggers as Heroes

October 24, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Who says small firms can’t do big things? Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the solo and small firm lawyers, who in the course of simply doing their jobs defending homeowners in foreclosure cases, stumbled across gross abuses in the foreclosure process, ranging from robo-affidavit signers” who attested to reviewing documents they’d never [...]

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BonaFide Office Rules – A Rejoinder by Tannebaum

April 5, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Last week, I  criticized a ruling out of New Jersey interpreting the bonafide office rule to prohibit virtual offices.  I argued that the rule (1) would force lawyers to hire staff and rent full time space, thereby raising the cost of legal services and (2) make it difficult for recently unemployed lawyers and female lawyers [...]

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Impact of Blogging on Solo and Small Firm Practitioners

March 21, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Back in December, I had the amazing privilege of sharing a panel at Norwestern’s Fourth Annual Judicial Symposium on Civil Justice Issues with Eugene Volokh and Mark Herrmann, co-founder and former blogger at Drug and Device Law (as an aside, Herrmann’s last word as a blogger came in this article on both the pros as [...]

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Return of the Part Time Shingle – February 18, 2010

February 3, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

The wildly popular The Part-Time Shingle Teleseminar is back. Carolyn Elefant, author of Solo By Choice and the blog, MyShingle and Julie Tower-Pierce, author of Staying at Home: Staying in the Law and the flexible lawyering blog, DarlingHill.com, are teaming up once again on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 12:30 p.m. ET to offer another [...]

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It’s Not Your Imagination…More Lawyers Are Starting Their Own Practice

February 26, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant

Over the past few months, it seems to me that the number of lawyers starting their own practice is on the rise.  My perception is based largely on anecdotal evidence, from increased traffic to this site (both direct hits and from search terms like “starting a law practice,”) a bump in sales of Solo by [...]

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The Year Since Solo by Choice: How to Be The Lawyer You Always Wanted To Be

February 19, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant

[Note- the tape cuts out at 50 seconds - music continues because I could not split the track] It’s been a little over a year since the release of my book, www.aSolo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be.  My book, which was the first book on law practice in [...]

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