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Trends

My Avvo Talk: 6 Start-Up Tech Trends That Start-Up Lawyers Need to Connect With Clients

May 10, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Six Start-Up Technology Trends That Start Up Lawyers Can Use View more presentations from Carolyn Elefant. I’ve uploaded my slide deck from my talk at Avvocating Avvo presentation (with some glitches in the translation) – and you can see my slides (hopefully in better format) and those by the other speakers at Avvo’s Lawyer-nomics Blog. [...]

Read more Marketing & Making Money 3 comments

Cash Mobs Put the Hype in Hyper Local Lawyering

March 27, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

This past summer, I twice spoke about how hyper-local lawyering can save solos from the demise-by-automation predicted by Richard Susskind in the End of Lawyers. The long arm of technology may be powerful but it lacks the dexterity to crack local markets as effectively as personal relationships. Plus, lawyers have traditionally acted as pillars of [...]

Read more New Marketing Ideas 1 comment

Take My Advice: Look Before You Advise

March 27, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

A lawyer’s advice may be his stock in trade, to quote a famous solo, Abraham Lincoln. But today, the reverse is apparently true: “legaladvice” is nothing more than a trade name (and a generic one at best) for aspiring lawyerpreneurs to stock up on.At least, that seems to be the view held by two lawyer-preneurs [...]

Read more Mistakes/What NOT To Do 0 comments

The Start Ups That Give Access to Justice Are Already Here

March 22, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Initially, I was excited when I saw this headline, Meet the startups that are giving everyone affordable access to justice. Great, I thought — an article that finally recognizes what solos — who are, after all, start-up lawyers – are doing to ensure that meaningful access to justice isn’t reserved for deep-pockets. But after a [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 3 comments

Book Review: The Freelance Lawyering Manual

March 21, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

I wrote the foreword for Kimberly Alderman’s new book, the Freelance Lawyering Manual in the hopes that law firms on one hand, and unemployed attorneys and re-entering parents on the other will take a fresh look at freelance lawyering in the 21st century. Unlike most things in law — and life, freelance lawyering, represents a [...]

Read more Legal Research and Writing 1 comment

Taking Back the Law Doesn’t Mean Going Backwards

January 13, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

So, I’m not sure what it was about my post last week, Take Back the Law, that lead a few commenters to suggest that I favor the status quo. I mean, I suppose the fact that I didn’t use buzzwords like entrepreneur (because I’m not, really) or enthusiastically promote unbundled virtual law practice (because in [...]

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Solos, Take Back the Law

January 6, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Each year, I try to identify an overarching theme that will impact solo and small firm practitioners.  And each year, I’ve been dead wrong – either because I’m way too far ahead of the trends, or because my predictions are contaminated by my own wishful thinking. For example, in 2009, I predicted that in the [...]

Read more Encouragement 12 comments

Why Does NAMWOLF, An Association for Women & Minority Lawyers Exclude Solos?

September 26, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Legal excellence knows no color or gender, reads the tagline for the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF). Unfortunately, NAMWOLF’s egalitarian notion of legal excellence doesn’t extend to size: shockingly, NAMWOLF bars women and minority owned solo and two-attorney practices from even applying for membership . For an organization that professes [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 0 comments

Where I’ve Been Hanging Out Online

May 3, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

So I know that there wasn’t much happening  at MyShingle last week. Between my talk on starting a practice at Georgetown Law and three days catching up with clients and colleagues at my trade association’s Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference, I didn’t have much energy left for posting. In addition, I’ve been spending a bit [...]

Read more Client Relations 1 comment

I Am Not An Entrepreneur…My Answer to the Most Important Question for Solo Lawyers

February 25, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at his new gig at Above the Law, my blogging colleague and law firm founder/owner Jay Shepherd poses the penultimate question to prospective shinglers:  Do you want to run a business, or do you want to practice law? For Jay, there’s only one right answer: if you want to start a law firm, you’ve [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 9 comments

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