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Solos & StartUps: A Match Made in Heaven Or Clients from Hell?

September 7, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Solos and startups seem like an ideal match.  Most obviously, startups don’t have the cash to hire in-house counsel or expensive mega-firms and solos can offer competitive rates and flexible service.  Solos also have the ability to better understand and accommodate the demands of start-ups since solos are essentially start-ups themselves.  For these reasons, experts [...]

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The Ethics of Legal Subscription Services

August 13, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Via Jordan Furlong’s  twitter stream, I learned about Legal Care, a UK-based legal subscription service.  The Legal Care package costs 14 pounds/month and includes  free template documents, a will pack, document review service, 25 percent discount on fees if a solicitor is needed and a guaranteed response to emailed inquires within an hour, 24/7. Legal [...]

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Future Fridays: As Solo Goes, So Goes the Substance and the Spark

August 3, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

A few weeks back, CNN reported on the demise of the solo physician, with the report predicting that within two years, 75 percent of new doctors will be employed by hospitals.  While the cost of doing business for doctors is on the rise (technology can cut long-term costs but doesn’t come cheap), reimbursements from insurance [...]

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The LegalZoom IPO: Proving That Volume Practice Doesn’t Work, Even 21st Century Style

July 30, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Academics and legal futurists may be  enamored by the Legal Zoom business model, the market sure isn’t.  As Legal Zoom readies to launch an IPO at $10 to $12 share, sources like  Reuters and The Street  are questioning whether a $483 million valuation is a tad “feisty” for a company that generated $156 million in [...]

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For Solos and Small Law Firms, Be A Rockstar in Your Community By Unlocking the Potential of the The Seven-figure Ancillary Legal Services

July 25, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

My apologies for the blazing passion of the title of this post.  I just figured that any headline with the term “ancillary” would send readers running unless counterbalanced with the mesmerizing language of a marketing hack.  And the concept of ancillary markets is too important not to understand in an era of change in the [...]

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Future [of Law] Fridays: Neota Logic is Neat – But Why Not Make It Accessible to Solos?

July 13, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Update Note 7/19/2012: I had a chance to chat with Michael Mills of Neota two days ago. Neota is doing some really exciting work, and is definitely responsive and curious about opportunities in the solo/small firm market. Stay tuned… Editor’s note:  This is the first of a regular feature, Future of Law Fridays where we’ll [...]

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Advance Your Practice With FastCase’s FREE Advance Sheets

June 20, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

With a torrent of information streaming through our email, social media channels and RSS feeds daily, most of us have become regimented in filtering.  We eyeball headlines, prioritize links from designated Twitter followers, strain articles without a particular tag or search term and use the delete key without mercy.  While our compulsive filtering immunizes us [...]

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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. [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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