What If You Could Have the Gobstopper of Solo Practice Ideas Free?

I’ve always been intrigued by he concept of the Everlasting Gobstopper, the Willie Wonka invented candy for children with “little pocket money” that can be sucked and sucked without ever getting any smaller.  Well, what if we could create an Everlasting Gobstopper of tips for solo practitioners that would be constantly replenished and never outdated?  Obviously, the ABA isn’t up to the task, but nor am I on my own.  While I’ve tried to maintain a fairly current  Guide to Starting a Law Firm, the list grows stale too quickly.  And it relies on a collection of published material, overlooking the rich source of advice that comes from the diverse universe of law blawgers.  So, here’s what I have in mind….

At the Blogher conference, I learned about a tool that’s new to me, the Technorati tag. According to Technorati, a tag is a category name that enables users to categorize posts.  So if you want to find blog posts on a certain topic, such as “lawyers,” you can click on the technorati “lawyers” tag and it will generate a list of post like this.

I’ve started a category of posts, Solotips (one word).  My first solotips post dealt with ethical considerations related to leaving a law firm. But other bloggers might also have posts that offer great tips for solos.  If they also tagged their post as “solotips,” we’d start to generate an ever replenishing list of tips that would be more comprehensive and current than anything that any one book author or organization could ever provide.  And all at no cost!

So how can a blogger participate?  Well, anytime you post a tip that would help a solo – from advice on taking a deposition to running a home office to firing a client – tag the post with the “solotips” tag.  To do that, you’ll first need to get into the code for the blogging package that you use (in typepad, you push the “edit HTML button” next to compose post; in blogger, I think that html is default, at least the way that I use blogger).  Once you’ve gotten into the code, simply paste this tag at the end of your post:

<a href = “http://technorati.com/tag/solotips” rel = “tag” Solotips</a>

Then, follow Technorati’s instructions on how to manually or automatically ping Technorati so that it knows when you’ve updated your site with a tagged post.
You can email me questions about tagging or express willingness to participate at elefant@myshingle.com.  Fellow solos, we’ve lead the way before – let’s charge ahead again with a unique project that in the long run will improve the quality of legal services that we solos and small firm lawyers provide to our clients.




SoloTips