Inspiration & Encouragement

By way of the  awesome Tim Baran (have you ever heard anyone say something negative about this guy?), Community Manager of our sponsor Rocket Matter, came this wonderful story  about the transformative power of social media by Brandon Stanton, founder of Humans of New York. Stanton writes that after losing his finance job in Chicago, he…

Yesterday, federal judge Otis Wright slammed  Prenda, a rogue “porno trolling” quasi-law firm that figured out a formula to get rich in the Internet Age. As Judge Wright uncovered , Prenda bought copyright interests in porn movies, placed them in shell corporations to appear as if they were owned by clients (rather than Prenda lawyers)…

This is one of my favorite scenes from A Civil Action . Billed as a book (and movie) about a class action by an underdog lawyer against a major corporation, A Civil Action is also, somewhat unintentionally, one of the very best books about solo practice, covering the tumults and the triumphs and the dichotomous…

Because of this blog and a national practice, I travel out of town several times a year for speaking engagements, conferences and hearings.  Rather than feign work on a long cramped bus or plane ride, I generally stay up until 3 am the night before I depart, scrambling to push assignments out the door.  That…

Dear New Lawyer, At 48 years old, I am old enough to be your mother.  And you should be ashamed of yourself.  Here you are, coming to me for a legal job when you don’t know the first thing about RSS feeds, blogging (reading them, let alone writing them), Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube.  And what’s…

Editor’s note: Tomorrow night is the first night of Chanukah, one of my favorite holidays not because of the presents but what it stands for. Chanukah inspired one of my favorite posts in nearly a decade of blogging, and if you didn’t catch it last year, here it is again. Tonight marks the first night…

After I shared this quick video clip from the Avvo Conference on my Facebook page, a high school acquaintance remarked: Sounds like you’re a lawyer that needs to market, what stress! Though intended sympathetically, the comment stung. Because yes, after almost 25 years of practicing law, 18 as a solo I suppose that I do…

Starting, or more accurately, sustaining a law firm is hard. Scott Greenfield hammers the point sharply but accurately; Sam Glover more mildly but equally accurately. So why don’t I? As a longtime blogger focused on solo and small firm practice, and author of Solo by Choice, I’m the first to admit that I, like other…