Operations

This post is a quick follow up to Would You Rent Office Space for $500 or Less? which has generated some useful feedback from other solos weighing in with personal experiences and opinions.  While you should read the comments directly, they generally fall into the following clusters of viewpoints: 1. Don’t start a firm unless…

My co-author Nicole Black and I will be at TechShow this year, and as in past years, we’ve organized a dinner for Friday, April 5, to get together with our online colleagues and friends whom we’ve never met or don’t have a chance to see very often in person.  If you’d like to attend, there’s…

Even though it includes CLE as part of the admission fee, the ABA’s annual  TechShow  can still be pricey. To help mitigate the costs, for the past few years, Legal Typist   Andrea Cannavina (who’s also speaking this year) has formed SuperPass groups to secure huge volume discounts for attendees. Andrea is organizing groups again this…

Starting and running your own law firm allows you the autonomy to pick and choose the kinds of cases you want to handle. But what happens when there’s no apparent market for the work that you love or where a market exists but the work isn’t financially viable? A lack of market refers to a…

Last call for the 21st century retainer agreement, scheduled for its final run on December 18, 2012. Register here – http://21stcenturyretainerdec.eventbrite.com/. The $49 fee is an amazing value, with a webinar and ebook and 14 pages of contract clauses included – but as a gift to readers and in celebration of MyShingle’s upcoming 10th Anniversary,…

When I’m asked how solo and small firm lawyers can compete with Legal Zoom, my view is that free is the best revenge. Now that legal forms are digitized, it’s only a matter of time before they’re available free everywhere.  If forms are free, companies like Legal Zoom have nothing left to sell — whereas…

For those who are regular readers, you know that I don’t believe in business plans. In my own case, when I started my firm, even my best predictions suggested that I’d go belly up in three months and had I memorialized my reality in a business plan, I’d never have had the nerve to launch.…

What do you do with someone who’s blogged nearly a decade and been nominated for ABA Top 100 Blawg Contest for six years straight without ever coming remotely close to winning the category? Stick her along with nine other guys (and yes, they really all are guys) in the Blawg 100 Hall of Fame.  That’s what…