How To Start Your Own Law Firm – Should you start your own law firm? 10 reasons you should start your own business
Have you ever thought about starting your own law firm? Find out if becoming a solo practitioner is the right option for you.
Contents
- 1 How To Start Your Own Law Firm
- 2 Opening Your Own Law Firm Video Series
How To Start Your Own Law Firm
Obtaining a “law certificate” is no different from obtaining any other type of professional license. This gives you the right to work in the state in which you wish to practice your profession and the right to form your own company. Having the latter is deeply rooted in what it means for many people to be successful. Many lawyers believe that having their own law firm is the true path to success and happiness.
Opening Your Own Law Firm Video Series
Deciding to start your own law firm is an important decision that will have a significant impact on the rest of your career. Starting your own business may or may not take your career in a new and glorious direction. This can hinder your professional advancement and hinder your entire career. You need to think very carefully about the pros and cons. Starting a business is a big challenge. You may succeed, but there is also the possibility of failure.
Every great company (there are literally tens of thousands of successful companies) started somewhere. You, too, could be the next lawyer to start a great law firm and nothing will stop you except understanding whether this is the right decision for you.
While working as an attorney with Dewey Ballantine in Los Angeles, I seriously considered opening my own law firm. Discouraged by the company’s policies and convinced that I could make just as much money by starting my own business, I put the wheels in motion. Since the Internet was still in its infancy (i.e. before websites), we took our first steps by placing an ad in the Yellow Pages and then renting an office (for $750 per month). I set a date to leave the company, set up a new office, bought a copier and a new Dell computer, and I was ready to go.
Recognizing that any law firm needs a regular, ongoing source of business activity to be successful, I already had a lineup of clients for my new firm: friends who were successful entrepreneurs. I was confident that I could charge $100,000 to $200,000 per year from these clients, which would be enough to sustain my business. I also understood that if these clients’ businesses were not sustainable, additional and separate sources of business would be needed. So we needed Yellow Pages advertising. It’s important to always have a backup plan to keep your phone ringing with your new company.
How To Start Your Own Law Firm
When I left my law firm, the lawyers gave me the same advice I’m about to tell you in this article. “If you leave here and start your own law practice, you will face an almost impossible time. Never get a job at a big company again. If you are not satisfied with this, contact another law firm. It will take months to decide.”
To my surprise, Dewey Valentine told me to take a few months to figure out what I wanted to do and to keep working while I looked around. At his recommendation, I spoke with a legal recruiter and began interviewing at law firms. Meanwhile, my phone started ringing with calls from ‘customers’ answering my ad in the phone book. I met them in the ‘other office’ after work at Dewey Ballantine. My new clients are:
While I was fortunate to have “real” customers (small businesses owned by people I knew), the reality of starting my own business meant taking on unwanted business to pay the bills. Most of the potential legal work I gleaned from Yellow Pages ads made me so depressed that I decided not to run my own business. During this time when I was considering my career path, I was still interviewing at law firms, and the experience confirmed that I was no longer interested in working at a law firm, even though I was working as someone else’s attorney. . Still, it seemed better than starting my own company.
During this time, I also realized that the only people who seemed to enjoy their jobs were the legal recruiters who sent me to interview at law firms. I quickly realized that helping lawyers find work was more fun and satisfying for me than starting out on my own. So I became a legit recruiter.
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A topic that comes up regularly while working as a recruiter is starting your own law firm.
I became a recruiter, but I actually really love the legal profession and have never left it. Over time, I decided to start my own law firm and, except for periods of inactivity, my firm has been in business for many years, handling cases both for the firm and for people outside of it, while I have been setting up and running a legal recruitment business. And the company.
Our firm has several attorneys and has achieved significant success thanks to our business planning and analysis that ensures we provide legal work suited to what the market needs. For example: (1) I have my own company as a customer. (2) I live in a small town (Malibu, California) with a population of 13,000 and there are only two small law firms. (3) There are many wealthy people willing to pay a lot of money for legal services. (4) I know how to recruit good, reliable attorneys because I have done so most of my career.
An honest assessment of my business involves recognizing that I may not be successful if I have a built-in customer base, special recruiting skills, and little competition. Every business, including law firms, needs a special advantage or selling point to be successful. What can you offer your customers that your competitors can’t? The most important thing for continued success is having a marketing pipeline that continually delivers new business.
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Given my professional background, I understand both the desire to start my own law firm and the challenges of running a small firm, as well as the much greater challenges of achieving success. So the basis of this article are 10 reasons why you should start your own law firm.
Despite the challenges, people can start a small law firm. Here are 10 reasons why you have what it takes to succeed in your solo career.
1) You have a group of customers who ‘go with you’ and you trust them to give you work. Otherwise, your previous law firm or company will give you the job.
Many lawyers who leave law firms rely on the fact that they have clients who have worked with them and want to continue working with them. Many of these relationships can last for decades. Thanks to the lawyer’s skills and history of working with clients, he is secure in the continuation of the relationship and workflow.
For example, I know many patent attorneys who work for large clients in a variety of industries, and their work is so advanced that there are very few people who can do it. Clients like their lawyers, value their lawyers’ sophistication, and are interested in continuing to work with their lawyers, whether alone or on their own. I also know real estate and corporate lawyers who have similar deep-rooted client relationships. In one case, we saw the general counsel of a healthcare company leave and start his own law firm, which grew to 50 lawyers working for the healthcare company. (This lasted until the health care company fired its lawyers and the entire law firm went completely bankrupt.)
Lawyers must evaluate very carefully whether their clients will follow them and continue to entrust their work to the lawyer. Lawyers who achieve this can be successful on their own or in small firms.
It might work if the lawyer’s previous firm sends him work. This often happens when outgoing lawyers receive smaller cases and other work from their former law firms. Many lawyers who leave large law firms have achieved considerable success in these situations and continue to do so as long as they maintain good relationships with their former law firms.
For example, I know several lawyers who left large law firms on good terms after failing to become partners. This usually happens in large companies that don’t have the ability to add too many partners. But when lawyers leave on good terms, law firms often provide them with enough work to enable them to succeed as solo artists or small firms. Some of the largest U.S. law firms had humble beginnings as sole practices that had good relationships with the original firms. (What to note here is
On Lawnext: How To Start Your Own Law Firm And Have The Practice You Always Wanted, With Carolyn Elefant
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