Law Students

Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be [Clippings]

By Anna

Sometime Ms. JD blogger and ever-faithful friend of the solo practitioner Carolyn Elefant has written a new book, Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be. As a solo practitioner and a regular contributor to law.com, she is an expert on the subject and a woman successfully forging her own path in the legal profession. I haven't had a chance to read the book, but Susan Carter Liebel (another Ms. JD contributor, who also knows her stuff about building a solo practice) says it's "a good reference book filled with great information aggregated in one easy to read collection and a necessary tool for your solo practice."

Here's an excerpt from the author's cut:

[D]iversity, too, is playing its own role in the new popularity of solo and small firms. Though women and minorities comprise, respectively, 50 and 20 percent of law school graduating classes, they remain woefully under-represented in the upper ranks of Biglaw. Women account for only 17 percent of partnerships at large firms (Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms? New York Times (March, 2006)), while 5.01 percent of large firm partnerships are held by minorities (NALP Bulletin, February 2007). This under-representation comes at a time when large corporate clients are demanding diversity in law firms and, in some instances, even cutting firms from bidding for legal work for lack of diversity (Wall Street Journal, December 2006; see WSJ Law Blog). This inability to meet the diversity requirements of corporate clients creates new opportunities for women and minority owned firms to service corporate clients directly. Or, they can forge alliances with larger firms to help them satisfy corporate diversity needs, as did Gray Haile, a minority-owned corporate law boutique which established a strategic alliance with a large law firm (Day Pitney Forges Alliance With Minority Owned Firm, Connecticut Law Tribune, May 2007).

Carolyn has posted reviews and more excerpts at her blog, My Shingle. You can order a copy for yourself at Amazon, or ask your school library to get one. As current or former law students, we probably all know how hard it is to finish a major writing project while juggling everyday life and legal practice. Congrats, Carolyn!

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Full post as published by Ms. JD on February 09, 2008 (boomark / email).