Solo Practice

How Good Solos Suffer When the Greedy Sell Out for $125 A Pop

Posted on March 15, 2010
Back in July, I denounced three Cincinnati, Ohio lawyers who shamelessly served as a front for a foreclosure solutions scam.  The lawyers never met with clients (who were going to lose their homes!) or did any work on their behalf; they merely signed their name to canned pleadings prepared by a so-called foreclosure solutions company for $125 a case (later upped to a whopping $150)...

Thank You, Justice Scalia for Remembering Who Pays (the Client!) for the Vanity Footnote

Posted on March 14, 2010
If you're a solo or small firm lawyer who litigates against biglaw, you're probably familiar with the vanity footnote -- that smug, yet entirely superfluous annotation to legislative history, obscure law review article, treatise or string citation included in many large firm briefs...

Sale of a Law Practice, Interview With Ed Poll & Lawyers at Midlife

Posted on March 12, 2010
Searching for fodder for blog posts, I came across this advertisement posted by a soon to be 70 year old retiring lawyer who is seeking buyers for his law practice located in Syracuse, in Hamilton County, Kansas.  According to the ad there are only two other lawyers in the County, thus allowing for a County-wide practice...

Big Ways for Small Firms to Grow Now

Posted on March 11, 2010
A few weeks back, I posted about several innovative business models that might work for small law firms.  Along those lines, yesterday's online issue of  Time Magazine offers eight quick and decidely twenty-first century tricks to grow a business in a down economy...

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To Win the Hearts and Minds of Consumers, Lawyers Need to Sell, Not Sue

Posted on March 04, 2010
To date, we lawyers haven't been able to effectively sell the public on the idea that document preparation services like Legal Zoom are a poor substitute for the services of a lawyer.  So, being lawyers, we've done the next best thing to selling:  suing...

Guest Post: State Bar Regulations on Lawyer Advertising

Posted on March 01, 2010
  The following is a guest post by Kelly Spradley, VP of Marketing and Sales at Impirus Legal Websites. Florida is not looking too sunny for lawyers today. The Florida Bar recently announced that Florida attorneys must put website testimonials, laudatory statements, and past results behind a disclaimer page...

Solo Blogosphere Round Up

Posted on March 01, 2010
1.  Lisa Solomon takes on Westlaw - It shouldn't take a detective to figure out the answer to one single question:  How much will WestlawNext cost?  Yet, apparently, it does and so my friend, Lisa Solomon of Legal Research and Writing pro has been investigating...

A Million Dollar Website

Posted on February 28, 2010
California mega law firm, Morrison Foerster is MoFo, and this (above) is its website.  Understandably, the site might confuse you since mofo has more widely recognized, colloquial meanings.  But Morrison Foerster ranks first in search for "mofo...

Solo Marketing Makeovers: What's Your Advice?

Posted on February 25, 2010
This month's ABA Journal features a piece on the results of marketing makeovers provided to three solos brave enough to bare their practices for all to see.  The article summarizes the advice given by two marketing experts to three different solos and follows up six months later to see how they're doing...

Would You Work on Spec? Why Should Your Logo Designer?

Posted on February 25, 2010
Back in my last year of law school, one of my friends who was still looking for permanent employment responded to an ad seeking a new associate for a three person law firm.  The firm's managing partner contacted my friend and they had a nice chat...

I Can Unbundle The Case, But I Can't Unbundle My Heart

Posted on February 22, 2010
I want to wholeheartedly embrace the concept of unbundled legal services, I really do.  After all, what's not to like?  The demand for affordable legal services is greater than ever.  With courthouses overrun by pro se litigants, even judges are advocating for unbundled legal services...

Help, My Virtual Assistant Is Turning Me Into A Moron!

Posted on February 21, 2010
I've always considered myself a "practical technology user," adept at mastering the latest and greatest on a strictly need to know basis.  For example, I still can't program a Tivo or download a movie on my ipod or operate the family Wii because I have no interest in the activities enabled those technologies...

Newbie Lawyers Sidelined in NALP-Biglaw Smackdown

Posted on February 18, 2010
I've never been a fan of NALP, the National Association of Legal Professionals.  So far as I've been able to tell, the organization focuses almost exclusively on supporting law school career offices in helping students get jobs at biglaw and promoting diversity within biglaw's ranks...

Who Loves You Solos? Dueling Videos - Join the ABA v. What You Don't Know About Solo Practice Can Hurt You

Posted on February 18, 2010
Last week, my colleague Susan Cartier Liebel posted on why the ABA's recent decision to slash dues for solos is too little, too late.  I agree.  While I appreciate the ABA for Solosez (and publishing the upcoming social media book I've co-authored with Niki Black), dues cuts or not, I won't join simply because the ABA spends too much money on political issues that I either don't agree with or which don't make a difference to most lawyers...

When You're the Boss, You Don't Beg For Work Life Balance. You Make It So.

Posted on February 15, 2010
Like every parent on the planet, I've told my daughters more times than I can remember some variation of the following: Yes, you can eat chocolate for dinner or stay up until three am or leave orange peels on the floor or [fill in the blank] when you have your own place and pay your own bills...

Attorneys Defending Bar Requirements Say that Lawyer Must Violate Them To Bring a Challenge

Posted on February 15, 2010
Princeton, New Jersey based solo, Ekaterina Schoenefeld did what every good lawyer is supposed to do:  she abided her state bar's ethics rules even though doing so cost her financially.   Though duly licensed in New York, Schoenefeld couldn't practice there...

Ideas for the Firm of the Future + One: Diversify Your Offerings

Posted on February 10, 2010
Via Dan Pinnington at Slaw.ca, I learned of Merrilyn Tarlton's excellent article, Figuring Out Your Place in the Race (ABA Law Practice Magazine, Jan/Feb. 2010).  Recognizing that technology advancements and economic upheaval have rendered extinct the high leverage business model, Tarlton predicts that "the future of the business of law is going to be about difference, not sameness...

Social Media or the Internet Alone Won't Help You Find A Job

Posted on February 08, 2010
Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan of social media, used ethically and responsibly.  Heck, I've got a book on  social media for lawyers with Niki Black that's coming out at the end of next month. As a shy person myself, I understand the appeal of social media:  it's easy...

Boutique Practice: Leaving the Land of Loss Leaders

Posted on February 04, 2010
The twenty-first century version of loss leaders, big-law style, is nothing more than old fashioned price cutting wars, observes Toby Brown at Three Geeks and a Law Blog.  A loss leader refers to a pricing strategy whereby a product is advertised below cost to lure customers in the hopes of selling them more profitable, big ticket items...

Return of the Part Time Shingle - February 18, 2010

Posted on February 04, 2010
The wildly popular The Part-Time Shingle Teleseminar is back. Carolyn Elefant, author of Solo By Choice and the blog, MyShingle and Julie Tower-Pierce, author of Staying at Home: Staying in the Law and the flexible lawyering blog, DarlingHill.com, are teaming up once again on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 12:30 p...

UPDATE - I lost my temper [I Should Be Banned from the Blogosphere? As If...]

Posted on February 03, 2010
UPDATE 2/4/10 - 7:45 am  Below is a post that I should not have written.  I let my temper get the better of me and attributed a view to a respected colleague, Mark Bennett, that I should not have.  Mark actually apologized in a comment, but I too am responsible...

Learning About the Future of Law From Our Kids

Posted on February 02, 2010
Yesterday, my thirteen year old came home from school and announced that her science teacher now requires all of the students to keep their materials - class notes, homework, handouts and the like - on Dropbox.  And so, my daughter and her classmates spent the most of the class uploading documents from their computers (probably half the kids have laptops, while the rest use school machines) or transferring them from GoogleDocs...

Ghostbusting in the Blogosphere: Is Ghostblogging Unethical & What's the Best Way to Deal With It?

Posted on February 01, 2010
Back in 2004, now my departed-from-the-blogosphere friend David Giacalone predicted that Ghostblogging Will Kill the Blogosphere.  In a thoughtful post that considered the issue from all sides, David criticized the ethics of ghost blogging and lamented that that mass produced, ghostblogs would be "devoid of the spark of life that has put magic into this way of communicating and created a community...

Fastlaw Makes FREE CaseLaw on the Spot a Reality!

Posted on January 30, 2010
To live in an era of wish fulfillment is an amazing thing.  That's exactly how I felt yesterday when I downloaded Fastcase's just released and 100 percent FREE legal research app for the iphone.  Yes, I can now search a full database of state and federal cases and statutes right on my phone for no cost...

Fastcase Makes FREE CaseLaw on the Spot a Reality!

Posted on January 30, 2010
To live in an era of wish fulfillment is an amazing thing.  That's exactly how I felt yesterday when I downloaded Fastcase's just released and 100 percent FREE legal research app for the iphone.  Yes, I can now search a full database of state and federal cases and statutes right on my phone for no cost...

Solo/Small Firm Round Up (Solicitors From Hell, Pay Gap), Upcoming Speaking and the Return of Lawagora

Posted on January 29, 2010
I hope to put up some more substantive posts next week, so in the interim, let me leave you with a couple of announcements and assorted news items. News Bag: So, you thought that Avvo's rankings system was bad? (for the record, I don't).  Well, if you did,  be glad that you don't practice in the UK where you'd have to deal with Solicitors from Hell...

My Trip Out [to] West: A Preview of WestlawNext

Posted on January 28, 2010
Earlier this week, I traveled to Thompson Reuters/West's headquarters in Eagan, Minnesota to preview, along with a group of other bloggers, a demonstration of the next generation of Westlaw, WestlawNext (go to the end of post for a round up of coverage)...

Welcome New York Times Visitors to MyShingle.com!

Posted on January 25, 2010
If you've come here via this New York Times story, welcome to MyShingle.com, a blog that's been inspiring solo, small firm and aspiring solo lawyers since December 2002 as well as highlighting the good that we do and making sure that we have a voice in the issues that impact the legal profession...

The Importance of Getting Out in The World: How A Lawyer Found an Oprah-Worthy Case on a Trip to Staples

Posted on January 25, 2010
Imagine wandering into Staples to purchase office equipment for your new law firm and emerging with a client whose case would eventually land you in Oprah's O Magazine.  Sounds far fetched, but that's what happened to Southern California based lawyer Brian Kramer who represented Sean Means, a Staples clerk, in his legal battle to secure his rights to the Duke Trust, established by tobacco and energy tycoon James Duke...

Booked Solid: Social Media 4 Lawyers Done, On To Solo by Choice - The Next Edition

Posted on January 22, 2010
It's been quiet at MyShingle this week because I've been booked solid, quite literally.  This week, I was immersed in the second and final draft of A Lawyer's Guide to Social Media for the ABA which I'm co-authoring with my friend and colleague, Niki Black (who'd already completed her edits on schedule, the week before)...

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