At the end of week two, I am feeling pretty good about being a solo attorney. I don’t have a ton of new work yet, but I knew that I wouldn’t have a bunch in the first months. I feel like I’ve done better in these weeks than I expected to.
Clients aren’t beating down the doors, but I’ve got some
I’ve managed to get a few clients already. I’m not yet to the point where I am meeting with new clients every day and getting new work pinned down on a regular basis, but I do feel like I am at a pretty comfortable spot between getting clients and actually doing the work that they are hiring me to do.
Obviously, I’d like to have more work than I knew what to do with, but at this rate I don’t doubt that the time will come when I am turning away work. What a glorious problem to have.
Part of being a new lawyer is learning how to efficiently do lawyering
I know the process for a lot of labor law and business law because I was doing that in my previous job. I can sit down and do that stuff without thinking about it. But I remember a while ago when I had to think about that stuff.
That thinking about the process and learning what to do is a lot more prevalent in my life right now because I am taking on a lot of work that I have never had the opportunity to do before, which takes up a lot more of my time than what it should. But that is ok. As a new solo, I don’t have any real issue with taking a lot more time than what I think it really should to do one task or another, because I know that I am figuring out how the process works and I am spending a lot of time in the books looking for the right way to do what I need to do.
Pricing for newbies
It was suggested that while starting out I quote a price that seems reasonable for the work I am doing, either by asking how much another lawyer would charge for the service or by calculating how long I think it should take and charging my hourly rate for that amount of work. By how long I think it should take, I mean how long would an experienced solo take to do the work. Once I set a flat fee for the work it doesn’t matter, at least in terms of the client, how long I take to do the job. I can spend 4 hours reading the Family Code on a case that should really only take 4 hours total if I am charging a flat fee.
The other suggestion I was given with this system is track the time it takes me every time. By tracking the time I can figure out what I am getting better at and what I need to work on, and what areas of law I might not need to practice because they truly take up more of my time than what I am charging for them. I like having a good Case Management System to do this so that I can track time easily, without actually charging the client for the time.
Amazed at how nice attorneys seem to be to new attorneys
I had a case come into the office yesterday that was turned away by another attorney. I called the other attorney and introduced myself and told him I was thinking of taking this case on, and asked him for information about the case. He was more than willing to help me and to give me his thoughts on the case. Then we spent another 10 minutes talking and getting to know each other.
This has been my experience with all of the lawyers that I have talked to, even some that were opposing counsel at the time. I don’t know if it is just Jefferson County or if this is the way the local bar works in every community, but I am really impressed at how lawyers are so willing to be collaborative and kind to other attorneys, especially new attorneys in Jefferson County.
Lawyering support
I got involved with a Slack channel (LawyerSlack) for lawyers a few months ago run by Keith Lee of Associate’s Mind. The channel has been an enormous help. Friends that know I am involved with the LawyerSlack, make fun of me for spending time on “Facebook for Lawyers”, but they don’t understand the value of having the collective knowledge and experience of a couple hundred other lawyers from around the country living in my browser. Before going solo I ran the idea by LawyerSlack and talked to them about the pitfalls of being a new solo. This group has been a huge help for my new practice, and has probably helped my sanity over the last few months because I’ve had a forum to bounce ideas off of and get tips of the trade from. Who knew that chatting on the internet would actually be a useful thing?