Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners, Technology

How I Managed To Succeed As A Solo Practitioner

Entitled lawyers, stop your whining; nobody owes you anything.

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I just read Shannon’s article from last week about solo practice (and the comments, which got pretty weird pretty fast). It was a familiar story. I have been a solo for a little over three years now. There certainly are lawyers who make more money than I make, but for most of the last three years, I have been so busy that I refer away most of the cases that come my way. I have watched a lot of my lawyer friends who have different personalities and different skills meet the legal market with varied success. Here’s what I have learned as a solo, as someone who has worked in a firm, and as an employer:

Understand That No One Owes You Anything

I went to a top-ranked university for undergrad. I got into the highest-ranked law school in my area so that I could keep my part-time job at a 200-lawyer law firm. I felt poised to make good money as a lawyer. After law school, I went to work for a small but successful business litigation firm. It was successful because my boss understood that the practice of law is still a business. When I passed the bar, I came into the office Monday morning and had a talk with my boss about how much more money he was going to have to pay me now. His response was that he was not going to pay me anything more at all because my value to him had not changed. I quit a few weeks later and opened up my own practice, using that talk as one of the foundations of my practice.

Let me explain….

So many new lawyers look at salary statistics and salary guides to determine what they should be paid. There is no amount that you should be paid. If you want to work for someone else, here is the only employment figure you should use to calculate your salary:

Salary = $(my worth to my firm) – [$(the administrative expense of keeping me employed) + $(the amount of profit my firm plans of making off me)].

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You got a good grade in Con Law II? Congratulations, so did a lot of people. You were on the Moot Court board? Great, we’ll let you know if we have a fake problem that comes up on appeal that is written so either side could win. The bottom line is this: if you don’t bring in business or don’t help retain business by helping existing clients win, it doesn’t matter how hard you worked to pass the bar because you are not worth a lot yet. I don’t condone employers paying $8 an hour (or less) because they can, but at the same time, young lawyers should not come out of law school feeling like they are entitled to a large salary.

So many lawyers I have talked to complain about how unfair it is that they worked so hard and they deserve more money. The question is who do they “deserve more money” from? No one is going to come to your office and say, “Oh, you went to X school and worked really hard and got into X law school and got the high grade in Contracts? Here is a monthly monetary reward for working so hard in the past.” Look at the above formula. If you want to increase your salary, you can either increase your worth to the firm, decrease your administrative expense, or talk your boss into making less money off of you. I recommend increasing your worth.

How To Be Worth More

Let me back up a bit with a story. In the 1800s, about 300,000 people came to California because some gold flakes were found at Sutter’s Mill. Most of those gold seekers left broke. Only a few people got really rich off the gold dream. Those were mostly the companies that learned to take advantage of the environment, like Levi Strauss.

To illustrate the point, here is the Sutter’s Mill property today:

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Here is the Levi Strauss headquarters today:

Levi Strauss & Company made more money because they decided, instead of being one of the 300,000, they were going to find a way to stand out and provide value to the 300,000. History repeats itself – there are about 250,000 lawyers in California right now chasing the dream of striking it rich with the same varied success that people had 150 years ago. So how can we learn from other people’s mistakes to enhance our legal careers?

Operating under no illusion that anyone owed me anything, I opened my practice looking for the best way to stand out and take advantage of the environment to make money. I thought about where the legal community is now, where it will be in 10 years, and then decided to plot out my niche. I realized that lawyers are really bad at technology, but they were being forced to evolve because of e-discovery amendments to the FRCP, advancements in trial technology, and new software that was making the practice of law more efficient. I saw that lawyers, especially senior litigators who needed it the most, were really bad at technology. I wagered that the incorporation of technology into the practice of law was only going to grow exponentially, thus creating a larger rift each year between where attorneys are and where they need to be with technology. It turned out I was right. Technology = Levi Strauss, and the 250,000 lawyers = the 300,000 gold seekers.

The Good News

That gap between where litigators need to be and where they are continues to grow wider. I’ve already done the math for you and found a niche that needs to be filled. If you want to be an e-discovery consultant or a litigation technology ace, there is room for you. The other good news is that you can use these principles and increase your value in your current field too. Technology will continue to permeate all aspects of litigation. Learn how understanding properly drafted e-discovery can make or break your case. Learn how to use the built in litigation tools in Adobe Acrobat to work more effectively. Learn how to use graphics to be more persuasive.

I don’t just sit around and write macros for Word and lecture other attorneys about native file productions all day – I use as many tools as I can in all of the cases I handle to work more effectively, and that increases my value to the people who hire me. I attended an MCLE last weekend with a panel of people who decided they wanted to advance their careers by forcing themselves to learn technology and then pointing out to their employers all the ways they can operate more efficiently. It’s worked for them, just like it’s worked for me.

The bottom line is that being able to keep up with technology trends will make you a more valuable associate or a more successful solo and the need for keeping up with this trend will only grow.

Earlier: A Solo Practitioner’s Cautionary Tale

Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at jeff@trial.technology.

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