SmallLaw Clients (And Why They're Better Than Biglaw Clients)

If you’re thinking about making the leap to SmallLaw, the chance to work with interesting people doing interesting things is yet another reason to take the leap.

People still in Biglaw always ask me about clients. Where do you get them? Who are they? Are they all pro bono? I won’t be answering the first question in today’s column, but I’ll be answering the second. (And I guess I can go ahead and answer the third: no! The ATL bucks are big, but they’re not enough to pay for this tiny office, the secondhand furniture, all the running shoes I go through, etc.)

I’ve written before about dream SmallLaw clients. But who are the actual clients you get in SmallLaw?

Whether you’re a corporate lawyer like me or a litigator, you’ll probably get a lot of small businesses and medium to high net worth individuals. In fact, it’s very possible you’ll meet more millionaires in SmallLaw than you did as an associate in Biglaw, at least in terms of the clients. Some folks have spent millions of dollars trying to get their business off the ground. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be eager to pay Biglaw fees for matters that can be handled by you.

Whether it’s true or not you’ll meet more millionaires, it’s safe to say you’ll meet more interesting people, if only because the people at the top tend to be more interesting than the people in the middle. (Sorry, middle folks.) With almost every client, you’ll be dealing directly with the CEO or the general counsel. Not like in Biglaw when you’re always corresponding with fellow mid-level associates, whether at an investment bank or another law firm. Some of the people you’ll talk to will have Wikipedia pages (the folks who are my age or younger and have pages that run several sections long give me pangs of inadequacy that last throughout the day). Not many mid-level associates at investment banks have Wikipedia pages. Note I’m not necessarily saying that when you have a Wikipedia page you’re a big deal. (Case in point.)

Also, there are a lot of clients out there who prefer to have a lean and hungry attorney, even if they can easily afford Biglaw. There are entrepreneurs who, even after they have built their businesses into a mini-empire (or maybe even not “mini” at all), still see themselves in David vs. Goliath terms. I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates in the 1990s when Microsoft was first starting to be on the business end of actions from the DOJ Antitrust Division, and he said that he wasn’t that far removed from the days when Microsoft was in a garage, and it was hard for him to get his head around the notion that now Microsoft could be accused of being large enough to stifle competition. It may not even occur to somebody like that to use a Biglaw firm for a matter.

You might even get a few Fortune 500 companies. Before I opened my practice, I was talking with a SmallLaw practitioner to get his advice and I mentioned that since all of the clients I worked with in Biglaw were big companies, I wasn’t going to be able to take any of them with me. He replied, “But they could give you a piece.”

That turned out to be true. Just because a company is a large company doesn’t mean they are going to exclusively rely on Biglaw for every last one of their legal needs. Biglaw is good for a few things — matters that need a response quickly, matters a client would rather have drawn out for many years, big deals that require an important name on the cover (for some reason no one thinks my name is important), sexual harassment — and a few things only. Everything else SmallLaw can handle, particularly if something like a proxy statement or a large lawsuit is tying up the in-house counsel team.

Sponsored

On a few matters you’ll probably work in tandem with Biglaw firms. They might be in charge of something that requires a lot of bodies, and you might be in charge of some discrete aspect of the case that is for whatever reason better farmed out (typically at the request of the client).

Regardless, there are plenty of clients out there waiting for an attorney just like you to come along, and if you’re thinking about making the leap to SmallLaw, the chance to work with interesting people doing interesting things is yet another reason to take the leap.


Gary J. Ross opened his own practice, Jackson Ross PLLC, in 2013 after several years in Biglaw and the federal government. Gary handles corporate and compliance matters for investment funds, small businesses, and non-profits, occasionally dabbling in litigation. You can reach Gary by email at Gary.Ross@JacksonRossLaw.com.

Sponsored