Small Law Firms

We’re Talking About Practice (Areas)

In Small Law, you can control everything about your practice. Why not choose whatever practice area you'd like?

By  
on

Life isn’t really like a box of chocolates. It’s more like a game of Plinko. You’re always moving. Even when it feels like you’re standing still, you’re moving. If you keep doing what you’re doing, it’s going to make it harder to do something else. To take one example: if I keep practicing law for a living, it’s going to be harder and harder to fulfill a dream of being Batman. (Fortunately, I have no dream of being Batman.)

In Biglaw, you have some control over where you start out. In law school, I enjoyed my third-year Securities Regulation class, so I became a securities attorney. When I was applying to law firms after graduation and was sending out résumés, sometimes firms would tersely reply, “Litigation or corporate?” and I quickly discovered, “Either, I just need a job!” wasn’t considered an acceptable answer. (Neither was, “Well, where are you hiring?”)

But also in Biglaw, you don’t really have a lot of control over where you end up. During law school I had a callback interview at a large firm that shall remain nameless, but for the sake of the story I’ll call it “Cadwalader.” The open position was in an area in which I had no interest. Kim Kardashian-level no interest. I did, though, have an interest in paying off my student loans, so I prepped diligently and had my questions ready. Google had led me to believe a good interview question was asking the interviewer what it is about this practice area that drew him (or her) to it.

Google was wrong. After I asked that question of the first partner, he immediately went from fake nice to not-fake upset. He started talking fast and told me it’s not a choice and you actually have very little control over where you wind up and you go wherever the firm needs you and that’s that. Then he ended the interview and out the door I went. I went through the rest of the day’s round, but really I might as well have left the building right then and there and hopped a flight back to Chicago.

That might be true in Biglaw. It doesn’t have to be true in SmallLaw. In SmallLaw, you get to choose, and it doesn’t even have to be anything you’ve done before. Say tonight I finally have that Batman dream. Tomorrow morning I could wake up and start calling myself the Batman lawyer, and no one could do anything about it but DC Comics’ IP attorneys.

Of course, as a newly minted Batman lawyer I might have trouble getting clients, since I do not have a Batman lawyer background. So how would I get clients and establish myself in Batman law?

People often say writing an article in a certain area will go a long way towards establishing yourself in that practice area. In my experience, that is much easier said than done. I banged out an article while I was writing this column (double-fisting!), but the subject was squarely within my practice area. Writing an article about a subject that is not within your practice area is very hard (or at least making it good enough so that someone is going to want to publish it is). After a while in your practice area, people are going to ask you to write — the ABA asked me to write the article I keep turning back to while I’m writing this — so then you’re skipping the whole article-submission gauntlet. What are the odds I’m going to be able to pump out an article on Batman law good enough to get into a Batman law journal, when I’m competing against people who — for the sake of argument — have been practicing Batman law all their lives? And if I can’t write an article, then what do I do?

Sponsored

Then I get experience in the area, and I get it however I can. I haven’t written about doing work for free yet (newsflash: I’m against it!), but if one wants to break into a new practice area and control that Plinko chip, there may not be any other choice. Other ways to move into an area include helping out an established attorney with whatever she needs, or simply paying the attorney to tell you as much as she can in an hour. (I’ve had a couple of attorneys hire me for this, and I can report they will make you keep talking every second of those 60 minutes!)

So go for it. Whatever you want to do in this one life you get, do it. Go to SmallLaw, make it happen. Control the Plinko!

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

Topics

, , , , ,