Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners, Technology

How To Make Money As A Solo/Small Firm Attorney

There are hundreds of thousands of ways to fail at being a successful solo/small firm attorney, but very few ways to be successful.

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happy associate Biglaw bonus money tech laptop business casualYesterday, I read Above the Law’s Solo/Small Firm Compensation Report, and it made me sad. According to the survey results, a little more than a quarter of solos who responded make less than $50,000. It’s not clear how long those solos have been practicing, but regardless, making $50,000 a year while paying off student loans is tough. If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of solo/small firm attorneys out there, or contemplating the jump, here’s what I’ve learned on how to be successful.

A Law Firm Is a Business

If you started out in a law firm, you might have thought only about your billables or other metrics of accomplishment. Billables are just one ingredient to success. I remember when I was working at one firm, we upgraded to Windows 7 and one of the printers didn’t work. Someone had asked me to look into it. I spent about an hour trying to get it to work and reading blogs and being on hold with support. I figured I was being productive because I was doing something that I could bill to admin and I was chopping away at my hours requirement. My boss stopped me and told me it was a $200 printer and I bill my time at $250, so I just cost him $50.

That thought had not even crossed my mind because I had not given any thought to overhead, collections, or any other business considerations. When I first opened my practice, I was surprised how much time I wasted doing things like filling out proofs of service and arranging for the filing of pleadings and setting up client folders.

Take Advantage of Shortcuts and Tools

When you are a solo, you can’t get caught up in technical support or administrative nonsense. You need to think about how much net profit you are making every hour of the day. That is the only metric you need to keep in mind. Luckily, we live in a time where there are tools available to us to help relieve some of the burden of those administrative tasks and focus on that metric. The wheel didn’t make cavemen smarter hunters, but it made them better hunters in that they could do other tasks faster, and therefore spend more time focusing on hunting.

Likewise, you need to use tools to focus on building your practice. Need to fax something? Use an electronic fax to manage your faxes the same way you manage emails, instead of standing by the fax machine and waiting for that weird dial tone and waiting for a confirmation sheet that you now have to file somewhere. Need to fill out pleadings or jury instructions from a template? Try using practice management software tools like Clio or MyCase’s document assembly tools. Need to Bates stamp documents? Try using Adobe Acrobat’s Bates stamp feature.

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Work Smart

Being a successful solo means you have to be lean and agile, but also smart about marketing. There are tools for that too. I’ve written previously about building out your digital footprint to establish your presence on the web and to make an impression on potential clients who look you up on the web. I’ve also discussed how to be cost-efficient when running marketing campaigns online.

Think like your potential client base. Where are they? What are all of the sources that they use to get information? How can you get into those information sources, and what is the most cost effective way to do it? Obviously, a good portion of the population and potential client base watches TV, but you do not want to run TV ads as your main source of marketing. Likewise, when most people have specific questions, they’ll Google it, but you don’t need to spend a ton on Adwords, especially if you are just starting out. Put yourself into news streams of your potential client base by showing up in their social media feeds. Get a domain name and even the bare minimum of a website landing page. Getting a potential client to find you online is only half of the struggle. You also need them to like you enough to decide to hire you, so make sure that you have at least some type of online presence, even if it is simple and cheap to start.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of thousands of ways to fail at being a successful solo/small firm attorney, but very few ways to be successful. You can’t reach your full potential for being efficient without taking advantage of the tools that we have available today. So, spend some time learning about what’s available. What are you wasting time on? If you are spending a lot of time doing something, someone’s probably found out a way to save time on it. Taking some time to invest in learning these shortcuts can make a huge difference in your practice.

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Earlier: ATL’s Solo And Small Firm Compensation Report

Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner at the Law Office of Jeff Bennion. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of San Diego’s plaintiffs’ trial lawyers association, Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. He is also the Education Chair and Executive Committee member of the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section. He is a member of the Advisory Council and instructor at UCSD’s Litigation Technology Management program. His opinions are his own. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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