Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Margarita Coale to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
When I graduated from law school in 1999, I had no crystal ball to know what the future would hold for my legal journey. I did what many “traditional path” law students do — I clerked for a district judge and then joined a prestigious Biglaw practice that focused on restructuring. Since then, I’ve traveled to a smaller firm, taught, and started a solo practice. I’m very happy in my current solo practice, which focuses on representing romance novelists, science fiction authors, and podcasters, and I wanted to share some of the (many) lessons I have learned along the way.
Looking At The Greener Grass
The New Way Litigators Handle Depositions Applies AI Every Step Of The Way
Depositions by Filevine help with scheduling, tracking goals, and trial prep.
During my time at Biglaw I worked on some amazing cases and forged mentorships, friendships, and personal relationships that continue to this day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be flying all over the world to work on the restructuring of the century — the Enron bankruptcy.
Working for a 2,000-plus lawyer firm was a dream come true. While I do not regret joining a big international law firm and working countless hours during the six years I was there, it presented challenges personally and professionally. Was billing those hours something I wanted to do for the foreseeable future? Once the partnership track was looming, and I had to face a decision about whether to move, I had to ask myself: “Truthfully, do I see myself there in five years?” Pregnant with our second child, and mother to a toddler, I couldn’t see how I could make it happen. So, I decided to try something else. And this was the first time I “retooled.”
I found an opportunity to join the law faculty at a nearby, regional law school and was very excited to pursue it. My colleagues were great, and the work schedule was more flexible, but I found out that I missed law practice (shockingly). After a couple of years of teaching and the birth of our third child I was eager to return to court.
Looking for my next opportunity (and deciding whether to go back to Biglaw or not), I was invited to join a medium-size local law firm of Biglaw refugees. I was coming in to build and provide support to current firm clients and help with the restructuring and litigation department. The hours were more flexible, and clients were local. But not having practiced locally before, I found it challenging to have a thriving restructuring law practice without the steady flow of work from large Biglaw clients.
What Even Is AI ‘Competence’? It Depends.
Takeaways from a Legalweek panel on evolving malpractice risks.
Around the five-year mark at this firm a New York Times bestseller author approached me with a question about whether her contract with a publisher would be enforceable in bankruptcy. From this one case, an entire new law practice developed for me. Five years later I left my midsize firm. I now have my own solo IP practice, focused on author copyright issues and contracts, with over 60 clients. One of my client’s cases was the subject of a New York Times feature and has drawn a lot of interest in the IP bar — but it also was stressful, time-consuming, and personally challenging .
Just like falling in love, you have to make sure you fall in love with the same one over and over — and with law, I needed to do that too. I do not want to focus on the why I left Biglaw but on the pointers I wish someone had given me once I made the decision to go. The biggest challenge in all of these retoolings has been to identify specifically what I wanted and what I specifically needed to do to get there. Identifying “what you want” is a lot more elusive than what it may originally seem, and the grass really does always seem greener on the other side.
Five Lessons Learned
Here are the top 5 questions/considerations that you need to address when you are thinking about a change. Some I learned with trial and error — and some with a little pain as well.
Lesson 1: Make sure you understand what you NEED in your new venture before making the change. Ask yourself: Is the change I am making going to require me to learn new skills, or relearn what I had always taken as granted? For example, when I moved from Biglaw, I gave up 24-hour word processing, paralegals that would come to the office at any time, and Westlaw and Lexis access that was basically free. I “knew” I was giving up these support systems — but I had not thought through what that really meant in terms of how I would replace them. I realize now that I did not think enough about the basic logistics of what I need to succeed where I was going.
Lesson 2: You need a business plan and a network. You are excited about your new venture. But are potential clients? The question you have to ask yourself is: How am I going to develop clients to continue to grow my career and sustain my income? When I went from a national law practice to a more local one, I realized I had never even joined the local bar association. The lawyers I was practicing with and against had local networks they had developed. I did not, and I felt that put me at a big disadvantage. I had not considered the importance of this factor when I joined the smaller firm.
Lesson 3: How am I going to cover my basics and how do I allocate money to all the things I never thought about. How much do I want to earn? What about health care? What about malpractice insurance? When I decided to go solo I suddenly had to make tons of very practical decisions in these areas. Other issues to think about are whether you need to set up a client funds account, or how to pay franchise taxes.
Lesson 4: Am I making the right move? Did I ask the right questions when choosing where to go? Your choice is never just “stay here or go there.” You have more options than you think. Every time I have made a move I was reminded, in hindsight, about other options I could have considered — for example, when I began teaching, I simply failed to consider other practice options as alternatives where I could have kept on going serving clients and going to court.
Lesson 5: Does my move have potential, or is it the same wrapped in another package? Related to the business plan question above, you have to ask yourself: What are the growth opportunities in this new position — am I growing my practice or someone else’s? If I go to a smaller firm, am I just changing the name on the letterhead, or am I going to have opportunities to build “my clients” and “my practice”?
In Sum
In my search for a “perfect” fit I found myself not only retooling from Biglaw, but also retooling practice areas. I now feel that I have found the perfect fit — but it did not come without its own stresses and challenges. And it continues to bring up both big-picture questions (what are my goals, what do I need to get there) and highly practical ones about bank accounts, taxes, and the like. I hope that my experiences can be helpful to you as you travel on your journey in the law.
Margarita Coale is a solo practitioner in Dallas, focused exclusively on the representation of authors, and romance writers in particular. A love of romance novels is one of the few constants in her well-travelled, adventurous life. Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, she attended law school at the University of Texas, worked for several years at the white-shoe New York firm representing Enron in its epic bankruptcy filing, and then taught procedure and international law at the Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth. Her current practice grew out of her business-law work and has expanded to include writers worldwide on a host of commercial and intellectual property issues. “Mom” to four children (and wife to one more), she also involved in scouting, her children’s schools in various capacities and coordinates volunteers for the junior high and high school. She can often be heard speaking to her clients about their universes in negotiation for mystical babies and hopes in 2021 to be able to travel and visit family and finally rock climb her way through some mountains.