Small Law Firms

Brick and mortar is so last century. Nowadays, one can get an entire post-secondary education without ever leaving the comfort of home, including a law degree (no I’m not talking about Belmont) and an LLM. Then, with your degrees and fully developed agoraphobia in hand, you can move seamlessly into a fully virtual law practice […]

Welcome to the second installment of Under the Shingle, an occasional round-up of news and musings from the world of small firms and solo practitioners. In other words, you get a break from me — mostly. I’ve added a bit of play-by-play to explain and connect these links, which cover such topics as the intersection […]

America is often called the “Land of Opportunity.” To many, that means cashing in on one’s education, ideas and talent as soon as possible. The corollary is that we frequently assume that folks who aren’t rich are only so positioned because they failed at all their attempts to become rich. After all, actually turning down […]

In the good old days, an aspiring lawyer could just read the law under the tutelage of an existing member of the bar. Then, around the beginning of the twentieth century, the ABA and AALS teamed up to begin requiring that wannabe lawyers graduate from law school as a barrier to entry. This was, I […]

Any person who ever thought it would be noble to be a lawyer remembers the classic scene from To Kill A Mockingbird where poor Mr. Cunningham goes to pay Atticus Finch for his legal services: Mr. Cunningham: Mr. Finch, I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to pay you. Atticus: Let that be the […]

To borrow a line from Sharon Nichols, I judge you when you have a poor website. Like it or not, we live in a superficial world where your website is judged on a daily basis — and not just by me. Friends, colleagues, potential employees and most importantly potentially paying clients are all looking at […]

I’ve been appropriately chastised for writing this column from behind the protective wall of a pseudonym. Readers want to know who’s talking to them. As a reader, I get that. To the extent I did not get it, the point that was made very clear in the comments to my inaugural post: It’s hard to […]

Okay, so you’re not socially inept. I’d offer my congratulations, but being socially adept and willing to mingle is only part of the battle for a small firm attorney. It’s a necessary but not sufficient component of long-term success. (Remember all that necessary/sufficient crap from the LSAT? Yeah, me neither. It doesn’t matter.) What does […]

A recent study by economists at UC Berkeley gives employers a nice argument for keeping salaries a secret. Well, luckily for you, I’m not your employer. Therefore I have no qualms about sharing with you Part 2 of the results from our small-firm salary survey. In your emails following Part 1, many of you asked […]

We all knew it would come to this eventually. The legal profession — once reserved for studious minds who diligently ponder the most complex moral, ethical, and legal issues of the day — has been reduced to a collection of short-order cooks, who whip up documents instead of eggs and toast. Actually, that change probably […]

Over 650 of you responded to last week’s salary survey. In poring over the results, I learned several lessons: (1) Don’t make salary questions fill-in-the-blank. It creates a host of problems, including the inadvertent omitting/adding of zeroes, and makes data compilation and analysis unnecessarily difficult. (2) Do include open-ended “anything else” questions; people write all […]

My former practice at a small law firm was primarily commercial and residential real estate development. The week after my bar results came in, my boss gave me a stack of documents to read through and let me sit in on a couple of closings. I watched, listened and pretended to take notes. Then one […]

Biglaw salaries are no secret. You can find numbers all over the internet, including places like oh, I don’t know, Above the Law (not just the home page, but also the Career Center). But what about information for everyone else? You already know what I made during my time at a small firm, but that […]

We first mentioned this lawsuit, which was filed back in August, last month (second item). But so many of you have emailed us this AOL news story that we’ve decided to provide more detailed coverage. It’s a lawyer versus lawyer lawsuit, usually the ugliest kind of litigation. But the allegations made here are perhaps more […]

It shouldn’t be that hard to find a qualified legal secretary. Actually, in this market, you can probably find a J.D. who will gladly answer phones and make copies for the chance to do anything with “legal'” in the title. But the firm of Minor & Brown, a small law firm based in Denver, still […]

I like to think of this column as a conduit for information relevant to small firm practices. Given the variety of practice settings we’re lumping into the phrase “small law,” it’s important that you hear from people other than myself. I know, you’re crushed — me too. Toward that end, I’ll be interviewing small firm […]

Season 3 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA) premiered this week on Bravo. Why, you might ask, are we covering a reality show that features more catfighting and hair pulling than a prize-off between Kenneth Kratz and Jack Camp? Because the new season brought with it a new cast member who is not only […]

Managing expectations is a very important skill — when it comes to personal relationships, movie enjoyment, and, of course, dealing with your co-workers and clients. You need to know how to set boundaries. After you’ve pulled two all-nighters in a row, for example, it’s okay to tell the partner you work for that you just […]

Over the next year, LexisNexis is rolling out a completely redesigned research platform, and guess who they’re starting with? From the press release that came out Tuesday: LexisNexis… today announced the launch of Lexis® Advance for Solos – the first in a series of releases of new Lexis® Advance online legal research tools. Created through […]

Yes, yes it is. At least that’s what I gather based on the relative volume of commentary I received on the subject since the inception of this column about small law firms. I’ve been avoiding the topic, mostly because salary discussions usually degenerate into little richard-measuring contests but, in addition to the comment wars that […]