Last month, I saw the future of law — and it wasn’t at Tech Show. Rather, it was at a panel on hanging a shingle that I was honored to moderate, held in a sparsely populated classroom at Drexel Law School in Philadelphia the last week in March.
The future that I saw at that
This past summer, I twice spoke about how hyper-local lawyering can save solos from the demise-by-automation predicted by Richard Susskind in the End of Lawyers. The long arm of technology may be powerful but it lacks the dexterity to crack local markets as effectively as personal relationships. Plus, lawyers have traditionally acted as pillars
A lawyer’s advice may be his stock in trade, to quote a famous solo, Abraham Lincoln. But today, the reverse is apparently true: “legaladvice” is nothing more than a trade name (and a generic one at best) for aspiring lawyerpreneurs to stock up on.At least, that seems to be the view held by two lawyer-preneurs
I wrote the foreword for Kimberly Alderman’s new book, the
Freelance Lawyering Manual in the hopes that law firms on one hand, and unemployed attorneys and re-entering parents on the other will take a fresh look at freelance lawyering in the 21st century.
Unlike most things in law — and life, freelance lawyering, represents a
Sometimes, it just plain sucks being a solo. (Yes, you actually read that at MyShingle!)
Not only must solos suffer the indignity of getting paid less in cases where they outperform their big firm colleagues, but in many instances, solos also pay more for products and services than larger firms. Call it the solo tax.
So, I’m not sure what it was about my post last week, Take Back the Law, that lead a few commenters to suggest that I favor the status quo. I mean, I suppose the fact that I didn’t use buzzwords like entrepreneur (because I’m not, really) or enthusiastically promote unbundled virtual law practice
Yesterday, while shopping in WholeFoods (a reward to myself after a particularly grueling week consisting largely of take-out), I noticed several prominently displayed signs touting local produce. Though the Whole Foods stores in my area have carried local produce for some time, what made this display particularly interesting is that the sign disclosed both the
Clifford Winston, an economist at Brookings continues to gain mainstream media coverage for his new book, First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers in which Winston and his co-authors argue that non-lawyers can do the same job as lawyers only faster, cheaper and – in many instances better. In that respect, Winston may
Like most solos who compete with big firms, my sweet spot is my ability to offer potential clients exceptional value — high quality work, longstanding experience and industry contacts, a seamless experience through use of technology and an assurance that clients will always deal directly with me and not a low level flunky. Of course,
Last week, the WSJ Law Blog highlighted this story reporting on South Dakota’s push to bring more lawyers to rural parts of the state. As you’d expect, the shortage arises as a result of the older lawyers in rural communities nearing retirement in combination with the departure of younger lawyers for opportunities in larger towns