This post from January 2015 at Above the Law  questions why solos and small firms pay associates so little. Initially, the answer seemed self evident to me: sadly, some solos and smalls are just plain cheap, while others need the help but simply don’t have sufficient resources to bring someone on board. (In case, you’re wondering, Lee Rosen says that the $300,000 mark is when a new hire makes sense financially).

Still, there are other reasons that firms may not want to pay associates much. Newer lawyers require training and once provided, the associate might move on to another position. Some firms may want to encourage associates to generate business, so they’ll keep the base salary low but offer bonuses for business to incentivize associates to engage in client development.

What I wonder is whether there’s some kind of a middle ground between paying newbie slave labor and attempting to match a big law salary.

I’ve long been a fan of free consultations for a couple of reasons. First, given the importance of the attorney-client relationship, it never made sense to put up obstacles  to clients seeking to vet different attorneys by forcing them to shell out a couple of hundred bucks for each meeting. Second, for some practices – like personal injury – free consults are so widely entrenched that lawyers may suffer a competitive disadvantage if they don’t offer them. Third, although free consultations date back to when time began, they’re also consistent with the 21st Century concept of Freemium where you give away some milk in hopes that it will persuade takers to buy the cow. (As it turns out, only between one and three percent will ). Finally, for lawyers starting out, free consults can be a learning experience.

Still, it’s articles like this one that may make you want to reconsider those free consultations. The piece, entitled How to Find Free Legal Advice for Your Business by Steve Gillman encourages businesses to seek out small lawyers who offer free consultations as a way to find free advice:
Finally, there are probably some lawyers near you who offer a free initial consultation of 30 minutes or more. That may not be enough to resolve your matter, but you’ll at least have a better idea how to proceed. Prepare for your initial consultation thoroughly, so you can get to the point quickly and get as much out of the meeting as possible.
Gillman even instructs readers on how to find firms that offer free legal advice by either calling and asking or simply Googling “lawyer free consultation” and the name of your city. 

When I couldn’t get a response from a medical provider after I’d written a lengthy complaint more than two months earlier, I did what any disgruntled consumer would do: I took it to Twitter. Cognizant of the possibility of a defamation claim ( been there, done that ) not to mention loss of my family’s privacy, I limited my tweets to a generic remark and a request for information to the facility’s ombudsman’s office. Still, my tweets did the trick and within 24-hours, I received two prompt replies along with an apology.

So I got to wondering, what if clients decided to do the same. For all of the thousands of words, and hundreds of hours that regulators have devoted to “protect” lawyers and clients alike from the “dangers” of lawyer review sites or endorsements or client testimonials, all it really takes is 140 characters to render those opinions meaningless. Because there’s simply no way to prevent dissatisfied clients from taking to Twitter to criticize their lawyers, or to keep them from praising their lawyers either.

Increasingly consumers are taking to Twitter to air all kinds of grievances. Why should we expect them to adopt a different approach when it comes to service providers? The short answer: we can’t. So instead of scaring lawyers off social media fora – or making it so complicated that they throw up their hands and outsource engagement to third parties – we should be encouraging them to participate because that’s what their clients are doing. 

You’ve got to applaud Austin, Texas based lawyer, Lee DiFilippo.

Whereas many attorneys with experience in corporate transactions, not to mention a CPA degree in their back pocket might focus on representing Fortune 500 companies or sexy business start-ups, DiFilippo set out to assist moderate income folks in the state of Texas obtain access to courts. Yet in spite of DiFilippo’s willingness to offer unbundled legal services and affordable flat fees, he couldn’t find enough takers for his services, as he describes in his Testimony to the Commission on the Future of Legal Services on February 5, 2015.

According to DiFilippo, he first attempted to launch his firm through own grassroots marketing efforts, visiting local community centers, churches and YMCAs. When these efforts failed to yield a critical mass of clients, DiFilippo went to the source, reaching out to various legal aid organizations seeking referrals. Two of the groups were, according to DiFilippo, reluctant to refer limited scope clients to a private attorney, while one of the legal aid groups did not even have a formal referral program. Meanwhile, another group said that it could not refer limited scope clients to lawyers unless they were on a bar association-sponsored referral list.

Undeterred, DiFilippo reached out to the State Bar of Texas asking it to create a referral list so he could receive legal aid referral but as yet, he has had no response. Finally, DiFilippo stumbled across an article by Wayne Moore, a long-time purveyor of unbundled services (so much so that he doesn’t appear to have much internet presence!) who offered to assist DiFilippo in achieving his goals.

Still, search the web and you won’t find DiFilippo’s story or others like his. Instead, you’ll find the ABA President touting the potential for creating a limited license legal technician (sort of the equivalent of nurse practitioners in the medical profession). And you’ll also find lawyers – and indeed, the entire profession – castigated by non-practicing attorneys for our failure to unequivocally embrace the LLLT model. 

Like the entrepreneurialclients it serves, Washington D.C.-born Innovista Legal is taking a new risk just a few months after its September launch, moving to a 3000-square foot space in Richmond Virginia, reports Richmond Biz Sense. There, the firm will occupy the first commercial space in a mixed-use building.  Although the article doesn’t say what…

Last week, I found myself over at the law library, for the first time in more than a year.  That wouldn’t have been true back in the mid-90’s when I started my firm. Back then, LEXIS cost 600 bucks a month for a dozen searches, and the law library with its digests and bound CCH reporters and (eventually) a free Westlaw Kiosk, was a lifeline for my fledgling practice. Today, my legal research bills run about $250/month between various subscription services (Lexis included) for most of what I need on a daily basis.

Still, every so often as was true last week, I face a coverage gap that necessitated a trip to the library. And my has it changed. The free Westlaw kiosk is no longer – with the transition to Westlaw Next, it’s become too costly to offer Westlaw gratis, explained the librarian. Meanwhile, the library no longer subscribes to hard copies of various reporters, or updates treatises because it’s presumed that these resources can be had online. And yes that’s true – but at what cost?

In an era where we’re supposedly seeing “advancements” in legal research, premium research services any more accessible or affordable than it was a decade ago. In fact, if my experience is any indication, these services have become proportionally more expensive while basic research services for locating state and federal case law have come down. Yet, how many tools do lawyers really need to research case law? Today, we have Fastcase and Google Scholar as leaders of free legal research, plus newcomers like Ravel Law that generate results in a different way to Casetext, which crowdsources legal commentary.   

As I’ve discussed before, my personal experience with Uber has been mixed. No doubt, due to Uber, DC taxis have stepped up their game and these days, I can typically catch a cab more quickly than waiting for Uber to arrive and pay by credit card to boot.

Yet my perspective doesn’t matter because I’m raising a generation of F-UBERs – future Uber users. Both of my daughters have the Uber app on their smart phones. Which means that my college freshman didn’t have to wait 30 minutes in the freezing cold in an unsafe part of town for the next college shuttle to ride back to campus but instead, could hail an Uber for a $6 ride. Nor will she ever understand the concept of “mad money” – that $20 bill that we ’80s gals stuffed in a pocket or shoe or bra – to be extracted to pay for a cab if our dates got drunk or “fresh.” As for my younger daughter, we’re experimenting with Uber as a stand-in for days when she can’t take the bus and my schedule won’t allow me to pick her up. 

If you’re like me, you’ve probably attended dozens of networking events or continuing legal education (CLE) panels and thought to yourself, I could do better. Whether it’s choosing a more interesting speaker or coming up with new activities or just having a decent spread of food, most of us could probably come up with some really cool networking events.

Yet even with a compelling idea, obstacles abound. With most bar associations, new suggestions, particularly from newbies are met with the universal mantra of we’ve-never-done-it-that-way-before or that-won’t-work or let’s-run-it-up-the-chain-of-command. You could of course host your own event, but then you need to find a space. Most law firm or virtual office conference rooms aren’t very large, can be expensive (if priced on a per diem basis), have all the charm of a solitary confinement chamber and may be off limits after-hours. Restaurants or coffee shops can’t always guarantee a private room, can be noisy and mean that any organized event will revolve around the meal.   

The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.
—John Bingham

In the dozen years I’ve blogged here, I’ve sung the praises of solo practice – the unexpected surprises, the enormous opportunity, and the satisfaction that flows from doing work that matters  or makes you feel alive or like dancing a jig.

For those in my audience avid to start a law firm, my words reinforce an decision you’ve already made. And for the unemployed, the graduates who’ve never found jobs or the otherwise desperate who come to solo practice not by choice but necessity, my blog offers hope that there just may be a a future in the law for you through solo practice if you want it badly enough. These readers – the determined and the nothing-left-to-losers – are easy to help.

But there’s a third group – the stuck and the trapped who face obstacles – either real (like being $500,000 in debt or staring down your kids’ $60,000 tuition bill) or imagined – that make it tough, even impossible to get started. And until my own personal misfortune, I simply didn’t fully realize that a rah rah, cheerleader attitude or even sheer force of will aren’t enough to overcome real fears that hold us back. Like the fear that life as a solo can never live up to the prestige of being a big law partner. Or financial fear that triggers survival mode, such that you don’t feel that you can do anything else than put one foot in front of the other, focused on the next fee, the next contract job, the next paycheck or the next tuition or loan payment, feeling so trapped on the hamster-wheel of life that you don’t have the energy to lift your eyes to the stars.

Updated – 1/30/2015

A few days ago, a question appeared on the Solosez Listserve, inquiring whether a promotional strategy – whereby individuals referred to a firm by an existing client would be entered into a drawing for a gift card upon coming in for a free consultation – passed ethical muster.

Happily, everyone who responded recognized that the strategy violates legal ethics prohibitions on giving something of value in exchange for a referral. Or in colloquial terms, lawyers can’t buy clients whether the currency comes in the form of dollars, gift cards or meals. Here are some of ethics decisions that I founded up on this point.