Regular readers know that MyShingle is all about original content, all the time, almost always authored by me rather than guest posters (though I’m always open to high-quality submissions).  But when a recent bout with the flu rendered me at less than full-capacity for over a week, I’ve had no choice but to revise my standards to keep the lights on here at MyShingle.  And so rather than original content, I’ve decided to refer you to an outstanding and detailed series on  Networking 101 published by recent ABA Blawg 100 Business of Law  category winner, Lee Rosen’s Divorce Discourse.

Of course, old habits die hard and I couldn’t quite bring myself to use my blog as a mere pass through for someone else’s content, notwithstanding the outstanding quality. So instead, I’ve decided to add a little twist by sponsoring a review program to test the effectiveness of Divorce Discourse’s networking program on the ground.  Of the expected results of networking, Lee  writes  (and I tend to agree) that:
 This is the point at which I should say something like this: networking is a time-consuming and lengthy process from which you shouldn’t expect immediate results. That’s what most writers and speakers on networking tell you early on in the discussion. They’re wrong.

Networking can—and usually does—have immediate results. You’ll often generate new clients from your networking activities in the first week or so of getting out and meeting new people. It’s always surprising to me how the first or second person you meet has a client, friend, or relative in need of your services. I’ve watched it happen time after time. You shouldn’t be disappointed if your networking takes a few weeks or months to pay off, but you’d better be prepared for new business to walk through the door immediately. It happens all the time.
But is it true in practice?  Let’s find out.  I am offering THREE MyShingle readers $125 each to follow Lee’s networking program and test out whether a week’s worth of lunches, breakfasts or coffees can make a real difference in business generation and your law firm’s bottom line.  The program works as follows:

So, I’m finally back to work and blogging after some highly aggressive bout of flu or sinusitis knocked me off my feet for almost five days.  When my symptoms reached the point where I felt too nauseous and feverish to leave my bed, I knew that it was time to seek medical help. As has been the case for the past year, I didn’t even consider calling one of the doctors listed with my health care plan – the office isn’t particularly convenient and in any event, wasn’t open on Sunday. Instead, I had my husband drive me around the corner to an urgent care clinic that opened in our neighborhood last year.   Staffed by a friendly, hardworking, young doctor and a few aides, the clinic is open twelve hours a day, seven days a week and features walk-in service.  For the past year, it’s been my family’s go-to place for sprains, colds, physicals and other healthcare needs.

Although I experienced a bit of a wait, I was glad to see this young doctor’s risk was paying off. Moreover, his apparent success offers many lessons for lawyers, particularly those just starting out.  First, even though this doctor isn’t part of a corporate brand like the CVS Minute Clinic (located just a quarter of a mile from his office), he’s able to compete both because he’s a doctor and offers personal touches that the Minute Clinic doesn’t – like calling patients the next day to follow up and see how they’re doing and keeping records so that patients don’t have to fill out lengthy forms for repeat visits.  While the doctor’s clinic doesn’t have the same advertising reach as the Minute Clinic, he’s been very effective in getting the word out through Yelp (a sign in the office displays a link to where patients can post positive AND negative review).  In fact, the day that I was in the office, a woman from South Carolina in town for business told me she’d found the office through the positive testimonials online.  Plus, the doctor’s work ethic doesn’t hurt either; every time I’m in the office, at least one other person will marvel at how the doctor can work an 80-hour week.

The lesson here? The advantages that the doctor brings over the Minute Clinic  are the same that a real live lawyer offers over Legal Zoom (and in fact, Minute Clinic can  issue prescriptions while LZ can’t practice law). Consumers can appreciate the difference.

As the saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun.  What law profs and thought-leaders tout as “the future of law” — from non-lawyer representation or nonlawyer ownership of firms  and form-based, assembly-line style or virtual law practices (for the record, not all virtual practices follow this model) — have their roots in legacy models that the legal profession discarded as unworkable or unacceptable both for lawyers and clients.

How do I know? Because it’s all documented in one of the most important books I’ve read on the future of law this year, Jerome Carlin’s Lawyers on Their Own; ironically, a book that focuses  on the past.  Based on individual interviews with dozens of solos, Carlin describes the conditions of practice encountered by solo practitioners in Chicago in 1958. While much has changed since then, much remains the same.  But what’s troubling is that many of the aspects of solo practice which have improved are the same ones that many of today’s legal futurists endorse or seek to replicate.

For example, back in the era that Carlin studied, lawyers faced competition from non-lawyers. In fact, back then, non-lawyer controlled business models (alternative business structures or ABS in today’s parlance) were fairly common, albeit on an informal basis.  Banks, not law firms, prepared most wills and performed estate planning directly in competition with lawyers.  (Carlin, Ch. 2)  Or, banks might farm legal work out to lawyers, — but only on the condition that the lawyer named the bank as executor – which might not be in the client’s best interest.   I’ve not seen any evidence that more folks in 1958 had wills than today or were better served by bank-controlled lawyers.  Yet, today, we lawyers are told that we ought to abandon the “old” in favor of the older.

Likewise, many of yesterday’s solos handled unbundled matters.  In fact, there existed a separate set of personal injury  lawyers who did nothing but negotiate with insurance companies, making demands but never taking cases to trial.  When trials couldn’t be avoided, these lawyers referred the work to more reputable firms but mostly, never attracted this work to begin with.  Likewise, many solos handled volume work like collections, which largely involved filling out and filing various forms.  (Carlin, Ch. 2)  Yet back then, solos handling these types of matters were regarded as bottom-feeders – and they longed for the day that they might graduate to a more upscale practice.  But just like putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t transform it  into a princess, spiffing up form-based practices with technology or rebranding volume practices as virtual practices doesn’t change the fact much of the work is inherently penny-ante, assembly-line work that in and of itself, may not necessarily be  financially viable. 

When it comes to post-law school learning, most lawyers think of continuing legal education or CLE.  And while it’s important for lawyers to stay fresh on law-related developments in their respective practice areas, in these dynamic times, lawyers — and particularly solos — need to learn other skills as well.  While large firm lawyers or…

Because I’m an avid blogger, for years, I resisted sending an electronic newsletter as part of my law firm marketing portfolio.  If potential clients wanted a sample of my legal analysis, they could follow my blog, I reasoned.  Plus, I assumed that my newsletter would get lost in the hailstorm of big firm client alerts that swarm like locusts after a significant industry decision.

But I discovered that I was wrong.  Many existing or prospective clients in my industry don’t read blogs or follow Twitter (despite heroic efforts at a steady stream of interesting content, including multiple daily news dispatches).  So I decided to experiment with a newsletter and found a broader audience with several subscribers opening the newsletters multiple times or forwarding them on to others (thanks MailChimp for your great stats!)  Moreover, in spite of the glut of other news services, I try to offer good  POV  which most of my colleagues either don’t take the time to do or shirk from for fear of offending a prospect.

Click to view complete Infographic

Ordinarily, I’m so grateful to get my newsletters out that I don’t care what time of day it is. But apparently, I should.

On several occasions, I’ve described myself as a practical technologist, mastering and adopting new technology tools on a strictly need-to-know basis to serve clients.  So for me, having the latest, greatest gadget was never as important as being an early adopter of tools like client portals or webinar platforms or blogging so that I could communicate with and educate clients.

But now I’m finding that in a technology age, the category of “need-to-know” technology is rapidly expanding.   All of a sudden, many technology issues that most lawyers once gave short-shrift are now critical — not because of how they affect our ability to practice law but rather, because they’re getting our clients in trouble.

Take social media for example.  Though many lawyers still persist in trivializing the role of social media in developing business or generating clients, lawyers who ignore social media or don’t understand how it works are potentially prejudicing their clients’ cases.   I’ve heard lawyers advise clients in contested cases to delete their social media pages not realizing that they’re raising potential spoliation issues, while other lawyers invite clients to friend their law firm page without cautioning them about potential confidentiality issues (no problem if an attorney asks a client to friend your law firm page so long as you warn that doing so may reveal to others that they’re working with a lawyer).  So even though you may not want to fritter away time on social media, if you don’t understand how it works first-hand, you may compromise your clients’ case or privacy.

Free Stuff for Going Solo; an excerpt from Launching a 21st Century Law Practice from Carolyn Elefant
Free stuff abounds for lawyers starting or running a practice.  From document sharing platforms to conference call services to websites to legal research, the cost of running a law firm is nosediving.  Free products are also proliferating; my current slide deck on free has nearly doubled in size since my last from two years ago. [Note: the practice management platforms are not free though most offer a free trial period)

But is free right for your practice?  That depends.  My own view is that free of any type can play a role in any law practice, but mileage may vary.  Below are some rules on when free can work — and when it should be shirked.

1.  Free always works for experimental use    There’s a reason that companies offer free trials – because it gives potential customers an opportunity to try a product and decide whether they like it.   In a similar vein, you can use the free products listed in my slide deck to determine whether they might play a role in your practice. For example, are you thinking about starting a blog?  If you’ve never blogged before, it doesn’t make any sense to drop a few hundred or a few thousand dollars on a top of the line platform that you might never use.  Instead, you’re better off starting a blog on a free site like Blogger or WordPress and bumping up to a paid professional design down the road if the blog takes off.  Likewise, you may have toyed with the idea of offering online webinars for current or prospective clients or a client newsletter but didn’t want to make what could be a considerable investment in getting started.  With sites like AnyMeeting  or MailChimp, you can have a webinar or newsletter up and running in an hour, it’s truly that easy. Sure, the free versions have advertising support but again, if you decide that a newsletter or webinar series can work for the long haul, it’s just a click of the button to upgrade a relatively inexpensive, paid version of the product.


Ten years ago yesterday, I pushed the “enter” key and launched MyShingle.com on to the World Wide Web.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I fell in love with the medium and my solo/small beat so I just couldn’t stop.  But this blog has been so much more than just a place to write…

Editor’s note: Tomorrow night is the first night of Chanukah, one of my favorite holidays not because of the presents but what it stands for. Chanukah inspired one of my favorite posts in nearly a decade of blogging, and if you didn’t catch it last year, here it is again.

Tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah, a joyous Jewish holiday that holds special meaning for me as a solo. From the small band of Maccabees triumphing over the Syrian army to the tiny drop of oil that fueled the eternal flame for eight days, Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the small overcoming impossible odds.

Although I’m forever bullish about the future opportunities for solo and small firm lawyers, there’s no denying that that we’re under assault on all fronts.  On the one hand, we must contend with hack-ademics like Gillian Hadfield who claims that non-lawyer providers offer better service than solo and small firm practitioners, who in her view are nothing but generalists spread too thin.  Then, there’s those economists who contend that deregulating lawyers will make legal services more affordable, even though cheaper options are already available with the emergence of online services like Legal Zoom. On the other hand, many lawyers (not to mention coaches and gurus) are all too willing to encourage lawyers to cannibalize ourselves and use technology to convert legal services into commodity products (which can be automated or bulk-packaged for bargain basement sales), instead of using the commodity – technology – to deliver bespoke services –  (that which gives us value as a lawyer) more cost effectively.

It’s not just the big picture that throws a dark thundercloud over our existence.  Even on a day to day level, we solos live precariously.  We can never stop hustling because we know that any day the phone could stop ringing, we could lose all of our clients and we’d have to start from scratch.  And even as technology makes our life easier, it brings with it additional distractions and increased responsibility to ensure that our clients’ data and communications are secure.