What are the difficulties involved with starting my own small-town legal practice after law school?

Question

Any suggestions/ideas/concerns? Have you been down this road/opened your own practice? Success? Failure.... please elaborate.

Answer 1

only the fact that you cant shake a tree with out half a dozen other lawyers falling out of it. but good luck on the business effort and law school

Answer 2

Hard to answer without knowing more, particularly how small is small and what area(s) of practice interest you. I could write a book about solo practice or the practice of law generally, but I won't. I entered solo practice after 6 years of working as an attorney in another attorney's practice and, before that, accumulated significant law clerk experience. Tough enough under those circumstances. Better perhaps to get some experience (and a steady paycheck) for a while at someone else's office. But some people do start up right after law school. Less burnout that way, possibly.

Answer 3

First, you would need to pass the bar exam. After that I would go work for a law firm build up a list of clients, and gain some experience, then figure out what area you are going to focus on. Even the best lawyer isn't an expert in all areas of the law.

Before you start your own practice, you should pay down your law school loans and other student loans, what if your business doesn't take off right away? Just food for thought.

Answer 4

The main problem, whether starting as a solo practitioner in a big city or a small town, (or for that matter any other small business) is generating enough business to cover your expenses.

Clients are going to expect you to have an office and a secretary. If you do not, it is going to raise questions in their minds about your skill level. Obviously, these will cost money. You should probably estimate a total expense between $3000 and $4000 in a small town.

The other thing is that, as a small town practitioner, a lot of your time will be spent either in court or driving between courts. Without a secretary/receptionist, it will be hard for clients to get in touch with you and find out the status of their case.

Aside from getting known, the major difficulty is that you will initially get a lot of the money-losers that other attorneys in the county will decline to take. You should know in advance that you will get a lot of middle class divorces in which, despite the lack of much to fight over, the two sides will insist on fighting. At the end of these cases, you will probably have to write-off most of your bill. Likewise, on soft-tissue injuries, the insurance companies will make you jump through lots of hoops to get a rather small recovery for your clients (and thus a small fee for yourself).

It will take a couple of years, but you will eventually get enough traffic tickets and small estates to cover your expenses between the better paying cases.

One thing you may want to consider is looking into office-sharing with an attorney close to retirement age who is willing to slowly direct business your way.

Answer 5

Starting out anywhere is a challenge bc business might be slow at first. OTOH, in a smaller town, there will also be fewer lawyers to compete for your business. Pick the town you want to live in and if you're a good or fairly good lawyer, you should be fine (don't sue me, I'm not a lawyer, just giving an opinion with no guarantees in yahoo answers. hehe). The worst thing to do is to move to a town that you hate and thinking you'll just be there for 5 years (and then end up suffering there for 20+ years). Another advantage of a smaller town is that your expenses will be lower.

Answer 6

Assuming you pass the bar -- the main difficulty is balancing the needs of providing sufficient quality legal advice (which is hard without experience) versus needing to devote a large part of your time to finding new clients (which takes away from your available time to learn the fine points).

Law school does not prepare you to practice law, unless you have some pretty good electives, or pretty good externship opportunities. The theory we learn as law students doesn't include the specific details of how to put that into real practice.

Answer 7

I think it would depend on how small the town was and whether there were any other lawyers already there. If there are, I would suggest starting out in practice with them. If not, work from your home until your practice is established, then open an office. I would advertise on community bulletin boards and possibly in the local newspaper, if they have one.

Answer 8

clients who hire you ...and pay you