I am not one for short blog posts, but I want to share some disturbing news I was reading over the Easter weekend related to my fears about starting a law firm.
While visiting family in Iowa, I was reading the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s business section. There was a disturbing article about lawyers not getting paid for their public defender contract work by the State of Iowa. Wow. If you can’t rely on the state to pay your attorney’s fees bill, who can you rely on?
I have a constant fear of not getting paid. I do a lot of family law work and I have had a lot of clients who do not pay their bills. As a young attorney worrying about whether I can start and maintain a successful law firm, I worry about how I am going to get paid all the time. One thought I have had when I consider how to make my new law firm successful is to sign up for the public defenders program in Minneapolis, MN. But, if a state supported program isn’t going to pay the bill, why would I want to do that?
Another reason for sharing this article is that it discourages me in the respect that I might not be able to make it on my own. If you read the story, one of the lawyers apparently couldn’t afford to pay her secretary and her home mortgage because of the State of Iowa’s failure to pay her public defender bill. That should scare anybody who wants to start their own law firm.