Month: May 2011

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Starting a Law Firm | Studying for the Bar Exam Part II

Starting a law firm means that you have to pass the bar exam in your particular jurisdiction.  For most, passing the bar exam means that you are required to sit through mind-numbing bar review lectures for about two months.  After passing the bar exam, character and fitness interview, and being admitted into your jurisdiction’s bar, you can open your own law firm.  Caveat:  if considering starting a law firm right out of law school, please read my post on getting legal experience first.

As I posted previously, I am taking the bar exam for the second time in the last four years. I feel that I have a little different perspective on taking the bar exam because I’ve already done it and I am going through the study process a second time.  Hopefully, I can benefit my readers by sharing whatever knowledge I have gleaned about passing the bar exam.

One of the discussion points that I wanted to bring up is passing the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).  The Multistate Performance exam tests the taker’s legal knowledge and ability to complete legal reasoning.  The MPT is the portion of the exam that is most similar to what young attorneys will do in the real world.  For example, the MPT is akin to a partner in a law firm coming up to you and giving you a problem and a case file that he or she wants you to write a legal memorandum or other legal document on. The assignment is similar to what I suspect a lot of law students did in their first or second year of law school to satisfy their legal writing component.

The MPT typically gives you information that is similar to a case file you will receive from a partner in the real world or when starting a law firm.  The bar examiners will give you a letter, a short memorandum, maybe a legal opinion, a library, some law, and a smattering of other information. Basically, you will get:  the facts, the laws, and instructions on how to apply the law to the facts to answer a legal problem.  The MPT will have different writing projects which vary the approach on how to apply the law to the facts.  Sounds simple right?

Of course, the MPT is only 90 minutes long and it bears no resemblance to what a private practice lawyer is likely to do in the real world.  If you are starting a law firm, you need to be concerned with what to do in the real world.  However, when you do pass the exam and work as an law firm associate, you will be expected to work quickly and efficiently.  In most cases, you will also not be able to bill a client for five hours of your time for writing a simple legal memorandum to a partner.  Clients don’t like paying those kind of bills – you are an attorney and they expect you to already know the law and how to use it.

In my opinion, the MPT is probably the most useful portion of the bar exam in terms of what it is like to be an attorney in the real world.  If you are reading this blog about how to start a law firm, then you should know that MPT gives you a good example of the kinds of initial critical thinking you will have to do on a specific legal issue.  If you hang out your own shingle and somebody actually walks in the door, you need to be able to meet with that person and know how to deal with his or her legal issue.  Of course, you need to know how to draft and file legal pleadings, cut checks, pay bills, and a myriad of other tasks.  But, at the end of the day, you need to be an attorney and think in a critical fashion.  I think the MPT does a good job of meeting this important real world task.

Starting a law firm is all about gathering useful information and discarding useless information.  That applies to every area of the practice of law – whether it is critical legal thinking or learning how to effectively manage your time so that you can ethically bill your clients.

 

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Starting a Law Firm | New Legal Journal at UND Law

This post is a little bit outside the peraminaters of typical start a law firm fodder, but I wanted to let the world know that there is a new legal journal called the “Journal of Law and Interdisciplinary Studies” at UND School of Law.

I was a member of the Law Review at UND and we did not have another competing legal journal at our small law school while I was there.  Heck, we had trouble getting all the student writers we needed for law review.  During my tenure, I always wondered why somebody (or, more likely, some faculty member) didn’t encourage students to start a new legal journal at the school.  Well, they did, and I am excited about it.

It may not come as a suprise as somebody who is blogging about starting a law firm, that I am very into the exchange of quality information.  I have always found legal research and the academic wherewithal it takes to formulate an interesting, timely, and scholarly article to be one of the hallmarks of the law.  Even when I am at my lowest in terms of my faith in the law, I have always felt that my time on law review was one of the most worthwhile things I have done as a lawyer.  I always hoped some other people would get excited enough to start their own legal journal.

I think a lot of practitioners of the law can relate when I say that our jobs often don’t seem to be based in the law at all.  Rather, in my own law practice, I have often found myself bickering with opposing counsel about some minor fact or trying to help a completely unreasonable client see that fighting over the truck in their divorce just isn’t a good choice.  Those kind of things aren’t about the law, they are about hand holding and trying win.  That kind of thing can be extremely draining.

But, when I see that some bright, young, ambitious law students want to try and start something and contribute to the law, I get excited.  There is hope out there.  Am I being a little bit melodramatic?  Yes, probably, but how can you not get excited by a quote like this:

“We are an innovative online publication that explores the various dimensions of contemporary legal scholarship and its relationship to other disciplines, working to provide a dynamic environment that fosters an evolving scholarly dialogue between practitioners, scholars in law, scholars from other disciplines, and the general public.”

While going down the road less traveled and starting my own law firm, I plan to take inspiration where I can find it.  I hope you do to and I hope you check back with UND’s new legal journal.

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Starting a Law Firm | Learning From Failure

The fear involved with starting a law firm can be palpable.  There are so many questions that go through your head as you begin the journey.  Those thoughts can be both positive and negative.  But, I would guess that a lot of the anxiety results from the fear of failure.

I’ll admit to the fear of failure in starting my own law firm.  I will also admit to a generally pesimistic attitude at times.  I may be wrong, but I would guess that many lawyers have an unhealthy amount of pessimism about some things – including starting a law firm.  But, luckily, I was listening to a particular interesting edition of Morning Edition on NPR lately, and there is hope for those who fail.

NPR interviewed Tim Harford, a financial columnist for the The Financial Times, to talk about his book Adapt.  The program and interview was extremely enlightening – enough for me to want to share it on my law firm start-up blog.  The subtitle of the book is “Why Success Always Starts With Failure”.  According to Mr. Harford, failure is inevitable – in life, in business, in everything.  What a relief!  Somebody said it.

I write this somewhat tongue-and-cheek.  It is an obvious premise, but I think it is a perspective that is not focused on enough.  Failing and adapting is a hallmark of many successful entrepreneurs.

One example from the interview that I found particularly interesting was an anecdote told by Mr. Harford about professional gamblers.  I am paraphrasing from the NPR interview, but the general extant of the story was something like this:  professional gamblers know that they are most vulnerable after they have lost a bet.  This is because it is the natural tendency of all people to want to play recklessly after they have lost and try to get all of their money back quickly.  It is a mental block that must be fought.  The good professional gambler knows that if he fails and adapts, his chances of winning are greatly increased.  As noted on the NPR article:

“If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that’s not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it … that’s a real problem,” he says.

I know this feeling.  I know the desire to try and achieve too much too quickly after I fail.  I’ve done it and, it would appear, I may have failed to adapt from that experience.   I hope I don’t do it again.  But, at the very least, I know that failure is ok as long as I use it as a positive and learn from my mistakes.  I am ok with this, just as long as starting a law firm doesn’t mean I end up like Johannes Gutenberg and invent the printing press but go broke doing it.

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Starting a Law Firm | The Virtual Law Office

In considering how to start a law firm, you need to consider where you are going to be actually sitting and thinking when you practice law. In other words, you need to consider what kind of office space and setup you are going to have when you start a law firm.

Sounds obvious, I know. This post relates to my previous post about law firm overhead.  A virtual law office arrangement equates to much lower overhead than paying for a lease or some other more traditional office arrangement.

Keeping costs to a nill is going to be key to ensuring that your practice is successful. Paying for a an expensive office lease is going to cost you money that you could be spending on other important things like a new printer/scanner/faxer. I’ve read on other blogs and in legal articles that paying for unnecessary overhead may be the biggest killer of a new law firm. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that I don’t feel that I can afford the office rent at this point in my practice. Even if I could afford it, I don’t really want to pay for it when it isn’t necessary.

But, if you are going to start a law firm you need to have an office with office supplies in it. There is no doubt about this. For instance, I need a bunch of things surrounding me in order to be successful. I need a telephone, computer, a printer, a scanner, a copier, paper, writing utensils and various law books.  That is the minimum, and I want these items to be easily accessible. I am always concerned about my time and how much I am spending doing things that slow me down or are unnecessary. When you bill by the hour, you have to be efficient. I take a lot of pride in being efficient, and my office set up should (I hope) reflect this.

Can all of these things be made available easily? Yes. Can you put them just about anywhere? Yes. Does it matter if they are in your basement or in a $1,000 a month, leased office space. No.

Now, I know that there are many advantages to having a professional office space. I hope to have one some day. I don’t want to practice out of my home or virtual office forever. But, this blog is about how to start a law firm and when starting a law firm you need to survive.  The virtual office can be a great way to survive.

Chuck Newton, over at a blog I really enjoy called Third Wave Lawyer, has some great posts about offices built out of odd-ball materials like old office containers.  This is not an example of a virtual office.  However, they are cool and I invite you to check them out.

An example of my attempt to check out a virtual law office arrangement in Minneapolis is that I have researched on the internet and found some companies that advertise for virtual office space.  The traditional arrangement goes something like this:  you pay somebody a lower rate (say $200 a month) to have access to a conference room are other office space when you need it.  Think:  meeting with clients.  The rest of the time, when you are not using the office, you are working from home.  This is a virtual office as I understand it.

Virtual law offices are a great way to still have an office presence while still keeping overhead low.  Starting a law firm is all about maximizing profit and making wise decisions.  For many people, the virtual office is can be a very wise decision.

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Starting a Law Firm | Studying for (another) Bar Exam

As I have posted previously, when starting a law firm, you need to be licensed.  No brainer.  How do you get licensed?  You study mind-numbing information that is mostly irrelevant to the day-to-day obligations of running a solo law practice.

My perspective on the requirement of being licensed to practice law is a little different because I am already licensed in one jurisdiction (Indiana) while trying to be licensed to practice law in another (Minnesota & North Dakota).  I find the situation ironic and mildly amusing.  One one hand, I am running a small, but profitable, law practice out of my home.  On the other hand, I am studying for the bar exam (again) to try and learn legal principles I’ve never used in practice.  It is truly an odd feeling.

But, this blog is not supposed to only be about my journey to start and build a law firm.  No, this blog is meant to try and help anybody out there who has questions which I may be able to answer while they go from zero-to-hero (or some variation thereof).  Today’s question is how to study for the bar exam twice.

My perspective on studying for the bar exam again after a four year layoff is a little different from the first time test taker.  Foremost, the focus should be on studying and memorizing lots of information for the multi-state examination or the MBE.  The MBE is the real bear and it needs to have the most time spent on it.  (Caveat:  this is only my perspective from my own experience and from speaking with former exam takers). Focusing on the MBE means two things (1) know the substantive area of law and all the elements VERY WELL, and, (2) do as many multiple choice questions as you can.

If you can focus on these two things, and you successfully graduated from law school, I think you can pass the bar exam.  Furthermore – and this is a cliche I’ve found to be true – studying is a marathon and not a sprint.  I am currently training for a half-marathon and I know what that means.  It means work.  It means sticking to a routine and doing things over-and-over-and-over again.  It means not missing runs (MBE test) when you are scheduled to make those runs (MBE tests).

Now, the rest of the bar exam is not a cake walk.  You have to know the substantive law of your jurisdiction so that you can pass the essay portion and the MPT.  This means going to lectures and taking notes and not blowing stuff off.  As long as you have done this, you should be fine.  The essays are relatively straight forward law school type questions.  One interesting change is that the bar examiners now allow people to take the essay and MPT on their laptops in many jurisdictions.  This should be an interesting wrinkle, but I believe it is most likely for the best given how sloppy many peoples’ hand writing must be.  I know mine is terrible.

I’ll post more on these subjects as I go through the process, but those are my initial thoughts as I dive back into bar exam studying.  So, if you thinking about starting a law firm and how to start a law firm, think first about being licensed.  Think first about the bar exam.  Think about it a lot and go through the paces.  You’ll be fine.

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Starting a Law Firm | Website “Call to Action”

In trying to build and start a law firm in the best way possible, I have obviously been thinking a lot about law firm websites optimization and how to get client to my website.  A recent post on Lawyerist about designining a website “call to action” is very relevant to my law firm website goals.

As many of you many know, the Lawyerist is an excellent lawyer blog that has quite a few contributors.  It is a good site with good content.  I suggest you check it out.  Today, there was a post about having a “call to action” on your website.  The call to action, as I understand it, is getting the client to click on what you want them to click on – your name, number, and contact information.

I’ve thought of this before, but I’ve realized that I need to me more diligent about it.  My idea was to offer a free consultation and get phone calls that way.  People always call more if they think they aren’t going to have to pay for the lawyer phone call.   Thus, the free consultation button.  I don’t intend on working for free, but I have found that I can usually consult with someone for ten to fifteen minutes about their problem over the phone.  If it is a case I think I can handle, the client and I get along, and I think the client will pay their bill, that is usually when I try and make the sale.

But, is that enough?  I don’t really think so.  I have realized that I need to have more on my website to get people to actually pick up the phone or shoot me an email.  I’m going to work on it.  My law firm website currently has a logo section.  That logo is something I’m going to focus more on.  I also intend to include more information in the footer of the website for people to contact me when they are seeking legal services.

From a practical, marketing perspective, starting a law firm is all about getting the phone to ring and getting people in the door.  Being a good attorney and practicing in an ethical fashion are equally important.  I don’t intend to wait and I want to call all my potential clients out there to call and seek my legal advice and skill.

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Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Website Update

As an update to my effort to start a law firm, I wanted to let everyone know that my law firm’s website is up and running.  It’s located at flanderslawfirm.com.

I am not completely satisfied with it and I plan to make some much needed changes.  But, it is up and it isn’t too bad.  The best part?  I did it mainly by myself.  If anybody actually reads this and goes to my website I would appreciate any comments.

I ultimately got my law firm website up and running through a lot of trial and error.  To me, starting a law firm is all about trial and error.  Why should it be any different with a website?

The first trial was hosting.  As I explained in my law firm website hosting post, there are a lot of choices but I chose Winhost.com.  To this point, I have been very happy with Winhost and I have no complaints.  However, it is early and we shall see how it goes.  Through many hours and a lot of head-banging, I was able to read the help forum and “knowledge base” articles on Winhost and figure out how to set my law firm website up using these main, FREE ingredients:

(1) Webmatrix

(2) FileZilla FTP

(3) Internet Information Services (IIS 7)

(4) WordPress.org

The Winhost forums have moderators who answer many questions from all kinds of people with similar difficulties.  There are posts about how to use your hosting service for all of these free tools.  Again, creating a law firm website isn’t easy, but if you have the time and the gumption you can do it.  Those are the free tools and they are great.

Now, the non-free tools I used were:

(1) Winhost website hosting (Cost: $114 for a year of hosting)

(2) NameCheap domain names ($10.00 for a typical domain name)

(3) Elegant Themes templates ($39.00 a year).

That’s it.  Easy right?  I also think those prices are pretty darn reasonable and I did pay a web designer anything.

Once I figured out how to use  these tools, I was able to customize my law firm website. It takes some knowledge of html  coding and cascading style sheet (CSS) language, but I picked it all up on the fly.

If anybody needs any help out there on how to start a law firm website, post a comment.

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Starting a Law Firm | Choosing Clients Carefully

When starting a law firm, you need to choose your clients carefully.  I realize that this is much easier to say than to do, but I can not emphasis enough how important client selection is.

In my 3+ years of working as an associate for a small general practice firm, I took on a lot of different kind of cases.  Probably too many different kinds of cases.  Regrettably, nobody ever told me to be careful about the kinds of clients and cases I took on.  I wish somebody would have because, for me, it could have been the difference between being a happy lawyer and being a miserable lawyer.

Clearly, if you start a law firm, telling yourself that you will only accept clients and cases you want to work on is a bit academic.  After all, you have to eat.  I also realize that I’m not always going to like all of my clients and they probably won’t all like me.  That is just a given.  But, being careful about client selection can make your lawyer life so much better.  My general rule of thumb is this:   don’t take on a dog just because it pays.

I wanted to write this article in my starting a law firm blog after reading a really interesting and well written article in my Indiana Bar Association magazine:  Res Gestae.  (I’d link to the publication online, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t have an online presence.)  The article is by a regular columnist, Donald R. Lundberg, and is entitled “Choosing clients wisely: a key to fulfillment in the practice of law.”  It’s in the April 2011 issue.

The article brought up some great points that I want to briefly summarize here.  The author advises that every time a new or old client brings your law firm a new matter, you should consider a number of things, including:

  1. Your Competence to handle the matter
  2. Past lawyer history on the case (are you the second or third or fourth lawyer on the case?)
  3. The client’s emotional connection to the case (are they too close and not able to distance themselves from it?)
  4. The problem dump (is the client wanting to dump their problems on you so that it is now your problem and not theirs?)
  5. The micromanager (this one should be self-explanatory)
  6. The needy client (also known as the constant caller)
  7. The non-payor and/or the slow-payor (in my experience, this one usually encompasses all of the above).
  8. Conflicts of interest (this one is obvious, but I point it out to say that it is also a good way to explain to the client why you won’t take their case)

That is the list.  I think it is a pretty good one.  There are probably other items to add, but I think you get the point.  Being a lawyer can be tough.  When you make yourself miserable by working on cases you don’t like, or for clients you can’t stand, your job starts to feel like a noose.  I’ve been there.  It’s not fun and I’ve thought about quitting the practice because of it.

If you are going to start and build a law firm you are going to need clients.  You are also going to work on some cases at the beginning that you probably won’t take later.  That is ok.  But, if I can recommend anything, it is to enjoy your job as much as you can.  Choosing your clients and cases wisely is the way to start your law firm the right way.