Month: November 2011

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Starting a Law Firm: You Have to Get Through Law School First

I can tell who reads the blog, where they come from, and what they were searching for when they find it.  The web is an amazing thing, but we should all be aware of how much our behaviour is monitored by sources we might not even understand.

One of the search terms that enabled somebody out there to find this blog today was “i’m going to fail law school.”  I don’t know how the heck my blog managed to rank for that search term, but it did.  However, I’m not very interested in why somebody found this blog using those search terms.  What I am interested in is that somebody must have been feeling a lot of pain when they typed those terms into a search engine.

I imagine that this person was not feeling too good about life.  I imagine that this person was wondering why they even chose law school in the first place  I remember what those feelings were like – I am not too far outside of those days.  I remember how scary it was.  I remember how I thought that I wasn’t meant to be a lawyer during my first year of law school. I remember it was really, really hard.

My first year of law school was an awful experience.  I wanted badly to be a good student and do well. I was reading the case law, I was participating in class, I was trying to stay on-top of things. I thought I was doing ok.  Then, I took my finals and I did horrible.  I got almost straight C’s my first semester of law school.  I was devastated.

The problem I had with law school at the beginning is that I approached it like I did my undergraduate education.  I thought I could just regurgitate the things I read and I would be ok.  However, I found out that I needed to be a little more analytical and active in my dissecting of case law and writing an great IRAC approved answer.  I also needed to grow up a little.

The point is that I didn’t do very well my first year and I really needed to change things:  my study habits, my attitutude, and my understanding of what I was reading.  I kept at it.  I became tenatious about learning.  I began to be more competitive.  I slowly became more analytical.  I learned how to dissect things.  Eventually, I became a good law student and learned how to “think like a lawyer.”  It was hard, but I did it.

So, if the student who got to this silly blog and is wondering what to do with his or her life because “they are going to fail law school”, I want them to know that many people had a difficult time with law school.  It isn’t easy.  You are not alone.  If you want to quit, fine, do it sooner rather than later.  If you don’t want to quit, get tenacious.  Start hustling.

For me, surviving law school is a lot like starting a law firm.  I am doing it because I have a drive to keep going and win even though it’s tough and I am sometimes afraid I’m not going to make it.

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I Went to Law School, Passed the Bar Exam, Now What?

I’m at a weird crossroads right now in my life.  Starting a law firm is taking up all my energy and – to be perfectly honest – it is beginning to stress me out.

To that end, I was forwarded an article by my uncle concerning how law schools are not teaching law students how to be lawyers which was in the November 19, 2011 edition of the New York Times.  My uncle said he found the article “interesting”.  I found it depressing.

These kinds of articles aren’t new.  They seem to pop up every few months.  My guess is that a reporter somewhere in the world had drinks with some lawyer sometime and the lawyer said something like:  “law school is a joke.”  Intrigued and looking for a scoop, the reporter then asks “why?”.  Later, we all get an article to read about how law schools don’t teach people to be practicing lawyers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the public needs to be aware that law schools don’t teach their students how to be lawyers.  I worry quite a bit that some young lawyer will read this blog, decide they can start a law firm, and then go out and committ malpractice and screw up somebody’s life.  It might not even be this hypothetical person’s fault.  After all, they went to law school and took a ridiculous bar exam that doesn’t teach them one thing about being a good lawyer.

Ok, it’s not all doom-and-gloom.  A diligent, honest, and hard-working person can probably make it right out of law school.  I couldn’t have.  I’m not even sure I can now.  One of the mantras that keeps flloating through my mind is “I may fail.”  Luckily, I have a fallback in my wife if that happens.  Do you have a fallback?

Go read the NY Times piece if you want to wallow in the misery that is law school v. law practice.  Me, I’m going to take the four years or so I spent AFTER law school where I learned to be a practicing lawyer and I’m going to continue to get better and hone my skills. As the article so aptly points out:

To succeed in this environment, graduates will need entrepreneurial skills, management ability and some expertise in landing clients. They will need to know less about Contracts and more about contract.

“Where do these students go?” says Michael Roster, a former chairman of the Association of Corporate Counsel and a lecturer at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. “There are virtually no openings. They can’t hang a shingle and start on their own. Many of them are now asking their schools, ‘Why didn’t you teach me how to practice law?’ ”

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Starting a Law Firm: Checklists and Doing the Due Diligence

As I posted in the past, I have a lot of work to do before I (hopefully) get my Minnesota license to practice law.  I have a long, four month wait before my character and fitness investigation is completed.  I’ve finished most of what I can do and I am now in the waiting phase.  Thankfully, I have a lot to do before I get licensed and, to that end, I am doing my best to come up with a list of things to do before I hang-out-a-shingle and start a law firm.

Much of my work is focused on two things:  (1) gaining knowledge to ensure competency and (2) coming up with a marketing plan.

Starting a Law Firm Checklist

  1. Purchase and read practice related books and code on family law and estate planning in Minnesota.
  2. Purchase and read Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure.
  3. Conduct market research on family law and estate planning law firms in my community.
  4. Finish one website:  flanderslawfirm.com.
  5. Start and work on additional practice related website (more on this later).
  6. Research costs of office space.  This includes lease agreements for full-time office space arrangement as well as locating a potential virtual office site to meet with clients.
  7. Decide whether working out of home for first couple years is feasible and, if so, how to do it.
  8. Research approved bank accounts for business and IOLTA accounts
  9. Research and understand completely IOLTA trust account laws.  Ensure compliance with them.
  10. Come up with blogging/marketing schedule
  11. Talk to local attorney in practice area about possible mentoring relationship
  12. Go to courthouses, meet staff, introduce myself and ask lots of questions about filing, judges, the right and wrong way to do things, etc.
  13. Contact father-in-law (an computers specialist person) about antivirus, and firm computing protection devices
  14. Research online billing software and costs.  Or, do I want to simply use QuickBooks or other software?
  15. Research online receptionist and answering service.
  16. Contact phone company about separate fax and phone lines for (probable) home office.
  17. Make list of all potential referral resources and how to network with them.
  18. Research and find solo attorney resources in Minnesota and beyond.
  19. Re-read ethics rules.

The list could go on, but I hope that provides some help to any of you in the process. It might not be the best list, but it is something I can work on and grown from.  My goal is to fill in some of the information with options I have been looking at.  I’ll try and share them in a future post.

When working as an associate at my prior law firm, I realized early that planning, organization, and goals are everything.  Without a plan and execution, you are just fumbling in space (ok, maybe it is just me).  Making lists and setting goals helps me have plan of action that I can follow.

Now that you’ve seen mine, I’d love to see yours.  Does anybody have any resources or plans they have made that they wouldn’t mind sharing?  I showed you mine, you show me yours.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-13

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Book Review: “The Big Red Fez, How To Make Any Website Better”, by Seth Godin

Disclaimer:  this “book” is nearly ten years old.  Furthermore, it probably shouldn’t be qualified as a “book” given that it is really an “ebook” with a new cover slapped on it.  But, it’s worth a read if you – like me – are developing a lawyer website and starting a law firm.

I’m no guru and I’m still learning about building a markatable website.  It’s fun, but I’m a newbie.  I’ve learned some stuff and I’m going to share it – FREE! (did i sell you?).

Here is another marketinging technique – summing up the book in one easy sentence: “when designing a website, make it simple, right leaning, and show the viewer where you want them to go.”  Essentially, as Mr. Godin posits:  show the monkey where to find the banana.

Every website has a theme of some kind.  Most lawyer website are designed to be quasi-informational but, more importantly, call the potential client to action.  Thus, the banana of lawyer websites (generally) is the “call me” or “contact me” portion.

To be fair, some lawyer websites are less about selling the “call me” banana.  For instance, I would guess that big law isn’t all that interested in people calling them off the street.  Rather, they would like to show off there impressive website with the listing of lots of impressive looking attorney names.  Maybe that is the prestige banana?

As I stated, Mr. Godin originally wrote the ebook in 2002 or thereabout.  The ebook then became a real book which can now be bought.  However, in 2002, many websites were just getting off the ground.  A lot of them were bad.  Furthermore, there was no concern about sizing the websites so they were easily viewable by smartphones.

Basically, the banana has changed a bit.  It may be true that Mr. Godin’s book influenced website designers to such an extent that many websites are now much better at selling the banana than they were in 2002.  I think back to some of the websites I used to visit ten years ago and I can’t help but laugh.

In sum, if you are designing a law firm website without professional help (like me), you can’t go wrong by reading this book.  At the least, it makes you think in terms of proper design and clearly selling what you want to sell.  The book costs $4.00 used, so you don’t need to worry if you buy it and realize it’s a little soft on the substance.

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Learning How to Practice Law Again

Confession:  I had a bit of a breakdown this weekend when I realized how much work I have to do before I can open-up-shop and start practicing law again.   Calling it overwhelming would be an understatement.  Luckily, I have the greatest person I have ever met to listen to me in my dark moments:  my wife.

After discussing a myriad of concerns with her about how impossible it was to get everything done, I realized that my main concern right now is competency.  I’m a licensed attorney in Indiana, but I am hoping to be admitted to the Minnesota Bar in the relatively near future.  Until I am licensed in Minnesota, I have been doing the whatever due diligence work I can to get ready.  In other words, I need to train myself all over again.  Furthermore,  I cannot begin taking on cases in Minnesota unless I can competently handle the issue.  As I’ve discussed, my main practice area is and has been family law.  I’ve done a smattering of other legal work, but I feel the most comfortable saying I know what I am doing in family law.

However, I practiced for nearly four years in Indiana.  Indiana has different laws and different rules.  Indiana has different courts.  Indiana has different forms, filing fees, deadlines, etc, etc.  I could go on.

It is true that laws are very similar in many states.  However, I know from practicing law that the bar exam and law school doesn’t teach you how to be a competent practicing attorney.  I thought I was getting good at my job in Indiana, but Minnesota has different forms, rules, law, procedures, courts, etc.  It is scary.

In light of this, I have come to the conclusion that I have two options: (1) join a law firm, get Minnesota-centric experience, build a network, and then open a law practice, or (2) go to the law library and read, read, read, gain competency in the details, and then start a law firm.

At this point, I am going with option 2.  After I teach myself, I will talk to as many local attorneys as I can and, possibly, do a unpaid internship of sorts.  Also, as I stated in my previous post, I’m looking into trying to find a family law mentor of some kind.

Luckily, I have a couple of friends who practice family law close by.  I plan to pump them for as much information as I can.  Also, I remembered today that divorce pleadings are typically matters of public record.  I simply need to go to a courthouse and find a completed dissolution of marriage file and review the pleadings – preferably a case handled by a good, experienced lawyer.  I used this trick often in Indiana.  When in doubt, go look at the quality work of those that have gone before you.

Learning the law over again is not fun.  It is especially not fun when you have already learned one jurisdiction’s law.  But, it is necessary.

After practicing law for a little while I know that I have my client’s lives in my hands.  I cannot fail to meet the burden of that trust.  I cannot be incompetent.  If, after trying to teach myself the finer points of Minnesota practice, I don’t feel I am competent to handle family law work, I’m not going to start a law firm.  End of story.

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Lawyer Mentoring Programs: Where Are They?

I have spent a good hour of my free time today (my son is at the babysitter) looking for mentoring programs in the State of Minnesota.  I’m not licensed in Minnesota yet, but I am trying to get a leg up until I do (hopefully) become licensed after Admission by Motion application.  Besides finding several articles that say that lawyer mentoring “is a good thing”, I haven’t found a single source which tells me how to actually locate and sign up for a mentor.

So, I’m putting the word out there:  where are the Minnesota mentoring programs?  I know there is one for law students at the University of St. Thomas but I haven’t been a law student for five years.  Are there any actual mentor programs in Minnesota or do I just call a local attorney in my practice area and ask them to be my buddy?

If anybody reads this, utilizes a mentor, or has thoughts about how to obtain one in Minnesota, I’d appreciate knowing it.

Update:  11/07/2011, 11:11 a.m.

I just did a Google search on “lawyer mentors in Minnesota” after this post and what was the first result?  This blog post.  Sad.

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Creating a Law Firm Website: Part II

I’ve promised this post for a couple weeks and I’m finally getting to it.  Better late than never.

My Minnesota lawyer website is up and running.  It is not finished and I am still adding content, but the homepage is almost done.  In the main, I’m satisfied with it but I keep tinkering.  Most importantly, it loads fast.

From what I have read, a  law firm’s landing page is the most important aspect of the website.  My current homepage setup is directed towards getting hits from potential clients.  It should make a strong sell with my phone number and free case evaluation “call-to-action” in the upper right-hand corner.  If potential clients come to the website, they should know right away what I ultimately want them to do: call me.

I thank lawyer website developer Karin Conroy for commenting on this blog in my previous lawyer website post and clueing me in to the important of the call-to-action.  My website is meant to be informative to all potential clients, but it is also meant to sell my legal services and how the client can ask for those services.  Thus, the phone number.

How did I get the lawyer website set-up?

I posted about my efforts to create a lawyer website previously.  However, since that post, I’ve learned a lot and I hope to share some of that with my readers.  Below are the three main tools that I used to create my website:

  1. WordPress.org.  Wordpress is a wonderful, user-friendly, and FREE resource.  It is a web design platform that focuses on aesthetics and ease-of-use.  I love it.  The learning curve isn’t overly burdensome and, once you learn how to use it, the rewards are great.
  2. Thesis Theme by DIY Themes.  I’m still a little undecided on this one.  I like it, but I don’t think the look of the theme is quite as good as other themes I have sampled.  I should, however, give kudos to Lawyerist.com for cluing me in on the Thesis Theme.  It cost $164.00 for the developer’s license.  I plan to use it for multiple websites so I went with the more costly developers license.  A single-use license costs half as much, at $87.00.
  3. Winhost.com.  Winhost is a website hosting provider.  I signed up for the “max” plan at $4.95 a month with two months free.  I don’t think I needed the max plan and could have gone cheaper, but I’m just starting out and wanted room to grown. Winhost is a shared hosting service and this means a lot of different things – namely there are a lot of other people using the server and your website load times can be slow as a result.  This also means you better know something about website optimization if you want to build your own site and use a cheap, shared-hosting providers like Winhost, Godaddy, or Hostgator.  Winhost allows you to purchase a domain name (usually about $8.00 to $10.00 a year for a domain name).  Winhost also has a nice, user-friendly control panel that was easy to learn and navigate.  My favorite part about Winhost is that it was very easy to install WordPress through their “application installer”.  Just follow some simple steps and your website is up and running in under an hour (if you know what your are doing).

That’s the list.  Essentially, you only need these three basic things to get a lawyer website up and running.  I didn’t say it would look good or load fast, I just said you would have a website.

After choosing a domain name, hosting provider, and setting up WordPress, you then need to figure out how your new website is going to look.  Once you get it up, WordPress installs a “default” theme which is basically a blog format.  You are not going to want to use a blogging format for your website.

Choosing a Law Firm Website Theme

I talked about using “themes” in my prior posts on blogging and creating a law firm website.  There are many themes to choose from and I haven’t sampled half of them.  Do a quick Google search on “lawyer wordpress themes” and just try and make a decision.  The three I have tried and like are:

  1. DIY, Thesis Theme
  2. Elegant Themes
  3. StudioPress Themes

I ultimately ended up sticking with the DIY, Thesis theme because I perceive it to be the most user-friendly, reasonably nice-looking, and it has top-notch support.  Without a doubt, DIY has the best support forum that I have used.  Most of my design questions were answered very quickly with good, solid advice.

In my opinion, Elegant Themes are the most aesthetically pleasing.   Elegant Themes is also very reasonably priced.  I paid $39.00 for a year-long subscription with no other contracts or other long-term deals.  Plus, if you use Elegant Themes, you can choose from an array of high quality Themes – not just one.  The ability to use multiple themes is a great feature – especially if you are going to develope multiple websites for your law firm.  I may still use an Elegant Theme for another website, but, for now, I am using Thesis.

The last option I have tried is StudioPress.  StudioPress has nice looking themes.  Their support was good for the short time I used the theme. However, I like Thesis and Elegant Themes better and I didn’t need the extra expense.  My mistake.  Check out StudioPress, you may really like them.

So, after you get a WordPress website started, you simply need to follow the WordPress instructions and upload your theme.  I know if sounds hard, and there is a learning curve, but it really isn’t that difficult.  Best of all, you should be able to get a very nice looking website up for under $200.00 using this method.

There are many other discussion points like website optimization.  There many good tools to use, but I particularly like YSlow, GTMetrix, and Pingdom.com.  These websites give you scores on how your website is designed.  The scores directly influence page-load times.  Many of these tools relate directly to a things with names like “Cascading-Style-Sheets (CSS)”, “HTML”, and other programing tools.  I know enough about some of them to be dangerous, but if you are going to get serious, you should probably talk to a website developer.  I learned a lot of this on my own and bought a CSS book but I don’t necessarily recommend doing this unless you have a lot of free time on your hands.  One additional website optimization tool I use is JPEG Mini.  It is free and it allows you to greatly reduce your website images before you place them on your website.  Optimizing images is very important for speeding up your website.  I could write an entire post on choosing website images and optimizing them.

Finally, if anybody wants help navigating the process of creating a law firm website, I would be happy to lend a hand.  Seriously, just shoot me an email at jflanders@flanderslawfirm.com and I’ll do what I can to explain what I have learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me.  Cheers.

 

 

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One Attorney Asks: “But Where Do I Fit In?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging and the arch question:  “is it a giant waste of time and thought?”  What is more, “should I feel compelled to share my nonsense and should you, dear reader, be compelled to read it?”  I’ll deal with the former, you consider the latter.

I started a small law firm, practiced for about 5 months and abruptly wrapped up the practice, took and passed the bar exam, and I am now waiting for admission by motion into the Minnesota bar.  Which brings up yet another question: “where do I fit in in terms of legal blogging?”  I’ve actually practiced by myself for a short period of time and had some success.  (To be fair, most of the money I made was from clients at my old firm – but, they were my clients and they wanted me).  Now, I’m licensed in Indiana and admitted (but not yet licensed in North Dakota).  I just submitted my Minnesota application for admission by motion.  The Minnesota Board of Law Examiners sent me a very official letter telling me I had to wait four months for a investigation to take place before they would make a decision.  This amounts to my third “investigation” in four years for bar admission purposes.  Yep, my record is still clean.  No disciplinary violations, and yet, another investigation.  I’ll say this, I haven’t had a speeding ticket in seven years.  I’ve been a good boy.

So this is where I think I fit in:  I’m a legal blogger, blogging about the things it takes to do before you start a law firm.  That’s right, this blog should more properly be titled:  “before you start a law firm.”  I apologize for the narrowness of my scope.  Read at your own risk.

As I promised before and will get to later, I have updated my Minnesota attorney website.  I am also in the process of creating a second website but I can’t unleash its awesome power because it is practice and location specific (think: Minnesota).  On the website front, I did it myself and it hurt me.  I like my website.  My wife likes it.  My son looked at it briefly (I think).  But, in the end, I’ll sign off with this:  why didn’t I just buck up and pay somebody to design my website for me?  I have spent long hours on it.  Too many hours.  To think, my time used to be worth $150.00 an hour.

I think I have an answer to the last question.  I spent too much time building my website because that is what I do.  I do things myself.  I can’t let anybody do things for me if I think I can figure it out.  It’s a curse and a blessing, really.

So, it’s a metaphor or a symbol then:  I developed my own website, figured out how to optimize it for speed, and added (and revised over and over again) because I’m a DYI’er (do-it-yourselfer).  I’m blogging about “before” starting a law firm because I can’t be any other way.  That is where I fit in.