Category: Odds & Ends

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Starting a Law Firm | Solo Lawyer Legal Research

Starting a law firm is all about gathering information and being aware of what other solos attorneys are doing.  In that respect, it is very helpful to review a lot of different lawyer blogs to get information, new ideas on networking and marketing, and (for me) to know that there are other lawyers out there doing what I’m doing.  I have a number of great blogs on my Google Reader list that I review daily.  Sometimes the posts are not that great, but often I find some very helpful information on running my own practice.

In light of this, The Connected Lawyer had a great legal post about the use of public domain citations in Illinois.  The gist of the change, as I understand it, is that the Illinois Supreme Court has adopted a public domain system of citation for appellate court cases in Illinois that have been filed on or after July 1, 2011.  Rather than exclusively using the traditional court reporter citation with a year and page citation, the Illinois courts are now allowing the use of a public domain citation system.  This is counter to what I would guess everybody learns in law school in the United States.

Ok, why does this matter?  It matters because, in the view of Bryan Sims at The Connected Lawyer, and also in my view, the law should not be held in the hands of giant corporations – i.e.:  Lexis Nexis or Westlaw (Thompson West).  I would also guess that this is something that other states may start to change to.  If one state does it, you can be sure that other states will take note.  When I start a law firm in Minnesota, I hope Minnesota takes note.

Why does this matter to learning how to start a law firm?  To me, it matters because a lot of solo lawyers cannot afford or, at the very least, don’t want to pay for expensive Westlaw and LexisNexis subscriptions.  It cuts into overhead, something that all solos are keenly aware of.  As a lot of other blogs have addressed, there are many other ways to conduct necessary legal research:  Google Scholar, your state’s judicial and legislative websites, Findlaw, Cornell Law School website, the Library of Congress, Hieros Gamos, Public Legal, and many others.  Are these websites as good as Lexis Nexis and Westlaw?  No, not really.  But, the law is the law and it can be found in places other than with big corporations.  I will admit that I have difficulty sheperdizing cases with these free resources.  Although, I do remember a reading somewhere that there is a way to sheperdize cases for free on the net.  If anybody knows of a link, please post a comment here.

Learning how to start and run a law firm is difficult.  There are so many different choices that must be made and a budget to stick to.   Legal research is something I don’t want to have to think to hard about – I just want to be able to do it as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.  Furthermore, I get irritated when I think about how the law is supposed to be accessible to everyone and yet that accessibility is greatly diminished due to the hording of it by two monopolistic corporations.

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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.