Category: Struggling Lawyer

Posted on

Oath and Affirmation

Today, March 8, 2012, I took my attorney Oath and Affirmation before the Honorable Thomas Bibus, Judge of the First Judicial District, Goodhue County, State of Minnesota.  What a relief.

I haven’t posted on this blog since November of 2011.  Why?  Because I felt dishonest posting on a blog named “Solo in Minneapolis” when I wasn’t licensed in Minnesota.  You might say:  why didn’t you just blog somewhere else?  Well, I did.  I’ve been blogging as much as I can about family law, estate planning, and probate.  Go check out my blogroll if you care.

Ironically, the last post on this blog was about how, in order to practice law, you have to get through law school first.  I feel like I just went through some kind of right-of-passage which was akin to law school.  I have waited for nearly ten months to be able to actively practice law again.  I left Indiana in June of 2011, bummed around with my wife and new baby boy, and settled in Minnesota in August of 2011.  Due to complications with my bar exam and licensure, I was not able to apply for admission in the State of Minnesota until the end of October 2011.  After that, I waited, and waited, and waited.

Last week, on March 1, 2012, I received my notice letter that the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners had recommended to the Minnesota Supreme Court that I be admitted to practice law in the state.  Thank god.

For anybody out there who has been benched, sat-out-a-year, missed playing time, been hurt, struggled with depression, struggled with life, felt whipped, been tired of bureaucracy, I salute you.  I hope you made it through.  I did.  I don’t know what the world has in store for me, but I know I can move on.

I realized a few things:  (1) I really want to be a lawyer, (2) I’m stronger than I thought, (3) my son is awesome and I love spending time with him, (4) I have a lot to learn about life, the law, and the pursuit of happiness.  Now, hopefully, I can stick to my guns, feel good about my choice of occupation, and go out there and kick ass.

I’ll be posting here more often.  I missed my starting a law firm diary blog.  I’ll let you all know what I learn about being a good Minnesota lawyer.  I hope I can build up a readership again.  I was doing pretty well for awhile, but, alas, nobody visits my nonesense anymore.  I hope that changes.

I’ll part with this nugget:

I, Joseph Matthew Flanders, do swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and that of the State of Minnesota, and will conduct myself as an attorney and counselor at law, in an upright and courteous manner, to the best of my learning and ability, with all good fidelity as well to the court as to a client, and that I will use no falsehood or deceit, nor delay any person’s cause for lucre or malice, SO HELP ME GOD.

Posted on

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?’ ”

Posted on

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.

 

Posted on

John Maynard Keynes and Spending to Start a Law Firm

Author John Cassidy, in the October 10, 2011 issue of the New Yorker magazine (which happens to be the annual “money” issue), wrote a though-provoking article on John Maynard Keynes and his economic philosophy as it relates to the current world-wide financial recession.  Much of the article, titled “The Demand Doctor“, posits (as far as I can tell) that Keynes was right in his argument that government spending creates demand and thereby boosts the economy out of recession.

As I’ve posted, I’m worried about how to start a law firm in this economy and the uncertain risks of being an entrepreneur.  I remember learning about Mr. Keynes as an undergraduate, but my level of knowledge is foggy at best.  I have noticed, however, that his name and ideas show up in my intellectual reading pursuits in an eerily frequent fashion.

This makes me wonder:  Is Keynes simply a easy target for writers and economic neophytes?  Or, is he truly a revolutionary though-leader whose theories should be continuously revisited?  These are question I do have easy answers to. Perhaps more important is what can Mr. Keynes and his economic philosophy can teach me about being an astute capitalist who aims to start a law firm in an economy that is at a historic low.

Keynes argues that the government must spend and possibly cut taxes so that people like you and me will, in turn, spend.  The spending then boosts the economy, creates jobs, encourages lending, etc, etc.  Mr. Cassidy, quoting author Sylvia Nasar, summarizes the Keynsian position well:

What made the General Theory so radical was Keynes’s proof that it was possible for a free market economy to settle into states in which workers and machines remained idle for prolonged periods of time . . .  The only way to revive business confidence and get the private sector spending again was by cutting taxes and letting business and individuals keep more of their income so they could spend it.  Or, better yet, having the government spend more money directly , since that would guarantee that 100 percent of it would be spent rather than saved.  If the private sector couldn’t or wouldn’t spend, the government would have to do it.  For Keynes, the government had to be prepared to act as the spender of last resort, just as the central bank acted as the lender of last resort.

Keynes argued that (at a basic level) a large entity (the government) needs to spend in order to help the national economy grow – or at least not stagnate.  I find this basic premise interesting because my first instinct is to cut my spending and save, save, save when things start getting rough financially.  Apparently, as the author writes, former President Harry Truman had a similar reaction to Keynes’s ideas, stating that:

“Nobody can ever convince me that Government can spend a dollar that it’s not got,” he told Leon Keyserling, a Keynsian economist who chaired his Council of Economic Advisers.  “I’m just a country boy.”

In many ways, I echo President Truman’s sentiment.  I’m also somewhat of a country boy.  How can I justify spending more of my family’s hard earned money on investing in an entrepreneurial venture like starting a law firm?  Would it not be wiser to simply look for and obtain a job doing some form of legal work and thereby garner a steady salary?  Clearly, if the only goal is to make money and provide for my family, then starting a law firm is not a wise decision in the short-term.

The New Yorker piece also discusses the myriad of objections that Mr. Keynes’s ideas have received since he first published his seminal work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” in 1936.  Many of the objection boil down to a fundamental disagreement that government cannot spend dollars when the government does not have dollars to spend.

With this understanding firmly in my mind about Keynes’s thought on stimulating a national economy, I believe that I can make a connection with starting and building a law firm.  In my mind, this sort of thought process is a akin to return-on-investment (ROI).  I have noticed that many law firm guru’s and other lawyers marketing blogs have discussed the importance of ROI.  I am not going to try to discuss the minutia of ROI as it relates to specific instances of law firm marketing.  My point here is only to share the excellent article by Mr. Cassidy in the New Yorker and to posit that starting a law firm (or any business for that matter) is akin to using Keynsian economic philosophy to stimulate the economy.

I also realize that starting a law firm is more individualistic  – it benefits me and my family but not the national or world as a whole.  Perhaps my leanings should be more socialist and less capitalist.  I don’t think so.  In addition to his academic career, he was also a privileged capitalist.  Mr. Cassidy quotes Keynes:

If I am going to pursue sectional interest at all, I shall pursue my own . . . [t]he Class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

I identify with Keynes’s sentiment.  Starting a law firm and being  capitalist in a down economy is not necessarily a bad idea or a strictly individualistic endevour.  The world needs spending and it needs entrepreneurs right now.  Whether or not you agree with Keynses’s economic philosophy, it is hard to argue with that fact.

I don’t mean to say that the journey will be easy or frought with risk.  It is and it will be.  Failure is also a reality.  But, I also believe in the maxim that nothing ventured is nothing gained.  As Mr. Cassidy concludes in his article:

It calls not merely for the management of risk but for something politically and intellectually far more demanding:  the acknowledgement of uncertainty.

 

Posted on

How Much Internet Marketing is Too Much Internet Marketing?

I’m feeling a little down about all of my social media/blogging/website-optimization efforts to market and start a law firm.  I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on legal internet marketing for near four months now and it has become all consuming.  To be honest, it is exhausting.  I have begun to ask myself:  to what end?

The easy answer to that question is that I am doing this to have a career, feed my family, and feel good about myself because I have marketed my law firm which has enabled the right people to hear me and, of course, hire me.

But, then there is another question: does all of this internet legal marking work?  Well, yes – depending on what you mean by the term “work”.

I have gotten a lot of hits on this blog.  I have gotten more traffic to my website than I otherwise would have without my marketing efforts.  However, a lot of this feels empty. I’m doing my best to give solid advice on here but one begins to wonder what solid advice is.

I think my point is that I worry that young attorneys will take me too seriously and fail to do a good job as lawyers.  I’m afraid somebody will think legal marketing is more important than being a good lawyer.  Believe me, if you have practiced law for any time at all, you know it’s a jungle out there.  You know that being a lawyer is difficult for many reasons. I hope you know that practicing law takes hard work, long hours, and plenty of difficulties and possible malpractice lawsuits.

Additionally, I hope you know that getting clients is not terribly difficult.  However, being a good attorney is.  If you don’t know what you are doing, don’t start a law firm.

There, I said it.  Don’t start a law firm unless you have some legal experience and can represent your clients with a high standard of excellence and zeal.  If you came here for advice and read this silly little piece of internet cheapery, I hope that message hits home.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I wish all of you the best of luck.

Posted on

Jump-Starting a Solo Law Practice

Carolyn Elfefant over at MyShingle.com has a post this morning titled “Crowdsourcing Advice for a Struggling Solo.”  She has included a letter asking for advice from a struggling solo lawyer in an east coast city.  The letter brings up issues that all solo attorneys struggle with.

Ms. Elefant asked readers to try and answer the attorney’s question, so I’m doing so here. To that end, here is the sanitized version of the struggling-solo-attorney’s letter as posted on MyShingle:

I am a solo with a practice in a large East Coast city. I handle real estate transactions, bankruptcy, divorce and general litigation. I started my solo practice three years ago, following several years of employment at a smaller firm. Initially, I was able to sustain a practice through referrals – although even then it was a struggle. But lately, I find that people don’t want to pay for legal services. I do an initial consult, but then the potential client will haggle over the price. In addition, the referrals come in spurts and I would like to find a way to produce a steady revenue stream.

I am updating the firm resume, adding a Facebook page, joining Linked In and I have started sending email updates to colleagues. But I would like ideas to jump start my practice – to start bringing in work right away while developing a reliable stream of revenue for the future.

To try and answer the questions, I’m going to strip the letter down to its most basic level:

Good things for a Solo Attorney:

  • The attorney indicates that he/she has been a solo for three years;
  • The person has some kind of referral base, although dwindling;
  • This person apparently has office space and necessaries like a receptionist, billing software, etc.

Bad things for a Solo Attorney:

  • Dwindling referral base;
  • Lack of steady revenue stream;
  • Potential clients haggling over price.

As Ms. Elefant states, there isn’t a lot to go on in the attorney’s letter, but the things I listed above are something all solo attorneys struggle with.  I know I have.

So, to try and help:  the attorney does have some things going for his/her law practice.  The attorney has the ability to be successful with the institutional tools he/she has set up.  These are all good things.

The rest of the issues seem to be related to marketing and client interviews strategies. Let’s start with the client interview.  The attorney is concerned about clients coming in for a consult and haggling about price.  This happens to me all the time.  That is what walk-in clients do.

If the attorney wants to continue to have a general practice dealing with every-day people, my suggestion to solve this problem is work on your selling skills.  I don’t mean sugar-coating the law or telling the potential client that they have a case when they don’t.  However, being overly nice to the client and making them understand how valuable your services will be to them is rule-number-one.  I don’t have a lot of problems closing and I think it is because I am overly nice, I explain the law in an easy to understand way, and I make the client knows that they and their legal problems are really important to me.

After that, I have found that having a credit card system usually helps ease the burden of a large retainer.  We aren’t told if this attorney utilizes credit card payments.  To me, credit cards are a must for a general practice attorney who is seeing people walking in the door.

Another client interview retention technique I use is the call back.  It works in one of two ways:  (1) I tell them to think about what they want to do with their loved one and I’ll wait or (2) I tell them that somebody from my office (usually me) will follow up with them in a couple days to see if they are still interested.  I don’t change my price, but I do explain the credit-card-system and I do take this additional opportunity to explain to them why I can be of service to them.  Basically, the client really wants to know that they are going to get something of value from us over-priced lawyers.

The second issue I see is the steady-revenue-stream conundrum.  Ah, the gold mine of solo attorneys.

My big suggestion for this is to find a practice area that caters towards steady-revenue. Once you choose one, you market towards it.  One idea is collection work.  Collection work allows you to be in court often and meeting with debtors on a constant basis.  It’s nickel-and-dime stuff, but it is work.  Also, if you have a large collection practice, you will begin to get good referrals from banks, businesses and other entities that are in need of fee collection – or, perhaps, better legal work.  Once this practice gets off the ground, you have instant steady revenue.  I’m not saying it is easy, but it is an option.

Another steady revenue option is getting on a public defender, indigent-person, court-appointed-appeals contract.  These are all steady revenue sources and they are usually available to struggling solos.  I try to get in good with my local judges, do a good job, and then let them know I am looking for work.  They usually want to help and they steer me business because I do a good job (I think) and they like me (I know).

Another idea is getting on a pre-paid legal referral network.  These networks can be dicey and you should check with your bar-association to see if they are legal, but they do work.  The pre-paid legal referral sources will always call you if you do a good job.  Try to get friendly with the support staff and they will really like you – thus referring steady business to you.

Finally, work your butt off networking at corporate/business functions and get yourself a great manufacturing type client.  These businesses always have need for a labor law lawyer.  The employees constantly have problems and/or the business always needs contract related advice.  This one is tough, but it can be a gold-mine, steady-revenue source.

I am not trying to say these options are easy.  They are not.  I have struggled with doing every one of them.  To me, law firm marketing means hustle.  However, what has helped me with the hustle is:  focus, being a nice guy, working really hard, and having a plan.

That is my two-cents.  I hope it is helpful to the struggling attorney.  If anybody wants to post here on their ideas on how to start a law firm and maintain it, please feel free to comment.