Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

I am constantly shocked by attorneys who have no support staff. I don’t know how they can do enough work to make a living without support staff.

Me to…although I think early on it may be necessary. Personally I just have one support staff myself at the moment. I’m more amazed when I hear people almost exclaim as a badge of honor “I’m a true solo” meaning it’s good they have no support staff. That surely shouldn’t be the long-term goal even if it’s a short term necessity.

They certainly should have some kind of back up plan. What disturbs me most is your example of the firm who’s telephone message said they’d be away for over a week with no way to leave a message. That firm had many technological solutions, even without support staff. They could have checked messages from wherever they were visiting and returned important calls. They could have forwarded calls to their current location. While I understand them wanting to take a break, one of the consequences of running a small business is never being able to have a true vacation.

Attorneys can be very professional and busy without hiring support staff if they are responsive and leverage technology. Usually, I would much rather speak or email with an attorney than leave messages with the attorney’s assistant. It is a shame that the professionals mentioned in the post above could not access their documents digitally and reply promptly to voicemail and email since these are easy things to do.

I think practice area matters a lot…there’s a big customer service need disparity between say having 20 estate planning clients and say 50 real estate transactions where there’s a lot of “logistics.” I would say there are a few areas that the lawyer should almost never do: billing/billing collections follow-up, pure logistical calls like client meeting scheduling, incoming phone calls, and keeping work processes flowing when you’re in court or out of the office for extended periods.