As someone who was a professional writer (and life long bibliophile) long before I was a licensed attorney I’m constantly amazed at both the dearth of writing I see undertaken by lawyers and the poor writing skills that I observe in my colleagues. I’m not sure where the fault lies, a legal writing course is part of the typical 1L curriculum. However, my recollection of my first year legal writing course is that it focused mostly on teaching the format of various legal documents (legal research memo, client letter, appellate brief) and not on writing mechanics. For me, a couple years working in a newsroom, reading for pleasure constantly, and William Zinssner’s On Writing Well have under-girded any writing skill I’ve developed. Alternatively you might just might spend a year reading the works of Oak Park’s own Ernest Hemingway.

But why write more?

Because a single, well-written article can pay huge dividends for you from reputation building to client marketing. I’ll steal a phrase from Julie Fleming’s, The Reluctant Rainmaker which I just finished (review and maybe author interview to come), “Repurposing Material”  or simply writing once and using your work product many, many times. Sure, an outside publisher isn’t going to want to re-publish something that has appeared elsewhere but you can manufacture plenty of “downstream” uses from referral source mailings, blog posts, client newsletters, and more. Let me talk-thru a personal example and then list some ideas that you might pursue…

One Article:  Multiple Benefits

This tale is a bit more lawyer rather than client focused but I think the principles are universal and I’ll touch on another more client-related article I wrote a bit more below. FIRST, In January 2008 my article, I Hung My Shingle:  What I’ve Learned in 2 Years of Solo Practice, was published in the IL State Bar Association’s General Practice, Solo, and Small Firm Section Council newsletter. It was a several thousand word piece with 10 tips on starting a solo practice and that publication has a subscriber base of some 7,000. SECOND, in March 2008, the Illinois Bar Journal wrote an off-shoot piece picking out some highlights from my original piece. The Bar Journal goes out to some 30,000 members of the bar association. THIRD, on 5/5/09 I posted a slightly revised version of the article on this blog, What Worked and Didn’t Work for Me:  A 2-Year Synopsis. Obviously getting something out of the Web really kick-started things. Although some of the more “prestigious” legal publications are great for a resume line, those publications generally aren’t freely available on the Web which hurts their marketing benefit to you. Currently, the blog post has 11 comments (likely one of our more popular posts) and I’ve gotten innumerable personal contacts from people with follow-up questions and more importantly relationships formed. FOURTH, the director for continuing legal education with the ISBA specifically referenced the blog post in asking me to host, Brick by Brick:  Building a Law Practice in Challenging Times. This was great fun and in terms of personal marketing brought great prominence to me and the program is still being sold today. FIFTH, The ISBA also included the post as part of its New-Admittee Virtual Coffeehouse program which brought even more traffic to SIC. SIXTH, although harder to specifically define, all of the above has and continues to pay huge traffic dividends to this blog and to my Internet prominence in general.

How can you use this general “repurposing” idea to grow your practice? Or, simply, how can you start with a single article and use it over and over and over for more clients and clients and more $$ and $$?

One Article = More Clients

If your goal is to attract more clients, think about the breadth of potential audiences when planning your “base article” topic. Is there a topic that with a little “repurposing” could be attractive to lawyers, referral sources, and clients?

In February 2007, I wrote an article entitled, Pay Yourself in Residential Real Estate Transactions, published in the ISBA’s Real Estate Section Council’s newsletter. I of course posted a version of this over at Closing Chicago Real Estate and I did get a re-post from a local real estate agent. Further, I mailed copies of the article to some 50 real estate professionals and referral sources. I also used a version of it in our Firm’s client newsletter. Sure, the original writing and research is hard work, but then the re-packaging and re-use of your writing is easy and the potential for business generation is BIG!

Easy Action Points

• Write better & write more.
• Distribute your writing to clients & referral sources.
• Get your writing on the Web (on a non-password protected site) for traffic-building and Web prominence.
• Use your articles again and again (break it up if need be) via client newsletters and blog posts.
• Consider paid writing sites like Ezinearticles.com to expand recognition even more (and put a few bucks in your pocket).

This post is intended to serve as a bit of an introduction to a Product Reviews tab that I’ve placed permanently above. I want to talk straight-up about the products and services that I use, that I’ve tried, and tell you what works and doesn’t work for me, an Illinois small (but growing) firm attorney. We exist to give you the practical tools and advice to run a successful legal services business.

Here are eight (8) products/companies that I have used recently and/or products that I use every single day:

QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition. We’ve used this QuickBooks product for our back-end financial management, financial forecasting, and our client billing since our Firm’s inception in 2005. It’s obviously not a specific, legal billing package but the Professional Services Edition does allow us to set varying hourly billing rates and enter thorough descriptions of the services that we’re providing our clients. On the billing side that’s the key…explaining in detail to your clients the wonderful, thorough legal services that you’re providing. I get regular compliments from judges and attorney colleagues alike on the aesthetic appearance of our billing statements. Bank accounts are easily synced with QBs over the Internet. Frankly, to be self critical, I’d like to use the product better in terms of the many business planning, tracking, and graphing options that it offers.

Constant Contact. For the last several months we’ve used Constant Contact for our monthly e-mail newsletter that goes out to some 200-300 clients, former clients, and professional referral sources. Effective communication with these groups of people and keeping yourself “Top-of-Mind” with them might be your most important marketing goal as a legal services entrepreneur. This group (clients/former clients/referral sources) is where 80%-90% of your new business will come (and likely increasing as you meet people and have more clients/former clients). We’ve been sending out an e-mail newsletter for some 3 years, previously as a PDF attachment, with less effectiveness. Constant Contact allows us to choose from 100+ e-mail templates to create a nice-looking, graphical e-mail that appears in the body of a recipient’s e-mail. This grabs attention MUCH better than our old “PDF attachment” version plus readers can easily click on articles and offers that drives them to our Website. We can also monitor bounce, receipt and e-mail viewing rates. I haven’t even tried the survey or event marketing options that Constant Contact offers but they look promising too. Our firm hosts 0-500 e-mail addresses for $15 per month (no long-term contract required). Properly reaching your current/former clients and referral sources is the way to rocket your growth EXPONENTIALLY in years 3, 4, 5 (and beyond) of your business. Sign-up for a 60-day trial with Constant Contact now!

eFax. We’ve used eFax exclusively for all of our faxing needs since our Firm’s inception in April 2005. Quite simply an Internet-based fax “machine” is the only-way-to-go in the 21st century. Here’s eFax’s price listing which includes a monthly charge plus a per-page charge. One of these days a “fax machine” may be unnecessary but at least for us in the real estate field having that proof of fax transmission is often still important for contract “Notice” purposes. With eFax, you send a “fax” using the print instruction on your computer and then choose eFax as your “printer” which then opens the eFax interface. Your fax recipient’s information is entered (and is remembered) and easily sent to multiple recipients. Simply, anything that you can get onto a computer and into digital format is faxable (is that a word?). Receiving faxes come to as many e-mail addresses as you like. Both I and my assistant receive our Firm’s faxes wherever we’re working that particular day. eFax does allow you to select your local area code for your fax number. Multiple documents are easily combined into one fax correspondence in a manner just like adding e-mail attachments.

Regus (Office space solutions). We’ve used Regus for new client meetings, depositions, and multi-person meetings for the last 2 years. Regus is a worldwide company that really does a nice job of servicing flexible entrepreneurs who have office needs and want to project a professional image but without the expense and inflexibility of a traditional, single location-type landlord. I’ve just really begun to see a lot of their advertising around Chicagoland…they currently boast of 28 Chicagoland locations. My legal practice is centered in Chicago and the north/northwest suburbs so it’s nice to be able to use a Chicago Loop location regularly plus a couple outlying locations in Deerfield, Park Ridge, and Schaumburg. In my experience, clients WILL HAPPILY choose the convenience-of-location versue your “traditional” single, permanent location with your diplomas on the wall anytime. We use Regus’ free blue, businessworld membership and pay between $18-$28 per hour for a standard office.

HostGator Web Hosting. I’ve used HostGator to host my Firm’s Website (Olsonlawfirm.net) and two blogs (SoloinChicago.com & ClosingChicagoRealEstate.com) for just over 1 year. I previously used 1&1. My change was motivated by HostGator’s superior support for the latest WordPress versions for us bloggers. When I finally got serious about migrating the blogs from Blogspot to their own domains I needed the latest in WordPress support. Granted our Website could use some work, but HostGator does have easy-to-use sitebuilder software to get a basic site up quickly and easily. The back-end of our sites gets managed through a cPanel. I think HostGator’s “back-end” management has been the biggest positive change for me. I love the Webalizer feature and being able to really drill down into our traffic numbers by referrers and traffic by time of day/month. Also, our content is backed-up with one click. Further, the online chat customer service has always been spot-on.

eVoice. I’ve used eVoice for our office telephone answering for more than 1 year now. eVoice is an automated answering software program that allows you to create a personalized greeting for callers and then routes calls wherever you want. Pricing ranges from $12.95 to $29.95 per month depending on minutes and the number of extensions you need. eVoice has been great for us with 2-3 people working from several different locations. Callers to the Firm are greeted with a friendly, descriptive, automated answer but callers can reach myself or our legal assistants with the push of a single button. I think this is a better and more cost effective option than many of the “virtual office” options that charge you each time they answer a call and forward it to your cell phone and I find it more professional than you as lawyer answering your own phone. Yes, it is an automated answering service (gag) but I think that is becoming more and more the business norm. eVoice does not place your callers into some endless loop of automation, rather, with one press of a button they can leave me a voice-mail or get patched immediately to my cell phone. Call me now and tell me how it sounds…312-629-9900.

Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind. If you want to learn about blogging and general online business building, Yaro’s blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and some of his coaching programs are the place to go. His Blog Mastermind consists of 27 weekly Internet-based lessons which include text, audio, and video instruction. Blog Mastermind also includes a very useful forum and online community for interaction with thousands of other students. The program works very usefully through initial blog set-up and structural matters to content production, then traffic building, and finally monetization. Blog Mastermind costs $450.

uPrinting. I’ve become a huge fan of this company following recent business card and greeting card purchases. And the issue isn’t merely the quality of their end product but rather it’s their quality online, do-it-yourself design tools on their Website. I was able to create a quality, two-sided business card for $40 (500 cards). uPrinting’s pricing, quality, and design tools made them a no-brainer for our printing needs.

You may have noticed the recent edition of UPrinting as a sponsor of this blog (sidebar) and I wanted to mention a couple things going forward…

First, this blog is no different than most people and businesses during these tough times, I’m searching for new and better ways to generate revenue and improve the quality of this blog long term. I’m looking very seriously at creating a law student section and really increasing the variety of media that appear in this space and these things cost $$$.

Second, I am not an affiliate advertiser of UPrinting nor will I be falsely shilling about its products to generate my own income. The largest benefit I’m expecting from the sponsorship to provide SIC readers is by way of regular free give-a-ways such as business cards, postcards, brochures, ect (so check back often!).

Lastly, I am a recent and happy customer of UPrinting…just used them for my new bizcards. It was a bit like using the Amazon equivalent for printed products. I wanted to support a local printer but when you can use UPrinting’s many design features on their site, order and get your materials in a couple days w/o leaving home for $50…it’s kinda hard not to like’em.

Nice to see some bar associations folks following our lead, no problem, maybe just throw a link our way.

Here’s the ABA Journal’s take on lawyer ads over at the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s Website…we previously hit this topic here.

And from Illinois Lawyer Now, Four must-have tech tools for solos…hey, we had five!

• Closing the client’s file from Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog. Here’s the column he wrote for USA Lawyers. A very good discussion of the “life of a client file.” I know it doesn’t sound too sexy but you have one with every client, right? So lets do things properly.

• And in another take on a game I used to play back when I was teaching high school social studies entitled ‘What’s in the bag?’ where I think I tried to relate a bag of artifacts with useful American History here’s The Connected Lawyer’s version, What’s in my Travel Bag? An informative list of technology gadgets…I think I only own 2 of the 10 items he lists. I’ll be renaming this blog:  The Unconnected Lawyer.

Well a belated happy 4th of July and hope you didn’t get too wet at your local parade and fireworks display. It was cold and rainy in Chicago but the morning and the evening were fine so no great impact on my plans. Yet beyond celebrating the signing of our Declaration of Independence and John Cabot’s discovery of our nation, the 4th also serves as a handy half-way point for the year so I thought I’d gauge my progress…

2009 Business Goals & Plans

1.  Generate an average of $6,000 gross income per month and $72,000 for the year, specifically from lawyering revenue only.

Analysis: I’m going to be just beneath this goal at the halfway point of ’09. I was at just over $30k through May but I know that June’s income wasn’t great. I’m still very dissatisfied with the inconsistency of my income month-to-month. Simply for living and planning purposes I’d like to just churn-out month after month of $6k to $8k sort of months rather than some big months and then a $1,500 type month. Some things I’ve been doing to generate more business were to put in an application with the CBA’s Domestic Relations Referral Service, I’m set to attend a seminar in August to get on the Cook County Arbitrators list of panelists, and I joined a weekly LeTip group. Three marketing initiatives for the rest of ’09:  experiment with Google Adwords, Website redesign, and really reachout to other attorneys to make more professional referral relationships. If there’s one thing this blog has done is it has helped me meet many lawyers and I’m sure some of them need a family law referral source so I need to become that person.

Grade: B.

2. Become a Cook County Circuit Court Child’s Representative.

Analysis: I do have a very vibrant domestic relations practice involving many, many child custody matters and I do surely seek out continuing legal education seminars covering this subject. I really need to figure out if this or becoming a certified collaborative attorney is the better use of my time and resources. I need more information for 1-2 real seasoned family law practitioners.

Grade: C.

3. Complete a law review style article.

Analysis: Minimal progress. I want to get a couple scholarly articles under my belt because I really do enjoy writing but I’d also like to bolster my resume for law school teaching purposes.

Grade: F.

4. Create both law firm and blogging business plans.

Analysis: Very little progress on this front sad to say.

Grade: F.

5. Blogging consistency and attend Chicago Bloggers Meetup Group monthly.

Analysis: Primarily the issue here is simply viewing blogging as a very serious business endeavor that’s very much about of my future career and income generating plans. I’ve made around 90 postings here this year and about 70 over at ClosingChicagorealestate.com…not too shabby I’d say. Plus the traffic has really been solid as we’ve solidified things since the transfer over to WordPress. I’m just about halfway through Yaro Starak’s BlogMastermind program and expecting that to be a great guide as I work through more of the marketing portions of the program.

Grade: B.

6. Coaching and Mentoring and Getting Mentored.

Analysis: I’d like to have at least three mentors in my life:  one for lawyering, one for business consulting, & one for my Christian faith. Unfortunately I only have the lawyer mentor in place currently. The one I’m frustrated about is the business mentor/coach…I’m not sure where to turn on that front. There are a lot of business coaches out there but they cost $500 per hour. I may have to seek this out through a local group like Rotary or a Chamber of Commerce. I did get my first contact to act as a mentor through the ISBA’s MentorCenter so I was happy about that…I think that’s the ideal, having both sides of the mentor/mentee relationships in your life. And I am making some progress on the blog mentor program that I bought in early ’08 so that’s good.

Grade: C.

The Road Ahead…

Some fairly random things I’m thinking about beyond the above:

• Improve my Website and really make it a business generator and tie in with online ads…take advantage of decent traffic stemming from my blog profile on the Web.
• Create a firm overview publication with fee listing as part of the package that clients see prior to our initial meetings.
• Market hard to other lawyers I meet here to turn them into referral sources and vice versa.
• Consider a firm merger. I want to play bigger and take on bigger cases and I think great teamwork and synergy might be the answer…any takers?

Editor’s Note: I’ve posted parts of this article in dribs and drabs over the last year or so but wanted to post it in its entirety since I’m constantly sharing it with colleagues. It was originally published in the newsletter of the ISBA’s General Practice, Solo, and Small Firm section council (1/08)…but sadly is password protected online.

In April 2005 I made the jump to sole practitioner, leaving the security of law firm life to create my very own legal services business; I hung my shingle. It was an exhilarating decision filled with both excitement and trepidation as I started my first business. I had been a licensed attorney for not quite two-and-one-half years when I made the jump, with a small firm background in suburban Cook County. I started my practice in Chicago’s Loop and I practice primarily in the domestic relations, elder and real estate law fields.

I want to share what I’ve learned. Particularly in the current tough job market for new law school graduates, I expect that there may be many involuntary sole practitioners entering the practice of law. You can do it! These are some tips of what worked and what didn’t work for me.

1. Life Circumstances (primarily financial). My focus here is your financial stability as you start your solo practice. Ideally, you have a spouse or significant other who is working full-time in a steady, income-producing job and is providing health benefits. Also, if you’re right out of law school, perhaps you live with your parents for six months to one year to eliminate housing costs. Although I was married when I went solo, my wife wasn’t working at the time and it surely added to the financial pressures. Jay Foonberg in How to Start and Build a Law Practice suggests having at least one years worth of living expenses saved before starting a law practice (or having a spouse or significant other earning an equivalent amount).

2. How & Where to Office. These first two points are likely more important than the remaining eight combined; the amount of money and overall risks at stake are large and an error can be fatal. I started my solo practice in a “Space for Services” arrangement on State Street in Chicago. I had my office in a suite owned by an older attorney and my “rent” was 30 hours of legal work per month. He had a very full practice and I along with a number of younger attorneys assisted him. I strongly endorse this sort of set-up if you can find it. It kept my expenses down and allowed for good learning and mentoring experiences. Unfortunately, my landlord closed this office after my having been there only about six months. Following this office closure my firm was located in a traditional rent-paying location. However, starting October 1st of this year, I transitioned to a home office. In retrospect, once the “Space for Services” arrangement fell through I should not have rented office space. My experience has been that there’s very little need for a physical office and it wastes critical dollars. In my practice, with regular court appearances and real estate closings and 21st century technology, I’ve found that in-person meetings with clients are virtually non-existent. Also, our administrative staff is off site. That said I would strongly oppose having client meetings at your home. I anticipate using “temporary” office space at places like Regus (Regus.com) or My Office Suite (myofficesuite.com) for future client meetings when necessary.

3. When to go Solo. I went solo some two-and-a-half years after becoming a licensed attorney. I would advise against going solo right out of law school if you can avoid it. Let’s face it, although improving with increased amounts of clinical education, law school remains primarily a theoretical education. Most newly minted graduates don’t know how to practice law. Thus you must learn the practical skills of lawyering after law school. This is best done on an employer’s dime and under the supervision of an experienced practitioner. I think two questions should be asked before making the jump to solo practice: 1) Do you have a relatively high degree of expertise in two-three areas of practice so that you’re confident advising clients on your own? 2) Are there immediate client prospects (i.e., income sources) when you open your firm’s doors? Personally, when I hung my shingle I was working on some 20 client files as an Associate Attorney at my previous firm. Some five clients chose to follow me to my new firm which provided some initial income to ease the transition. Finally, I would strongly suggest you seek out good mentors both for practice specific matters and for the business of providing legal services. Both the Illinois and Chicago Bar Associations have created mentoring programs in recent years. I can’t imagine that most lawyers wouldn’t be honored to assist a less experienced lawyer learn the ropes.

4. Pre-Launch Tasks. Although your law firm will be constantly evolving as a business, I think there are certain tasks that must take place before opening your doors. It’s unlikely that your phone will be ringing off the hook your first day as a sole practitioner, however, you do want to hit the ground running and be ready to service clients. First, register an Internet domain name for your firm and preferably an additional domain name or two for practice specific blogs (see below). If you’re not on the Internet you’re invisible. And if you’re not optimized for search engines, primarily Google, you’re not much more visible. Also, you need a mailing address whether a physical office, a business “image” address or a simple post office box along with a telephone and fax number plus an e-mail address. All of the above are important because this information should be on your business card. Low tech business cards are still very effective for in-person marketing. You should also take out a malpractice insurance policy effective the day you open your doors. This is critical for personal liability protection but also because it’s going to be required for bar association referral services which you should also get signed up for up front. Also do a mass mailing to everyone you know with an introductory letter regarding your new law practice including several business cards. Finally, you should make sure that you have a more experienced attorney to consult as you deal with areas of uncertainty. This might be a friend, a bar association mentor or at a minimum membership on an attorney list serve such as the discussion groups offered through ISBA.

5. Naming your firm. I think there are three primary directions to consider in firm naming: founder/partner last name(s), geographic location or practice area(s). I obviously chose the last name option: The Olson Law Firm, LLC. I’m beginning to favor the use of a practice area in a firm’s name. Nearly everyone is using a name or names in a firm’s name. Take a walk around any town square of a county seat and you’ll see innumerable law offices. As a non-lawyer consumer, how would you tell the difference? I think the use of a practice area in a firm name will differentiate you. Or perhaps a combination such as The Family Law Offices of Peter R. Olson. I think the value of including a city’s name in your firm’s name would be particularly useful for search engine optimization for the consumer who types “Glenview lawyer” into Google, for example. In large cities I don’t think this would be effective. If you want to be real innovative and aggressive in opening up marketing channels, use more than one technique simultaneously. In other words, you might have a Website or a yellow page ad for both the John Doe Law Firm and then have a separate marketing stream for the Des Plaines real estate law office.

6. Business Entity choice. Let’s start with liability basics; unlike a non-legal business an attorney is restricted in his ability to limit liability. An attorney cannot limit his liability for liability relating to negligence in the practice of law. However, an attorney can limit his liability when it comes to contractual or employment-related matters. For sole practitioners, a Professional Corporation (P.C.) or Limited Liability Company (L.L.C.) are your likely business entity options. The Limited Liability Company, created in 1994 in Illinois, is a form of business entity that combines the limited liability of corporations with partnership treatment for federal income tax purposes (see 805 ILCS 180). Meanwhile, a Professional Corporation is a corporate structure for professionals such as lawyers, accountants or doctors. Illinois permits the operation of professional businesses in the corporate form under the Professional Service Corporation Act, 805 ILCS 10/1. Liability protection is identical under each entity, but the P.C. requires greater formality in terms of annual meetings and issuance of stock. As for costs, the P.C. requires an initial $150 filing fee to the Secretary of State and a $75 annual report fee. The L.L.C. costs $500 initially to file plus there’s a $250 annual report fee. I started my practice as an L.L.C. I don’t think that the formation of a business entity is critical for the new solo practitioner. Practically you may not have any employees and few long-term contractual obligations. That said, beyond issues of liability, I think there are perception advantages to using a business entity for your firm. I think there’s an advantage to have clients perceive that you’re running a serious business versus just a single lawyer toiling away by himself. Further, you as the firm’s founder must realize everyday that you’re running a serious and competitive legal services business.

7. Client Referrals. As mentioned above, one thing I did initially was to send a mass mailing to virtually everyone I knew with an announcement (business cards enclosed) that I was opening up a law practice. This is a “must do” and we still get calls from people who mention that they saved a business card and now they’re calling because they have a legal problem. I also sent a mailing to some 250-500 lawyers announcing the opening of my practice and offering to be available for court coverage and referrals. This reaped surprisingly few benefits.

Perhaps six months into our practice I started using LegalMatch.com as a referral source. This is a commercial, Internet-based, geographic-specific legal matching service. Clients enter their case information and I respond online. LegalMatch does generate a high volume of referrals and they do market themselves aggressively through the various Internet search engines. The downsides are referral quality and cost of the service. For this current year we paid $5,000. I am also a referral attorney of Pre-Paid Legal, Inc. The only thing I’d say is it’s free. I’ve gotten 3-5 referrals through it. As one of their referral attorneys you simply agree to give a slight price break to their referrals.

Bar association referral services give you great bang for your buck. I think these are critical because people who don’t have lawyers in their social networks call bar associations for referrals. Secondly these are typically only $50 to $75 annually. I’ve gotten good referrals from the Northwest Suburban Bar Association and the Illinois State Bar Association services.

Other professionals are another critical referral area. If I had to generalize, some of the above areas are good and useful for the person starting a firm and early in their career. These last two (clients and professionals) are referral sources more critical for my current and future planning and will potentially be the most lucrative referral sources. In the residential real estate area, you get most of your referrals from real estate agents. Other lawyers are also starting to be critical referrers. I think this takes time but once you have some good lawyers who know what you’re doing this may be the best referral source going. Get to know lawyers who practice in different legal fields and geographic areas and refer cases back and forth. Along this line, you should develop a nice “lawyer referral file” of your own because you’re often a referrer too.

Finally, I don’t think current and former clients are too helpful right up front because you either have few or no people in this category, but, over time this becomes the most important category. This is the category I consider most critical right now. After 2.5 years as a sole practitioner, we have a mailing list of 500 or so former clients. We have started a quarterly client newsletter to reach out to this group better. We also do the occasional “targeted” mailing of articles I write that address a specific area of law.

8. Billing & Collections. Since our inception, we’ve billed clients monthly and use QuickBooks Premier: Professional Services Edition for billing/accounting. It allows for hourly billing and you can provide written description for each entry. Bills are sent out religiously the first day of the month with a self-addressed stamped envelope enclosed (make it easy for clients to pay you). We do accept credit cards.

After some time our accounts receivables became higher than I liked and we’ve made changes. First, once a client hasn’t made a payment after the 30-day grace period, one of my assistants begins to make weekly calls to that person; these are non-threatening calls just reminding people that we haven’t seen their payment and asking when we can expect it. This little change has been surprisingly effective. We’ve also begun using an outside collection agency. The stages we go through with an unpaid bill are: start phone calls after 30 days without payment, collection letter stating that we’ll be sending to collections soon at the 60 day mark; and send to collection agency if there are no payments after 90 days (slightly different procedures if the case is in court presently). One other wrinkle we’ve added of late has been to include coupons in our monthly billing package. I’m still unsure about this. Does a coupon make us look too much like a fast food restaurant? I do know that multiple clients have come to us directly from our coupons. Lastly, if possible, wall yourself off from collections. Obviously I’m entering my billing time for legal work. But maybe it’s just me but I don’t like doing collections nor does it feel too comfortable for me on the one hand to be dealing with traumatic and personal legal issues with a person and then simultaneously calling them about the $500 they didn’t pay last month. Collecting is critical for your business. Create a policy that you and clients are aware of and follow it. Have non-lawyer staff follow-up on collections if at all possible! Looking toward the future, I am intrigued by the possibility of totally outsourcing billing to a company like TimeBillers, Inc. (www.timebillers.com).

9. Staffing. When I initially went solo I had no staff; I shared a receptionist answering my phone. Although I thought it necessary at the time, working without any administrative staff leads to lawyer unhappiness, is a cause of bad client service and poor communication (the primary cause of ARDC complaints) and is just bad business. No, I’m not suggesting you run out and hire some seasoned legal secretary for 40 hours per week with health benefits. What I am urging is for you to consider the use of virtual workers whether a legal assistant or law school student researcher on a part-time basis. With 21st century technology it’s simple to forward phone calls to an off-site employee and to share computer network resources over the Internet. As a business matter, without any support staff I’d guess a lawyer can spend only 20 percent – 25 percent of his time on billable legal work. The more non-billable work you can delegate to non-lawyer employees the more profitable you will become.

10. Blogging. Nothing has raised my individual profile more than blogging. For all you Luddites out there a blog (short for Web Log) is a frequently updated Web-based journal or diary, often hosted by a third party. For the majority of my Firm’s existence, I’ve published three blogs: Solo In Chicago, Closing Real Estate In Chicago, and The Illinois Family Lawyer. Their usefulness is wide-ranging but I think two uses are critical: marketing and the sense of “community” they provide. As a marketing tool, a blog allows you to exhibit your authority regarding legal subject matter through regular postings discussing legal matters. Further, regularly updated blogs will effectively enhance search engine rankings for both the blogs as well as your “static” firm Website. Using a free service such as Blogger.com is an easy way to get started. I am regularly interviewed in the legal press and have been profiled in multiple publications; none of this would have happened but for my presence in the blogsphere. Second, there is a wide-ranging and extremely active group of solo and small firm bloggers across the country. Without listing them all, let me say that nothing inspired me to hang my shingle more than these lawyer bloggers.

Let me be frank in closing, although I’ve attempted to be positive and encouraging in this article, it would dishonest of me to not state clearly that starting a solo law practice is tough, there will be some lean years and it’s not for everyone. It’s not something to do on a whim for six months to a year. I think you have to be committed to sticking it out for three to five years to really give it a fair shot. Jay Foonberg says that it took him five years before his cumulative earnings as a self-employed lawyer equaled what his cumulative earnings as an employee with a firm would have been. You need to be entrepreneurial. As a lawyer employee one might spend upwards of 75 percent of time in the practice of law. As a sole practitioner, marketing and business development come first; you need clients in order to actually be practicing law. You have to enjoy leadership and responsibility; the buck stops with you. But it’s rewarding, you’ll build something that’s yours. And there’s no failure. Several years in solo practice provides a breadth of experience not found in the typical Associate Attorney role. As Abraham Lincoln advised, your desire to succeed is one-half of the battle. Go for it!