Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

Lawcrossing.com has a pretty good ‘flying solo’ piece here. I think most of the advice from the piece is pretty right on from my experience.

If you are in the pre-client (or few client) stage upon start-up, I think you need to go home office or space-for-services set-up with other lawyers. I had some five clients when I started our practice in April 2005 in a space-for-services deal. I was immediately profitable…my expenses weren’t too much. The thunderbolt that I had to deal with was when the lawyer who owned the office condo I was in got up and left for a law firm job and put the floor on the market. Having to pay rent probably increased my expenses by some 300% immediately.

Here’s a piece from yesterdays’ Sun-Times about immigration in the Chicago area. Is your Firm feeling the same effect? The numbers are, not suprising to me, but still fairly stagering. Naturalized citizens of voting age were more than 12% of the suburban population and more than 13% of Chicago’s. I found it suprising that between the six collar counties with Cook separated between Chicago and suburban Cook, DuPage County actually has the highest naturalized citizen population at 14.4%.

I think the questions that small law firm managers need to be considering are:

• How can I reach out to these populations (marketing)?
• How much do I stand to lose by not targeting these populations?
• How much do I stand to lose by not having foreign language interpretors in my office?
• Do I (lawyer) need to be fluent in more than one language?

Obviously immigration has huge ramifications that our Congress is having a hard enough time coming to any policies regarding as our federal government; it’s a tough issue. That being said, I’d be hard pressed to think of many places in the Chicago area that should not be having Spanish language interpretors available all the time. The same may apply to Polish on the north and northwest sides of Chicago.

Got my weekly e-mail from Vault.com (Vault.com is a popular career and legal employment Website) that included the following:

Wanted: Bloggers on Vault

Apply To Blog on Vault
To get your blog on Vault, send us an email to blog@vault.com. Please send us the following information.

Vault Blog FAQ
Q: Will I automatically get my blog on Vault?
A: No. Vault reserves the right to reject blogs that promise to be off-topic, incoherent, created for the purpose of selling diet pills, or just generally insane.

Q: I don’t know if my blog is right for Vault or not.
A: E-mail us at blog@vault.com and ask.

Who wants to put all the effort into a good blog solely for the monetary benefit of another company? Doesn’t Vault know how easy it is to generate Web traffic to a blog these days?

Anyone gonna sign-up?

Here’s a good post from The Chief Happiness Officer about creating a happy work environment at your company.

Look beyond the stupid title at this seminar put on by the Chicago Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. If you’re at all like our firm, it sure seems like we’re too often haphazard law practice rather than lean, mean, legal services BUSINESS!

Where’s the JD-in-a-day program for wannabe lawyers?

No guarantees from the management (as the late great Louis Rukeyser used to say on Wall Street Week), but I thought I’d just put out a quick post for this free tele-seminar from the Law Offices of John M. Preston in CA…

To learn more about the Preston A.P.C. Marketing Program, email us at ken.wilson@prestonestateplanning.com or call 1- 800-698-6918 to sign up for my free marketing teleconference.

I just e-mailed them myself. It’s free so if it’s convenient, what do you have to lose?

Another thought is, what affliated/side businesses can you develop to complement your law practice? For this guy, it’s legal marketing. I know we’re actively considering providing CLE courses for IL attorneys now that we have MCLE. What compliments your practice?

It’s lawsuits like this here (teenager’s parent suing another teenager regarding a lost iPod) that at least make me secure in the fact that I shouldn’t have to worry where my next meal is coming from. The greater ramifications and the health of our society is a differnent question.

I was reading the NYTimes’ day-after analysis of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program decision from Judge Anna Diggs Taylor and was struck by how widely the columnist used bloggers as sources quoted in the article. By my count the first three quotations from a private attorney and two law professors, are referenced as bloggers.

Question: Have we reached a point in some fields where not having a blog is really going to limit ones influence and cut into their business/influence, period??

I think the answer to the question is clearly yes and I’m just uncertain and just don’t have the breadth to say exactly what fields are most imminently impacted. In the legal field, it seems like if you’re a law professor who really wants to have influence outside the small law review world, i.e. the mainstream media, you need a blog. Second, I think if you’re a legal consultant, you need a blog. Those are the two that jump out at me in my industry. Speaking as an attorney in private practice, I could go on about the benefits of blogging but I won’t. What I will say is that I don’t think a blog as a private practice attorney is a “need” yet. However, I would say if you want to be someone who the mainstream media contacts and have some press relationships regarding particular subjects, having a blog may be particularly critical.

The Illinois MCLE Board recently published updated Frequently Updated Questions and Forms on their temporary web page. It provides answers to questions about the new Illinois MCLE rules. There’s quite a bit of information available including FAQ sections for attorneys and CLE providers.

Much of the information regarding approved CLE providers and specific activies that are approved for CLE has not yet been provided by the board. I’m personally somewhat curious as to how they’ll view legal writing. Supreme Court Rule 795 references “law books” and “law review” writing as items for which CLE can be gained. Those of us who edit legal newsletters are keeping our fingers crossed about that writing being included.

Anyone want to be a CLE provider with me? Shoot me an e-mail. I surely think that there are two or three areas of law I’m fairly expert on. We can market our law firms like typical CLE presentations offer, gain our own MCLE credit, and run a viable side business. Let’s do it!

Well, the ISBA conference police have told me I need to get my written materials in by Monday for our presentation at the Solo and Small Firm Conference and I’m brain-cramped. The Bears look lousy in their preseason game and I’m exchanging text messages with my wife who’s in Witchita, KN.

So, what does everyone want to know about blogging…I’m all ears?