Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Specifically, what should be the “niche” subject matter of my law practice…that’s the question. I’ve been puzzling on this for some time with concerns that my practice might be too general and not niche enough. Plus I’ve read a couple nice posts from Chuck Newton and Martha Newman about boosting profits by going niche. And I often find myself returning to Jim Collins’ “Hedgehog Concept” from Good to Great.

Over at Top Lawyer Coach Martha’s post is, A Niche Practice Positions You as Expert in Your Field of Practice. Her 5 reasons for going niche:

1) You’re perceived as an expert; 2) You’ll make more money; 3) You’ll dominate with less competition; 4) Your marketing will get easier; and, 5) You’ll be remembered.

Chuck lists 4 Steps to Snowball Your Law Firm Profits and look at reason #2…Niche Your Practice. Here’s his definition of a “niche practice” and why:

This is a matter of taking your strongest and most profitable practice area or cases types and concentrating on those. The purpose is to increase those cases that pay you more, and take less of your time, while decreasing those cases that pay you less and consume most of your time.

Sounds great, more money and less competition. So what’s holding me back? Why is it difficult to narrow my practice towards a very specific niche?

I think my trepidation stems from 2 concerns:

A.  Narrowing my practice areas will limit my potential pool of clients.

B.  What if I pick the wrong niche.

Currently my practice is some 70% family law and 30% real estate transactions. I’ve been thinking of dropping my real estate practice for a while…it’s not particularly profitable and I’m not particularly passionate about the subject matter (See Jim Collins re:  PASSION). But 30% of my income is still a decent chunk of change. Do I just lop it off in 1 fell swoop? How long before the niche momentum (marketing/expert/less competition) replaces that 30% or more?

Letter B may be scarier…I think a part of me hangs on to my smaller practice areas as a way of hedging my bets.

So, I’m moving towards a niche practice, likely slower than I should be. I’ve been branding our firm as the Family Law Office of Peter Olson on the Web and telephone marketing for a while. With me, the question likely shouldn’t even be between family law and real estate but rather how can I get ever more niche within the family law field.

Hard questions; touch choices…my search continues.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Thanks for the great comments and links to some other articles on “niche practice”…there must be something in the water this week. Checkout MyShingle & Build a Solo Practice.

No, this isn’t about corruption in Illinois politics…that’s on display live in at least 3 courtrooms at the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois down the street. The issues I’m talking about are systemic inadequacies that affect all 25,000 or so litigants within the state court system within Cook County on a yearly basis. The issues reared their ugly head again in a case I had this week…

1.  An inadequate court case filing system

2.  No electronic or human transcription system within most courtrooms

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse on this…it is a critical issue. And hey, we did eventually get the Daley Center law library to add WiFi so somebody must be listening/reading. First the facts and then the legal consequences and then my personal experience in court this past week.

THE FACTS: The Cook County Circuit Court Clerk uses a primarily paper-based filing system that is difficult to access and more importantly isn’t secure whereby old filings/court orders are lost and gone forever. Due to the storage needs required by a paper-based system, the even inadequate case files are rarely in court when a case is heard in court thus making judges wholly dependent on what attorneys/litigants produce. Finally, there’s no real-time electronic transcription occurring within courtrooms and the Cook County Official Court Reporters office simply cannot staff the hundreds of court rooms throughout the county.

THE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES: Simply, incorrect rulings/judgments are entered and that’s the injustice. And it’s not the individual making the ruling/judgment, it’s the inadequacy of the data upon which individual is forced to relay in making the ruling/judgment (See THE FACTS) which causes the incorrect ruling/judgment. A fair analogy would be the President relying on intelligence that in retrospect is like a 25% snapshot of reality in making foreign policy decisions…not a good decision-making environment.

I don’t think a lot of non-court attorneys or lay-people grasp the very large percentage of current and future litigation that relates wholly to the enforcement/vacating of/modification of previous pleadings and orders thus making the accuracy of a court file and case history critical. Within the domestic relations division I’d say 40%+ of the cases in court every day are in the enforcement/vacate/modify box. I don’t know the exact number that 40% translates into but I’d surmise it’s somewhere between 500-1,000 cases every day in Cook County Circuit Court.

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/EXAMPLE: This week I had a Motion to Vacate an old court order heard in court this week and it’s a great practical snapshot to illuminate the gravity of the problem. And in the end justice actually prevailed but not until some 6 months of wasted time and the potential for injustice was very likely despite my and a client’s best efforts. So here’s what happened…

Some 6 months ago my then pro se client sets several pleadings for hearing on court date #1. Next, opposing party files a motion to dismiss my client’s pleadings at court date #2 and motion to dismiss is set for hearing. Here’s where the system’s inadequacies first raise their ugly head because the hearing date originally set at court date #1 was supposed to be stricken at court date #2 but the wrong date got stricken because no one was in a position to view the actual order entered at court date #1 while in court at court date #2. Also at court date #2, various response times were set forth and the opposing party’s motion to dismiss was set for hearing a couple months after the hearing date set at court date #1 (note, this date was intended to be stricken but wasn’t so it’s still out there as an active court date). On court date #3 (which is the hearing date originally set at court date #1 that should have been stricken) the opposing party’s lawyer appears but my pro se client does not thinking this hearing date had been stricken. Well, this fine, upstanding lawyer goes ahead and by default has my client’s various pleadings dismissed with prejudice despite the fact that she surely knew the Motion to Dismiss had a subsequent hearing date set at court date #3.

Well, to some degree all is well that ends well and the court did vacate the dismissal order entered at court date #3 this past week. But I’m sure there are hundreds of cases where the opposite occurs. And I’d surmise that if the Cook County filing/transcribing system is better that this simply would NOT occur. Because if the judge has the 2 orders from court dates #1 and #2 in front of him at court date #3, there’s no way the dismissal occurs at court date #3 because the order entered at court date #2 clearly sets a hearing day several months after court date #3 & my client’s time to answer the motion to dismiss had not even expired yet by court date #3.

I know we’re in tough budget times, but this IS a BIG DEAL!

I’m pretty surprised at many lawyers’ inability to avoid discussing certain topics with opposing counsel that in my opinion make themselves look bad or more importantly, weaken their clients case. Personally, I think discernment when it comes to topics to discuss and facts to volunteer is in like the top 3 “must have” skills for lawyers. Yet I come across many lawyers who suffer from diarrhea-of-the-mouth. It’s a common American malady but Jane Public just makes herself look like an idiot whereas Jane Lawyer potentially weakens her clients case immensely.

Here are two that stick in my craw…and one is VERY detrimental to your client too:

1.  Complaining about not getting paid by your own client. I don’t see this a lot but I had it come up just this week and it’s really what motivated this post. I have a fairly small $$ case regarding return of some personal property from a client’s former commercial tenant that has dragged on for a while. Well, in court this week the Plaintiff’s lawyer complains that his client has only paid him some $500 and is way behind on paying attorneys fees and the lawyer didn’t sound too confident in ever getting paid. It’s not that I don’t empathize with his plight because I have client payment problems too and it’s likely the most important topic discussed on SIC. But when you discuss it with opposing counsel I don’t think you’re acting in your client’s best interests. Because now I know this lawyer is hanging by a thread and if it’s in my client’s best interest to get him out of the case I wouldn’t hesitate to flood him with a little paperwork to push him out.

2.  Personal attacks on an opposing client. Individually, I just find this utterly tacky and unprofessional but generally NOT AS hurtful to your client as #1 but it can hurt your client too (so why do it?). This comes up more than #1 through little snide comments by so-called professionals who can’t help over-personalizing a case. The worst I personally experienced was at Cook County’s primary parentage courthouse (32 W. Randolph, Chicago) a few years back where there was a visitation dispute and my client was the mother and the opposing female attorney just got in my client’s face attacking her about allegedly hurting the child’s relationship with her client (father). The only reason I can think of as to why this sort of behavior ever occurs is perhaps a lawyer trying to create the perception that she’s “aggressive” to her client. Of course the real result is damaging the relationship with the opposing counsel, hurting communication, and likely hurting a client’s case…not to mention likely causing the case to be a more expensive endeavor too.

Don’t forget about the meaning of the relationship:  Fiduciary Duty. It means acting in your client’s best interest…not just doing what feels good.