I’m making progress, slowly but surely. Filed the paperwork to form my PLLC yesterday, negotiating for office space. Also looking in to becoming a notary public, obtaining a business license, getting PO Box, office furniture, and approximately eleventy billion other details. Goal is to have my doors open by October 1, 2012.
Good luck Oak.
Are you interested in taking court appointments? If so, be sure to tell the local court clerks to put you on the list.
Go, Oak!
- Always ask “Does this client/evidence/story/proposal etc. pass the sniff test?”
- Have some fun with your practice.
Good luck, Oakminster!
From the absolute other end of the profession in every possible way (experience, firm size, and practice area), allow me to join in and say: Good luck, brother.
Ideally, that’s where you want to get to with your practice (with oversight from you), so as your practice develops, try to farm out everything that you cannot bill for, and spend your own time billing, for ultimately you are the only significant income generator. Set billable hour goals for yourself, and meet them.
Source out contractors – accountants, valuators for pensions, real estate and personal property, researchers, bookeepers, law clerks, secretaries, process servers and delivery persons.
Lawyers do not like to turn away business, but at the same time they do not like to take on clients for tasks for which they either do not have an appropriate skill set or simply do not have the time. Get yourself known in the local bar as someone who can handle referrals without poaching. Call the other lawyers in town to introduce yourself and discuss their needs.
Find a few lawyers in your town who will be willing to give you advice. Develop professional relationships with other lawyers, law clerks, court staff, judges, and contractors. Things go a lot more smoothly when everyone in the sandbox plays well together, so develop a reputation accordingly. [De Niro]We’re all in it together.[/De Niro]
Consider setting up in chambers, in which you and a few others run separate firms, but share common resources (such as a receptionist/secretary who is also a commissioner/notary), or consider setting up in a building that houses several other small law firms, so that you can help each other out as needed.
At a minimum, you need to get in the Yellow Pages and the phone book. Put effort into a good ad. If you go for the free design offered by Yellow Pages, you will get what you paid for. If you have not already done so, find out when their deadlines are, when their book comes out, and what the monthly bill will be (and make sure your health insurance is paid up before you find out how much it costs). People tend to keep phone books, so expect Yellow Pages ad based calls to grow after a couple of years. Also have an internet presence, for although your page will be lost in a sea of other pages, when someone searches for you it would be nice if they could find you. At its simplest, get a domain name that matches your name , and place meta tags in on each page of your website’s code.
Assume that at any given time, a piece of equipment, software, or a paid service will fail at the worst possible moment. That’s no exaggeration – that’s a fundamental physical rule of the universe (says the guy who for the last couple of weeks was using a cell phone as a modem for an internet connection because his home landline was dead, and who was working at home because his office is still not ready for occupation after a flood, and who is showering at the marina because the work on the well did not go well). Both redundancy and alternatives are your friends.
Consider getting a file server so that you and the Druidess do not get bogged down accessing files or trying to figure out which machine has the most current version of a file. Also consider a router and a network printer.
Back up obsessively. Set your programs for autosave. Get a backup unit that continuously backs up – as in every time you make a change to a file, it backs it up. Perform a separate backup for off-site storage every day. For off-site storage, cheap options include on-line backup and portable drives (memory sticks can hold a lot these days), so use them both.
Scan all important documents – don’t just toss them into a box. That way when there is a flood or a fire, you are still good to go. Also, the time taken to scan the important documents will be more than paid for in efficiency when a client calls for a quick answer long after the file has been closed.
In addition to professional errors and omissions insurance, also consider coverage for down time to cover lost income when you are ill or your office has been knocked out from fire or flood.
If you have not done so already, develop skills at Word and Excel (or whatever word processor and spreadsheet the practitioners in the area are using), and develop enough knowledge of the tech in your office that you do not have to hire a technician every time there is a minor problem. If you have not already done so, see what specialized software is out there that you will either require (for example, where I am there are certain programs that we must use in family law and in real estate), or could make your life a lot easier (accounting and billing packages, although for a one person shop you can do quite nicely with just a spreadsheet).
Check with your governing body to determine your reporting, accounting and banking obligations, and follow its requirements to the letter. For banking, find an account manager that you can relate to, and who has a book made mostly of small professional practices. At the minimum, I expect that you will need to set up a trust account and a general account. Set them up so you have full on-line access. Find out the procedure for you to receive funds electronically from other institutions (SWIFT code, etc.), and find out the procedure for your clients to make direct deposits into your account over the internet (if your bank offers that sort of thing).
Consider getting set up for credit and debit card transactions. The longer a bill goes unpaid, the less chance that it will ever be paid, so immediate payment is less risky than a cheque in the mail. When it comes to cheques, in family law, clients in crisis bounce cheques out of confusion. In criminal law, clients bounce cheques because they have no money. When accepting cheques, make sure the funds have cleared the bank before you access those funds (talk to your account manager about how long it takes for a cheque to clear). When handling settlement funds, always insist on direct/electronic transfer of funds, or a certified cheque or money order from an institution with which you are familiar. Keep your eyes open for scams that will have you receiving funds for a transaction into your account and then paying them out from your account, only to find that the incoming funds bounced, leaving you out of pocket and the scammers long gone.
Speak to your account manager about setting up an operating line of credit. Try not to use it, but have it available for a rainy day (for example when a client bounces a cheque). The rates are one hell of a lot better than credit card rates, so if you do have to borrow to get the office up and running, us the LOC rather than the card.
Although it is simpler to receive payment for work done rather than to receive advances in trust from your client that will eventually be moved from your trust account to your general account when work is done, this will lead to the problem of you being in the middle of a case when your client runs out of funds, leaving your last account unpaid, and leaving you having to put time into the matter to remove yourself as the solicitor of record. You should always have enough funds from your client in your trust account to cover the work that will be done in the immediate future plus enough to cover the work it will take to be removed as solicitor of record. At first, it may be only a couple of grand for an initial retainer deposit, but ensure that the retainer agreement signed by you and the client has a term that lets you change the deposit requirement and the matter proceeds, particularly if you are heading into motions or a trial, and that lets you dump the client and recover your costs from the retainer deposit should your client fail to adequately maintain the deposit level. Never expect to get paid after your client loses. Never expect to get paid after your client wins but no longer thinks you deserve your rate. Never expect to get paid by a well-intended client who is tapped out. In short, think of yourself as a good old fashioned prostitute: “Cash on the dash, Baby!”
If you do go out on a financial limb for a client, make sure the anticipated debt is secured with a priority, such as a mortage, but even then be sure to look closely at whether that priority is high enough with respect to super-priorities (tax man?) and pre-existing priorities.
With respect to family helping you out at the office, please take the following as being put forward with the best of intentions and respect. Some couples can work well together in a business, but a great many cannot, and end up bringing too many of their employer/employee problems into their spousal relationship, and bringing too many of their spousal problems in the business. That can lead to a marital failure. If times are tight, that can lead to a marital failure. If a business fails that can lead to a marital failure. Both you and your spouse should talk this through, and execute a domestic contract with independent legal advice. Hire her as an occasional contractor rather than as an employee, keep detailed records of work that she does, and pay her a fair wage for every minute of her work. If your marriage fails, you must expect a claim against you for the work your spouse has put into your business and for a share of the business, so you had best be able to prove that she had already been paid in full and has no entitlement to a share. You’re going into a business in which you will be drafting a lot of domestic contracts, so don’t be like the cobbler with no shoes.
Do the best you can to protect your assets from potential creditors. If your business fails, or if you get nailed with a claim that is not covered or is not fully covered by your errors and omissions insurance, you do not want to be left broke. I don’t know what the law is in your jurisdiction with respect to this, but look into moving assets out of your name (obviously that brings its own risks), look into whether you are permitted to operate as a limited liability corporation, and look into investments that are protected from creditors (for example, where I live, creditors cannot touch accounts held in a life insurance company provided that there is a designated beneficiary).
You’ll come across a lot of clients who believe that their spouse is not fair, the laws are not fair, the world is not fair, and on and on and on. Don’t ever take that attitude in your own business. It really does not matter if something unfairly affects you – all that matters is how you deal it. Every minute that you spend playing the blame game is time and effort that should have been spent solving the problem and relentlessly moving forward. Take this to heart: “Shit happens. Deal with it.”
To keep your business moving forward, you will have to work your ass off. Expect to work long hours on client matters, and then further hours on administrative matters. Know that you will be doing this while juggling on a high-wire without a financial safety net. At the same time, you must consciously make an effort at not burning out and not destroying your marriage. While you are learning to juggle (“Keep calm and carry on,”), remember that you must juggle all the dimensions of wellbeing in your life, not just the business matters, so set your priorities and meet them, rather than letting your priorities get mired in the madness of a new practice. Don’t risk burning out.
Two final words of advice. First, have some fun – enjoy the self-direction, the opportunities for creativity, and the chance to grab the tiger by the tail and give that fucker a spin. Second, don’t be too loud when you are your wife are enjoying your office space.
SCORE (service corps of retired executives) is a really good source for free and/or low cost assistance in most business practices.
Speaking of billable hours, I am meeting more and more attorneys who work on a flat fee basis. You have to be be very knowledgable about the time-cost of different types of cases, and accept that you will take a bath on a few cases, and also receive windfalls in others. But apparently, clients love it.
Just a thought.
Owning your own business is definitely tough. My parents had their own business and as a result of that knowledge, I don’t think I would ever, ever, ever work for myself. And certainly never with a spouse (at many times I thought my parents would divorce. Sometimes I wished they would).
BUT there are also very significant personal rewards (and sometimes even monetary ones).