Top Ten Secrets in Starting Your Own Firm

Mon, Aug 9, 2010

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By Jason Brown

I spent the better part of a year preparing to open shop in 2003. I was just three years out of law school. Many thought I was nuts for taking the plunge. My former boss told me I’d regret it. With due respect, joke’s on him.

Instead of lining the pockets of others with your hard work, you can be the direct beneficiary of your efforts. What the heck…there aren’t any jobs out there anyway. What have you got to lose?

Here are my ten secrets if you are getting started:

Read Foonberg’s Books: Jay Foonberg is the king of kings when it comes to advice on opening and managing a law practice. Check out www.foonberglaw.com. I read his “How to Start and Build a Law Practice” no fewer than three times before drawing up a game plan.
Domain Name Search First: Don’t name your firm first and then see if the domain name is available. Check out domain availability first, then name your firm. Not my first choice, but www.brownlawoffices.com was the best available name at the time we opened up.
Virtual Office: Have offices in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Roseville, Burnsville and Minnetonka. Clients usually look local. Many virtual office entities will afford access to conference rooms in any number of locations for a modest monthly rate.
Don’t Give the Yellow Pages a Dime: It’s a dead form of very expensive advertising. Just look at this year’s Minneapolis book and see how thin things are getting. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.
Answering Service: Have a professional answering your phone, taking messages and speaking with potential clients. Not all that expensive, but first impressions are everything.
Specialize: Unless you are a “main street” lawyer, have a few areas you specialize in. More and more clients wants lawyers who specialize. Stinks to turn away business but don’t be tempted to experiment with someone’s life.
Breathe the Internet: Marketing gold. Won’t give away any more secrets than that, but those who harness it will succeed.
Buy the Good Stuff: Otherwise you’ll wind up buying it three times. Get a good computer, high speed internet, commercial grade scanner and commercial grade printer. Ours have lasted years and years.
Less Paper: Scan. Scan. Scan. Use PDFs and store every document that runs through your firm digitally. Send electronic copies to clients. Send electronic copies to counsel.
Search and retrieve documents in a second, instead of digging through foot-thick stacks of paper. Throw away all the unnecessary paper that does nothing but soak up precious office space. Don’t pay a secretary to attach paper to manila folders. Take your entire file with you to court on a thumb drive.
Remote Secretary: Getting busy? Great! You need an assistant. Some really good ones work “as needed” for a modest hourly rate. You dictate digitally and send stuff to them. They return work product in 24 hours.

Always fun to talk shop. If you are seriously considering opening your own office, give me a call. Be glad to spend a few minutes and share a few more pointers.

This post was written by:

Jason Brown - who has written 7 posts on JDs Rising.

Prior to founding the Brown Law Offices, P.A., Jason clerked for Timothy R. Bloomquist, Chief Judge of Minnesota's Tenth Judicial District. He graduated magna cum laude from Minnesota State University Mankato and earned his Juris Doctorate, with honors, from the William Mitchell College of Law. Jason is a former chairperson of the Family Law Section of the Minnesota Association for Justice.

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7 Comments For This Post

Eric Cooperstein Says:
August 9th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

Some great tips here. Be careful though about how you advertise having multiple “offices” through those available conference rooms. It could be considered misleading to give the impression that your firm is so large that you have several offices, when in fact you have one or two attorneys with access to conference rooms in the various cities.

I agree that is is important for new solo and small firms to focus their energy in one area and develop expertise in that area. But be careful about describing yourself as a “specialist” or “specializing” in any area of practice (see MRPC, Rule 7.4).

Jim Jarvis Says:
August 11th, 2010 at 10:14 am

http://www.brownlawoffices.com is an excellent looking website. Clean, easy to navigate. I wondered why you went with a PA instead of a PLLC as an organizational structure?

Jason Brown Says:
August 11th, 2010 at 11:03 am

Thanks Jim. Tax issue on the PA. Our situation resulted in more favorable treatment under the tax code. I would suggest speaking with an accountant.

Ron Says:
August 11th, 2010 at 9:47 pm

Really enjoyed this post. Any other authors you’d recommend in addition to Foonberg?

Shawn Vogt Sween Says:
August 16th, 2010 at 8:45 pm

Thanks for a useful post. I also found Carolyn Elefant’s book to be very helpful when preparing to start a practice. And don’t forget that Minnesota CLE publishes a “how to” guide for starting a law practice that’s available through the online library.

paul floyd Says:
September 3rd, 2010 at 10:07 am

I really appreciated this article. I would agree 100% with his recommendation to scan, scan, scan….. I am one of those attorneys who stapled paper to paper and then filed hard copies (and in most cases more than one hard copy of the same thing…. so that I would not lose it) and now I scanned virtually all my documents.

I scan even letters, notes, cards and the like from clients and friends (for future referral sources and addresses). I can see little reason for a new attorney (opening her own practice) to pay the office space (or use garage space) for file storage. I just wonder what the document storage people think of this new change in file maintenance?

Brad Taplin Says:
September 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 pm

Dear Mr. Brown,

Thank you for those tips! I had considered implementing eight of them, but had not yet considered the answering service or remote secretary, and was hungry for confirmation of the other choices. I may, pending bar results (in two weeks) and many job applications, open a virtual office “in” St. Paul by November, probably specializing in Family and/or Criminal Law.

Regarding Internet access, I plan to use http://www.apps4rent.com to host a Sharepoint site – I get no kickback for recommending them. The upsides of Sharepoint there should be (a) it’s cheap to host if multimedia is excluded, and (b) one can easily grant restricted “library” access to specific groups or individuals. For example, one could grant Client XXX exclusive read-only access to certain files.

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