Think of ‘shared purpose’ as your logo

The bar association small-group meeting I go to recently had a speaker come and lecture about personal branding. The speaker lectured for a while on the main points of establishing a brand as a solo or small-firm attorney: how to find your voice and deliver your message. The central theme of the whole talk boiled down to one question. Who are you?

Her purpose, I suppose, was to point out that the question is in concept so broad that most people don’t have a good answer. It’s your name, your occupation, and your hobbies; it’s your skill set, your education, and your work history. Her point in getting us to look at that deeper question was to get us to ask ourselves something fundamental about our practice: what is it about you that would make potential clients want to trust you with their legal issue?

I realized I didn’t know.

I’d never thought about it in exactly that way. I’d thought about—in fact, I’ve written about—small pieces of that larger issue. What do you convey in the way you dress? How do you balance client participation and the client’s goals without sacrificing your ethical duty to make sure that they get the best possible representation? What the speaker pointed out was that these smaller issues all fell under the branding umbrella. And I didn’t know what the overall umbrella was.

I remembered a TED Talk I watched once about the power of advertising. The speaker at that talk explained the difference between outside-in and inside-out marketing. Outside-in marketing tends to start with the features of the product. Volvos are safe cars. Subway ingredients are fresh. This law firm will get you results.

Inside-out marketing, however, focuses on sharing identity. It builds brand loyalty. Think Apple, or Gatorade, or Nike. Nike doesn’t tell you the features of shoes so much as it sells an image of who you are while wearing its shoes. Apple does the same thing, and does it better. As a brand, Apple has established itself as trendy and innovative: the cult of early-adopters. These strategies establish a common identity with the consumer, and tell consumers to choose their products because of that identity. Think about it. How many Nike commercials tell you how strong and break-resistant their laces are?

I tried to imagine how a law firm would create a similar brand identity, and realized that the same model doesn’t exactly work. When Apple comes out with its newest product everyone will run out to buy this thing that never existed before but that they now desperately need. There will be crowds of people waiting on the street for hours to do something so they can be a part of the Apple Empire.

That didn’t happen when I opened a criminal practice.

Yet our speaker told us that we could do something similar by telling people not just what areas of law we practice or where we work, but who we are. What we do. She told us to introduce ourselves not by saying “Hi, I’m Michael Kemp and I work for MET Law Group” but by leading off with our identity. What defines you and your practice? (“I help bad people get away with bad things,” it turns out, was not what she was looking for.)

Logos, fliers, a website, letterhead, and related products are all part of branding. We see this in advertizing all the time. We recognize the Nike swoosh, or Apple’s apple, without the need for the company to ever directly identify itself. But those are just reminders of the image of the company itself. When I was starting out I spent time on creating what I thought at the time was a brand image: the website and logos and business cards. I thought I was branding. What our speaker pointed out was that the brand goes far beyond that. She tried to get us to identify who we were.

And so we all tried, in that small-group meeting, to identify who we were. How we would connect with people in what some people (often derisively) refer to as an “elevator speech.” To push our brand beyond our business card and identifying our firm, to conveying an image of ourselves.

That was the biggest thing I took away from that meeting. The legal market in the Twin Cities is filled to the breaking point with lawyers, all competing for the same pool of clients. Everyone will promise results: the legal equivalent of bragging about miles per gallon or crash-test ratings. What our speaker told is that the best way to make a potential client decide to choose you and your firm above the others is not necessarily the results you can deliver, but the idea that the client can connect with you as their lawyer. The idea of shared purpose and identity.

Clients aren’t going to camp out on the streets waiting for your services. But if they identify with you, you will be the person they want handling their legal problems. There is a TV ad running for Discover credit cards where their customers call in to the call centers, and the same actors play both the person calling and the Discover card employee answering their questions. Their tag line is “We’ll treat you like you’d treat you.” And that was the point of the talk, I guess. How do you identify yourself as the sort of person who potential clients would want handling their problems? Are you the sort of person who will do exactly what the client would do to help themselves if they had the legal training and experience you do? That is the ultimate branding exercise.

Contact Michael Kemp at mkemp@metlawmn.com.

Karin Ciano has freelanced since September 2011 and says the key to success is working on your own is initiative. “You need to be a self-starter,” Ciano said. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

Working on a project basis can help with flexibility

When St. Paul attorney Emerald Gratz lost her job at the state Attorney General’s office following a 2011 round of staff cuts, she figured that looking for full-time work was her only viable option.

But with a young daughter and a husband who’s also a full-time lawyer, Gratz figured there had to be another way, and there was: For the past 18 months, she’s been averaging about 20 hours a week working strictly as a freelance attorney.

Freelancing is a growing option for attorneys who want to work on their own but don’t want the hassle of running a solo practice. Freelance attorneys can generally be distinguished from contract attorneys by the absence of a middleman, usually in the form of a staffing agency. For better or worse, freelancers are in charge of finding their own clients – usually, other attorneys or firms that have a project too big for them to handle alone.

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew flexibility was the bottom line,” said Gratz, who spent five years as a prosecutor for Commissioner of Public Safety. “I didn’t want to work as much as I was, but I was concerned about finding some work. When someone offered me freelance assignment, I took it.”

Ideal hours

That led for an ideal level of work flexibility for her, and she’s not the only attorney to stumble on an ideal way to make a living without committing to a 40-plus-hour work week.

It can also be a lucrative way to escape the strictures of the 9-to-5 life: A 2012 study by Money magazine found that among part-time, self-employed workers, attorneys had the highest median hourly salary at $147.40. Gratz said what she’s been earning as a half-time freelancer rivals the full-time salary she used to get as a state employee.

“It’s a great way to do substantive work in an area you love, but on a schedule that can be a little more flexible,” said Minneapolis attorney Karin Ciano.

Ciano, who has freelanced since September 2011, has become the unofficial flag-bearer for Twin Cities freelance attorneys. She’s the Twin Cities director of Custom Counsel, a network of freelance attorneys that also has a presence in New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. Ciano also helps coordinate informal networking sessions for Twin Cities freelancers.

“I started out thinking I’d freelance as a supplement, and discovered after a few months that the supplement was my core business,” said Ciano.

The primary advantage of freelancing for attorneys is a level of flexibility that could never be found in a firm, corporate or solo proprietor setting.

“It’s a nice way to stay on top of things when you have too much work or you’re in an area that’s outside of your comfort zone,” said Minneapolis lawyer Martin A. Carlson, who has used Gratz on past projects. “It could be a challenge to the existing law firm model.”

Much lip service is paid in the legal industry to work-life balance, but freelancing actually seems to provide it.

“It’s ideal,” said Plymouth attorney Lynn Walters. “The ability to continue working on interesting legal issues and diversifying my expertise while maintaining some flexibility in my schedule is a perfect fit.”

Both sides benefit

The availability of freelancers is also a boon to full-time lawyers, especially solos. Many solos might not realize that when a case comes along that’s too good to turn down but too big to handle alone, temporary help is available. Ciano said most of her freelance clients are other solos or small firms who need help when a crisis hits but aren’t inclined to hire a full-time associate.

“Since I’m not interested in a full-time job or in stealing their clients, we can have a very productive business relationship,” she said.

A potential obstacle to finding freelance work can be the concerns of prospective clients regarding conflicts and confidentiality. Walters says her contract addresses both issues, and she does conflict checks before she takes on a case. “I have to make sure I’m only given the files I need so I’m not exposed to anything I shouldn’t be,” she said.

The other barrier for freelancers is letting the world know you’re out there and available. Solo attorneys especially might not know how to find you, and once they do, they can’t always be sure they can trust you.

The same holds true for freelancers. Gratz, who has been working mostly on litigation support projects, said one of her reservations about freelancing was the specter of having to chase down delinquent invoices – just the sort of administrative headache she was trying to avoid.

That’s where networking and comparing notes with fellow freelancers can pay dividends, she said: “I’ve been trying to find projects with people who at least know someone I know.”

But as with most independent contractors, the key to success for freelance attorneys is to hustle, hustle and hustle some more, according to Ciano.

“You need to be a self-starter and someone who can make the most of the supervision you have,” she said. “It’s helpful to be able to get up to speed quickly on a project. Lawyers often don’t realize they need help until they really need it.”

Contact Dan Heilman at heilman1028@gmail.com.

Image: Dreamstime

Isolation, productivity can cause anxiety

As most anyone who’s worked in both settings can tell you, working as a solo attorney is significantly different from working in a law firm: The hours are different, the clientele is different – and the level and sources of stress are different.

For most solos, the primary source of stress comes from the knowledge that you and only you are responsible for the success or failure of your practice – there are no partners to send work your way.

“You’re solely responsible for your success,” said Joan Bibelhausen, executive director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers in St. Paul. “If you don’t have enough work, there’s nobody else who’s going to find that for you.”

Bibelhausen noted that, at least anecdotally, her organization hears from solos more often than from lawyers in firms. The problems they’re dealing with – alcoholism, depression – aren’t exclusive to solo practice, but the lack of avenues solo lawyers have to deal with them can be.

“If you don’t have someone down the hall to talk to, that sense of being along can build up,” she said.

Building and maintaining a solo practice can be highly stressful, especially for younger lawyers without a business background. Minneapolis civil litigator Seth Leventhal agrees that fluctuations in the volume and value of business that comes through the door can create anxiety for even the busiest solo lawyer.

“The unevenness of workflow can cause stress,” he said. “But that’s probably true of anyone who practices civil litigation at any law firm.”

For some solos, though, the key lies in managing the self-imposed expectations of how much business you need to generate to be successful. St. Paul business litigator Brian McMahon has seen his profession from both sides of the fence, having worked with a large Minneapolis firm for six years before striking out on his own in 2006.

McMahon says he finds that the stresses of a solo practice, while there, are different in scope and number than what he remembers from his large firm days. He sublets in another firm’s space, meaning a slow month of business can be endured much easier. As a result, he figures the number of hours he has to bill is half what it might be in a more posh setting.

“I think I was smart in how I approached overhead, and that helps a lot,” he said. “The solos who get jammed up are the ones who think they have to have a fancy office and all this overhead. It takes longer to make any money if you have to deal with that.”

Leventhal, who also sublets from a small firm, says the importance of managing overhead can’t be overstated. “Not having the expense of my own office makes a big difference,” he said. “It actually makes my practice more liberating and less stressful.”

Solo and alone

Locating a solo practice in an occupied office can also help with the other main source of stress for solos: The isolation of working alone. Phone and email contact are not always an ideal substitute for human interaction, and being alone all day every day can mount and lead to depression.

“That’s hugely important,” said Leventhal. “I think a solo who is working out of his or her home, or is otherwise isolated somehow, probably has a source of stress that some of us don’t have – just being alone.”

“If you don’t have someone down the hall to talk to, that sense of isolation can build up,” agreed Bibelhausen.

Lawyers Concerned with Lawyers provides numerous and resources for lawyers who feel the stress in their professional or personal lives is getting to be too much. LCL can connect lawyers with a counselor, or point them to groups such as Lawyers in Transition, which helps lawyers assess the state of their careers.

Bibelhausen also recommends that solos join the Solo/Small Firm listserv offered by the Minnesota State Bar Association, if only as a way to see that other solos are going through similar tribulations.

McMahon advises keeping on top of billing and other day-to-day business needs as a way of heading off stress. And as a way of keeping work coming in the door, another resource for solos is Counselconnect.com, which acts as a liaison between attorneys looking for work and clients with extra work to offer.

“Solos want to know, if things can be better, how do I get to that?” she said. “Sometimes they call us because things are bad and sometimes it’s because things are OK — but they want to find ways to figure out what their niche should be.”

Image: Dreamstime

Fighting for your client? Show them!

It was 1 a.m. and I was still in the office, pacing about my conference room preparing for a hearing the next morning. I had spent the last night in the office too, catching a few brief winks on the couch under the purple-and-gold fleece Vikings blanket I kept in the office for exactly that reason. I had gone over the examination of each witness backwards and forwards a dozen times, but I wanted to game them all out again; make sure I hadn’t missed anything; quizzing myself on the law of the case.

Somewhere around 3 I racked out again for a few hours. I slept just long enough to go home, shower, shave (at least, as that term applies to me, cleaning up the stubble), iron a shirt and put on a clean suit. When I appeared at the hearing, I was bright-eyed and cleaned up, pretending a diffidence I didn’t feel.

The judge’s comments at the close of the hearing made it clear that he was going to rule in my client’s favor (in his written order later, he did). She walked out of the hearing knowing that she would soon be a free woman. I shrugged off her thanks. “Glad to help. I have to get back to the office now, though. Call me if you have any issues.”

I was lying to her. I went home and slept.

The worst part was, it was a flat fee case. There’s a column in that, but one that everyone knows; that’s why you charge a flat fee, in fact. For every client whose case you resolve in a few days or sporadically over a few weeks, there are one or two that take months of work and a hundred hours to resolve. The more interesting part is whether a client should know into which category she falls.

For small firms (I’ve said this a dozen times and I will keep saying it), your personal relationship with your client is a key advantage you have over larger firms. When it comes to the work you do, however, and justifying your fee, that can put small-firm lawyers in a bit of a dilemma.

On the one hand, you don’t want your clients to feel like their case is a stretch. You don’t want them feeling like you worked your butt off and are barely staying on top of their case; like you are one bad day away from losing their case. On the other hand, at the end of the day they are (it is hoped) paying you for your services, and they should leave the representation feeling like this case was important to you, that you put your best foot forward, and that you really earned your fee.

The solution, one older attorney told me as I was just starting the practice, is to do what you do in 8th grade math: show your work.

For hourly cases, this is easy. Not only is it easy, it is a requirement: you have to present your client with the itemized bill, showing what you are charging them for. But as this attorney pointed out to me, your bill should do more than just that. Like everything else, it can be a persuasive tool; in this case, persuading your client that you earned your fee. Are you going to write off or write down certain charges? Do that—but have your bill reflect what you are marking down. Many lawyers will not bill for certain types of charges, like when a client calls for 5 minutes and you give them a brief run-down. It may not seem worth the time to mark it for billing, especially if you will not bill for it. But reminding the client that he called a dozen times might be worthwhile in itself when he is looking at the bill.

Similarly, even in flat-fee cases it can be a benefit to show your work. Did you pay a $60 in copying charges or a motion fee from your own firm’s account? Don’t just do it. Tell the client you did it. Take the time to update the client on new theories for their case. When you are in a small office and never have enough hours in the day, it’s easy to prioritize doing the actual work for clients over telling them about the work you are doing. But the biggest factor in client satisfaction with representation is the feeling that someone has heard them and is working for them.

The key factor is that, unlike most products or services people buy, they really have no idea what the quality of your legal representation was, even when it is done. Whether or not they feel satisfied with your work—and by extension, your bill—depends greatly on their relationship with you.

I’m writing this at about 4 am, taking a break from working on an emergency TRO which, by definition, come up urgently. And I’m happy to do it. When my clients get the bill for this motion, they don’t have to know that I was up all night, or that I now buy my coffee wholesale. But they do need to know that I worked hard on it, that I listened to them and that I was willing to go the extra mile. They’ll see the time I spent and what I did, even the things I didn’t bill for, and hopefully—win or lose—they will be happy with it.

Contact Michael Kemp at mkemp@metlawmn.com.

Have you been afflicted with too much free time? Is running your own business starting to get too easy? Are you finding yourself finishing your work on time, going home early, spending time with your friends and family? Too many small-firm lawyers are stuck in low-stress jobs, are effectively managing their workloads, and are wondering what they are doing wrong. Luckily, I’m here to help.

Through this simple, seven-step process, you too can learn to be a king of the all-nighter and harness the power of the greatest of all motivators: last-minute panic. Just practice these seven habits and you, too, can turn your small firm into a stress factory.

Habit 1: Be reactive

This first habit isn’t hard to learn; for solos, it is the easiest thing in the world. When you are the only one in the office, you know there is no one else answering your phone, responding to emails, or meeting with clients. The best way to be reactive is just to take tasks as they come in. After all, making a to-do list and scheduling time for each task is just more work. On the other hand, your clients and opposing counsel are happy to call, email, or write with things to respond to. This is all about doing what is easy until it becomes natural. Which leads directly to …

Habit 2: Don’t prioritize

There’s a difference between something that is urgent and something that is important. Learn to ignore that difference. You can blur the distinction by putting off important tasks until they become urgent. How do you do this, you ask? First come, first serve is a tried-and-true rule of retail establishments, so why shouldn’t it work in a small firm? If you need some practice, go down to the nearest Chuck-E-Cheese’s and spend $5 playing Whack-A-Mole until you get the hang of it. Consider it an investment in your firm — and a tax write-off.

Habit 3: Be optimistic

So much of the law is aspirational. Why shouldn’t your calendar be, as well? Schedule tasks for the amount of time you hope they will take. Falling further and further behind in your day creates incentive to work harder. Just think of how motivated you will be when you Friday rolls around and you are still finishing up tasks from Wednesday. If it helps, Caribou Coffee’s online store allows you to buy coffee by the case.

Habit 4: Wait for your muse

Archimedes, the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, original renaissance man, and the namesake of one of Disney’s best-ever characters, famously had inspiration strike while he was taking a bath. So if you get blocked or are having trouble working, don’t force it. Four seasons of “Damages” are streamable on Netflix, and uninspired writing is bad writing. Along those same lines …

Habit 5: Be open to inspiration

Yahoo!, bucking current trends, just announced that it would be ending its practice of allowing work remotely. Starting this year all its employees will be required to work from its offices (no word yet on whether they can continue to work in pajamas.) Their philosophy is that anything from random conversations in the hallway to popping into someone else’s office can spark new and better ideas. In that spirit, make sure you take time every day at work to engage those around you in conversations unrelated to the law. You never know what it might lead to.

Habit 6: Be adaptable

In a small firm, one case can make or break your business, and there’s no way to know when that case could walk in the door. So don’t lock yourself into a schedule, just leave your day open and see what comes. Docketing and calendaring software like Clio cost money, and constantly nag you with reminders about what is due when. Allow your inner self to flow through your work. It’s like feng shui for your calendar.

Habit 7: Own your schedule

You’re the boss, which means there is no one looking over your shoulder telling you to stay on task. Take advantage of that! Four four-hour days and one all-nighter makes 40 hours, right? The important thing is the number or hours you put in. After all, if you had wanted a nine-to-five job, you would have joined a nine-to-five firm.

What will you gain from all this? Well, if you’re a commitment-phobe, or have decided to open your own practice because “organization” was too much work, these habits are for you. If you loved your 3L schedule in law school, getting up at the crack of noon and hitting four night classes, and don’t want to give that up, these habits are for you. You rule your practice under the Damocles’ Sword of the next waiting coronary, and knowing that the next day of your practice could be the best day in business, or the worst, and by following these simple steps, you will have no idea which until it is too late.

Steve Marchese, pro bono development director at the Minnesota State Bar Association, advises solo lawyers to make pro bono work fit their workload and goals. “Figure out what you’re passionate about and go with that.” (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

The most conspicuous reward of doing pro bono or volunteer work for lawyers is self-evident: The gratification of helping  clients in dire need.

But many solos, especially those working to get a practice off the ground, fail to see some of the ancillary effects of doing pro bono work – namely, that it can be a great way to receive free or discounted training, or even to more effectively market your practice. As mercenary as it might sound, the free work you do could be paid back in free advertising for your practice.

“I think there are practitioners who have been able to use pro bono work to distinguish themselves in their communities,” said Steve Marchese, pro bono development director for the Minnesota State Bar Association. “I see a lot of attorneys who have used it particularly in the beginning of their practice, to connect with other practitioners.”

While there are no rules in Minnesota that require pro bono work by lawyers, Rule 6.1 of the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct sets a guideline that lawyers aspire to at least 50 hours of volunteer legal work per year.

A byproduct of reaching or surpassing that goal is working with lawyers, judges and other personnel who can provide contacts or even referrals.

Maplewood family lawyer Tom Tuft administers the Ramsey County Volunteer Mediation Program, and handles pro bono cases with the Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services and the Tubman family crisis center, among other outreach efforts. He says that donating time and services, while primarily for the purpose of doing good, does have its benefits — in fact, he still gets leads from pro bono work he did when he was starting his practice 18 years ago.

“All of these things build our presence,” he said. “It’s a good way to get in front of both lawyers and the bench.”

“I do most of pro bono work for personal reasons,” said Alexandria solo attorney Doug Hegg. “It does give me a chance to hone my skills and get out and do the kind of work I might not be able to do otherwise. And I do get some referrals, but I don’t do it for that purpose.”

Various benefits

Because solo practices are more common outside the Twin Cities metro area, anecdotal evidence indicates that extensive pro bono work is practically de rigueur among outstate solos, according to Jean Lastine, executive director of Central Minnesota Legal Services, which provides civil legal help to low-income persons in 21 counties in Central Minnesota.

For that reason, Lastine said, her organization and others like it make it worthwhile for solos to give up a few hours per month to help low-income clients. Central Minnesota Legal Services, and similar volunteer-based legal services organizations throughout the state, offer benefits to participating lawyers such as free training, discounted CLEs, and help with forms, pleadings and filings from their organizational staff.

“There are lots of benefits for solos who get involved,” said Lastine. “They get to know the judicial officers, and that can’t help but benefit their own practices, because they get to know how a judge operates. They also get experience with the kinds of cases they might be working with on a regular basis.”

For state bar association members, a minimum of pro bono work can also mean recognition as a North Star Lawyer. Starting this year, for hours volunteered in 2012, the MSBA will give special recognition to members who provide 50 hours or more of legal services in a calendar year to low-income clients at no fee and without expectation of fee. Honorees will appear on an annual roster published in Bench & Bar magazine, among other perks.

There are myriad ways to get involved in pro bono work that can double as exposure for your practice. Most legal services programs and nonprofits have a board of directors or some other sort of administrative body. Pitching in on those along with working in the trenches can net both good karma and good attention.

Marchese advises not letting yourself get bogged down by the time commitment involved in a token amount of volunteer work; 50 hours in the context of a full billing year is essentially an hour a week. And make your schedule fit your workload and goals — it is your time, after all.

“Some lawyers prefer a consistent clinic time at the county or a legal services provider, because they know that that’s where they’ll be the second Tuesday of every month for four hours,” said Marchese. “Others like to take on a case from start to finish.

“The great thing if you’re a lawyer is that you’ve got skills and training that far exceed those of someone who’s going to try to do this stuff pro se,” Marchese said. “Figure out what you’re passionate about and go with that.”

“From a business standpoint, it’s how you get out there,” said Tuft. “It’s not like just having lunch with someone.”

Time for ideas to ensure access to legal services

Around the water coolers of the Interwebs lately a number of lawyers took umbrage at a MinnPost story by Doug Grow regarding Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget proposal. The governor has proposed a sales tax on professional services (including legal services), and Grow’s article quoted bar association President Robert Enger that “taxing legal services will harm the middle class.”

What really sparked ire was Grow’s own reaction to the quotation. Among the insults lobbed from the peanut gallery of Grow’s article was his comment that the lawyers in Minnesota don’t care about the middle class.

It is easy enough to mock Grow for planting his flag so proudly at the summit of Mount Uninformed, but there is a more fundamental point here: We have not done a good enough job explaining what the downside of such a tax is, and why it is not only harmful to lawyers but to the public as well.

The downside of a tax, as Glenn Hubbard recently and simply commented on NPR’s “Intelligence Squared” debate on taxation, is that “if you tax something, you get less of it.” And he should know: Mr. Hubbard was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush, a former deputy assistant secretary for tax policy in the Treasury Department, and he is now dean of the Columbia Business School. More taxes on professional legal services means less people can afford them.

For small firms, of course, there are a number of issues involved in this. Of primary concern to us as small business owners is anything that takes effort away from providing legal services in favor of adding complications to the administration of the business.

The addition of a monthly sales tax accounting and reporting system would add a significant layer of complexity to a small business. Complexity adds overhead. Every unbilled hour a solo attorney has to invest in her business means an increase in the billable rate to maintain the bottom lin — yet another increased cost to the consumer of legal services.

More important, however, is the question of who is bearing the brunt of this cost. Like all sales taxes, a tax on services is inherently regressive: A greater percentage of the income of those in poverty is spent on sales taxes, as opposed to the wealthy.

While the state provides criminal defense attorneys to those who are too poor to hire an attorney — “too poor,” of course, being a relative term these days — parties in civil, family and housing court cases are going pro se in ever-increasing numbers. More and more, the price point of hiring a champion to do battle for you in the justice system is beyond the reach not only of the poor but the middle class as well. While big businesses, commercial litigants and the wealthy may be able to absorb the increased cost, there can be no doubt that Dayton’s plan has the potential to tax more Minnesotans out of the justice system.

Any time you make something more expensive there will be people who could afford the service before the price hike who cannot afford it after. The small firms and solo practitioners are the lawyers most likely to be affected by this, as they are the ones whose business survival is most closely tied to services for the poor and middle class. There will be people who paid for legal services before who now will be looking for pro bono legal services, turning to DIY solutions like LegalZoom, representing themselves or foregoing the justice system altogether.

There may be a way to help the poor and middle class while still raising revenue for a state that is facing a $1.1 billion deficit, but before I begin to spout a wildly idealistic plan, I should state that IRS Circular 230 requires me to inform you that I am not a tax attorney, have never been a tax attorney, and that although I did (somehow) manage to get an A in Individual Income Tax in law school, any resemblance the following idea has to any tax policy, sensible or not, is purely coincidental.

If our real issue is that the people hardest hit by the tax will be those who can no longer afford legal services, we should create greater incentive to provide those services for free. The ABA’s model asks 50 hours of pro bono services per year, and that’s a good thing. Unlike monetary donations to a nonprofit, however, this sort of charitable work is not tax deductible — but only because we say it isn’t. There’s no particular reason the state couldn’t, say, make a lawyer’s next 50 hours of pro bono work tax deductible, offsetting the increased numbers of people who can no longer afford legal services by creating incentive to provide those services for free.

Tantrums from people like Doug Grow are ensconced in the warm embrace of public opinion when we as lawyers do not demonstrate that we care about more than just our own profit line. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with trying to keep the cost to our consumers low. Like any small business, solo and small firms survive only when their consumers can afford their goods or services.

But there should be a broader discussion of how this increase in cost will affect the poor and middle class’ ability to get legal representation, and what we as lawyers can do to make sure that any tax increase does not fall hardest on those it will hurt most.

Contact Michael Kemp at mkemp@metlawmn.com.

Shannon Fitzpatrick at her office at Calhoun Beach Club in Minneapolis. A move from Boston helped inspire her shift from commercial litigation to family law. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

Shannon Fitzpatrick had what she calls an epiphany. A confluence of events, including a move to Minneapolis from Boston and her 50th birthday, made her realize that her days as a commercial litigator were numbered. Fortunately for her, she had the means and gumption to do something about it.

“I was finding myself not being passionate about the work I was doing,” said Fitzpatrick, who practices in Minneapolis. “I started volunteering for the Chrysalis Center’s [now Tubman] Safety Project, helping women get orders for protection. After doing that for a while I thought, you know, I would make a really good family lawyer.”

Now Fitzpatrick has a thriving family law practice and, what’s more, she looks forward to going to work in the morning.

“I’m so much more interested in what I’m doing,” she said. “I was never worried about learning a new area of law. As a litigator, every case I had involved different types of law. I was used to picking up a file and learning everything as I went. I’m not making as much money, but a lot more satisfaction.”

The American Bar Association doesn’t keep figures on solo attorneys who change practice area, but anecdotal evidence seems to show that such a shift — or making a change within your practice area or adding a second one — has become increasingly accepted and even encouraged.

Although it may seem like starting over, solos are in an advantageous position to change practice areas because they’re professionally beholden to nobody but themselves; there are no partners or bosses to convince of the idea — only oneself.

“It’s well worth the change,” said Edina attorney Becca Wong, who left a strictly family-law practice in a partnership last year to focus more on mediation and collaborative/cooperative law. “There’s still stress in what we do; it’s still dealing with people’s lives and the lives of their children. But doing so with these alternative options seems like a more healthy, healing way than going to court.”

Go slow, but stick with it

Changing a practice area, in whole or in part, is a decision not to be made lightly. Not only will you be in for a steep learning curve, but you may have to build a book of business from scratch — or, at the very least, brace for a dip in income.

Even if that happens, though, many who make the change find the trade-off worth it.

“Business is down, but I’m more comfortable with this work. I just like it better,” said Wong. “I knew it would be a challenge to get the word out about collaborative/cooperative, because it’s still growing in Minnesota. The public doesn’t know too much about it.”

Making a major change doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning a previous practice area, either.

St. Paul solo attorney Vanessa Rybicka added an unusual layer to her 7-year-old family law practice last year when a friend leaving her practice offered Rybicka her casebook of criminal defense cases.

“I wasn’t going to take them at first, but she kind of walked me through how to handle them,” said Rybicka. “But now I love it. I’ve been adding more cases along the way. I feel revitalized, because I get really excited about these cases.”

Like Rybicka, Fitzpatrick has found that the change she made resulted in an increased workload. Once she made the shift, she was subletting office space from a pair of family lawyers who funneled their excess work toward her.

“I was very fortunate in that way,” she said. “From the start of having my own practice, I was very busy.”

For attorneys who are considering modifying their practice area or changing it entirely, those who have done it advise doing significant homework before you pull the trigger. Research the area you’re interested in, and talk to attorneys who practice there. They may offer insight into the learning curve you can expect, or they may even end up sending work your way.

“Think long and hard before you do it, but when you do it, go at it hard,” said Wong. “You can’t pussyfoot around with it.”

Once you’ve made the change, recognize that your new practice will take some time to grow, but don’t let that stop you from networking.

“Start slow,” said Rybicka. “Reach out to other attorneys within that practice area.”

“Educate yourself. Go to as many CLEs as you can, and go to the section meetings of your bar association,” added Fitzpatrick. “If it’s something you care about, follow your heart. If you don’t like what you’re doing, you’re not going to do it very well.”

Contact Dan Heilman at heilman1028@gmail.com.

Image: Dreamstime

I was recently asked about possible sources for free TV and radio transcripts or replays. There are a few places you may want to check prior to using a fee-based service. The following is a short list of possible sites:

1. The actual source. Most radio and television stations offer podcasts of prior programs or segments. One example is CNN, which offers its transcripts on its website. A researcher can utilize CNN’s search box, program listing or calendar to quickly locate the transcripts of interest.

Many radio stations offer individuals the option listen to past broadcasts. Some radio stations also allow researchers to subscribe to popular shows via iTunes.

2. YouTube. Searching YouTube is another option to locate news segments and videos.

3. TV News Search & Borrow. Part of the Internet Archive, the website “collects and preserves television news. Like library collections of books and newspapers, this accessible archive of TV news enables anyone to reference and compare statements from this influential medium.”

Currently, the collection contains more than 350,000 news programs. Coverage includes national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The website is updated the day following the broadcast. Researchers can view portions of the news transcript and watch the video. Researchers can also borrow a DVD of the entire broadcast for a processing fee.

4. Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Researchers can search the “world’s most extensive and complete archive of television news” for free. Search results provide a summary of the information presented, including commercials. The researcher can then request a DVD of the broadcast for a fee.

Beverly Butula is a contributor to Wisconsin Law Journal, a sister publication to Minnesota Lawyer.

Unfortunately, “law schools haven’t done a very good job … of helping law students know how to do budgeting and finance and how to treat the firm as a business,” said Janis Alexander, chief operations officer at Ambrose Law Group LLC in Portland, Ore., and a frequent speaker and writer on law firm finance, technology and operations issues.

Laura A. Calloway, director of service programs at the Alabama State Bar in Montgomery, Ala., agreed. She advises small-firm lawyers “to really focus their practice on creating an environment that’s very technology-oriented in order to reduce costs, save money and get clients that normally would only go to big firms.”

Here are some other suggestions for improving your firm’s financial health:

• Bill early. Infrequent billing is an area where attorneys can get into trouble, said Calloway.

When lawyers get “really busy doing legal work, they won’t send bills out,” she said. “Have a time and billing program. [Attorneys] can enter their time easily, edit it easily and produce a bill easily.”

She also suggests timing your bills to accommodate your clients.

“Ask them when is best,” she said. “If you send the bill when the client has the money to pay … they will pay you.”

• Watch the books. Have a financial management system that tracks your finances, said Calloway, and learn to make use of underutilized features.

“Most billing programs will provide you with aged accounts receivable, but a lot of lawyers never bother to look at that report,” she said. “It shows you if you sent a lot of bills, and it will show you how much money is owed [and for how long it has been outstanding].  If it’s over 90 days old, there’s about a 2 percent chance of collecting it.”

It’s also important to keep an eye on write-offs.

“If you’re writing off a lot of work before you even bill it out, that’s an indication that you need to tighten up the work processes in the office,” Calloway said.

• Minimize paperwork. “For all files you close, scan all documents … send the originals back to the client and then shred the rest. This saves tons of money by not having to use offsite storage and then take the time years later to retrieve and dispose of files,” said Alexander.

You can also go paperless to cut down on time spent looking for documents, Calloway added.  An easy way to do that is to “use your computer filing structure to mirror the paper filing structure that you used to use. If you name your documents starting with the date … all of your documents within a folder will order themselves chronologically.”

• Automate document production. Calloway recommended using programs that do most of the work to create common documents. That frees up your time, and it also frees up your assistant’s time to do more than typing.

• Leverage existing talent. Small firms can have the most tech-savvy person handle minor troubleshooting issues and software upgrades without calling third-party vendors, said Alexander.

She also suggested offering a regular “tips” presentation, where each employee of the firm presents a discreet tip on how to improve the firm, such as a new use of existing office equipment or software or a marketing idea.

“At the end of the tips presentation, [pick] the best tip and give the employee a $20 bill for his or her efforts,” she said.