Writing in Above the Law, Jordan Rothman argues from personal experience that solo lawyers would be better off partnering in a law firm with one or more other attorneys. As someone who has operated partner-less for almost 10 years now, after Big Law partner experience (where one literally doesn’t know many of one’s partners because there are so many of them), I’ve seen different arrangements and have some thoughts on these issues. While there are some clear advantages to having partners, much of Rothman’s argument is based on an unduly restrictive assumption about how solo firms must operate.
Many of Rothman’s points relate to personal bandwidth and the need to share the burdens of running a practice. He points out that a solo lawyer can get slammed with a lot of work at one time, more than can be handled by one person easily. He further notes that there are administrative tasks to be done as well as direct client service. Finally, he notes that multiple-partner firms can have attorneys with different expertise and therefore the ability to handle more matters. For all of these issues, Rothman posits as the obvious solution bringing one or more equal partners to share the burden. However, this ignores the possibility of engaging outside help from attorneys and other service-providers who are not your partners.
To be specific, if you’re concerned about handling overflow work, you can bring on freelance attorneys or temps, or in appropriate circumstances, hire full-time associates. As for administrative tasks, this work can be outsourced. There is literally no task that is handled by the back-office staff of a large law firm that a solo attorney can’t hire an outside person or service to cover. And for broader expertise, while it’s true that a solo corporate attorney will likely not handle something completely different, like litigation, it’s certainly possible to handle matters that are not too far afield, like negotiating a commercial real estate lease, again with the help of subject matter experts among the available pool of freelancers, temps, etc.
I do think that there are some advantages to partnering up, however, most importantly that potential clients may not be aware of all the points I made in the previous paragraph and assume, incorrectly, that a solo firm cannot handle larger matters for bandwidth reasons. That is a perception issue that sometimes requires some explanation to potential clients. My larger point is not that solo practice is the only way to go and that partnering up is inadvisable. It’s just that solo attorneys have ways to manage an up-and-down workload and the other burdens of running a practice other than finding partners.
In some ways, my law firm, Andrew Abramowitz, PLLC, is at the forefront of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. For example, the firm operates virtually, with the staff attorneys toiling away at home (or wherever – they could be doing it while hang-gliding as long as they do the job well and promptly, as far as I’m concerned). The ability to get the work done without housing everyone in an expensive Manhattan leased space gives the firm flexibility to offer more competitive rates than traditional firms.
When I am having initial discussions with potential startup clients, they often say they’re looking for a firm that understands the particular challenges of running a startup. Perhaps this can be a reference to the substantive transactional matters that startups deal with – like negotiating an agreement among founders or raising capital using methods particular to early-stage companies – that attorneys who’ve been trained by representing Fortune 500 companies may not understand. But often the subtext of the question is that startups are frequently short of cash and may not be in a position to pay legal bills on a regular basis. The challenge for the attorney is to secure these sorts of clients and still manage to make a living after doing so.
When I am estimating costs for a project for prospective clients, particularly those new to the formation of business entities and deal-doing, a common source of confusion is why there needs to be a fee paid to my law firm as well as to a corporate service company like CT Corporation or CSC. So, I thought it would be useful to briefly outline the different roles that each of us plays in the creation and maintenance of entities.
So, the good news for the law firm of Andrew Abramowitz, PLLC is that business has increased steadily over the past few years. The bad news is that there has been somewhat of a greater tendency among clients to be slow in paying invoices. There is a hassle factor associated with this, as it requires frequent follow-up, but the real issue, as anyone who runs a small business will know, is that lumpy income creates financial challenges. My firm has regular expenses that can’t be contingent on the timing of my clients’ payments, and the owner of the firm (yours truly) has personal expenses that are equally not capable of being deferred while I wait for payment. (All of this sounds very self-pitying, but I’ll get to the point soon. I’ve been very fortunate in life and cannot complain.)