I was looking up my visitor stats today (yes, I can tell when all of you come here, and even where you come from!) and realized I hadn't posted on here for over a week. I'm sure you are all just dying to hear what is going on, so here you go.
In the interests of full disclosure, my time hasn't been extremely fascinating, busy, or anything else related to the fun that should be associated with opening your law practice.
This is for one simple reason - I'm waiting to get my bar results back. See, I've been a practicing attorney in another state (two technically) for four years, but with my recent move, I had to take another bar exam. I get those results back a week from Friday, so I have been doing as much as I can without expending any money. Because, although I feel fairly confident about my bar results, I don't want to put the cart before the horse and spend a lot of money before I know for sure. So a lot of my time has been has been spent on optimizing my law firm website to rank high in Google. Or at least set everything up so when I turn on my law firm website it should be recognized by Google and ranked pretty highly pretty quickly.
If you go to my other site, which discusses law firm website SEO, you will kind of get an understanding of what I'm talking about. More posts on that site should come shortly.
Speaking of starting a law firm website, a funny thing happened to me the other day. And this is part of a larger story, so let me start from the beginning.... Law office space - I've decided that I think I need some. But I want some that is relatively cheap, and I want some where there are some people around that I can get some local knowledge from (if you are new to law practice or an area of the country, it is easiest to learn about how things work by those that are already there).
I called this firm that listed office space in the local bar bulletin, and after finding out they didn't want to have someone that practiced in the same area as them and asking to just "let me come in and see what happens," I scheduled an appointment to see the space.
And it was interesting what happened. Just the week before the firm had had two associates leave to go start their own law practice. So, not only were they interested in leasing out some office space, they likely were going to have some work that they couldn't do, and they needed someone that could take some of that over. I welcomed the opportunity (although I think the true prospects of work diminished slightly when I made it clear that I was looking to start my own firm, not come on as an associate), and they volunteered to put me at the top of the list for any work they had that they couldn't handle (and conflict work they have too). He promises to call me later with some more information. I don't wait on pins and needles.
And then, on Friday, the owner of the criminal defense firm calls. He asks me what I'm doing, and can I come into the office this afternoon because he has some stuff he thinks I can help with right now (don't get worried, it is not up to the level of practicing law). I don't have much on my schedule, so I go in. After I leave at 5, not only do I have a lot of great information about the practice of law in Seattle, but I've got a little bit of work to do, and I've established myself as an SEO expert for law firm websites!
You may not know this, but over the last year or so I've become quite the authority on web site optimization, or getting your site to the top of Google. For example, there is a reason you found this site, and it wasn't by chance! I told the owner of the firm a little bit about what I know, and they were very interested in how everything worked, and wondered why the guy they were paying a lot of money to didn't mention half of the things I did. Anyway, in the end I think the guy was seriously considering hiring me to optimize his websites!
UPDATE - 10/07/09: I am still at this space, and they are still throwing me some work (though mostly in the form of coverage work, which I'll discuss in another post), but I've come to see just how much money they spend on marketing to get the volume of calls and clients they do, and it is scary. I don't know exactly how much money it is, but I know it's a lot. And, they have someone on that does SEO full time. A little goal of mine is to get up in front of them on Google, for next to nothing, just to see if it's possible.
I think the point of this entire post is this - you have to keep plugging away and you have to be willing to grasp opportunities when they come up. Fear can cripple you, and you need to be ready to accept an opportunity when it comes up. If it doesn't work out, then nothing has been lost but a little time and a lot of knowledge has been gained. And be confident in what you are doing.
On the internet, I may seem like a pretty wise old guy (I have no idea how you see me actually). What would you say if I told you I was 28 years old, have basically already run a solo practice with an office sharing arrangement, and have done 10 million dollar real estate deals? I would hope you would say that anything is possible.
So, if you hadn't heard it today, I'm telling you now. Starting a law firm is possible. You can successfully open your law firm. You can create opportunities for your law firm. And you have what it takes to be a successful law firm owner. All you have to do is go for it (and make sure you rank high on Google - if you have questions, email me, I'll see what I can do for you).
As always, questions and comments are very welcome. How is everyone else doing out there with opening your practice? Any specific questions (I am now set up to essentially hit the ground running once I get my bar results, so I have a lot of research stories to tell...)?
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