Starting a Law Firm | Lawyer 2.0 Book Review and My New Book

You all know that I've got big, grand plans to write a book about starting a law firm, right? And that my book would be different from all of the others because it would be updated to include today's technological improvements as well as be more focused on the "business" side of owning a law firm? Well, now I've got some extra motivation out there to get started - a starting a law firm book I read yesterday called "Lawyer 2.0 - How to Build a Six-Figure Solo Practice in 12 Months or Less." You can find the link to the book here.

I'm not going to provide a link because I don't think you should read it (though you know how hard it is to find it). What I'm going to do instead is review it and give you my take on why I think you should not buy it. Ready? Here we go!

I stumbled upon this book through my Google Reader. A blog I read regularly called "The Attorneys ATM" or something like that had a post pointing people to this new book about how to start a law firm. The blogger was touting the book because he'd been mentioned in the book as a helpful resource when it came to internet marketing. Because I'm kind of into this whole how to start a law firm thing I thought I'd check it out.

The book costs $20. I bought it with the idea that I'd review it here. If I thought it was good I'd say so. If I thought it wasn't so good I'd say so. And, as I've already alluded, I was pretty disappointed in what I found.

To get right to the heart of the matter, this book is too much like Foonberg's "How to Start a Law Firm" book that was written ten years ago. It talks too much about what kind of stapler to buy and whether or not to get a postage meter and not enough about fundamental business principals that can and will make or break your law firm. Here's a break down of the table of contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Hardware

Chapter 2 - Practice Management

Chapter 3 - The Paperless Law Office

Chapter 4 - Legal Research

Chapter 5 - Online Marketing

Chapter 6 - Other Considerations

As you can see just from the titles of the chapters, it's really heavy on what to buy and what to think about when setting up your office and really light on preparing your law firm to be successful from the very beginning. To give you an example, there is an entire section on whether to buy a laptop or desktop and what to look for in your computer hardware configurations. I get that that's important, but I'm going to trust you can figure that out by talking to the computer salesman. Tell them what you want and they'll tell you what to get.

There's also the entire section on going paperless, which includes instructions on how to set up your filing system. I'm not saying this isn't important on some level, but it's not going to determine whether or not your law firm is successful.

And, by the way, I'm going to let you in on a little secret - it's not that hard to make $100,000 your first year. I did it. I'm sure many others have done it. And you can do it. But this book isn't necessarily going to help you get there.

Another way in which this book falls short is that it is geared toward one area of practice primarily - the high volume pump and dump practice. He talks a lot about what his practice is like and what you need if you have a practice like his. What he doesn't talk about is the thought process behind those decisions or why he chose one thing over another.

And by far the weakest area of the book is the online marketing segment. If you buy the book (and at $20, why not, right?), read it, and then dig around on this site for a little bit, you'll see just how short he falls. The first and largest red flag I see from reading this section is that the only references he makes to resources are other attorneys who claim to be online marketing experts. I've got news for you, there is an entire subset of people out there making a living based purely on their knowledge of search engines and how to rank high on them.

That's how I got my internet knowledge. I poked around until I found professional internet marketers who were teaching those fundamentals and learned from them. My references are to those people.

So, I'm going to start working on the book immediately. I just feel like I owe it to you all. There is so much misinformation out there that it's really kind of scary. And to give you an idea, completely off the cuff, of what my table of contents would look like, it would be like this:

Chapter 1. Why Do You Want to Start a Law Firm?

Chapter 2. What to do Before You Open the Doors

Chapter 3. Three Critical Questions You Must be Able to Answer (1. Who is your ideal client?; 2. How are you going to get clients?; 3. How are you going to get clients if your first idea doesn't work?)

Chapter 4. Fighting Fear

Chapter 5. Opening a Law Firm - the Essentials (I'd put all the nuts and bolts in here - 75% of the other guy's book condensed into one chapter).

Chapter 6. Internet Marketing (this would be the biggest chapter - it would also be worth the price of the book alone).

Chapter 7. Creating your team (accountant, bookkeeper, etc.)

Can you see the value in this material over the other? I hope so.

Okay, now that I've laid the gauntlet on myself I better get started. And I guess step one is figuring out how to write a book!

This post would be a great place to leave comments about what you would like to have in the book. I can't guarantee you everything will make it, but I can guarantee you it will have a shot if you let me know about it.