Starting a Law Firm | Does the Economy Matter?

The short answer is no, you should not worry about the economy when starting a law firm. The practice of law seems to be a funny thing in that even in hard times legal advice is needed. That is not to say, however, that when the economy is tanking, as it is right now, that you can just announce you are open for business and begin counting money. Here are the a top five things to you can do to help your law firm survive an economic downturn from How to Start a Law Firm.

1. Make Sure the Law Firm Business Plan is Well Thought Out and Very Thorough.

Know how they say time is money? That saying holds even more truth in down economic times, where a missed opportunity may mean no opportunity for your firm. How can you be sure to maximize every opportunity you are presented? Make sure your law firm business plan is complete. You will have defined your goals and will be able to immediately recognize an opportunity or a potential client, that could determine the success or failure of your young firm.

2. Market Market Market Your New Law Firm.

Although you may think because there are less people out there requiring your services so you should focus on the clients you have, the truth is this is the most important time to market to potential legal clients and keep the business coming in. When you have poured over the case you have for the 10th time you are going to need something else to do. Finding potential clients when the pool is shallow is critical to your law firm's success.

3. Don't Forget About Past and Present Law Firm Clients Though.

Law firm marketing doesn't just mean finding new clients. It also means looking at your past clients. If they have utilized your law firm's services before, there is a chance they may need some help again. Give them a call, let them know your new law firm is still doing well in these hard economic times and ask how they are doing. You'd be surprised how many times a former client has work they just have not had time to ask you to complete.

For example, I'm a Seattle DUI defense attorney. In my practice I'd expect there will be times when former clients need to come back to me for help. I'm going to make sure they remember what a good job I did for them.

4. Limit Unnecessary Law Firm Expenses.

This one is pretty self explanatory. Do not splurge on things you do not need. The belt needs to tighten in hard economic times. Maybe this means an alternative office arrangement when you start a law firm. Hopefully you have set up the budget in your law firm business plan so nothing unnecessary is splurged on. Whatever it is, try to hold back unless it is immediately necessary.

5. Continue to Provide Excellent Service.

One of the great things about economic downturns is when an upturn begins. Don't shoot yourself in the foot during the downturn by providing less than stellar service. When staring a new law firm or continuing the success of an established law firm, your law firm reputation is everything.

Just because you may end up losing money on a specific case (assuming it was your error and not a lack of payment by the client) doesn't mean you should diminish your level of service. At some point the economy will turn and people will have money to do things like sue people and they will remember the help that you gave them when times were tough. If you do a good job of stating your value proposition to the client and agreeing to a fee that accounts for your services, you shouldn't be faced with this problem too often.

In the end, there is no better time to start a law firm than now. There will always be things standing in your way. If you wait until everything is perfect, you will never open your law firm doors. So just get out there and do it!

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Starting a Law Firm | Getting Clients

Starting a Law Firm | Favorite Blogs

Pace Yourself: An Exercise to Create Rhythm in Your Writing

Like changing seasons that move elegantly into each other, a good book has an almost invisible rhythm called pacing.

Excellent pacing creates music a reader can resonate with. Pacing makes writing memorable.

An Important Tool for Your Writing
Pacing is one of the most complex and exciting tools in book writing. It’s the speed of the story, the balance of anecdotes and concepts, the ebb and flow of the writing. Pacing determines your paragraph and sentence lengths, where you put in a line of dialogue, where you muse, where you wax lyrical over a setting.

Two-Page Squint
To study how different writers deliver pacing to a reader—find a favorite book.  Open it, hold two pages up, squint at them, and see the balance of white space to text. Notice how conversation sections have more white space, description has less. So dialogue usually equals faster pace, and description (summary) equals slower pace.

Studying the Pacing in Your Own Writing
Now study the pacing in your own work.  For this week's exercise, find two favorite pages of your writing.  Read it aloud. 

Freewrite for 10 minutes on these questions:
What rhythm do you perceive?
Is the pacing fast or slow?
Where does it vary?

It's Often What You Don't Say That Counts--A Weekly Writing Exercise about Negative Space

Painters know the concept of “negative space.” I learned it in art school. Negative space is everything that is not the main object in a still life or portrait.
(If you can't imagine this, picture a painter getting ready to capture three yellow apples on a fuscia plate, with blue cloth as background. To the painter, the apples are the main objects. Plate and blue cloth are negative space.)

Negative space is kind of like what's not said in your book.  Sometimes this speaks louder than your words.  The silences, the spaces between things.  The hum of what's unspoken brings more tension.  Especially true for memoir and fiction. 

You have to have the main object and the negative space in constant conversation in a painting; although some experimental artists disagree, I’ve found one doesn’t work as well without the other. The apples in my painting above, without plate or cloth on the table, float in space, unanchored and possibly unbelievable. And without the plate's intense background, the apples' luminous golden color would not be as sharply defined and contrasted. Negative space serves to define and illuminate the main focus.

So it is in book writing.

Consider a chapter of your book-in-progress this week.  List everything that's not being said.  Is it creating absences of tension or omission? 

Then ask yourself about the negative space in your life:  How does your book writing co-exist within your life? Is there a conversation going on?  What kind?  One of harmony and back and forth acceptance?  Or one of conflict, avoidance, irritation?

Spend 10 minutes writing about negative space, both in your book and in the relationship between your life and your writing.

Brainstorm Your Way to a Book! Simple List-Making Technique Works for Fiction or Nonfiction

A book could be just a list away.  This week's exercise encourages you to start a simple list in your writing notebook:  possible topics you could write about. 

Ask yourself, What could become a scene or section or small moment in my book?

Your challenge:  add three items to your list each day this week.  Watch your book build.

Go wild:  Allow yourself to include things that don’t seem to fit, like a color, image, snapshot memory, dream, desire, smell, favorite meal. Use your own special shorthand and descriptors to jot these ideas down. Choose image-rich words, if you can, so your imagination will be triggered when you read them. The most successful brainstorming lists immediately put the writer into a scene full of senses.

Examples from my current novel's list:

red stain in the carpet
nighttime trees in the orchard behind Molly's (main character's) house
Molly saying no to Lisa--finally

Do Book Writers Need the Right Brain More Than Other Writers?

How do you use your right brain as a book writer?  The right brain brings a writer ideas for theme, emotion, and deeper levels of meaning in a book. The challenge is to activate it.

This week's writing exercise:  Take five minutes to watch this amazing video.  Let your right brain follow the shapes and movement, then write for 10 minutes.  Do new levels emerge?  Does your writing change (and your blood pressure lower)? Click here to try this exercise.

Writing Exercise of the Week--Ethan Canin's Storyboarding

A blog reader from Minnesota sent in this great link to an interview with author Ethan Canin (America, America)--where he talks about his writing process. He storyboards (one of the main techniques I teach in my writing classes). She writes, "He uses color-coded index cards on a big piece of foam core. Neat!"

Click here to view and listen.

Weekly Writing Exercise--Your Minimum Daily Requirements for Getting Your Book Written!

It's back-to-school time. I can smell those sharpened pencils. Are you set up for getting back to your book?

This week, think about what you would need to have in place, in your life, to get your book started, to keep going, to finish it. Be very specific.

Examples from writers in my book-writing weekly classes:

privacy (where my daughter can't use my computer)
dedicated time to write each week/each day
kind and helpful feedback (not from my mother or spouse!)
supplies--pens that work, legal pads, computer paper
resources for research and inspiration
a laptop that works
writing schedule I can live with
respect from my family--permission to be alone
better goals

Pick one area you could improve on this week. What's one small step you could take? Even a small movement forward helps free us up on this amazing book-writing journey.

Share other mimimum requirements you've discovered.