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| Re: Then and now - Flipping to Plaintiffs' side |
Big Firm Refugee |
February 04, 2005 04:40 am |
Success on the other side is not nearly as hard as you might expect. I dumped the big firm lifestyle about 7 months ago after about three years of big firm drudgery and would never look back. Lawyers are terrible marketers, and the field is wide open to bring in more quality clients than you could possibly handle with just a little marketing savvy. Money has not been at all an issue, and I am now in the market for an associate and legal assistant to help me pull my head above water so that I can stop turning down the quality cases potential clients want me to take.
I'd recommend against the "whatever comes in the door" route. It's tough to sell yourself as an expert on everything, and why would you hire someone who is not the expert when contingency rates are pretty much the same across the market. Pick something you're good at (this requires a few years of doing it), focus a marketing campaign on that, avoid taking cases outside your specialty (no matter how lucrative they may seem at first -- a lesson learned the hard way), and you'll be getting grateful notes from clients to go along with your big contingency checks in no time. Do a little contract work on the side while you are starting and offer clients a fee-based option (some will take you up) to keep the bills paid until cases mature to the point that defendants will pay appropriate settlement numbers (don't settle cheap to pay bills, or you'll become known as a hack quickly). Keep your overhead as low as possible.
And don't count on working only 30 hours a week for a while. Triple that. Once you have several associates and a junior partner to leverage, you may get away with 30 hours, but I can't picture that working for you starting out.
Sorry for the delayed post, but my ventures to see what's happening back in big firm world are rare these days.
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