April 3, 2012

Adaptation.

The ABA Journal recently posted an article on the future of the legal profession:

"There will be 10 to 40 percent fewer lawyers in the next decade than there are today, a trend that will effect mostly solos and small firms, predicts Fairfield, Connecticut-based attorney Fred Ury, according to [Jim] Calloway [director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program]. And the growing number of venture capitalists throwing tens of millions of dollars at startups automating basic legal services cannot be ignored by U.S. lawyers, Calloway said. However, lawyers can embrace some of those same systems, tools and techniques to boost their own law practices and attract clients."

As a new startup myself, I need to figure out how to create business in a challenging economic environment. Not only are potential clients seeking lower cost alternatives to the traditional attorney fee structure based on the venerable billable hour, but there is a huge movement afoot to meet that need in the form of low-cost do-it-yourself document assembly services such as LegalZoom. Need a will? Power of attorney? Simple divorce papers? Just click a link and avoid talking to (and paying for) a lawyer.

To that end, I have added my own online document assembly service to my law practice. The drawback to LegalZoom and its commercial competitors is that they cannot offer legal advice -- you're completely on your own, so if something goes wrong, you could be stuck with a bigger problem than what you started with. My service goes beyond what they offer -- for a low, fixed fee, you can ask for a personal consultation on your legal documents, whether you create them on my website or not.

Times change. The trick is to keep up and not be left behind.

This blog is an advertisement for the Law Office of Philip R. Yabut, PLLC, and the information in this post is not to be construed as legal advice, nor does reading it form an attorney-client relationship. Please do not post confidential information in the comments section.

March 29, 2012

Business Planning Square 1: Mission Statement

by Philip Yabut in law firm management

So you want to start a small business -- in my case, a law firm. Virtually all experts recommend drafting a business plan, which is what I have started with step 1: the mission statement. After all, the first thing you need to step into the self-starter world is a reason to exist.

Of course, being a lawyer, the first thing I did is look for reference material online. There are many resources floating around the Internet to assist in creating a business plan. Perhaps the most referred link is the Small Business Administration's "How to Write a Business Plan" page, which has comprehensive and user-friendly guides for the budding entrepreneur. I also found CMS Law Firm's blog Starting a Law Firm helpful (they recently created a new site here). Finally, here's a link to the American Bar Association's solo practice resource page.

Taking all of this advice, plus that of my loving fiancee, I set to work on coming up with a mission statement. I thought about how I want to make my embryonic practice stand out in a sea of solo and small firms in the Metro DC area. I wrote down a few bullet points describing what I envision my firm will be in the near and not-so-distant future. Since a mission statement should only contain a few sentences, I condensed the points into a short paragraph, which is now on my firm website and Facebook page.

"It is our mission to provide quality legal representation with the highest level of integrity. We will strive to provide services based on value to the client, helping the growing segment of the population that cannot afford legal representation under a traditional billable hour system. Through these principles, our goal is to become a leading family law practice in Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia."

January 30, 2012

Laying infrastructure - early law firm management

by Philip Yabut in law firm management

In 2008, everything changed. Markets around the world collapsed, and many people were driven out of work as a result. High unemployment meant loss of income, and that in turn led to far less spending back into the economy. In the legal field, an area long thought to be "recession-proof," lawyers were laid off left and right, and firms large and small downsized or disappeared altogether as billable hours dried up, as people and companies could not afford ever-increasing legal fees. The economy has since improved, but the survivors of the Great Recession were left to pick up the pieces and move forward.

I actually "officially" started my law practice late in 2010 by registering as a PLLC with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and my basic website followed shortly thereafter. I recently purchased a book, Law Practice Strategy: Creating a New Business Model for Solos and Small Firms by Donna Seyle (the source of much of the background information on this blog post), when I decided it was a good idea to expand my online presence. I started by creating a Facebook page and Twitter account for my law firm and expanding my LinkedIn profile. I also started an online services page, which features do-it-yourself legal forms for fixed fees with options for attorney review. Furthermore, I created a profile on the legal and medical advice site Avvo.com and began answering questions there, linking my responses to Twitter and Facebook. Finally, I started this blog to write about law issues and my progress in establishing a solo law practice. I took all of these steps at a very low financial cost, with only the book and the online services being the only items where I had to pay any money.

Creating the infrastructure for my law practice was actually the easy part. I had a plan and followed it fairly quickly, and I was totally engrossed in the effort. Keeping up the momentum created by this process is proving a bit more difficult for me. Infrastructure is all well and good, but you need to add moving parts for it to be useful, and networking has become more key for me to get my name out into the industry. In the past, business cards and word of mouth were paramount, but in this age of growing Internet resources, more and more people are simply going online and trying to find answers at the lowest cost to themselves. To this end, I am seeking to increase my digital footprint by using my new infrastructure to expanding my name recognition. At this point, online networking means following other attorneys on Twitter, keeping the blog up to date, finding old and new contacts on LinkedIn and Facebook, and using Avvo and similar Q&A sites to provide additional substance to my cache, as well as gaining new knowledge for myself. There are many other low-cost networking possibilities that I will pursue, but at this point what I have is keeping my hands full.

Offline, I am doing volunteer work and doing pro bono intake, which sometimes leads to representation. While this does not lead directly to income, it provides valuable in-person experience and allows me to problem-solve. I have also joined local bar associations in DC, Arlington, and Fairfax, and seek to be on their attorney referral lists.

Overall, it has been an interesting month on the infrastructure front. Much more work lies ahead. But it's been fun so far.