If opening your own solo legal practice was portrayed as a MasterCard commercial, it would go something like this: Virtual Office: $250.00, Cell Phone: $69.99 per month; laptop $799; taking your five-year-old to his first Mets opening day game at Shea Stadium (without derailing the partnership track): Priceless.
Solos work very hard 24/7, but most will tell you that the reason they work so hard is for the freedom it affords them. And for not having to apologize for, or feel guilty about decisions that put their family first. Not having to risk their promotion or job because life means more to them than eighty hour work weeks. Not having to ask anyone’s permission to live their life the way they choose.
One of the most amazing benefits of being a lawyer is the ability to be an entrepreneur along with all the rights and privileges that go with the professional title of lawyer. And most who have done so will never turn back. Some recent statistics state there are over one million lawyers in this country; 74 percent of lawyers in private practice are in firms of four or fewer lawyers. (The 2003 Census states four or fewer “employees.”) The statistic is powerful because it indicates that lawyers in general prefer to have autonomy over their schedule and income rather than rely on a corporation, with its notions of supervision and promotion.
They prefer to take a greater share of the dollar they work so hard to earn. They prefer more interaction with clients and more control over their working lives which in turn gives them more freedom in their personal lives.
Fears Often Plague Solo Practitioners
However, we also live in a culture of fear: fear we won’t meet our student loans, fear we won’t be able to pay our living expenses, fear we won’t have clients, fear we won’t know what we are doing, fear of not having a steady paycheck and health insurance, and so on. And then there is fear of what others will think if we try to make a go of it as a solo practitioner. We absorb all that fear to our detriment. And in turn, we sell ourselves to anyone who will hire us rather than trust ourselves. We sell out because of fear and usually too cheaply.
I say, “No deal.”
Women Lawyers Are Especially Susceptible To Fears
Unfortunately, this fear can take a disproportionate toll on women in the legal field. A very disturbing article in the Boston Globe, (May 2007) reported: “Of the 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers who provided data for the report, 31 percent of female associates had left private practice entirely, compared with 18 percent of male associates. The gap widens among associates with children, to 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively reflecting the cultural reality that women remain the primary care givers of children and are therefore more likely to leave their firms for family reasons. The dropout rate among women lawyers is overwhelmingly the result of the combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and a failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers’ career trajectories may alternate between work and family.”
Law school lays out a clearly-defined career track which is strongly supported by the profession and is still viewed as the gold standard, a track which hopefully leads to employment with Big Law. Women, with or without families, who define professional and personal success as a full-time, partnership track associate’s position will thrive in this environment because it aligns with their ambitions. However, other women, who define professional and personal success differently, have been given neither the guidance nor the encouragement as to how to make their degrees work for them outside of this model. They feel compelled to go the traditional career route only to be miserable at Big Law because it is a poor match for their personal and professional goals.
Eventually they leave the profession all together because no one ever showed them there are professionally satisfying alternatives.
Explore Satisfying Alternatives To Big Law
I recently met a young lawyer who has been out of school for one year. She received a full scholarship to an Ivy League undergraduate school, the first college graduate in her immigrant family. She then received a substantial scholarship to a mid-level law school. Her ethnicity made her attractive to a law firm which, in her words, “hired me to fill their quota.” She makes $45,000 or so per year traveling to a city to which she has no attachment, and feels isolated from the law firm “clique” while practicing the type of law she really does not enjoy. Why? She was too fearful not to take the job.
Yet everyday she returns home to a culturally vibrant community where she has a large family, friends, and previous co-workers all begging her to take on their legal work because they trust her as one of their own. She has potentially built-in success and the lure of real freedom to design her life as she chooses, to create the balance that will allow her to work and raise a family and be an active contributing part of the community she loves without selling her soul to the highest (or lowest) bidder. And she is selling her soul if every day she dreads going to work and sees no future. But she caters to her fear rather than venturing forth. And no one will disabuse her of the fear. The legal community, from law school right through to Big Law, feeds the fear.
It’s impossible to put a price tag on the freedoms solo practitioners enjoy, including the freedom to balance and improve the quality of their lives, and the other psychological bank accounts that get hefty deposits every day. Apparently, 74 percent of all private practice attorneys have done Ben Franklin lists when making the decision to work for themselves. If the statistics tell the tale, then independence, autonomy and a day at the ballpark is winning by a long shot.
This article was written by Susan Cartier Liebel, the founder & CEO of Solo Practice University which is the #1 online educational and professional networking community for solo lawyers and law students.
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