The Dreams of a Solo

I Can't Seem to Shake the Office Fog

I'm not sure if anyone else out there is like me, but I have to say that over the past two weeks I have found it increasingly more difficult to work efficiently from my leased office space.  I find myself jetting off after lunch to either work from a nearby coffee shop or some my home office.  Once I do leave the office I have found that my attention level and productivity drastically increases.  My creativity and desire to research and write new blog posts also ramps up when I am in a more comfortable setting.  Now that I see these observations on the computer screen I am kind of surprised that I was surprised in the first place.  I have really never liked the traditional approach to office space.  I have never liked being required to work from a set location.  That is one of the reasons that I chose to establish my own law firm.   Being on my own allows me to design and implement a more efficient and personally tailored approach to the practice of law.

As my previous post indicates I have a tendency to pursue tangents more than the average person.  I enjoy the pursuit of information and knowledge, even if that knowledge is simply trivial.  The downside is that getting off on a tangent detracts from the time I have to spend on revenue producing matters.

To test this theory I decided to work from home today.  I found it to be quite refreshing.  Aside from the fact that my printer and scanner are at my office, which required a short office stint to take care of some printing matters, I was very productive today.  In fact it was such a satisfying experience that I plan to work out of my home at least one or two days a weeks.  Who knows, it may be a slippery slope that leads directly to the Third Wave Lawyer and Home Office Lawyer approach that I have read and talked so much about.  I'm sure that Chuck, Grant and the rest of the home office lawyers could find room at the table for another converted lawyer.

Was U.S. Currency Larger at Some Point in History?

I really have no idea why I decided to spend the last half hour looking up the physical size of U.S. currency, other than recently watched two movies depicting the late 19th century and the currency looked larger than what we use today.  In case any of you have ever thought about this or things of this nature, I thought I would share my findings.

I was surprised to find that before 1928 U.S. paper currency was in fact larger than our medium of exchange today. The size of the large-sized note was approximately 7.4218 × 3.125 inches or 189 × 79 mm.  Whereas the size of the current small-sized note is approximately 6.14 × 2.61 inches or 156 × 66 mm.  I suppose that it is a good thing from an environmental or the tree's perspective that we have smaller currency today, but I'm not convinced that was the motivating factor at the time of the change in the 1920s. 

Whatever the reason may be I'm happy that I have answered this long-standing and important question in all of our minds.  In case my brand of humor was not evident in the preceding line I wanted to emphasize that I am quite sure that very few if any of you were pondering this question either now or at any point in your life.  So basically I am writing this post to justify the time I spent looking this stuff up.  You never know it might be the answer to a trivia question some day.

 

 

Office Space Update

The ink was barely dry on my recent post regarding office space when I received word from one of my office sharing mates that drastically changed my situation.  As I mentioned before I currently in an office sharing arrangement in an office containing three full offices, a reception area with a workstation for the receptionist, and two separate workstations for assistants.  Notice I did not mention a conference room.  We have a conference but our lease will be terminated effective the 15th of September.  Operating without a conference room is difficult for my practice because I primarily meet with my estate planning clients in that setting.  I can get by without it, but it made the space lease appealing to some degree.  The news I received yesterday eliminates that problem.  At the beginning of November the office will return to a two attorney space, with my current office serving as the shared conference room.  This is great news from my perspective.

The experience has taught me a number of lessons including how important it is to research and evaluate the office space decision.  Things worked out well in my case, but what if they hadn't?  Starting a solo law practice is hard enough without unexpected surprises.  In the early stages a solo attorney needs to focus on acquiring clients, completing work for clients, minimizing expenses, staying up-to-date on legal developments, etc.  You don't want to worry about finding a new office after only two months in business.  My advice is to take the time to really think about the office space decision before committing to anything.  By office space I mean all available options including a home office, office share or your own office space.  Start the process early enough such that you can make a decision in your own mind but don't commit to anything.   Give that a couple days to settle in, bounce it off your trusted advisors and your support network.  Compare and contrast the various options.  Make a list of advantages and disadvantages of each option.    If you will be sparing with other attorneys, make every effort to get to know those attorneys including their immediate, mid-term and long-term plans for their practice(s).  If after a week you still feel comfortable with your decision then take the next stage to secure that office space.  Once office space is secured, get back to planning for the launch of your solo law practice.

What would I do if another law firm offered me a job right now?

I asked myself this question just a few minutes ago as I was winding down another work day.  This is clearly a hypothetical for me right now, other than a few off the cuff comments I have heard from colleagues currently practicing as solos or looking to leave their current firms.  However, it is not outside the realm of possibility and I am quite confident that many solo attorney have had reason to ask himself or herself the same question.   Initially when I posed the question I didn't immediately yell out an answer, but as I thought about it more the answer was crystal clear.  I'm not going anywhere.  Why would I?  I love practicing law as a solo.  I am able to observe, explore and capitalize on opportunities much more quickly than even 3 or 4 attorney firms in my area.  Work-life balance is a realistic possibility in my world.  Direct client contact is an everyday occurrence.  Earning and income potential is only limited by my desire to work, or more specifically my desire to maintain an acceptable life balance.  The trade-off, or course, is foregoing the "security" of a regular paycheck.  However, after only two months of practice that trade-off is already as close to a non-issue as possible.  I can only imagine how inconsequential that will become as we move forward.  The moral of this story is simple:  If you have a dream and a passion for that dream, do not allow insecurity to stand in your way.   

Office Space, Office Share or Home-Office Law Firm?

It comes as no shock to any of you, I'm sure, when I say that the solo process hasn't been all sunshine and roses.  One decision that I made in the planning process is functioning as the type of Paper Handcuffs that I had hoped to avoid.  By Paper Handcuffs I am referring to the limiting effect that tying up cash in different projects can have.  I imposed these limitations on myself when I decided to use personalized stationary, business cards and envelopes.  This fact hit me in directly in the face a couple of weeks ago when we (my office mates and I) that our landlord would be terminating our lease for the space serving as our conference room effective the middle of September.  Without this additional space the office arrangement is much less appealing.

In response to this recent news I have spent the last two weeks brainstorming solutions and I am satisfied with one in particular that I am going to put on the table.  This solution addresses the three main disadvantages of simply relocating my own office.  First I would continue to keep my current office address with use of a conference room when needed.  My current office would become the conference use for the office share once again.  I would continue to receive my mail, messages and faxes at that location until I can complete the transition and burn through the letterhead, envelopes and business cards.

This solution gets me closer inline with the home law office approach, also known as the Third Wave Law Firm.  For any of you not previously familiar with Chuck Newton and his Third Wave mantra I would like to direct our attention to Chuck's site.  I know from experience that you can find hours and hours of valuable information and insight on Chuck's blog, so please check it out.  I had seriously thought about this approach very early on in my planning to start my law firm.  For a number of reasons I decided against setting up a home law office, but as you can see I am rethinking that decision.  Another great perspective on the home law office comes from fellow Mac user, Grant Griffiths, over at his Home Office Lawyer blog.  Before you sign any lease for office space or print business cards and letterhead it is worth your time to review each of the blogs mentioned above, as well as the many other great law practice resource blogs including but not limited to, Susan Cartier Liebel's Build a Solo Practice, LLC, Carolyn Elefant's My Shingle, and Sheryl Sisk Schelin's The Inspired Solo.  I also hope that this blog and my real-time observations can be of help to you as you make these important decisions for your law practice.  I will report back in the coming weeks as to how I resolve these issues relating to office space.

Determining the Role that Blogging Will Play

Over the past two weeks I have spent a great deal of time racking my brain and reading all of the blog posts I can from my favorite law practice bloggers.  My main reason for taking the time and expending the effort was to figure out how I wanted to proceed in regards to the my two blogs.  I have every intention of continuing with the Dreams of a Solo blog, but my focus had started to wain in recent months.  Part of this was due to the steady increase in business I am seeing at my law firm and part of it is due the change from issues related starting a solo law practice to issues related to growing and sustaining a solo law practice.    I will address each change in part, but they have more in common than not.

After I launched my firm on the first of July I spent the next two weeks primarily on administrative and organizational matters.  I also kicked my marketing and networking efforts into high gear.  I sent out numerous announcements, set a number of lunch meetings and launched the firm website and blog.  I also had a few new client matters almost immediately so I had a lot to do.  As the first month wound down I started to transition from 80% administrative and marketing to 50% or client work.  Then as things continued into August I took our family vacation and I picked up additional client work.  Now I look back on the last three weeks and I notice that I have not posted many updates to my practice blog and the Dreams site has laid dormant for two weeks.  That is not acceptable by my standards and I apologize to my regular readers for that.  Sometimes it just takes some reflection to fully understand the situation and to refocus my efforts.  The moral of this story is that the increased workload should not have prevented me from consistent participation in the blogosphere.  The Micheal Stelzner's article on Copyblogger.com titled Five Tips for Finding Writing Time addresses some of the issues I have been having.

The second barrier to blogging lately for me has been the changed perspective from which I am writing.  For the first three months I blogged anonymously as a soon-to-be solo attorney.  Then for a month and a half I blogged anonymously as a new solo attorney.  Now I blog as solo attorney Nathan Dosch.  I like the new position a lot better.  It has just taken some time to get used to putting everything out there without the cloak of anonymity.  But have no fear, my absence was nothing more than a bump in the road.  I have four partially drafted posts that I will be finishing up this week on both blogs.

Before I complete those drafts though I have to complete my thought in regards to the role that blogging will play for me going forward.  The answer is somewhat different depending on which blog we are talking about, but the intention is still the same.  I will continue to blog as the author formerly known as Solo Dreamer here and I will blog as Appleton, Wisconsin Attorney Nathan Dosch on the Planning for Life's Certainties blog.  The Dreams blog will continue to be my thoughts, feelings, plans, experiences, and observations of starting and building a law practice along with occasional commentary on the legal profession as a whole, law school, the world, politics, the economy, sports and music.   Whereas Planning for Life's Certainties will focus on providing education information, updates, news and events related to estate planning, taxes, elder law and business law.  Often times this commentary will be specific to the State of Wisconsin since that is where I practice but it is inevitable that more broad ranging topics will be addressed including federal laws and developments related to taxes and elder law.

I am also looking forward to the prospect of learning the art of a shorting my blog posts.  I have never been able to boil my posts down to a paragraph or two so I end up writing short chapters each time I create a new post.  While I will continue to write this way going forward I hope to mix in a shorter post every once in a while.  I hope that you continue to check back in the days, weeks and months to come.  Also I look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible.  Please leave a comment of send me an email at any time.   As always, thanks for reading.