The Dreams of a Solo

Bloggers respond to ABA Journal Blawg 100

My recent post regarding the ABA Journal Blawg 100 was admittedly not the first log in the fire.  Two fellow bloggers and people I respect a great deal recently posted their respective takes on the new blog ranking game.  Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyer's Have Blogs authored a post titled, "Law Blog vanity contest: ABA adds to the silliness" and Chuck Newton authored a post title, "My Blog Makes the Rosa Newton #1 Blog Ever!!!"  As always I get a kick out of Chuck's sense of humor.  I also agree with him that I must be really smart because I subscribe to and regularly read a good majority of the blogs listed in the Blawg 100.  My take on Kevin's post is a bit different and that is not because I disagree, but because his point is intended to be less humorous and more opinionated.  Quite honestly, I agree wholeheartedly with pretty much every Kevin says in his post and I see that a couple of other bloggers feel the same way.  It is always an honor to be included on lists or recognized for the things that you do.  It is kind of like being picked first for the game of kickball on the playground.  I just hope we can all reach a point where we realize that these sorts of rankings will come and go.  It would be pretty foolish to hang your hat on a Blawg 100 ranking if you fail to deliver solid content or if your readers go elsewhere.  Those blawgers may find themselves uttering words similar to Rick's famous line on Casablanca, "We'll always have the Blawg 100."

ABA Journal: Blawg 100

The ABA Journal has come out with a new attraction called the Blawg 100.  The tagline reads, "These are the 100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers, as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal."  That sounds glamorous and pretentious all in one short swoop.  Sadly, I am not a top 100 blog, which by the way is justified.  I would like to think that I may be included in a larger group like the Fortune 500 as opposed the the Blue-chippers of the Blawg 100.  I had three immediate reactions to the Blawg 100.  First, it gave me a sense of something to shoot for, but then I realized I am more concerned about my actual readers then the ABA.  Second, that the ABA actually did a decent job including the blogs that I would consider "no-brainers", like Build a Solo Practice, LLC, My Shingle, Inspired Solo, and Home Office Lawyer.  Third, I wanted to know how I could get a job as one of the editors of the ABA Journal.   Maybe they will give me a call back if I post some propaganda, I mean articles about why I think the ABA Journal and the Blawg 100 is such a great thing.

Congratulations to many bloggers in my blogroll on being selected for this contest.  I am not sure what the prize is for winning, but I do know the ABA Journal website is going to be the big winner as more and more of us are providing links to Blawg 100 user poll.  I had to pause for a second to rethink whether I really wanted to publish this post.  I kind of feel like I am contributing to some one else's con.  Well, I'll publish it anyway, but as Teddy KGB said on Rounders, "I feel so unsatisfied."  The first part of that quote is what makes it funnier, but this is a family website and I want to keep it that way.  May the best blog or blawg win.       

Surviving the Blogging Crash

Link:  Blogging Tips: 10 Tips to Survive Your Blogging Crash and Gett Back on Track. This is a great post from Michael Martine regarding the blogging process and picking yourself back up after you hit the wall.  I can certainly identify with many of Mr. Martine's observations and I wish I had read this list months ago.  I'm not sure if you will find this as funny as I do, but I started writing this post almost three weeks ago when I notice Mr. Martine's post.  Yet I somehow managed to disregard his advice long enough to witness my own blogging crash. 

In my defense, the month of November was a very busy month.  We also went on a family vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday.  I know, I know, excuses are like __________ (fill in body part here), everyone has own.  To prevent the need to dream up excuses I thought I would share my thoughts on surviving the blogging crash.

1. Interesting subject matter:  Pick a blog topic that you are passionate about and that you will always have topics to cover;
2. Make an appointment with your blog:  Schedule time in your calendar to research and write your next blog posts;
3. Clear your mind:  Try not to think about what you are going to write the next day or later that week.  A clear mind tends to allow for more creative thought and you will eliminate the pressures that grow after skipping a few days or weeks of blogging.
4. Take a mental vacation:  If you have been hitting the blogging scene pretty hard for a long stretch, then consider taking a weekend off from the blogoshere to refocus your mind.
5. Always read other blogs in your niche:  This is a great way to develop writing ideas and also to get a sense for the focus and routine of bloggers writing on a similar topic.
6. Find a mentor or a blog buddy.  A mentor, in my opinion, is probably the best advice I can give anyone in any walk of life.  The second idea, a blog buddy, is something I just thought of but I think it could serve a purpose very much like a mentor. 
7. Bring in a guest to write a post.  I have seen this done many, many times on other blogs and I have always liked the way that the blog author incorporated another person's writing into the blog's overall body of work.  It also gives the regular author a little break for a day or two.

I could continue this list but I'm going to stop at 7 for the time being.  For one that is plenty of things to think about at this stage and secondly 7 just seems like a nice number to me.  However you choose to deal with the brick wall that you will hit during your blogging career, it is important to remember that it is very normal and it isn't the end of the world.  The drive and creativity will come back.  We just have to work a little harder to get the engine running each time it shuts down.

I am not sure that Solo Is the Loneliest Number

The word solo as defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as "a performance in which the performer has no partner or associate: something undertaken or done alone."  We all know this definition, but I am guessing that we each feel a little different about what that means to us in real life.  My feelings of the word solo and the connotations attached to it routinely hit me when I am networking and meeting new people.   The question from someone I am just meeting goes something like this, "Who are you with?"  How do you answer that question?  Do you say I am on my own, I am a solo practitioner or I am independent?  Or do you say I am with My Last Name law firm or I am the owner and managing attorney with "insert law firm name here."  The way you naturally communicate your law firm status says a lot about your feelings of the term solo. 

In preparation for writing this post I came across an older post from The Greatest American Lawyer titled "Solo Means Alone: I am Not Alone."   If I am reading his post correctly I agree with the GAL's point.  Being the lone attorney at my firm does not mean that I am on an island, devoid of any resources or contact with the outside world.  I am not sure why any negative connotation is bestowed upon solo attorneys.  If I had to guess I would start by pointing the finger at the usual suspects:  Law Schools and Big Law.  Although if you trace it back far enough the real culprit is Big Law alone.  After all law schools cater to their largest "clients" and in this case that is the large firms and partners contributing to their alma mater or to area law school, whichever may be the case.  It is old news that law schools do not offer many options focusing on starting a law practice.  In addition law school career services probably does not have resources available to aspiring solos nor do they talk to students about the possibility of starting a law practice.  Law school career services at my law school was a waste of time and I am guessing a good number of you feel the same way.  It was not "career services" at all.  At most it was a "job" placement agency.  Since when is practicing law on your own not a career?

The jury is still out on how one should answer the ever daunting question of "Which firm are you with?", but from my perspective we (solos) have nothing to hang our heads about.  Personally, I say I am an estate planning and tax attorney with Dosch Law Firm.  Am I a solo?  Do I work for the family firm?  It does not matter.  They can ask that question if they want to, but at the end of the day I am what I am and I am damn happy to be this guy. 

Friday Night Bowling League!!!

This post is not a normal post in that it covers something that one would assume has nothing to to with a solo law practice or the practice of law in general.  While that would be a very popular assumption, it would also be very wrong.  Okay, that is me being overly dramatic, but the point is that we have our Friday night bowling league tonight and it occurred to me that in addition to the opportunity to post my wife's great action shot of me, I could also share my positive Marketing experiences from bowling. 

As you have seen from my posts over the summer I am involved in a variety of sports or other activities during the year including two golf leagues, a youth soccer league, and now this fall, a bowling league.   In addition to the enjoyment and exercise (debatable, I know) that I derive from these activities, I have also developed valuable friendships and yes, clients along the way.  When I leave the office today I am bringing with a number of business cards and some of my estate planning informational material because fellow bowlers have requested said information.  People like to work with attorneys they know, like and associate with on a personal basis.  If I just looked at people in terms of gross estate values or if all these people see me as is a suit and tie then there is a very good chance we would not have the opportunity to work together.  The moral from my perspective is that we should all strive to be active and visible in our communities.  Clients cannot hire you if do not know who you are and/or if they do not know what you do.  So be proud and promote yourself to anyone and everyone that will listen.  Have a great weekend.

SoloSez Now Has a Facebook Group

Many of us are familiar with the SoloSez listserv that is a free service through the American Bar Association.  If you do not already subscribe to the listserv I would strongly urge you to do so by going to the ABA Solo Center website.  I do not always have the time to review each and every one of the sometimes hundreds of posts that come through the SoloSez listserv everyday, but I did notice one recently that caught my eye.  Someone (I do know who, but technically the SoloSez listserv is supposed to be somewhat confidential, at least I think that is the case) set up a SoloSez group on the popular social networking site Facebook.  If you do not have a Facebook account have no fear, you can easily create one.  If you do have an account, just log on, click on Groups link and search for SoloSez.  Once you find it you will just click the "Join Group" link.  That is only the beginning of the fun as far as I am concerned.  The next step is going through the list of group members and sending out Friend Invites.  My Friends numbers have doubled in the last three hours and I am not even close to being through the SoloSez list.  I would encourage you to take a look at the Facebook group, but you should be warned that Facebook has been known to be somewhat addicting.  That is not unlike the addictive nature of blogging as detailed in this post co-authored by Ann Handley and David Armano on MarketingProfs Daily Fix, titled "Top 10 Signs You Might Be Addicted to Blogging."

When did you decide you wanted to open your own law practice?

I am asking this question for a couple of reasons but mostly because I am curious of the thought process that current or soon-to-be solo attorneys went through before committing to the solo journey.  There are more than a few ways of arriving at proverbial fork in the road and the road signs say different things for all of us.  Some attorneys are practicing at large law firms, have years of experience, and an established client base when the thought of going solo enters their mind.  Others are soaking up torts or contracts in law school and are starting to think about paying back student loans when they see the light.  And the rest of us fall somewhere in the middle.  Whatever the case may be we all entertained the idea no matter how loud the voice of practicality and security grew.

The point of this post is to gather some feedback from all of you regarding your decision to open your own law practice.  It does not have to be limited to solo practitioners.  If you opened a law practice with one or more partners I am also interested in your story.   Please leave a comment to share your thoughts on this topic.  Maybe someone on the fence will identify with your reasoning and decide to follow their solo dreams as well.
 

Traits and State of Mind of a Solo Attorney

There are a number of buzz words and catch phrases that one could use to sum up the essential personality traits and the required state of mind of a someone planning to open a solo law practice.  Some of those words or phrases that come to mind are self-motivated, a leader, energetic, hard-working, personable, confident, an outside-the-box thinker, a doer, resourceful, practical, motivated, etc.  I agree that most if not all of these traits can be rightly applied to a successful solo attorney.  But, like most things, words along are not going to make a person successful.  It is the act of doing and doing it well that will ultimately lead an attorney down the successful solo path.

As you can see from a few of my more recent posts I am currently in a stage where I am doing everything I can to understand the totality of a solo law practice.  More specifically, I feel the need and desire to understand the main things that make solo attorneys successful.  It is not so much what drives an attorney to open up his own law practice or what makes an attorney great at practicing law.  My focus is more on the traits and mental makeup of an solo entrepreneur.  My initial thought was to comment on the personality trait that I thought was the most essential tool in a solo's arsenal.  After spending some time thinking about that I still think that it is helpful to identify important traits, but it may be impossible to narrow it down to one or two.  If I could I would place confidence at the top of the list.  A close second would be a controlled sense of pride.  To some degree this traits run counter to one another from time to time.  However, I believe they can and must coexist. 

I have personally battled my entire life with the task of balancing these two traits.  I have always been confident in my abilities, but I have also been more hesitant to ask for help or to ask questions solely based on pride.  We do not want to look like are inept or unable to complete the task at hand.  At the same time being too proud can just create a very bad situation down the road.  It took me about six months after I graduated from law school to realize that I did not know anything about practicing law.  Sure I had a good start on thinking, reasoning, researching, and writing like at attorney, but the nuts and bolts of law practice were an absolute mystery to me.  I am not convinced that we ever truly get to a point where that is not the case to some degree.  After all we do call it the "practice of law," which carries the connotation that no one really masters the craft. 

People like to work with people that put their worries to rest.  Confidence plays a huge part in selling a person's abilities, qualifications and advice.  At the same time people do not like to work with people who are arrogant or stubborn.  My advice is to let your beliefs in yourself shine through.  Be confident in your ability to provide high quality legal services.  But do not be to proud and stubborn to admit that you may need help and that from time to time you may be wrong.  It turns out these are great traits to carry through to our everyday lives and relationships as well. 

The uncompetitive nature of blogging

It took me a few weeks to figure out that my fellow "niche" bloggers were not competitors.  In fact, one of my favorite solo law bloggers keyed me into this during our initial email exchange.  I'm glad that she did because even though I made a fool out of myself in our conversation, she saved me from repeating that mistake again. 

A recent post by Maki on Dosh Dosh titled Your Fellow Blogger is Not a Competitor articulates the nature of the blogging community much better than I can.  Maki's conclusion is that the real competition is over the relevancy of content on each respective blog.  That brings us back to the same mantra that I have adopted from the start that content is the key to any blogging endeavor if the goal is to drive up traffic counts.

Admittedly, I haven't always done a great job providing content that is relevant to the specific tasks associated with starting and managing a solo law practice.  This is for a variety of reasons including the fact that this blog has served as a personal outlet in addition to a quasi guide to start a solo law firm.  I have also just simply been like the prodigal son in terms of providing updates.  The truth is my infrequent posting and occasional tangents have undoubtedly hurt my overall traffic numbers.  That fact does not and will not keep me up at night because I am not relying on this site to generate large amounts of traffic.  But I am interested from a practical standpoint how things like blogging, page rank, ad revenue, etc. work and I know that understanding blogging will be beneficial for marketing my solo law practice.  After all if I want to maximize my position on a Google search for "starting a solo law practice" or for "estate planning Appleton, WI", I first how to figure out what drives those search results.  I'm not there yet and I may never perfect the art in my lifetime, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. 

Delete a post once, shame on me...

I am writing this post to vent a bit since I have somehow managed to completely erase three nearly completed posts in the last three weeks prior to either saving or publishing.  I accept full responsibility for the vanishing acts, but I have a good reason besides the typical "I hit the wrong button" defense.  While I was over at Blogger the Compose feature was configured to auto save my posts while I was writing them.  That allowed me to get away with an occasional mind numbing erroneous keystroke or mouse click.  Now that I am on the Typepad platform I haven't determined how or even if it is possible to configure the Compose feature in the same manner.  As any frustrated and resourceful blogger would do I ran a couple of Google searches in hopes of finding a solution to this problem.  At the present time I have not decided how to fix this other than to just be more careful during the writing process, but I did find an interesting post on The Official Everything Typepad blog title Post to your blog from Word 2007.  My initial thought was that it would be worthwhile to take this for a test drive.  Then reality set in because I realized that I run Word 2004 on my MacBook Pro and that feature does not appear to be available.  Needless to say I will continue to look elsewhere for a viable solution.  In the interim I will just have to be more careful in how I go about composing my new posts.