By Joseph Shaub

Some of us are lucky. Maybe it’s right out of law school--or perhaps a few years later. We land a job practicing a challenging brand of law with people who respect us and commit to our growth. We don’t feel like highly educated wage slaves, with golden handcuffs that we snap on ourselves through life-style choice and inertia. Five or ten years down the road, we are truly satisfied with our work and its integration into our lives.

This column is for the rest. Those who wonder, “What am I doing?” “Did I make the right choices?” and “Can I really be happier and stay a lawyer?” To answer these questions, I’d say that you don’t have to abandon the practice of law. There may be a deeply rewarding path within the profession.

I co-teach a Solo and Small Firm Practice class with Andy Benjamin at U.W. Law School. About four years ago, we began asking solo practitioners to sit on panels of five for an hour-and-a-half and share with our students their impressions of practice. I began to emerge from these meetings with glistening eyes (sap that I am), feeling a surge of pride because I was a lawyer. Why is it that a discussion of solo practice would cause such emotion to well up? The answer lies within the core of solo practice.

Amidst the long hours, uncertainty and general absence of big firm compensation, there is the universal experience of creating one’s own place in this professional community. As a solo, you get to say who you are and how you will practice. Your professional life is entirely your own creation. Daunting as that may seem, it is also intoxicating.

One aspect of the solo practice community that is particularly attractive to me is the general ethos of service that permeates the environment. A greater proportion of solos I have spoken with love their work because they are permitted to make a good living while they serve others. Such expressions are entirely consonant with Walter Bennett’s The Lawyer’s Myth, which was discussed in the last column at some length. Bennett argues passionately that the antidote to the general sense of malaise within the profession can be found in a commitment to an attitude of service.

Another draw of solo practice is the number of skill sets that must be developed. One hunch I had about the quality of people entering law school has been confirmed in my teaching over the past few years. The great majority of law students are incredibly smart, multi-talented and have a vast landscape of interests. The legal education and training process narrows down these bright lives. Minds that are eclectic by nature must become unnaturally focused. In solo practice, we not only must hone or legal skills, but we must develop a wide array of complementary abilities. You’ve got to learn how to run a business. You’ve got to make decisions about what you’re going to do yourself and what you’re going to let someone else do for you. I remember the wonderful moment a few years ago when I came to the realization that I had enough business that it made sense to pay someone else to do many administrative and marketing chores I had been doing. The evolution of a client base is also an experience I would wish on every lawyer.

One of my major beefs with our current culture is that everything has to happen immediately. Forget instant gratification. Even in business, people demand instant returns. People bought stock in the 90’s expecting their investments to double in a year. Every sports team has to win this year, or management is gone. But growing your own practice takes time--not a horribly long time--but a few years. Then one day you get a call from a prospective client who got your name from a person you helped a couple of years ago...and a week later there’s an inquiry from someone who was referred to you through a board you serve on. Over time, your name gets known in the community...your name--your reputation is what draws people in. And you think, “My God, I’ve created this myself.”

Andy and I tell our law students that learning all the skills attendant to running your own practice (particularly marketing skills) allows you to be particularly valuable to a firm that hires you, while at the same time giving you the freedom to make your own choices. Every business has to have a marketing plan. How are you going to present yourself to the community? Who are you and how’s that message going to get out? A great marketing piece by Murray Singerman in the ABA’s exceptional Flying Solo - A Survival Guide for the Solo Lawyer suggests that each of us have a one or two sentence reply to the question of “What do you do?” It should be well honed and begin with the phrase, “I help people by .....” Any efforts to support your community is a marketing effort--but at the same time it is a statement about who you are.

That’s what it seems to come down to, over and over again. Practicing solo permits you to blend your personal and professional lives in a seamless fashion. I will testify to that. I spent a lot of time in the first 15 years of my professional life wondering how I’d get out. I even went back to school and got another degree and became licensed as a therapist. It was not until I decided to make the leap and create my own practice that I began to find fulfillment in the practice of law. Now, I love helping people--but I also love figuring out how to create my presence in the community; how to manage the administrative aspects of a business, how to tackle each challenge of growth.

I’ve come into contact with great people like Dr. Andy Benjamin at U.W.; Pete Roberts at the WSBA LOMAP# 1 office (an incredible resource) and a fabulous group of practitioners who are so full of vitality you need a fire hose to cool them down--people like Carolyn Rammamurti; Davis Bae, Ed Ritter and the score of other lawyers who have come to share their excitement with our law school class. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that the current and past editors of the Bar News are solos.2#

I remember a few years ago, when I was an associate in a 12-attorney boutique litigation firm in L.A. I remember the experienced associates having lunch one day and we were all bitching and moaning about our compensation, the billable requirement and the general notion that partners were holding onto the controls pretty tightly. I remember walking back to the office thinking, “What a waste of time. If you’re unhappy, either change the environment or leave. Don’t just sit around and complain.” The culture of that firm was pretty locked in, so in a year I was gone. After completing my training as a family therapist and keeping food on the table by performing contract work for family lawyers for a couple of years, and learning the field, I came up here and started my practice from scratch. I didn’t know a soul. The long and the short of it is that I learned that it can be done. I am ever thankful that I took the leap. Ask any solo. They’ll confirm the message. Think about flying solo. It gets you in the air--closer to the sun.