Benefits of retaining a sole practitioner

Benefits of retaining a sole practitioner
The law office of Barry Zalma, Inc. is a sole practice law firm. Barry Zalma is the only lawyer in the firm and has more than 40-years of experience in insurance and insurance coverage issues. The following is presented for the assistance of clients and potential clients of the benefits available to those who retain the services of sole practitioner Barry Zalma rather than a large firm.
Responsiveness and flexibility. A large law firm, like any large organization, is eventually "captured" by its own bureaucracy. Over time, it becomes inflexible and tends to operate more and more for the benefit and convenience of its bureaucracy, rather than the benefit and convenience of its customers. A sole practitioner is relatively immune from that phenomenon and, therefore, can provide service that is more responsive and better-tailored to each client's needs.
Efficiency. At a typical large firm, documents and issues often are repeatedly revised by redundant layers of junior associates, mid-level associates, senior associates, and junior partners, before getting the imprimatur of a senior partner. That is slow, inefficient, and expensive. The large firm makes money: by leveraging the billable hours of its professional staff. A sole practitioner is unable to do that.
You Are a Big Fish. In a large firm, many clients will find they are rather small fish in the firm's pond, and are treated accordingly. In a mega-firm, even a Fortune 500 company may not be a particularly big fish. A sole practitioner has no small fish in his pond. Every client is important and is treated accordingly.
Access. Solos are usually happy to have clients contact them, day or night. I give clients as many ways to contact me as I can think of: mail, e-mail, fax, Web site, office phone, and cell phone. My office phone call forwards to my cell phone which also gets e-mail. Wherever I am, in my back yard or across the world, I am available. I wan to be contacted, and often am, even when I am on vacation. I want my clients to call me. If you use a larger firm, when is the last time one of the lawyers there gave you a number where he or she could be reached at any time of day, seven days a week?
Lower cost for a like kind and quality of work. The bills presented by a sole practitioner are for work done by a single lawyer for the client. Large firms can give their staffs a lot: high salaries, bonuses, beautiful offices in "class A" space, catered food at meetings, golf outings at expensive country clubs, limo service home for anyone working late, in-house cafeterias, in-house gyms, expense accounts, etc. Well, who do you think is paying for that? An experienced and knowledgeable sole practitioner can perform legal tasks in less time than required by a law firm bureaucracy. You pay for the work of one lawyer not many.
A Sole Practitioner is more likely to be independent. Because large law firms have many clients, they will more likely have conflicts of interest. Generally, a law firm cannot handle a legal matter when it gives rise to a conflict of interest between clients of the firm that they are not wiling to waive the conflict. Depending on the size of your community, the larger the law firm, the more likely there may be conflicts of interest.
There are no cross-selling pressures from a sole practitioner. Large firms have an understandable interest in selling additional services to their clients, even if the clients fail to share that interest.
No hidden billing pressures. The dirty, not-so-little secret of life in many law firms is billing and the compulsion to meet minimum numbers of billable hours daily. Whether they call them "expectations," "guidelines," "standards," or "requirements," most firms try to get their staffs to bill at least certain minimum amounts, each and every day, week, month, or year. At many firms, the professional staff is bombarded with ceaseless exhortations to bill. Some firms even offer monthly cash bounties to lawyers who bill in excess of a required minimum, or penalize lawyers who fail to record the minimum number of hours. Too often, the result is obvious and easily predictable: lawyers and paralegals feel constant pressure to inflate their bills, so that's what they do. Sole practitioners like to make money just as much as the next guy (I sure do), but no one is pressuring us to inflate bills.
Your matters will not be used to train inexperienced lawyers. In larger firms, all but the most serious matters are delegated to junior lawyers for day-to-day handling. From the firm's perspective, this not only gives the junior lawyers something to do (and to bill for), but allows them to get experience at clients' expense. The reality is that inexperienced lawyers, no matter how bright and well-educated they are, have little or no idea how to be lawyers. They lack the maturity, judgment, seasoning, experience, and specialized knowledge that come only after years of actual practice. As a result, they spend an inordinate amount of time to produce work that a more experienced lawyer could have done better, in less time, and at lower cost to the client. Experienced sole practitioners do not need to train junior lawyers at clients' expense: they have no junior lawyers.
A more informal working relationship. You are likely to get to know everyone in your lawyer’s office if he or she is a sole practitioner. This can lead to a better one-on-one working relationship, which may make you feel more comfortable.