Practice Areas

By Bankruptcy Attorney

I have been an Attorney for several years and I have gone through several practice areas since opening my own law firm.

I originally had three (3) or so practice areas which i decided i would enter into because they were "hot" at the time.

I recently spoke to a solo who had been practicing for 20 something years and he told me that he had managed to stay alive by changing his practice areas with the times.


Here are my recommendations:

1. Do what interests you, because if you hate what you do it will show.

2. Change and alter an area or two as the market changes.

3. Stay informed. I know CLE is boring, but sometimes it can be extremely helpful. I am constantly updating myself on changes in the law.

4. Have a mentor in your corner for each area of law you practice so that you can pick their brain when you need to. Listservs can be extremely helpful. I head one solo listserv and I am on two others. We freely ask questions and exchange referrals.

5. Market yourself. It does not cost money sometimes to attend networking events or to call up your friends and let them know you are now solo and what you do. Create a website and send out some promotional information.


Good Luck solo, its a competitive market out there!

Practitioner Etiquette : Part 2

By Charlotte Attorney

Often times we get so caught up trying to defend our clients and put notches under our belt that we forget the other Attorney deserves respect.

Lets face it everyone makes mistakes, lefts face it. Everyone has a law degree and a bar license, which is pretty hard to get. That being said, everyone deserves respect.

Do your best

Follow the local and procedure rules

It's ok to try to frervently represent your client, but do not be rude or disrespectful to another Attorney

Get on the Phone talk to the other Attorney a lot of times things get lost in translation over email and pleadings

Your client has a goal and their client has a goal. Find out what their client's bottom line and what your client's is.

Talk to your client about realistic outcomes and goals.

If opposing counsel and yourself get off to a bad start, try to workout the differences and work together to get the case resolved with ethic rules in mind.

Good Luck Solo hard work is only part of the job, relationships is the other portion!

Unconscionabilty of Law Schools

By Bankruptcy Attorney

Every year new law schools are springing up and charging high tuition and fees. Why does the ABA allow this to occur? There is a supply/demand imbalance. There are fore more Attorneys than there are jobs and opportunities. The real reason is that Law Schools are businesses and they feed the ABA $ to keep their accreditation.

Take Charlotte School of Law For example. This is one of the most evident cases of greed. Tuition here is somewhere between $22,000-$30,000.00 a year. The received their accreditation sometime in 2008 or 09. It is a Delaware non-profit corporate organization and is run and owed by a series of investment companies in florida! What does this mean? A lot of people are going to lawschool these days thinking that they will get out and be able to get a good job. Good LUCK. Even biglaw attorneys (larger firms) are being laid off and forced to hang their singles and start anew.

So when you sit there and think about your student loan balance and how you will be paying that off for the rest of your life, think well at least i got a law degree! And that's just invaluable isnt?


Our contribution Attorney represents clients in North Carolina with: bankruptcy court, filing for bankruptcy, chapter 7 bankruptcy, foreclosure defense, chapter 13 bankruptcy representation, and loan modifications.

Reinventing the Wheel

By Traffic Attorney

One thing I have learned over the past couple of years is that as a young Attorney, you have to think of fresh new ideas to market your firm. The days of newspaper ads being the end all be all are over!

These days you have to go to marketing events. Be careful who you give your card to here, they may end up harrassing you for their services.

Advertise on the internet.

Send out newsletters

Give referral incentives.

Print promotional items: shirts, cards, magnets, ect.

Network with other Attorneys who are in different practice areas.

Whatever you do don't give up! Hanging your shingle is no easy task!

Official Google Blog: Calling from Gmail now in 38 languages, with lower rates to over 150 destinations

Official Google Blog: Calling from Gmail now in 38 languages, with lower rates to over 150 destinations

So you have decided to market yourself on the internet

By Charlotte Bankruptcy Attorney

In this day in age you better have a website if you want to reach the young technology clientele. Here are some simple tips about start, maintaining a website.

1. If you do purchase a marketing package from the big dogs lawyers.com; or findlaw.com; realize that you are going to paying a lot $$. These companies create hollow websites that are backed by their servers which have high google recognition. What this means is so long as you are with them, your website will be topped ranked and the minute you can not afford to pay for their website servers, your website will fall the bottom of the ranks.

2.  If you do decide to go with a web designer make sure you research and look for someone who can not only build your site, but also has a little bit of background in search engine optimization. To at least give your website a fighting chance you need to have some kind of chance to survive. In the world of lawyer's websites only the attorney's with the biggest budgets and the best website teams survive.

3. Find a reputable good web designer. There are lot of people out there calling themselves "web designers" these days and they will take your money and fade to black. There is no regulation of web designers nor is any training necessary. Anyone can say they are a designer and advertise their services.

Here are some dos and don't dos regarding finding a designer
1. Read up on website design and get some background knowledge about what is you want to do with your site.

2. Finding the designer: I personally think that the number one thing to investigate is your prospective website designers ranking in google. A business website needs to rank extremely well to an effective marketing tool. If you know someone who has a website that you like, ask them for a referral. I have had no successful finding reputable people on craigslist, but you may find someone good on sites like guru or freelance.

2. Ask each designer for references. Be careful about this, lots of designers will do some websites for free to get business and have family and friends vouch for them. Also some people will charge you to do the work and often contract with freelancers to do the work. This will cost you more money.

3. Request several quotes and make sure the quotes entail what the designer will do: i.e. design, seo (keyword, title, install widgets to your site, ect). Review the quotes and the cheapest designer may not be the best, look at his portfolio.

4. Make sure you clearly define what you want the website to contain. What this means is that you will most likely have to write most of the content yourself that you want to appear on your website. Usually designers charge extra if they have to find a content writer to fill in the pages of your website. Basic Pages should be your home page, contact page, a few content pages, with your practice areas and background information on you as an attorney.

5. Send your designer examples of websites that catch your attention. Also google a few sites in your practice area to see what their sites contain and look like. By no means am i telling you to commit plagiarism.

Good luck on your quest to build your website dreams,

Sincerely,

Bankruptcy Attorney

Overcoming obstacles as a Solo

Posted by Bankruptcy Attorney

As if being a solo is not hard enough, but when you add being 1) young, 2) a woman, 3) and minority, things start to become complicated.

On a daily basis I admonished, questioned, by older white male solos who see me as inexperienced, inept, and inferior. I am by no means crying or calling every male white Attorney racist. I am merely stating fact that I am treated differently by the Attorneys I come in contact with on my opposing matters.

I am as respectful as I can be to my peers and colleagues. In my eyes I went to law school and passed the same bar exam as they did. I am not sure if this static is intimidate me or just out of pure ignorance. Either way, I find that following the rules, responding to only those things that require my response, and finding peace with the fact that these individuals ultimately can not value the quality of my work or define me as an Attorney or person a good way to deal with the mud slinging.

confessions of solo.......................