Starting a Law Firm | Knowing Your Local Rules

Starting a law firm doesn’t just mean marketing your firm.  You won’t be in business very long if you don’t know the law.  The last thing you want when starting a law firm is to be faced with a legal malpractice lawsuit for failure to know and follow the law.

The law you know includes more than the state and federal law that you learned in law school.  The law also includes your jurisdiction’s state (county) and/or federal court local rules.  Failure to learn and know the local rules puts you at a huge disadvantage and will ensure that your initial efforts will not go well with your client, opposing counsel, and the court.  This is a really bad was to develop reputation.

Knowing the local rules also means that you are going to make your local judges happy.  Making judges happy is a good thing.  They know the rules and so should you.  In fact, your judge probably wrote a few of the local rules in your jurisdiction.  Many judges are often either on the local rules drafting committee or are giving direct insight into the drafting the process.  Believe me, it is your best interest for you and your new law firm to know the rules.

Also, knowing the local rules will surely put you at least on par with your local attorneys who have been in the community for a while.  You can be sure that those attorneys know the local rules and will not hesitate to use them against you.  Also, in my practice, I found that a number of attorneys (for whatever reason) tended to ignore the local rules.  This is not a good idea when starting a law firm.

I have a little sticky note in my office which says “I get paid to win”.  Now, that is probably not the end-all-be-all of how I want to represent my clients, but it reminds me that I am my clients’ advocate.  My clients don’t want to pay for my mistakes and nor should they have to.  What is a great way to make mistakes for your clients and hurt your new law firm?  Not knowing the local rules.  In my family law practice, I have both won key victories and lost some things because I did or did not know a particular local rule.  I can tell you that, although my clients didn’t know the law, they knew that I had won something for them or done a good job.

Building a successful law firm means a lot of things.  It certainly means developing a marketing plan, being ethical, and having experience – but it also means making a reputation for yourself.  One of the best ways to earn a reputation is by knowing the law and asserting your client’s position to the fullest.  That will get your bills paid, believe me. In my view, there are many different ways to “win”, but knowing the local rules (and the law in general) is one of them.  Don’t under estimate it.

When thinking about starting a law firm, don’t just think about marketing and planning the firm.  I know that is tough to do.  After all, your law firm needs clients first to make any of this matter.  But, I read a lot of blogs and other literature and they seem a little too focused on money and marketing your firm.  Don’t forget that when starting a law firm you need to be just as concerned with being a good lawyer.  In my experience, things will fall into place if you start with that as your rock.