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Starting a Law Firm | Naming Law Firm Part II

There are many many choices to make when trying to start a new law firm. Sometimes it seems overwhelming.  Where should I start?  Making a list and outlines always helps me, but you still need a header.  (As an aside, because I am so into reading all forms of knowledge I can get, here is a cool link to a book by Atul Gawande called “The Checklist Manifesto” that I am planning to read.)

So my header to day is Naming Your Law Firm.  A tried and true choice is using some form of your own name.  After all, aren’t you going to be the one to represent the clients?  Aren’t they going to come to your office with your name on it to hire you to help them with their divorce or other family law problem?

I have strongly considered using some form of my own initials.  It sounds a little more professional and grown up to me.  It also creates more of an impression of strength and stability to me and it is different from all the other “John Doe Law Firm, P.C.” names out there.  You need to be careful though, there is plenty of information out there on misleading potential clients with your law firm name.  It can be unethical to try and mislead potential clients about the size of your law office and the number of attorneys working there.  However, I think using your initials is reasonable and not misleading – after all, the “Law Tigers” moniker seems to be ok for some reason.  All things to consider when starting your own law firm.

Your professional affiliation or “business association” is also important.  As lawyers, we know that we need to use business associations like Corporations, LLC’s, Professional Corporations, Partnerships, Limited Partnerships, and S Corporations in order to protect our businesses from liability and to deal with taxation issues.

Which leads me to think that my initials and some for of business association behind it might look good.  Here goes:  “JMF Law Firm, LLC”.  Not bad.  Not too bad at all.  I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I am leaning towards the initials direction.  I should also note that there are other firms out their with that designation.  They aren’t in Minneapolis or Apple Valley, Minnesota, but when thinking about search engine optimization (SEO), I do want to keep in mind some originality in my new firm name.

One thought I have been turning over in my brain when thinking about the best way to market for starting a family law firm is to ask for outside opinions.  I’ll be honest, my wife is my biggest sounding board.   She is very astute and gives me an honest opinion which I really value.  But, she doesn’t know much about the law or marketing.  She thinks I should use my last name in some fashion.  I’m not sure my last name is all that catchy. I’m not sure it will sell.  I’m not sure she’s wrong.

I am not sure about a lot of things about starting my own law firm, but I am sure I am excited and happy about the decision to start a firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Moving to Minnesota

I sold my home in Indiana today.  Actually, my wife an I received an offer with a small amount of earnest money from the buyer.  Given that we put a lot into the house and looked after it in a kindly fashion, I doubt there will be much trouble with inspections and I fully expect us to be moving out by June 7, 2010.

I’m glad we sold the house and that we can now move on, but I am nervous about my quest to start and build my own law firm.  The more we do here in Indiana to move, the more nervous I get about all of the things I need to accomplish before I can open up a family law firm.

I need to take and pass the Minnesota bar exam.  I need to set up a website.  I need to worry about office space.  I need business cards.  Malpractice insurance.   A forms library.  I need telephone, fax, email.  I need paper.  I need pens.  I need to worry about a lot of things.

I have been running my own firm in Indiana now for about three months.  So, I have gone through the early motions of starting a law firm and I know a fair amount about what it will take.  I was at a general practice firm here in Indiana for about three years.  I took a few clients with me when I knew I was moving and I knew I could finish them up in 3 or 4 months.  So, I know a fair amount about what it takes to start and run a family law firm in Indiana.  But, obviously, Minnesota is a little different.

Actually, running my own practice hasn’t been that hard so far and I have made pretty good money.  The biggest problem has been how to invoice and keep track of billing without proper billing software.  I have been doing it with various programs that have all been bad.  Actually, I keep wondering if one client still owes me $150 and whether I sent the invoice.  I know, pretty silly.

I’ll post more when I figure out more about financial record-keeping software.  That wasn’t really the point of this post.  I suppose the point was to let everybody know I sold my home in Indiana and I am getting  that much closer to making the move to Apple Valley, Minnesota and starting a law firm more real.  Oh, and we sold the home in a week after putting it on the market.  We sold it to a family medicine resident and her husband.  My wife is a family medicine doctor, so I think we had a good in.  Anyway, I’m happy we sold it.  One less thing I need to worry about.

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Starting a Law Firm | Getting Informed

In my continuing quest to learn how to start a law firm in Minneapolis, MN, I thought I would talk a little bit about how to gather the information necessary to try and start and build a practice.

I love information.  I love books.  I love the ability to go to a book store, library, or other source to get knowledge.  I was just reading a really interesting article in the New Yorker about the Vatican Library in Rome and all of the neat things they are doing.  But, this post isn’t about libraries.

What this post is about is the information that I am trying to compile to teach myself how to start a family law firm in Apple Valley, MN.  The first thing I did several years ago was start looking for some simple information which was written by an attorney.  An old book that a lot of attorneys who want to start their own practices have mentioned is Jay Foonberg’s How To Start and Build a Law Practice.  This guy appears to be the original man on the subject.  If you are thinking about starting a law practice of your very own, there is no better place to start than here.

So I read it.  And it’s good.  But, there are other sources of information that I have located.  Of course, blogs are good – especially this one.  However, the version of Foonberg’s book that I was using was a little dated and lacked a lot of modern day marketing/networking information.  The best sources I have found so far are Solo By Choice, by Carolyn Elefant and the starting a law firm blog.  Both of these sources are excellent and very appropriate for me – a guy in his early 30s with about 3 years of practice under his belt and who is very adept at technology and social media.

I hope anybody reading this post tries out just one of these sources of information.  Isn’t knowledge great?

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Starting a Law Firm | Computers, Software, Etc.

In an effort to get my computer systems ready for starting an Minneapolis, MN law firm, I just spend the entire day (and I am not kidding) trying to create a network between my old desktop computer and my new laptop computer.  It didn’t work.

I get so frustrated by Microsoft.  They are great at a great many things, but they keep rolling out product that is incompatible with their old products.  Why?  My theory is that they are too busy paying their R&D and software development people to create new products and new maintenance for that product, that they forget to support their old systems.

I run Windows XP Professional on my old Dell desktop.  It’s basically a dinosaur, but it works.  The new laptop came with the Windows 7 operating system.  I have to tell you, I really like Windows 7.  It is so much smoother and user friendly.  However, it doesn’t like to connect with Windows XP via a network connection.  This really shouldn’t be so hard.  Especially, when I have other things to concentrate on when starting my new firm.

If I am going to run a law practice, I am going to need a network so that I can share different computers on the same business network.  I am going to use multiple computers and I hope to have staff one day who can be on the network.  Is that to much to ask?  It shouldn’t be, but Windows 7 isn’t really compatible with other operating systems.  I did manage to create a remote desktop connection, but I don’t like it as much.  It is too clunky.

The remote desktop is great (but not as great as a network connection) because it enables me to share all of my office information with another computer.  I also have printer, fax, and scanner access through the remote desktop.  I am also protected by a user name and password, so I don’t need to worry about law firm client files being hacked into.  Finally, with a network or a remote desktop, I can work from anywhere I want and bill my firm’s clients.  Great!

The point of this post is that there is so much more to running a law practice than practicing law.  It is tough to realize how many little things I will have to do, and how much will go wrong.  But, all that being said, I am still very excited about starting my own Minneapolis, MN family law firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Ethical Blogging

Update 09/16/2011:  

I wanted to do a mea culpa on this post and admit that I am young (31), just starting out as a solo lawyer, and you should probably take everything I say on this blog with a grain of salt.  

I have almost 4 years of practicing experience under my belt but it isn’t enough.  As I said in another post, if you are going to start a law firm out of law school or without doing much work as a practicing lawyer previously, you should get more legal experience.  Every bar association in the country has a mentoring program.  If you lack experience, I would recommend a mentor.  I have done a poor job at times being an attorney and it wasn’t due to lack of desire, it was due to lack of experience.  We have people’s lives in our hands and we need to take that responsibility very, very seriously.  

As some of you may notice, I started blogging over a month ago in an effort to document my efforts to start a law firm.  I have the concept:  start a firm in Minnesota once I am licensed there and blog about how I am doing it.  I plan to talk about the process, the trials and tribulations, my successes, and my failures.  All fairly started stuff.

The problem is that I am trying to write the blog for another very important reason – I want to generate search engine optimization so my future clients can easily find me by doing a google, bing, or other search on a search engine.  The more I blog, the more traffic I get. The more traffic I get on this blog the more likely somebody needing a divorce or family law attorney will find me.  Ok, that all makes sense.

But, is it ethical?  I am not licensed in Minnesota.  Doesn’t the name of my blog suggest a possible ethical conflict when I am not licensed in Minnesota?  What if a potential client thinks I am making representations that I am licensed?  This is all scary for me.  I’ve included several posts and a legal disclaimer at the bottom of the page about my licensure status.

So, I’ve realized that I need to be very clear that I am blogging about starting a family law firm.  That is what this blog is about.  I also probably need to change the name to “starting” or some other moniker.  It’s not about practicing in Minnesota because I am not licensed there and I don’t want to make any inference to any reader that I am.

I think this post is important because I think a lot of young entrepreneurs like myself who are savvy with social media, need to be aware of the ethical constraints of blogging.  I just read a really interesting (and somewhat scary) in the Indiana Bar Association magazine about the ethical issues surrounding social networking and social media for lawyers.  The point is that I need to be careful about what it is I am actually blogging about, and that is starting and building a law firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Practice Area

After be questioned by my wife on why I wanted to start a law firm in Minnesota when I pass the bar exam, I wanted to post my answer to her completely valid question.

As I’ve discussed, I have always wanted to start my own family law firm.  I worked for a public-transit, integrated-GPS company called Siemens in my home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa for about a year after college.  I got to see first-hand how lazy people are and how silly the corporate system is.  I decided law school would be a way to do my own thing and be my own man.  But, after experiencing the doctrine oriented, non-practice related, curriculum of law school, I knew I needed experience.  And I did.  I still do.  But, after a little over three years of general practice with a focus on family law, I think I’m read

I want to start a family law practice because I know family law and/divorce work, I think I am good at it, and divorce and family work is one of the easiest way to generate billable hours and revenue to get a law firm going.  I also want to serve my clients to the best of my ability and help people in need.

Do I always want to do family law?  No.  Do I ever want to completely phase it out? Probably, not.  Do I need clients right away to be self sustaining?  Absolutely.

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Starting a Law Firm | Bar Review Course

Taking the bar exam is not fun.  Taking it twice is really not fun.  As I’ve already posted, I’m taking the bar exam again and hope to admitted in Minnesota.

In the effort to start a law firm, I have to actually move to the area and take the July, 2011 bar exam.  Yay!  So, in preparation, I am signing up for BarBri review again.  Double yay!

My justification for using BarBri again is that I took it once before and passed the Indiana bar exam.  Some might ask:  Since you passed 1 bar exam, can’t your just study your self and pass another?  The answer:  Maybe?  As an attorney, I am very risk adverse and the way to control risk is to do what you know works.  So, the answer is BarBri – I signed up today.

Which gets me to the point of this post.  I spent $2,615.00 at the special alumni rate to take the full course, plus the mobile upgrade.  I get a significant discount on the tuition as an alumni, but I am in Indiana so I need to sign up for the mobile option because I don’t want to move to Minneapolis for two months.

And there is a catch – the BarBri mobile has a $295.00 upgrade fee and a $200.00 refundable deposit fee for a IPod Touch.  There goes my alumni break.  I get to watch the lectures and get materials on the IPod Touch they are going to ship to me.  So, being an alumni is starting to look less good.

I would be ok with the obvious Apple-in-bed-with-BarBri deal, but I’ve already got a Google smart phone.  Why can’t they send me the software to the phone I already have and like?  Well, because Apple wants to make money silly.  I would even be ok with that, but now I am wondering how fun it will be to watch BarBri lectures on a 3.5 inch screen!  This could be seriously bad.  If any of you have taken the BarBri courses before, you know how awful those lectures are.

That pretty much ends my rant.  Check out this funny video on how wonderful BarBri is.

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Starting a Law Firm | Firm Technology

When thinking about how to use technology to help me start a law firm, I have come across some really cool, free, ideas.

I know I discussed MindMeister already in a previous post, but while using the brainstorming tool on MindMeister I was referenced to Yahoo Widgets.  I’ll admit that I am not one for gadgets, but I really liked this one.

I have trouble keeping my thoughts organized and I am always coming up with what I think are great ideas.  Sometimes I actually write them down.  Sometimes I put them in an email and email it to myself.  All of this is very disorganized and often doesn’t lead to much.

But, the MindMeister brainstorming chart I am using is linked to a Yahoo Widget called Geistes Blitz.  Being a German student in high school, I knew “geistes” meant mind.  So, the widget is a mind blitz or, put another way, an idea capturing tool that sends all my starting an Minneapolis family law firm ideas to my MindMeister chart.

Pretty cool huh?

This way, if I’m working at my computer or surfing the web for helpful information on starting a family law firm, I can pull up the Geistes Blitz, type in an idea and/or link and it automatically goes to the marketing section of my chart.

This may be kind of lame, but I find this kind of very helpful for idea organization when starting a law firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Research on Family Law

It’s tough knowing where to begin when trying to start a law firm.  I know I will be opening up my own family law firm once I become licensed, but I don’t know what the best route to get there is.  There is so much information and it is hard to categorize.  It is a lot like my frustration with the internet – too much information to comb through to get to something that is really useful.

So, I am going to try to come up with a listing or categorization of steps to take when planning to start a family law firm.  One really helpful tool that My Shingle turned me onto is MindMeister.  It is a graphing tool to help you brainstorm how to start a family law firm and organize those brainstorming ideas.

 

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Starting a Law Firm | Naming Law Firm Part 1

This is an often discussed topic, but I am having trouble choosing a name to start and build my law firm.  I am going to be a solo practitioner so something with name seems right.  However, isn’t it a little cliche?  I was thinking of something with my initials.  That might appear to be a little more professional while giving the impression of an established firm.  Of course, I don’t want to get into any trouble with false advertising as a family law lawyer.  Check out this interesting post from My Shingle for what not to do.  Of course, I could always wind up a Supreme Court justice.

I won’t tell you my initials, but I will say that a firm in Chicago is already using them.  I won’t be practicing as a family law lawyer in Chicago so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.  I will also say that I don’t plan on saying anything like Joe Lawyer & Associates.  If and when I get an associate or partner, I’ll use it.  Not until then.

Also, while I’m on the topic of names, I had considered whether the location starting my family law firm should be in the name.  I have noticed a lot of joelawyerinnewyork type of names.  Could it be a good idea?  One interesting idea is using a thesaurus and start bouncing ideas around.  I’ll keep you updated and all suggestions are most appreciated.