Starting a Law Firm | Slow Times

I’ve been away from this starting a law firm blog for a while.  Two reasons:  (1) my summer fishing vacation and (2) I’m waiting to get licensed in Minnesota so this blog becomes al little superfluous.  Regardless, my situation reminds me of the slow times involved with starting a law practice.

Summer is about fun for most ordinary people.  Lawyers (although some beg to differ) are ordinary people.  Lawyers like breaks too and the summer can provide them – in ways both good and bad.

Summer also means that other ordinary people don’t want to work.  They want to go on vacation.  If your law practice is at all consumer driven (family law, criminal law, debtor representation) you have probably noticed that the summer can often mean slow times for your practice.  It has for mine.

As I stated, I like to fly fish and the summer is a great time for this.  But, I always feel irritated when the practice of law slows down along with my monthly income.  My theory is that, in the summer, people either don’t want to think about lawyers and/or they are too busy doing fun stuff to worry about what they really need to get done.

In terms of my family law practice, on the opposite end of this spectrum is tax season.  My practice always picks up during tax season because people get their tax returns and can now afford to pay my retainer fee for a divorce, adoption, guardianship, child support modification, etc.  That is a good time for my law practice and I often feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to get done.

However, during the summer my practice slows down considerably.  While working as an associate out my ten-attorney law firm, summer also brought on slow times for our corporate clients.  Guess what that means?  The corporate client work slows down as well. During nearly four years in practice, I now know that June through August has always been some of my slowest months in terms of work done and money earned.

Which leads me to ponder:  maybe we lawyers should take a cue from our lack of clients, worry less about the billable hour and more about our mental and physical well-being during the slow summer months?  I’ll be the first to admit that I am not good at slowing down.  But, what choice is there if there isn’t much billable work to do anyway?

I’m making an assumption here that those of you reading this have already started a law firm and built a succesful law practice.  If you are just getting going and notice that the summer months are slow – be patient, refocus, and maybe have some fun?