Launching a Successful 21st Century Law Practice

Overview of context for starting a firm

This is four page checklist for starting a law firm. One of the matters on the checklist which I didn't address in any of the other modules is choosing a corporate structure for your firm. Most lawyers starting out often begin as a sole proprietorship and incorporate when they rent office space or begin using outside support staff. In contrast to ordinary businesses, a lawyer's most significant source of liability are malpractice claims and a corporate structure will not insulate lawyers from malpractice. Nevertheless, some lawyers do opt for creating a corporate entity - either an LLC (or a professional limited liability company or professional corporation - it's jurisdiction dependent) - and this blog post from Apex Legal (see here - http://www.apexlg.com/?p=468) offers a good discussion of options.

This is a 35 minute presentation on making cold calls to prospective referral sources and clients. It's not easy but the results are usually very worthwhile.