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How can you benefit from retaining a sole practitioner, as opposed to a
larger firm?
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Responsiveness and flexibility.
A large law firm, like any large organization, is eventually "captured"
by its own bureaucracy. Over time, it becomes inflexible and tends to
operate more and more for the benefit and convenience of its bureaucracy,
rather than the benefit and convenience of its customers. (Think "DMV" or
"U.S. Postal Service.") A solo is relatively immune from that phenomenon
and, therefore, can provide service that is more responsive and
better-tailored to each client's needs.
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Efficiency.
At a typical large firm, documents and issues often are repeatedly massaged
by redundant layers of junior associates, mid-level associates, senior
associates, and junior partners, before getting the imprimatur of a
senior partner. That is slow, inefficient, and expensive. The large firm
does not care, because that is one of the ways it makes money: by leveraging
the billable hours of its professional staff. Solos do not do that: we
can't.
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You're a big fish.
In a large firm, many clients will find they are rather small fish in the
firm's pond, and are treated accordingly. In a mega-firm, even a Fortune 500
company may not be a particularly big fish. A sole practitioner has no small
fish in his pond. Because repeat business is so desirable, every client is
important and is treated accordingly.
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Access.
Solos are usually happy to have clients contact them, day or night. I
give clients as many ways to contact me as I can think of: mail, e-mail,
fax, Web site, toll-free office phone, home phone, and cell phone. Calls to
my office phone are automatically routed to my cell phone if I do not
pick-up in my office, and are then sent to me as e-mail attachments if I do
not answer my cell phone right away. I give
clients ways to contact me almost anywhere and anytime, including while I am
away on vacation. I want them to call
me. If you use a larger firm, when is the last time one of the lawyers there
gave you his home number and urged you to use it?
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Lower cost for a like kind and quality
of work.
An experienced, knowledgeable sole
practitioner can often perform legal tasks in far less time than would be
required by a law firm and its bureaucracy.
Large firms can give their staffs a
lot: high salaries, bonuses, beautiful offices in "class A" space, catered
food at meetings, golf outings at expensive country clubs, limo service home
for anyone working past 5:00, in-house cafeterias, in-house gyms, expense
accounts, etc. Well, who do you think is paying for that? Could it
possibly be...the clients? Solos do not have to pay for that kind of fixed
overhead, and can pass the savings along to their clients.
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No hidden billing pressures.
The dirty, not-so-little secret of life in many law firms is the "b-word":
billing. Whether they call them "expectations," "guidelines," "standards,"
or "requirements," most firms try to get their staffs to bill at least
certain minimum amounts, each and every day, week, month, and year. At
many firms, the professional staff is bombarded with ceaseless exhortations
to bill, BILL, BILL! Some firms even offer monthly cash
bounties to lawyers who bill in excess of a required minimum, or penalize
lawyers who fail to do so. Too often, the result is obvious and easily
predictable: lawyers and paralegals feel constant pressure to inflate their
bills, so that's what they do. Solos like to make money just as much as the
next guy (I sure do), but no one is pressuring us to inflate bills.
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Your matters will not be used to train
inexperienced lawyers. In larger firms, all
but the most serious matters are delegated to junior lawyers for day-to-day
handling. From the firm's perspective, this not only gives the junior
lawyers something to do (and to bill for), but allows them to get experience
at clients' expense. The reality is that inexperienced lawyers, no
matter how bright and well-educated they are, have little or no idea how to
be lawyers. They lack the maturity, judgment, seasoning, experience, and
specialized knowledge that come only after years of actual practice. As a
result, they spend an inordinate amount of time to produce work that a more
experienced lawyer could have done better, in less time, and at lower cost
to the client. Experienced sole practitioners do not need to train junior
lawyers at clients' expense: we have no junior lawyers.
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