Solo by Choice: How to be the lawyer you always wanted to be, by Carolyn Elefant (Seattle: DecisionBooks; 2008), contains 300 pages packed with down-to-earth, well organized advice on everything from making the decision to set up your own law firm, to deciding if and when to expand your solo practice. There are appendices on everything from writing a business plan to creating a forms library, that invaluable shortcut provided for you in a big firm.

The four chapters on marketing are some of the most positive prose I’ve read about the topic, even by veteran, trained marketers. Messages like “Marketing makes you a better lawyer” and “Marketing gives you more control over your practice” are music to the ears of those of us who believe that even the best law firm marketing departments are wasting their time if their lawyers don’t actively engage in business development.

As I turned the pages of Solo by Choice, I thought about some of the coddled partners and cocooned associates in big firms and wondered whether they would be able to survive a solo practice. When the practice is your own, you have to think about everything from billing to benefits to buying the coffee—and all points in between. Claiming to be “too busy to market” or even “too busy to bill” just doesn’t cut it. Having been a successful “solo” for over a decade, albeit in marketing rather than law, I appreciated Carolyn Elefant’s refreshingly realistic attitude.

Marketing can be most difficult

Sometimes the best education a lawyer can get is to go solo—as Elefant so eloquently points out. Reading her interviews with successful solos, I was struck by how many of them said that the things they found most difficult at first were marketing and accounting. These might just be the two least appreciated departments in big law firms! She tackles everything from alternative billing methods to finding good suppliers, all with common sense and good humour. Some of my favourite lines:

• One of Six Reasons to Solo: “To own not loan your talent”
• “Treat every encounter as a marketing opportunity”
• “The law is as much a business as it is a profession”

Elefant’s book focuses on the types of practice that tend to attract solos, like family law or wills and estates. However, I know of several BigLaw refugees running highly successful solo practices in insurance, securities and corporate law. To her excellent list of reasons for soloing, I would add avoidance of conflicts, which gets many litigators out on their own, and escaping the high-overhead rat race, especially in price-sensitive fields like employment law and immigration.  

Solo by Choice holds a number of sobering messages for anyone running a law firm, of whatever size. Appendix 6 consists of transcribed interviews with other solos. Managing partners should read these interviews to learn how to retain associates and the clients they serve: give them interesting work and credit for doing it. Pay attention to their clients, because they will walk with the dissatisfied associates if you don’t. Almost all of the solos who had practiced at big firms took some clients with them when they launched their own firms.

Worthwhile for marketing directors

Although this book is aimed at lawyers thinking of taking the solo practice route, it’s worthwhile reading for marketing directors, too. I particularly liked the section in Chapter 8, Beyond the Code: Building a Client-centered Practice. Her six ways to develop a good bedside manner are worth following:

1. Listen
2. Explain
3. Don’t nickel and dime
4. Be responsive
5. Show interest
6. Thank clients for their cooperation

Elefant’s advice applies to any service provider, including those of us in marketing: to be successful, focus on the client’s needs rather than on your own. I enjoyed her sample dialogues about the right way and the wrong way to discuss matters so that instead of resenting your actions on their behalf, clients end up appreciating your decision-making. When I was an in-house marketing director, many’s the time I had to write myself a little script for a sensitive discussion with a high-maintenance partner, or to counsel staff on how to respond effectively to multiple, often conflicting, demands. I always found that showing an interest in the lawyer’s practice went a very long way towards establishing a productive relationship. Being responsive allowed me to guide a marketing initiative in a direction that would produce a greater return on investment.

Canadian readers will find plenty of relevance, even though the book is written for US lawyers. Where she mentions costs or revenue numbers, the amounts may be different in Canada but the order of magnitude is the same.

One disappointment: I wish the publishers had taken the author’s advice (“It never hurts to have a second pair of eyes review a document”) and had the book professionally proofread. The typos, uncorrected grammar mistakes and fragments of computer code throughout the book detract from its message. This excellent book deserved better.