r/LawFirm

Hello All,
I have been a solo for the past 4 years. I have a company that answers my phone if I do not pick up after a few rings.
Quick facts: I have a case list of 70 cases in different stages (15 pre lit, 65 lit). Right now, I am the one doing the tasks such as requesting medical records, following up with medical facilities for records, client contact, intake, motion practice (mostly responsive motions), discovery, court conferences, depositions, letters... you get it.
Yesterday I spent the first few hours of the day in Court on multiple conferences. By the time I got to the office and "started" it was 12:30PM. I was working on catching up on my tasks and correspondence for most of the day. Last night, I was working in the office (7pm) and I received a call from someone in a car wreck on their way to the hospital. For the first time, I felt extremely overwhelmed and exhausted. I absolutely spoke to the client and I am in the process of signing them up. Sending out letters of representation, helping the clients navigate the beginning stages, opening up the no fault case, getting the defendant insurance on the phone - I am THRILLED I am signing up a new client, but my ability to be proactive on other cases in a legal capacity (motion practice, notices to admit, drafting formal demand letters with case law) is falling behind.
I am assuming that I need a virtual assistant in a secretarial capacity more than a paralegal but I could be wrong.

For those of you who hired a virtual assistant
(1) How did you find one that you gelled well with and did you start with full/part time
(2) What are some tasks that you assign your assistant

Looking forward to reading your responses but please do not try to sell me on your service of matching attorneys with VA's or Para's. I am looking for attorney experiences here.

I just want to make it clear. I am beyond excited to sign up a new client. No clients = no law firm. I don't want to come off like an asshole (my steak is too buttery, I have too much work etc). I just want to spend my time doing the right work.

I've been meeting with Clio's marketing partners, and they all sell the same stuff. Has anyone used any of these? Have you gotten results? So far I've met with:

1. Kaleidico
2. Matador
3. Law Rank
4. Jurispage
5. Rankings

Jurispage and Law Rank seem promising to me, they both have lawyers writing their content while the others are using AI. (I asked rankings if they used AI and their answer was unclear, so i'm assuming they do.)

I also met with scorpion.....one reddit search and that one was instantly off the list! LOL.

Our firm doesn't have an employee that could do this in-house, or I would consider us paying for LSA, google ads, managing our own SEO. We're currently using Androvette - HORRIBLE. Would absolutely not recommend them, all they focus on is vanity metrics like clicks and impressions and are consistently 2 months late on reports. Last year they only sent us one report. You'd be better off burning your money.

I'm a third year associate attorney at a small law firm in a mid-sized city doing hyper-specialized real estate development and financing work. I don't dislike it at all. The pay is fine, it has extremely reasonable billable expectations, and the people are supportive. The issue is that I absolutely despise billing for other people and having little control over my work. I am realizing how much I crave agency and control over my practice. I feel immensely unmmotivated and dissatisfied despite the seemingly good situation I am in (and to be clear, in many ways it is good!). This is my second firm - I was at my previous firm in a related practice area for two years, was laid off, and started here only a month later.

In my free time, I volunteer as an organizer for a group I am helping to get off the ground for an issue I care passionately about. Simultaneously, I am attempting to invest in my own real estate. When I'm building my own thing (whether it is the activism group or a side-business in real estate investment), my motiviation and enthusiasm is through the roof. This is what I believe is missing.

Thus, I'm seriously contemplating transitioning into a solo estate planning practice. I'd stick with real estate, but lawyers aren't required for real estate transactions in my state and quite frankly, I don't feel skilled enough to market myself within the niche I'm currently practicing in. Estate planning is appealing in part because I would be working with real people (as opposed to quasi-government entities as I currently do). I could charge flat fees, I could design my own business entirely, and I envision it feeling much more like plying my trade than grinding in a cubicle. Additionally, I could choose the amount of clients I work for - if I wanted to have less than a full caseload, that would be entirely my choice. I could actually take a vacation.

The plan would be to slowly begin to build skills in estate planning (or whatever it ends up being) and begin to create a business plan over the next year while leveraging my network for mentors. I know it won't happen overnight. That said, am I being unrealistic or naive? I haven't been an attorney for that long, and in many ways I still feel like a first year. Would it be better to just stick around at my firm for a while longer?

Hypothetically, if I were to start my own law firm (example name being x Law) and open an ancillary business (example name being x tax and wealth advising), would I be allowed to have non-lawyer partners in the ancillary business? I would provide: written notice of my interest in the wholly owned entity before providing the law-related services, with written acknowledgement of the notice to the client. I would also keep the law firm offices and the wholly owned accounting firm physically separate, provide disclaimers in any marketing or advertising. Maintain separate letterhead, or providing clear notice of the relationship between the lawyer and the entity. I am based in Utah.

Any insights into if this would be allowed or barriers I may run into would be heavily appreciated.

hi all! i recently got an offer at a big law firm to join as a second year associate. i currently only have 1 year of experience from a mid-sized firm (where i honestly i don't think i learned a whole lot) in a different practice area, but both litigation. im pretty nervous about starting and the transition but am seeking any advice for how to be successful at my new firm!

what should i expect coming in as a second year lateral and what are the expectations going to be of my skill level? what should i be doing to make sure i have a good transition? really appreciate any advice!

My problem: I have a few thousand potential clients and nowhere to take them.

Details: first year call, only do family law, live in a very big city, no lawyers in my ethnic community (~10k people in the province!), I'm well-known in that community, no "job" currently (doing contractor work for a solo), I get calls from potential clients at least several times a week. I have a list of over 70 such calls.

How do I capitalize on this? Should I find a mid-sized 360 firm in town and tell them: I'll bring you all the clients you want, you give me a nice referral fee. keep me on file as a "consulting lawyer" or something like that, so I can bill them for helping with translation and all that.

But: could I ask to be mentored on some of the files so I get to do the work and actually learn/grow?

What's my best move here? (remember: first year call)

EDIT: my long-term goal is to start/run/grow my own practice. I've no interest in being an employee at another firm, in the long run

I recently graduated with my Master’s in Law and have been seriously considering taking the LSAT and pursuing law school. In the meantime, I wanted to reach out and ask for your thoughts or experience regarding opportunities for non-attorneys in the legal field.

Have you seen smaller firms or companies outsource work to non-attorneys for assistance with things such as contracts, legal research, drafting briefs, filings, document preparation, or similar support work? I would love to explore opportunities to do this on the side if there are legitimate avenues available to contribute in that capacity while continuing my education path. I’m mainly looking for any feedback, suggestions, or insight you may have from your own experience. I’d really appreciate your perspective.

They changed the website to be a dummy's guide to the court system with AI inspired images throughout, and now its hard to obtain actual needed information.

The chef's kiss of the changes is that all county surrogate court pages had a picture of a coffin at the top. This has been recently changed to a candle and a dove. WTF.

I'm curious about the services world. In software, you typically have rough benchmarks:

For <$10k/year clients: up to 10%, with up to half of that being the cost of the initial meeting.

$10k-$25k/year: up to 15% with up to 8% being the initial meeting cost.

$25k - $50k/year: up to 20% with 12% on first calls

$50k+/year: no set benchmarks.

How does this compare to legal services? I'm conscious the margins are different, so curious to learn how this differs or how you think about it?

Question for Morgan and Morgan employees: what is a “summit” attorney in the interview process?

We're considering moving our website from a Word Press site to an AI created site on the Loveable platform. I'm concerned about SEO and dropping on Google. Has anyone done this?

I am starting my own law firm this year and want a reliable, good working laptop. I was thinking about the Macbook Air or Pro. What do you guys use and recommend? Its mainly to use Word and software from Kleos and some small administration.

Hello,

I am a Paralegal at a solo law firm and my background is in IT and Automations. I honestly can't believe my experience with MyCase thus far so I was hoping to find out if others are having similar problems and if Clio is any better.

Ironically enough, I was a Zapier certified expert for several years and not even Zapier team seems to be able to get them to fix it for automations. It's at the point my boss wants me to look into Clio as an alternative.

First, MyCase does not seem to be taking their automation API seriously. I have explained to them that it doesn't seem to matter how you "search" the system for a case/caller that it doesn't seem to attach to both correctly. I was able to narrow this down to them not using industry standards which REQUIRE them to normalize the phone number formatting in the back end so it is searchable properly. In this case I opened a ticket with Zapier and forwarded to them where Zapier said it is on their end. They consistently want to request a shared screen. For security posturing I don't see why they need to share screen with me when they can confirm this issue with Post man or with a sample CRM sandbox on their end.

Second, the gmail add-on falls short in two ways. Who has ever heard of a law firm that only has one email they need synced to the system? Also for the last 2 weeks it has been impossible to attach any email attachments in the gmail add on (even after removing and reinstalling in incognito) and again they don't seem to want to do anything about it.

Third, MyCase Desktop just stops working regularly. I have a Mac and I have to completely "eject" the virtual drive for it and reopen it and sometimes that doesn't even work.

Forth, I know they refer to their "Advanced Automation" as if it is helpful but I am convinced it takes more time than doing things manually given how you can't even use it to select multiple things you need (i.e. I was trying to set up Estate Planning automations and I need them to be able to select one or more of: Wills, POA, Trusts, Anatomical Gifts).

BigLaw happiness rankings are starting to look like Formula One with billing targets. O’Melveny beats Morgan Lewis by 0.021 points in Vault’s “happy lawyers” survey. That’s basically one slightly less angry 3rd-year associate with a decent partner mentor and functioning espresso machine.

Are these worth the internet time anyway? Half the industry is still throwing money, “wellness weeks” and AI copilots at associates who’d quite like to see daylight before midnight. Curious thing: the firms winning on happiness are also the ones acting least like sweatshops with marble reception desks. Revolutionary concept that, I'm sure.

I didnt have original pan but i showed my epan that was created using nsdl portal but they were trying to verify it using income tax portal’s section called instant e-pan , that gets verified only when you created it using e-pan , if only they had verified using “verify pan status “in the same portal my pan would have been verified . Now i am left alone in banglore with nothing . What should i do . The Hr is behaving rudely listening to nothing . I know its my fault by not bringing original pan card but there must have been a solution . In chennai branch people got accepted by just signing acknowledgement letter than why not here . Please help me .

Hey all,

I'm at my wits end here with the state bar. I formed my law corp to practice solo in March. Filed my law corp application about a week later with the state bar on April 8.

It's been over a month since I've received a response. I keep calling, submitting online forms and nothing. I'm starting to get really irritated.

How long is this supposed to take? They've already processed my payment but they haven't approved my corp yet. What am I supposed to do?

As I understand it, I'm not allowed to practice under the corp without approval right?

Any advice or insight would be really helpful. I am exhausted.

Hi everyone!

I’m currently undertaking my traineeship in Scotland. I’m doing it solely in Personal Injury. I have around a year left.

I joined this field to help people, but at this point I feel like an abused ambulance chaser (:

Does anyone in Scotland/UK have any experience of moving into a different field once they qualify?

Would corporate/banking firms even consider me? I’m willing to learn!

Who is going to break the pay freeze? In November 2023, Milbank set first-year associates at $225,000 and eighth-years at $435,000. In November 2025, Cravath confirmed in writing that base salaries would not rise in 2026.

Two and a half years and no raise. Which firm is going to break it this year?

Searching for a way to log/identify each call that comes into the office. These calls can be a result of word of mouth, B2B referral, or paid ads. I am worried we are not responding to all calls in a timely manner. Also, that we could be thinking a marketing strategy is working in one area, but the phone calls tell us something else. For example, a referral partner tells us "I only refer to you." When in reality it might be once every few months. I always ask clients in consults "how did you hear about us?" Clients 9/10 times will tell us multiple places, so if we can them right when they call I hope to avoid them forgetting who sent them our way, even if multiple people.

Someone calls, I can move the number into case type, and have categories for when/how fast we called them back.