BEST LEGAL PRACTICE AREAS FOR SOLO ATTORNEYS. Lawyer Tips for Small Law Firms to Make a Profit.

hey everybody judy the youtube lawyer here today and today's episode is going to be about what i believe to be good practice areas for solo attorneys this was upon the special request of one of my subscribers who was interested in going to law school with the purpose of becoming a solo attorney upon graduation figuring out what is the best area of practice for an attorney is sort of like being asked what is the best type of youtube channel idea for somebody it really depends on yourself number one how much experience do you have if you have already worked for other law firms or in some other area of law where you are very competent in a certain niche then certainly it makes sense to stick with that if you think you can continue to get clients also what kind of communities do you belong to any certain ethnic group do you have any specific foreign language abilities which would make it easier for you to get certain types of clients the best thing any young attorney can do is to try to talk with as many other attorneys who have already been in practice for a number of years as many attorneys as possible and i know it's really hard to do now due to covet where you can't easily meet up with people but there's nothing wrong with just sending out a quick email or contacting people through their websites to see if they could talk to you on the phone very briefly you do your initial investigation to fill out what kind of legal market is in your area you also want to try to contact attorneys from different practice areas and with different lengths of tenure in the profession so somebody who just graduated from law school a couple of years ago and is a solo practitioner is going to most likely have a very different point of view compared to someone who is an established solo practitioner with tons of clients who has been in the area for say 25 to 35 years i do know of plenty of solo practitioners who have a very targeted niche area for example i know this woman who only does eminent domain cases and she has been in practice for a number of years much longer than i have and i'm not sure how she got those connections but she has built a name for herself as being one of the premier attorneys in the whole state to handle eminent domain cases i know a couple of other attorneys in north carolina who specifically do lemon law so that's a very narrow area of law where you might not get a lot of clients if you are just focusing on a local base but if you are one of the few attorneys in the whole state or a section of your state who handles lemon law and that means dealing with people who have problems with buying a car that turns out to be a piece of junk or needs a lot of extensive repairs and as far as i know those attorneys also do some other general consumer law cases so that is an area of law that could be lucrative but you have to see if your specific geographic area is already saturated in that market so there are so many areas of law i was writing down all the areas of law where i know there are some successful solo attorneys but it turned out to be well over 20 different specific areas of law so i'm just going to focus on a few of them here you can see some of my older videos where i did one focusing on my experiences doing personal injury cases as well as another video where i focused on doing workers comp and social security disability appeals and talked about those areas of practice and why i ended up cutting them out of my law practice one of the common areas of practice that a lot of young attorneys do especially if they are just coming straight out of law school and trying to start their own solo practice is to do criminal defense work and there is some work to be found doing court appointed criminal defense work i'm not really familiar with how it works in other states but at least in north carolina you can apply to become part of the court appointed list which means that when there are poor people who are accused of crimes and for some reason the public defender's office might have a conflict of interest like representing another co-defendant or um something that keeps them from having the ability to represent somebody then these court appointed attorneys can be called upon to defend the person criminal defense isn't going to be a great practice area for everyone and i'm just going to tell you my own personal experience because when i was in law school i interned for the fairfax virginia public defenders office as well as the d.c public defender service so back then it was kind of exciting to me as a law student to be able to work with these attorneys and run around going to court going to the juvenile detention center to jail to the mental institution it um it was kind of exciting because we got to go to so many different places we were always on the move talking to different people and going to court every single day but as a career though you know i personally i'm really glad that i didn't do criminal law because um i know friends who were public defenders as well as people who worked in the district attorney's office and a lot of people do get burned out doing criminal law because you're just hearing all these horrible stories all day all night you're on your feet in court dealing with tons of different kinds of people people who might be lying to you or very disbe disrespectful or rude to you so um it is very stressful and taxing at times some people thrive off of that though some of the people that i worked for in the past had been public defenders for a number of years before starting their own solo practice and to them they felt like it was kind of like um kind of like an intellectual exercise you know to to defend people who are criminally accused and to try to make the prosecution prove every single element of the case so it's more about protecting people's constitutional rights as opposed to just looking at your client as some murderer or rapist or somebody that assaulted a child so um you do have to have a very certain type of personality you can't take things personally or you have to be able to really kind of wash away all of the troubles of the people that you're dealing with especially when you do criminal defense cases um i've also heard stories of some attorneys getting punched by their clients or assaulted by their clients so as a short woman i'm kind of glad that um i ended up not being a public defender and um just basically not handling those types of cases whatsoever but for some people you know the thrill of being in court of um helping to save somebody you know somebody may have actually been falsely accused of a crime and you can help get them out of it um you know that that kind of feeling could be great and some people really do feel a calling for that and you know there is money to be made in those types of cases but you do have to be pretty good about making sure you get all the payment from your client or the client's family up front and um also think about your own personal safety too other kinds of court appointed work that you might be able to get as a new solo attorney is to be the guardian ad litem in guardianship cases so guardianship cases are when somebody is deemed to be incompetent incapable of handling their affairs it could range from someone with a mental disability or usually it's like an elderly person who is no longer able to fully control their finances or to be trusted to safeguard their own finances so in those kinds of cases at least where i practice they typically will appoint an experienced attorney who has had special training to be the guardian ad litem who is supposed to protect the interests of the person that um is claimed to be incompetent and that person the guardian ad litem would then have to go out to try to meet with the person and also try to speak with other family members or maybe even medical providers to try to figure out if there is validity in the petition to try to deem this person incompetent so once again it's not going to be the um the meat of your practice or revenue if you try to do court appointed work but this is a good way to supplement your income if you're a new solo practitioner so doing this court appointed work is also a great way to network and meet other attorneys and get yourself in front of the judge so even though you're not going to be making a lot of money doing this kind of work it's just a really overall good thing to do especially just for maybe at least a year or two to get your name out there gain your experience and also let other people in the legal community get to know you another popular practice area is doing wells or estate planning for people so that's become a really big deal with coveted going on and people suddenly realizing they are in need of planning so at the same time it makes it really hard to be profitable because it seems like there are so many attorneys at least where i practice who claim to do simple wills or estate planning and there are other areas of that law that can end up being more profitable like if you learn how to probate estates and you get hired by an executor to help them probate the state then um that could be lucrative but i don't have a lot of experience in that i will do some simple wills and power of attorneys for people but i think with things being on the internet and things like legal zoom where people are trying to save money and do it yourself then it becomes harder to really do that kind of work solely and try to make a really good living at it of course there are some attorneys who do that kind of law solely and i'm not sure how profitable they are but i think it's the older attorneys who already have a foothold and their connections and everything people who are board certified who are the ones that are really making a lot of the profits another niche area for a solo attorney like myself is to do employment law so again employment law encompasses a lot of different things it can be wage and hour act cases it can be defending small businesses in discrimination cases it can mean sexual harassment cases wrongful termination retaliatory employment discrimination act cases within north carolina so just to niche that down further i have sort of made a name for myself i'd like to say by doing employment cases for federal employees because there aren't many attorneys in the whole state who do this and i just gradually gained experience it started from my previous law firm where we did a lot of different employment discrimination cases and then i just started picking up cases after i started my own practice people were referring things to me because i had been active in the north carolina advocates for justice the employment lawyers division and it all started really with a client who worked for the postal service who hired me because she couldn't find any other attorney that could handle her case it was an eeo case involving sex discrimination and a hostile work environment so after i handled that person's case i got more referrals and somebody that was involved with the union also got to know me so she started referring more people to me so it's just gradually grown and grown i wouldn't say that it is anywhere close to even say like 75 percent of my practice but it's turned out to be a lucrative and also satisfying area of practice for myself and then there's also small business law some people like to cater towards small businesses and i've done this too in the employment law context where there are some businesses that need help defending themselves in employment cases but they don't have fifty thousand dollars to cough up which is the typical retainer deposit of a bigger employment defense firm in my area some areas might expect the would-be client to cough up even closer to a hundred thousand dollars as a retainer deposit and then get billed something like 400 to 500 an hour for the attorney's time so of course a lot of small businesses there's no way they can afford that or they don't want to pay that so just kind of work got around and i've gotten some cases through other attorney referrals handling cases where i'm defending small businesses and i can feel good knowing that i'm offering a great service for these people especially people who otherwise would not be able to afford legal services i know another attorney who is building up her practice solely doing wage and hour act cases for employees who have been underpaid or treated unfairly by their employers so um once again i'm not privy to how how profitable that is but um for these kinds of cases there is an attorney's fee provision so if she wins large cases for multiple people then i can imagine that it would be very profitable so again these are niche areas where you really do have to have that specific knowledge and if you're out there and you're a new attorney or you're just thinking about leaving your current employer you may be wondering well how the heck do i even learn these areas of law because so much of the practical aspects of law is not taught in law school whatsoever so the answer is that you just need to number one network number two try to find a mentor through the bar association and number three go to all of the continuing legal ed classes that's really where the knowledge comes out and is provided to you as a practicing attorney so a lot of the things that i do i have learned by going to the north carolina bar association's library as well as the north carolina advocates for justice library where they have all the previously administered continuing legal ed class courses and their binders and the information is right there for you to sit there and read so i used to do that a lot when i first started my practice and had too much spare time on my hands and some days i would just go to court and sit around the courthouse and watch proceedings like divorce equitable distribution and child custody hearings people probably thought it was a little weird that some attorney would just be like sitting around there observing but hey you know it's a public forum you're more than welcome to go into court and observe these things and it's all part of learning so um also getting active in different attorney associations is very helpful and joining the list serves sometimes it is worth it to pay hundreds of dollars every year to join even voluntary bar associations because that's where you can really get to know other attorneys who might be willing to help you out and then also get templates and get your answers for any sort of questions that arise because being a solo attorney it's kind of lonely at times you don't have anybody around you to bounce ideas off of and there might be times when you have no idea what you're supposed to do or what a judge is likely to do in a certain situation so that's where you just send out a message through one of the many listservs that you're hopefully on and some people will be nice enough to respond another area of law that could be lucrative depending on where you are is real estate so i do know a bunch of attorneys who do real estate closings and they've told me that the way to making it profitable is to have a lot of connections within the real estate world you really want to get to know fellow realtors in the area and mortgage lenders people who are going to recommend you as being the closing attorney so that's why it seems like there are already a certain number of firms at least in my area that focus exclusively on doing real estate closings and they have all that work funneled towards them because they already have the connections so in that respect if it's like that in your market then it might be hard to break in to start doing real estate closings but if you already have those connections or you have like friends and family who are realtors and in the mortgage industry then that could be a profitable way to have a solo law practice what about immigration law actually that's a line from don't be a lawyer so if you haven't seen my reaction video to that please take a look it might be entertaining to you so immigration law well um just based on my experience it's hit or miss there are some solo attorneys that i'm friends with who have clearly made a good living being an immigration specialist that's an area of law where you can specialize by taking a specialized exam it is held i think once a year and you have to study for it and pay an extra few hundred dollars and if you pass the exam that's administered from the state bar then you can call yourself a board-certified specialist in immigration law so that's definitely the way to go if you want to stand out from all the people who claim that they do immigration law and my younger sister used to do immigration law in charlotte for a firm that was a mid-sized firm and she really learned a lot and she would tell me confidentially that she sees tons of attorneys who claim that they do immigration law but they are terrible and they really screw up somebody's case mess up somebody's life and sometimes clients end up running to the bigger firms like where she used to work and then the new firm is left trying to clean up the mess made by the previous attorney who claimed that they did immigration law but really had no clue what they were doing so immigration law you definitely don't want to dabble in that because from what i've heard the laws are changing all the time there are so many different rules and regulations and it's just not a good thing when you're playing with somebody else's life or their family's livelihood or something you know you don't want to say that you do immigration law just for the heck of getting the client and trying to make some money and stuff you need to really specialize in immigration law and get active with ayla which i think stands for like american immigration lawyers association they do have a website they used to have conventions all sorts of specialized continuing legal ed classes so if you do want to practice immigration law especially if you speak different languages or you can afford to hire a legal assistant who speaks other languages then you might have a good shot at making it as an immigration lawyer but definitely be sure that you are well educated and you know what you're doing and speaking of knowing what you're doing i do know that some young attorneys they do try to advertise themselves as doing other things such as medical malpractice or personal injury but the key to not screwing up people's cases and getting a bar grievance against you is to either have a mentor or have other attorneys who are much more experienced who are willing to co-counsel with you but on the other hand you have to kind of play it right there might be some attorneys that get aggravated or really don't want to co-counsel they'd rather have you just flat out refer the client to them so they can handle it without having to share the fee and also take the time of training you to do the case so um it's just kind of hit or miss if you're a really young attorney and you have no clue what to do you definitely don't want to get into trouble with the state bar by taking on more than you can chew and promising your clients things when you really have no idea whether the case is any good or whether you can handle it properly so co-counseling means that if you get a case a client with what seems like a good case but you really don't have the experience or the money to front the cost let's say it's a medical malpractice case then an older more experienced attorney or firm might be willing to handle the case together with you and then you guys would split the fee somehow depending on who does what or who does how much more of the work so that's like an idea for you but um you just have to see what the community is like around you and if other attorneys are willing to co-counsel as opposed to just telling you to hey you know turn over the client to us and we'd be glad to send you over some referrals too in north carolina you're not allowed to get quote a referral fee just for sending a good case towards another attorney so co-counseling could be a way to handle cases that way where you can still make some money and also learn and have the benefit of having a more experienced attorney guiding you along to make sure that the client is handled correctly law is another area of law that a lot of solo attorneys do including myself it's an area of practice that i started doing at my very first job out of law school and i also covered family law at some of my other firms but i really started focusing more on family law after i started my own practice back in 2006 and it turned out to be an area of law that i sometimes enjoy and i think i'm fairly good at it so i've stuck with it and gradually built more and more of a client base doing divorce prenup separation agreements collaborative law child custody and child support cases family law can be a lucrative area of law because pretty much everybody is expected to pay an initial consultation fee and they are also usually asked to pay an initial retainer deposit to be billed by the hour some attorneys charge like a flat fee depending on what kind of specific task needs to be done but if you do anything by a flat fee basis then you have to be very careful to have some sort of time parameter or to limit the scope of the work that you're going to do for the client so that you don't feel taken advantage of some attorneys don't want to do family law and i can understand that too there are some people who have told me that they would never touch family law or divorce cases with a 10 foot pole they would rather just not even be practicing law and the reason is because sometimes you are going to get very difficult clients those are the types of people that are more likely to need the help of an attorney and to file a lawsuit when they have problems involving a divorce or child custody or child support matters so you do have to have a certain type of personality and almost be willing to be a therapist at times because there are going to be various types of people some of them are going to be very anxious or depressed or just be very unreasonable sometimes you'll find out that your clients are lying to you or exaggerating to you so you have to strike a fine line between wanting to be the person zealous advocate yet also realizing that there are two sides to every story and you certainly don't want to lose credibility with the judge or opposing counsel or end up making a fool out of yourself by strenuously arguing for a client who then turns out to have exaggerated the story in terms of learning how to handle family law cases the best way is to join your state bar association if they have a family law section and get active on liz serves and also definitely attend any family law conventions and continuing legal education classes that's really where you can learn how to practice in addition to handling cases and going to court and observing other legal proceedings so those were all the ways that i learned how to practice family law in addition to working for other firms that handled some family law in addition to other areas of law i was trying to think of some other practice areas of solos that i know and i would say this is definitely not going to be something easy for the average solo practitioner to do but you could think about branching out into tax law but that's mostly for people who have the cpa degree or some additional tax training like a llm in tax so you could learn to help people who are having problems with the irs or people who are just having problems in general with their taxes so that's not an area of law that i do and i referred those on to a couple of attorneys in the area that i have gotten to know so it really depends on what your specialized knowledge or what specialty that you think that you can excel at so sometimes for one person it's going to be a great idea but then for another attorney who might not have the same language ability or the same background the same experience or the credentials then a certain area of practice might not make any sense for them so if you have any more specific questions feel free to leave a comment below and i'm always trying to help people if i can so thank you so much for watching to the end of this video i know it's kind of a dry subject but it can be very helpful to some law students or some attorneys who are looking to branch out and start their own practice thanks for watching and please hit subscribe if you aren't subscribed already

Channel: AALegalFocus

Views: 7,857

Keywords: law school, legal careers, solo attorney, lawyer, practice areas, georgetown law, north carolina lawyer, criminal defense, court appointed attorney, civil litigation, divorce law, immigration law, lemon law, wills, probate law, after law school, legal career options, areas of law, profitable law firm, law firm ideas, law firm options, attorney profits, building a law practice, making money as a lawyer, how to profit as an attorney

Id: MqqdE1-wBKo

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020