I think sometimes that law school graduates are so use to debt that they insist they need the extension of even more debt to start a practice. To me, however, solo means solo. Just like you do not need law partners, staff, a law job, a law firm, you do not need financing, with the obligation to pay back interest and principal out of imaginary future earnings. Going solo means solo. Just you, your family and your friends.
The charts below apply to all businesses, but they offer a couple of interesting things. The first chart shows you that 47% of all businesses, which would include law firms, have no financing sources. The second chart shows that businesses that rely just on friends and family have the highest success rate.
There are two points to the no financing option. First, the access to unearned money leads most lawyers starting out to do stupid things. I say stupid when the real term might be something like impractical, senseless, arbitrary, unimportant, foolish or frivolous. In short, like the unaccountability of spending with a credit card, it is too easy to make bad or instantaneous decisions that have long term repercussions. Borrowed money is most often spent in ways that does not secure a return.
Second, the solo practice of law in this day and age only really requires a laptop or notebook computer and a cell phone. Everything else is optional. Everything else is discretionary.
Third, and just as importantly, the success of any law firm in terms of cash flow is the referrals of paying clients. That requires a good degree of marketing. Where there are numerous ways to market, this is where initial attention needs to center when starting a new practice. Money somehow affords a false sense of luxury that distracts from this goal. In this day and age marketing does not take a good deal of money. It does takes a good deal of energy, planning, diligence and tenacity.
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