Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled Legal Advice…on a Budget featured in a special report section about small businesses.  The article discusses how some law firms are offering fixed fees and discounts for start-ups.  Firms that they profiled for the article report growth in small business clients who are attracted to the service.  The article mentions that some law [...]

Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, has written a guest post for the Legal Rebels blog entitled “Disaster Ahead for Lawyers Unwilling to Change.” Susskind looks at changes in the profession as well as the impact that the economic recession has had on our clients.  He mentions [...]

Over the past couple weeks I have spoken with two or three attorneys who have been  laid off from their positions at large law firms.  A couple of them knew that the practices of their BigLaw firms were not sustainable in this economic environment and had the foresight to pad their savings.  Now they are [...]

Today’s Legal Technology section over at Law.com has an article about the increasing number of solo practitioners who are profiting from going virtual.  As I’ve blogged about in the fall of last year, operating a virtual law office is a great way for a solo or small law firm to compete in this difficult economy.  [...]

The ABA Journal published an online article today about the progress that Virtual Law Partners (VLP) has made in recruiting attorneys from large law firms.  One of the reasons for the growth is the downturn in the economy and large law firm layoffs.  The beneficial reasons cited for the move to a virtual law firm [...]

More middle income Americans are choosing to handle their legal matters themselves because they cannot afford to hire a traditional attorney.  The International Herald Tribune reported this growing trend in an article last week.  The downturn of the economy has made the cost of traditional full-service law firms unavailable for many Americans.  In order to [...]

Attorneys considering opening a virtual law practice should take a look at Susan Cartier Liebel’s recent blog post “Is Now The Perfect Time To Start Your Solo Practice?“  The post is motivational and gives great examples of why and how attorneys may make the most of the economic downturn to create innovative law practices.  Along [...]

The following is a post I wrote for MsJD about how a virtual law practice could be used as a way to provide attorneys with more flexible work/life balance. The essay was in response to an essay contest hosted by The Project for Attorney Retention and MsJD. A small part of the work/life balance reform [...]

Kevin O’Keefe over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs summarized Dennis Kennedy’s suggestions for how attorneys can cut costs in the slowing economy. At the top of the list was find technology that cuts costs for your law practice. Maybe it should also read: cut out the legal software that was supposed to save you time. [...]

Building a client base for a vlo requires out of the box thinking. I’ve found that networking works best when I use other popular online networking mediums that are frequented by the online public, my potential clients. The no-brainer is advertising my vlo on free lawyer referral websites or in free classified ad sections like [...]