If you are reading this, you are most likely a lawyer or aspire to be one, so let’s start with a familiar concept: a disclaimer. Starting a sole practice is a daunting task. Before reading another sentence, let’s start with your why. Ok, now, if your why is to get rich, choose another goal and another article. If your why is freedom and autonomy over the direction of your practice, keep reading.
As you have probably heard, law students – and most of those in the legal profession for that matter – are risk-averse. The notion of giving up a steady, and potentially lucrative, paycheck can be a frightening prospect to say the least. This is probably the main reason that people preclude entrepreneurship from their life. A change of mindset is required to claim total responsibility for your work product and the advice you give to clients with minimal oversight. The buck stops with you.
As law students, we didn’t plan on building a law practice from scratch together. But, as time went on, the decision started to make a lot of sense. As we will explain, having another person with you on your debut into the professional world mitigates many of the concerns one would have when diverging from the traditional career path. Even if one has years of experience at a firm, starting a practice with another lawyer can definitely help ease the transition.
Many of the lawyers we have spoken to recommended at least 3-5 years of practice at a firm before even considering making the jump. However, others have showed us that it was possible earlier than that, and we took that challenge on. So, this is our story.
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