Waiting to open a solo practice until you know where all your work will come from is like waiting to have children until you know where all the money (or time) will come from: You’re likely to wait forever. Each of those life-changing opportunities requires a certain amount of faith. However, the chances of long-term success as a solo increase by utilizing the wide range of tools available to bring work into your shop.

COURT APPOINTMENTS

Courts appoint lawyers to handle not only criminal cases but also family, juvenile, probate and bankruptcy matters. The qualifications for court appointment to criminal cases vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but most lawyers will qualify for misdemeanor appointments immediately.

Handling several such cases a week, even for only a few hundred dollars each, a new solo can sustain an office while word gets out about his or her practice. Trying misdemeanors diligently for a few months, along with sitting second chair in some felony trials, will generally qualify a lawyer for felony appointments if he or she is inclined to build a criminal practice.

Criminal appointments also frequently lead to civil cases. The client who is happy with how his lawyer handled his minor drug possession charge might call the next month about a close family member injured by a drunk driver who is well insured.

ADVERTISING

Mark Twain wrote in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” that “any a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” Advertising works, and snobs forgo it at their economic peril. This is especially true for solo practitioners, who can’t devote as much time to networking and business development as rainmakers at larger firms. The most common venues for lawyer advertising include telephone books, television and, more recently, the Internet.

In my experience, telephone book advertisements are the most productive form of lawyer advertising. More than half of my clients tell me they found me through my phone book ad.

The most common reason solos don’t advertise in the phone book is the expense. A half-page ad in the primary telephone directory of a major Texas city can cost $15,000 to $25,000. Moreover, some directories have an aggravating practice of raising advertising rates on ads each year unless the buyer increases his or her ad’s size — and thus its cost. However, such ads can produce five to 10 times their cost in billings.

Lawyers who decide to advertise in the telephone book should avoid the temptation to scrimp on design. Many lawyers spend tens of thousands of dollars on ads only to take the directory up on its offer for a free design. Don’t fall into this trap; You get what you pay for. An architect’s fee for a well-designed building project is often about 7 to 10 percent of the project’s cost. Similar figures make sense for a well-designed ad. Professional help with their image can be especially important for solo practitioners, who must combat the stereotype that they are amateurs or part-time lawyers.

Television ads are the most maligned form of lawyer advertising, often for good reason. However, they can be nearly as effective as phone book ads. TV ads also have the advantage of timeliness. A telephone book ad runs all the time, and the buyer pays for it all the time, regardless of whether the lawyer is in a position to take on new clients. In contrast, once an attorney pays for the production of a television ad, he or she can run it whenever there is a need to generate calls. This can generate more bang for the buck for solos, whose smaller caseloads generally have less flexibility than those of multilawyer firms.

Internet ads and listings are the wave of the future. Ten years ago, they were largely a novelty relied upon by lawyers more for prestige than profit. That is changing as Internet access reaches the great majority of indoor work spaces and homes of every economic level.

Just as some younger people are abandoning telephone land lines in their homes in favor of cell phones, some foresee the day when online directories replace hard-copy phone directories. That day isn’t here yet, but Web site ads and listings with Internet directories certainly complement traditional ads.

Internet listings with prominent directories often cost less than $100 per month, a fraction of the cost of a telephone book ad. After an initial development investment of a few thousand dollars, Web sites can cost as little as $100 per year to host.

REFERRALS

Solo practitioners sometimes feel like it’s them against the world, but they are best served by viewing the world as full of people who can help their practices by steering unanticipated business their way. Some of the most important sources of referrals include former firms, especially those looking to refer prized clients with specialized matters to competent counsel who can be trusted not to poach clients; referral services run by local bar associations or state bars; other lawyers, such as those with whom the solo might share an office suite, co-counsel or even opposing counsel in prior cases; former clients; and family members and friends.

The first case I accepted as a solo was an earnest-money dispute involving my older son’s soccer coach. Who could have foreseen that or written it into a business plan?

One of the greatest selling points a solo has to offer is personal attention. When a solo practitioner receives a referral, the referring person knows who’s going to do the work, and it’s not some faceless associate. For that reason, view work done for referrals as another form of advertising. Undertake it with an extra measure of diligence. Word of a job well done will likely find its way back to the person who did the referring, and that increases the prospects for more referrals down the line.

Paul Schorn is an employment law solo with offices in Lockhart and Austin, Texas. His e-mail address is paul@schornlaw.com.

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