What actually helped you transition into solo practice and was it worth it?
I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on this for months and honestly the more threads I read, the more I question if I should be going out on my own in the first place. I spent a lot of time researching coaching and educational resources so I put my breakdown below. Hopefully it helps someone going through the same process. For context: mid-career attorney, decent book, currently at a small/mid-sized firm. I’m not miserable where I’m at. Comp is solid, work is steady, and I have pretty decent autonomy already. But I’m increasingly feeling like I’m building someone else’s asset while also carrying a lot of the operational stress. The thing that keeps pulling me toward solo is that every lawyer I know who actually did it seems way happier. Less prestige maybe, but more control, better margins, more flexibility, fewer politics, etc. At the same time, every solo I talk to eventually says some version of “The legal work is the easy part. Running the business is the hard part.” And that’s what I’m trying to think through realistically instead of fantasizing about “freedom.” I don’t really care about the prestige piece anymore. I used to. But the older I get, the more I realize clients mostly care whether you respond, you know what you’re doing, you don’t overbill them, and you actually solve problems. What I do worry about is admin creep (I currently have a team of assistants, paralegals, etc.), staffing headaches, trust accounting/compliance mistakes, building systems from scratch, ending up working MORE somehow, the feast/famine cycle, feeling isolated without other attorneys and support around. What’s interesting is I’ve also realized there’s this entire solo law firm education and industry now. So definitely less scary than just starting without some form of a community and guidance. Each one seems to do part of what I’m looking for but not necessarily all aspects. Here are my impressions so far (keep in mind I have not pulled the trigger on any of the ones I found so far so this is completely based on my personal research and observations). Atticusadvantage.com - Definitely the oldest players in the space which has its pros and cons. They seem like a lot of old heads and to be honest I’m looking for some young blood. I’m not AI obsessive but I know tech implementation is important and in general they seem a bit outdated. Also from everything I can find they are not the most affordable for my current startup budgets. Howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com - Seems really focused on mindset and their own brand. I don’t mean this to be offensive to anyone but I get very “culty” vibes from them. They say they have coaching, community, courses, and all the other things to support a new and growing firm but so far I’m the least impressed with them. They’ve been around for like 20+ years and their site kind of feels like an old person trying to fit in with the cool young kids saying words like “yeet” at the wrong time lol. To be fair this is my personal opinion but meh really not sure about them. Crisp.co - Not that this matters too much but their site is beautiful. Their main focus is definitely video production (which some of the videos they made for firms are freaking beautiful) but they also offer coaching and marketing, etc. They seem a bit out of my price range as a starting solo practitioner but I will definitely hire them for video production if/when I launch and my firm gets big enough. I recognize a lot of the firms on their homepage but they are all much bigger players. Firmincubator.com - Ended up scheduling a call with them and was able to speak directly to the founder who is also one of the coaches. The price is exactly in my budget and they were pushing a bootcamp which is fine but to be honest I just want someone to do all of that stuff for me. I’m not interested in becoming an expert marketer or operations manager. The nice thing is they offer fractional executives and marketing services. I was on the fence because they are one of the newest players (started in 2023). Funny, I know, because I also said I wanted young blood (I know I’m a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma). One thing that was awesome was they got me in contact with a few of their clients so I didn’t need to just hear a sales pitch from them, I got to hear first-hand experiences which all seemed very positive. Part of me thinks “Lawyers have been hanging their shingle forever… Just start!” The other part of me thinks “Why waste 2 years reinventing things other people already solved?” I’m especially curious from people who left a relatively GOOD firm situation, had an existing book when they left, are 2-5+ years into solo/small firm life now, tried any of these coaching/incubator/mastermind programs and their experiences. Did any of them materially help? Or was it mostly stuff you could’ve figured out yourself? And bigger question… did going solo actually give you more freedom, or did you just trade firm politics for business owner stress?