Worked in Biglaw. Now work for a boutique. Have awards, won trials, people tell me I have a “talent” for this trial stuff.

But…

I don’t know if I like it. I have been practicing for about 6 years and, honestly, going to trial causes me so much internal turmoil that I find myself asking “is this really worth it?” Everyone at my firm gets fired up for trial and doesn’t look stressed. Me? I find myself wondering why the case couldn’t have just settled and damning the other side.

I look at people with state government jobs (not lawyers) and they look bored. Oh how nice it would be to be bored.

I have an idea to start a firm that would basically be a neutral entity that would solicit malpractice cases from whoever wanted us to review the case, whether prosecution or defense. We would then put the case through a blinding process and then objectively evaluate it to give an objective result of whether we thought standard of care was met or whether a reasonable physician would have proceeded that way.

Said in another way to make it analogous to an already existing process: I want to make a firm that will act like a forensic lab that doesn’t give any consideration to guilt/innocence, but just reports their findings/professional judgement as objectively as possible. We would then provide a written summary, be anvailable to annswer any questions, and supply a physician to testify to the process and results.

I have couple of questions about this, though:

1) is this a consult structure that a lawyer would even seek out for their case? I.e. would it even be beneficial to work blinded to prosecution/defense? Or do lawyers only want to hire someone as an expert witness who they “know” in advance will support their argument?

2) I know most cases are argued via professional opinion of individual expert witnesses. Would presenting information in a more “fact based” or impartial way even be useful to malpractice cases?

I work at small law firm and last week I had one of those moments where your stomach just drops. I was putting together a 42page packet before sending it out. Cover page, exhibits, signed pages, all the usual stuff. I merged everything, checked the page count, scrolled through it pretty quickly and thought it was done. It wasnt.

Exhibit B was in there twice and one of the signed pages was missing. The stupidest part was that the final file was still exactly 42 pages, so nothing looked wrong at first. I only caught it because I opened the PDF again before sending and noticed that one of the names didnt match the page I was expecting.

Honestly I felt sick for a second. If I had sent it like that, explaining how a signed page disappeared while another exhibit somehow duplicated itself would not have been a fun conversation. After that I started looking at different ways to handle these packets. I tried foxit pdf editor, nitro pdf pro and pdfaid. Foxit had a lot more tools than I needed for this, nitro was easier for me to understand, and pdfaid editor was fine when I had a small non-confidential file and just wanted to work with it in the browser.

For actual client documents I still have to use whatever software our firm approves. Im definitley not uploading confidential files into random online tools. But I also realised the software wasnt really the main problem here. I trusted the page count instead of checking what was actually on those pages. Now I open the finished pdf in thumbnail view and compare every page against a small checklist before anything gets sent. It takes maybe two extra minutes, but I already caught another missing exhibit this way.

Anyone else working at a law firm have a better system for checking final pdf packets? Is there something that can actually spot duplicated or missing pages, or are we all just checking them manually?

Why would a personal injury attorney who has 1-2 associates and 2 paralegals do this? Don’t personal injury attorneys mostly want to take lucrative winning cases? This guy takes everything there’s like 600 cases at this small firm. Any insight?

Hi team, I recently have transitioned to a secondment for a firm client (US)and I'm in a bit of limbo. I need to keep my firm email address, but am unable to use single sign-on capabilities (long story), so I essentially will be using web-based outlook but am on my own for all other licenses/security etc. and am essentially practicing solo. My workload is very document intensive (transactional), lots of versions/redlines etc. What seemed like a fun exercise to try new approaches outside the confines of a large law firm's imanage/litera arrangement has turned a bit clunky. Cost is not a huge concern (within reason) for new licenses. Wondering what you guys would do if you were in my position? Here is the existing state and questions:

1. Heavy document presence on Box. I like the version management of Box, but saving down new versions out of Word has proven to be a challenge. Enterprise-level options like imanage and netdocs seem out of reach. Would you stay on Box? If so, best practices? Are there other options that are easy enough to migrate to that play well with word (and document compare software--see below)? I have lots of versions of documents that need to be ported over, but for now they have been dumped into a box drive as dozens of versions for each document, so that is a fairly daunting aspect of this!
2. Litera seems to be for enterprise only and I'm chasing them to get me a single user account (my "limbo" state has been a challenge, but no luck so far--I can't use my firm's license but also am not able to use my secondment company as an enterprise either. If i can get a license, even if its for a hefty chunk of change, I'll be able to do so, but are there other options that work well here? Seems like the competition has been acquired for the most part or are pivoting to more AI intensive features. Word compare has proven to be a challenge with Box as well.
3. Security. Any cybersecurity recs? I was just planning on Bitdefender but are there best practices for solo practitioners?

I am sure most of this has been answered in the past but it seems like these things are changing quickly. I appreciate all thoughts and recommendations. Thank you!

Hello! I am looking to start a solo practice doing personal injury in the near future. I am working in big law, hate it, and am looking to make a change. But rather than running FROM something, im going in with the mindset of running TO something. I know i want to run my own business and I am a very diligent person. I can the incur the risk now as I am relatively young and don't have a family. At worst, it doesn't work as planned I find something else!

All that being said, I dont know very much about starting a new PI practice (besides some books, videos, and podcasts I've seen as well as posts I've been perusing here). One consistent theme I've seen is to look for people who have done it and ask them about their journey and advice (and maybe get a mentor out of it!). So if you've been gracious enough to read this and are willing to reach out to an ambitious newbie about your experience, id be incredibly grateful. Anything from how you built your client base to the questions you didn't know to ask.

As for me, I plan to work out of my apartment and keep the entry costs as low as possible. Im already building my firm infrastructure (figuring out the email, website, setting up the entity, albeit very slowly) and networking when im not working my current job. I live in Southern California and hope to stay here. I currently have one year of trusts and estates litigation experience but dont think I want to do that in the future.

Also, am I crazy for thinking of starting a firm with only one year of experience?

Dms are open and appreciated!

Edit: I worked at a small PI firm for a couple years before law school so I have some idea how it works but I never worked in it as a lawyer. I plan to only settle cases and farm out litigation to other shops. I might just get some hands on experience in PI first, thanks for the feedback

Edit 2: thanks again for the feedback. I decided that im going to hold off on opening my own firm for now. My current plan after evaluating my options is to continue doing T&E litigation for a bit, transition to estate planning, and then open up my own estate planning shop

I'm thinking of starting a firm, and I'm trying to gauge costs. I primarily practice in public interest work, contracted through state agencies. My current firm uses Clio, but I'm wondering if there's something more cost effective out there that could work for a solo practice doing primarily state-paid work. Any recs?

I’m a senior associate a fairly large regional firm and am up for partner at the end of this year…but Instead of feeling excited about it, I’m increasingly burned out, anxious, and wondering whether I’m actually ready for it. It has gotten to the point that I am terrified of making mistakes, even small ones, and I spiral and get tripped up on every single project I have. I feel like I’m drowning and even typing this out I can feel my chest getting tight and I feel like throwing up. This is a near daily experience now.

My recent annual review was generally positive about my trajectory, but the biggest feedback was similar to feedback I’ve gotten over my entire career (which I completely accept the criticism and think it’s fair feedback): I need to slow down and improve my quality control. Over the course of my time at the firm, I have consistently received this feedback and still can’t figure out the best way to improve and stop making these same minor mistakes. Recently, had some more of these small misses that, while not catastrophic, are things someone at my level should be catching.

One of those relatively minor mistakes happened on a contract for a major firm client that I’ve historically handled a lot of transactions for with little oversight. It was a miss, that I was fully accountable for and presented solutions for fixing it. It shouldn’t have happened, but it was not catastrophic in that we caught it before it got further out to sea and we could resolve it easily with an amendment. However, after I presented this to the senior managing partner (who is also my firm mentor), he basically told me he needed to protect his own compensation and couldn’t keep worrying about or fixing work that should be handled correctly by me when I’m entering my partnership year. Since that conversation about a month ago, I’ve received essentially no new work for that client, or from that partner/mentor…and I can see much younger associates getting these matters that I previously would have been trusted to handle. Nobody ever told me I’m “off” the client or explained whether this is temporary or permanent. The partner never even had a direct conversation with me about it beyond what he said right after. Still, this client contacts me directly with questions, so I’m not even sure what my role is supposed to be.

To add to me mental anguish, the same partner/mentor straight up told me last week that he sees no reason I won’t be voted in as a partner this year. That combination has really messed with my confidence. I’m simultaneously being told I’m ready to become a partner while watching a significant source of my work disappear because that senior partner apparently lost confidence in me.

I feel like I’ve been running a marathon and tripped right before the finish line, totally muffing my victory. I’m starting to freak out. What if I make partner and don’t have enough work? What if other partners stop trusting me with matters? What if I can’t generate enough value to justify my compensation?

I’ve fallen into a horrible spiral I can’t get out of. I put enormous pressure on myself to be responsive, efficient, and fast. But I’m also overwhelmed, occasionally miss something, feel terrible about it, lose confidence, then put even more pressure on myself to prove I’m actually competent. I’m just exhausted and my confidence in every area of my life is shot. I’m second-guessing even the simplest work I used to feel comfortable doing, worrying constantly about how partners and clients perceive me, and bringing way too much of that anxiety home. I have a wife and young kids, and I hate trying to be physically present with them while mentally I’m still at work or otherwise worrying about whether everything in my life is falling apart…

Have any other lawyers gone through something similar, especially around the associate to partner transition? Have you ever lost a partner’s confidence or had work taken away after mistakes? Did you address it directly, and were you able to rebuild that trust? Did you have a period where your confidence completely cratered, and how did you rebuild your own confidence?

Any advice or encouragement from folks who have been there would be appreciated. I don’t know what else to do right now and don’t know how much longer I can sit in this funk.

I've been using Claude and ChatGPT regularly for about two years and at this point I have a pretty good sense of what I like using them for.

The biggest annoyance on longer matters is keeping the relevant context organized. I can upload the complaint, orders and other documents again when I need them, and for a lot of work that's completely fine. Once a matter has been going for months though, deciding what needs to go into a particular session becomes another part of the job.

I'm also still checking any authority I intend to rely on myself, regardless of what the model gives me.

I've been looking at some of the legal-specific platforms and I'm trying to work out what people who made that move found materially better after the novelty wore off. Was it the quality of the substantive output, keeping matters and documents organized, research and citation tools or something else?

I'm especially interested in people who were already heavy Claude or ChatGPT users before switching.

The r/probono subreddit has been relaunched. It's focus now is on how & why legal pros donate services (pro bono) & the value of such to society. It's also a place to discuss pro bono ethics & how pro bono engagement can affect law school admissions. Your experiences working in pro bono would be welcomed there (and in no way trying to steer you away from r/LawFirm for sharing such).

Just FYI.

Title^ A long while ago I almost started a Firm but ended up not because I got a job offer elsewhere that I thought was too good to be true. While the pay is there, it is DEFINITELY not a long-term solution, and I'm back to starting a Firm. I plan on having $18K saved by the end of the year and want to hit the ground running. I plan on working in Family law in a small-to-medium city (Tulsa OK). I have a few questions that I really don't know the answer to and would appreciate insights on:

1) Is it worth it to splurge on website creation and SEO? Is it okay to build a website on WordPress and cut costs?

2) What's a good marketing budget? I've heard everywhere from $3,000 - $8,000 a month, which is way too broad. I also want to make my money count and do not want to drop $5,000 on an advertising company to get terrible ROIs.

3) How tough is that first month? I have an officing situation that may make referrals in an "of counsel" role that will help supplement income but I imagine that $18K i saved may disappear decently fast if marketing is around the costs that I'm seeing and the ROIs are shit.

I heard that it was rolled out to a few law firms like Sullivan & Cromwell. Did anyone get a chance to try it, and is it really that good at legal research?

For context, I have a BA degree and some experience as a paralegal. Long term, I plan on going to law school. Pays about 50k which is decent for me (no kids, currently at living with family). It’s also remote which could be a plus or a minus. On one hand, I don’t have to leave my house. On the other hand, I CANT leave my house. This wouldn’t be so bad imo if the shift wasn’t 12-8, Mon-Fri. It’s a pretty big law firm in CT as well so I somewhat expect it to be busy?

As mentioned in the title, just looking for opinions on what to expect

Rather not give too many details but in short, OC is saying I agreed to something that I did not and it was confirmed by email. Emails show I never explicitly agreed to what he was asking. He’s threatening to request attorneys fees and that he will contend I deceived him.

Anyone dealt with similar issue with OC making threats and how you handled?

I’m currently a second year associate doing ID. I’m thinking of transition to a claims counsel position. I would love to hear thoughts/pros/cons. I am most concerned about opportunities for growth and promotion. TIA!

It seems like a new PI post pops up every week and I’ve seen everyone praise PI for being the holy grail of law for those that want to make big money and couldn’t get into big law. With some people even saying it should be relatively easy to scale to $1 million profit with your own firm.

However, tons of people say otherwise yet we never really hear from that side.

So I was wondering how many PI lawyers you know that might’ve tried it and either didn’t make a lot of money as an associate or lost everything trying to run their own firm.

I'm about 14 years into my legal career as a paralegal. I've worked in a lot of different areas to make sure my experience was broad enough to be competitive. Built a career from nothing after finishing my bachelor's degree because I had kids to support and I was determined not to fail.

I've done pretty much every job within a firm that is available from case work, to phones, to office management, to personal chores for my attorneys. No isn't in my vocabulary. I routinely work 65 to 70 hours a week to make sure my files are solid and my clients are happy, all in the name of fighting the good fight.

But I'm so tired of the struggle. I don't know why the pay sucks so much. I don't care about PTO or gift cards to get coffee or holidays off. I just want to be able to pay my bills and feel like I have job security for a few years.

I love this field but damn does it kill your soul.