The Madness of Solo Practice

One of the oft-quoted career paths for the fifty percent of law graduates who aren’t lucky enough to find a paying job is solo practice or sharing an office.  For the twenty thousand pre-1Ls who will inevitably find themselves in this dismal position in three years, or who are still going to law school this coming September thinking that this is a fallback option, let’s take a look at the facts.

But not in the context of law school, because that message just hasn’t sunk in – if it had, low-ranked law schools would be empty.  So let’s think about burgers.

Picture this: your average intersection. On one corner, there’s a McDonalds.  On another, a Burger King. The third corner has a Wendy’s.  And the fourth corner is vacant. Each sells roughly the same product – burgers.  Each has a finely tuned business model, economies of scale, great reputation and experience, and together all three restaurants easily satisfy the burger needs of the passing customers. The lines in the drive-thru lanes are short, there’s not a huge amount of traffic in the area, and there is no need for any additional burger restaurants in the area. Not only that, but people are realizing that they don’t like burgers as much as they used to, and the customer base is shrinking.

And your business plan is to borrow $150,000 to $250,000 and start “LawBurger” on the fourth corner.  Your business model is selling more of exactly the same burgers in an already-saturated and shrinking market.  Not a different type of food. Exactly the same kind of food.  And you will be taught how to make burgers for three years by people who have never made burgers before, at a school headed up by someone who thinks that there is a vast unmet demand for burgers – except he fails to tell you that this demand is from hordes of hungry bums who can’t pay for your burgers.

Crazy, right? 

Yet that’s exactly what the suggested business model for many new law grads is.  Go into a saturated, shrinking market and start selling exactly the same product as everyone else.

That’s not being entrepreneurial.  That’s the kind of business stupidity shown only by lottery winners - the ones who end up bankrupt three years after winning the MegaMillions.

And therein lies the danger of solo practice or hanging out a shingle.  There is no entrepreneurial common sense.  For many new businesses outside law, the plan is to either tap an existing client base or demand that is not being met (e.g. a new entrant into a market that is underserved, such as manufacturing low-cost, reliable electric vehicles), or the business is set up with the goal of generating demand for something new (e.g. the latest fad in the restaurant world.)  But for new entrants into the practice of law who believe they can make their own jobs, there is no base of clients that can be tapped.  The law market is tapped out.  There are already dozens of similar (even identical) businesses in the marketplace, and there’s nothing new you can offer.  You’re not able to set a trend or alter people’s tastes and desires.  Literally all you’re doing is adding one more person providing same-old legal services to the entire legal services marketplace, where it’s already saturated and there’s just no room for anyone else.

There is still time to decide to do something other than going to law school this coming September.  Surely you can think of something better to do than throw money away on a business plan that is set up to fail?

Charles Cooper is the author, along with Thane Messinger, of “Con Law: Avoiding...or Beating...the Scam of the Century (The Real Student's Guide to Law School and the Legal Profession)”, in addition to being the moderator at Nontradlaw.net and the author of “Later in Life Lawyers”.  He can be contacted at charlescooperauthor@gmail.com.