Videos

If you're a successful mid-career lawyer who never considered starting a law firm, then this is for you. If you're reasonably happy at your current firm, but you have a nagging feeling that you may not live the life that you hope to, if you continue on your current path, then I'm making this for you. Truth is, I'm not sure whether anyone will get any value out of this or, or be interested in this effort, but this is the content that I personally would've wanted more than anything. When I was considering quitting my big [...]

One of the most important things that I realized as I was considering leaving the large law firm life and starting my own firm, is that nobody was coming to save me if I didn't take the risk of saving myself. You know, my purpose in recording these videos is to help people like me. You know, people like you understand that you have realistic options for a happier life if you are not loving your job right now, you know, working for somebody else in the law practice world. And as you begin to think about [...]

I once heard somebody say that only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. And I certainly found it to be true that crowdsourcing information, making friends with other lawyers of every stripe that run law firms of, of very different varieties, you know, is the best way for me to figure out how to not fail in launching and running my own law firm. It's the friendships that I've made with these lawyers, the content that I've taken in particularly a lot of podcast content that has [...]

More than anything else. The one thing that you should start doing today, if you haven't already been doing it, regardless of what sort of a law practice you envision for yourself, is to begin to build up your contacts list. Now, the smartest thing that I ever did over the course of the last 15 years was to connect on LinkedIn with just about everybody who I came into contact with professionally. Now, of course there are exceptions, you know, judges and opposing counsel that you're fighting with in difficult litigation. But generally, if I came [...]

This may be the most important video I record if you're anything like me, because what concerned me the most as I stared over the precipice from my comfy big firm job and considered the possibility of starting my own firm was whether I'd be able to get clients. And one of the biggest misconceptions, and perhaps maybe the biggest lie ever told to some young attorneys is this idea that they can't develop their own business. Now, certainly my experience in law practice has made it evident that there are some people that are just whiz [...]

As you consider the question of whether it makes sense for you to make a change and to launch your own law firm, what I want to talk to you about is the fact that this isn't five years ago, right? There has been a legal revolution, a cultural revolution, you know, in the world, in the United States over the last five years or so, that really requires you to cast off the vestiges of so much of what you may have learned. Because I'm here to tell you that it is, it's absolutely possible for [...]

I want to talk to you about whether you want to go fast or whether you want to go slow as you consider the possibility of starting a new law firm, but the risk of getting stuck in a planning phase forever. You know, if you're anything like me, you're a planner. I don't like to jump out of the airplane and hope my parachute's going to open without making sure that I folded it just right. Many times, you know, I've got a lot of friends that run awesome law firms that are maybe a little [...]

So if you've made a decision to go, if you've made a decision that you're going to make a change, that you're going to leave your job, that you're going to start a new law firm, I want to give you two essential pieces of advice that I found to be so important in making my transition from big law firm partner to solopreneur work for me. I want to talk to you about the importance of leaving on good terms, on leaving with integrity. Now, this is the blinding flash of the obvious, right? Everybody's like, [...]

One of the things that surprised me the most about my journey from working at the large law firm to starting my own firm was just how many blind spots I had to so many things that I needed to know in order to make my firm a success. I want to talk to you about the importance of being curious and open-minded. You know, when I think back a couple years ago, five, six years ago, when I was still working at the other firm, I thought, you know, I've been a lawyer in Chicago practicing [...]

So you've decided to make a move. You've decided to start your own law firm. I want to talk to you about, you know, what you should do next. You know, and it probably should be summed up as knowledge, acquisition and validation, right? I mean, you know, even if you're somebody that wants to go fast, you know, even if you're a little bit more of a take this job and shove it kind of person that is more inclined to resign from their job and hang a shingle, which there's absolutely nothing wrong with, it's [...]