Starting your own solo law practice? When it comes to starting a small business, a law practice is one of the least-expensive options. A computer and a clear space on the kitchen table are about all you need. Well, almost. There are a few other things. In this article, I will lay out what you need to start up a solo law practice, plus a few nice-to-have extras. This is not a bare minimum, but I have left out things like registering an LLC or corporation ($160 in Minnesota), liability insurance (mine was $599 for my first year), and business cards and stationery (I don’t use stationery, but I buy my business cards from VistaPrint for $29.99/500).
Starting a Law Firm for Under $3,000
The following purchases will get you through your first year of solo law practice, at least, but the hardware should last far longer. If you shop wisely, your hardware should last at least 5 years, if not longer.
Assuming you do not already have a computer, printer and internet connection, your startup costs would be just under $3,000, leaving some room for miscellaneous supplies. If you do already have a computer and printer, you can convert them to business use and save $1,248.99 or more.
Even better, your second year overhead will drop to $837.60, since you will already have all the hardware you will need.
Computer
Obviously, you can’t do much without a computer. If you already have one, use that and save yourself about $1,000 in startup costs. If you do not already have one, get one. For the solo practitioner, a laptop is infinitely more useful than a desktop, particularly if you plan to have a paperless law office for greater efficiency and lower overhead.
For most people, a Mac just makes more sense. They last longer, are more secure, are easier to use, and have a variety of features that make them ideal for going from home to office to the courthouse. Sure, they are a bit more expensive, but if you outfit a PC with comparable components, you often pay more.
The Apple MacBook starts at $1,099.00. If you get a PC, don’t consider anything but a Lenovo. The other brands just don’t measure up, especially when it comes to durability and customer service. The ThinkPad T61 starts at $873.00 with an upgrade to Windows XP Pro or Vista Business (do not get the “home” versions, but feel free to upgrade to Ubuntu Linux). Equipped comparably to the MacBook, a T61 will cost $914.25.
Software
So you have a computer. Now you need a way to generate documents, keep track of contacts, tasks, and your calendar, and manage your accounting and billing.
To manage contacts, your calendar, and e-mail, you can use Outlook (Windows) or Entourage (Mac), but those cost money. Mozilla Thunderbird with Lightning is free and works just as well for most users. If you got a MacBook, the built in software is perfectly serviceable. Or if you installed Ubuntu, Evolution is a full Outlook replacement. Don’t spend money if you don’t need to.
The same goes for your document processing software. Openoffice.org (NeoOffice for Mac) is just as good as Microsoft Office, and free, to boot.
For accounting, I prefer GnuCash, which is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, to the proprietary options like QuickBooks. GnuCash also has basic billing, but let’s assume you want something better. FreshBooks offers timekeeping and billing for $14/month, or $168/year. You could also opt for QuickBooks, at $169, which does accounting, rudimentary timekeeping, and billing. But QuickBooks wants to be upgraded every year, as well, so it is down to personal preference.
Backup
If you have a computer, you need a place to backup your files. Mozy gives you 2GB of online backup for free, and is a great option while you get going, since your business files probably will not take up anywhere near that much space.
If you are going paperless, you will want a local backup option, as well. Any external hard drive will do. I recommend one about five time the size of the files you need to back up. For most people this will not be very large, but something like the 500GB Western Digital MyBook is perfect at $142.99. It will last for years and hold your music, as well.
Copying, scanning, printing, and faxing
Stop right there. You thought I was going to recommend an all-in-one copier/printer/scanner/fax thingy. I’m not. They suck.
Get a scanner, printer, and fax service. You don’t need a copier, because a copier is more work than a scanner and printer. (With a copier, you have to make a copy every time you want one. If you scan the document the first time, you just print it out from there on.)
For a scanner, you cannot do better than the Fujitsu ScanSnap s1500, available for Windows and Mac (it works with Linux, as well, but other scanners may work better). For $429 (Windows) or $425 (Mac), you get a small, fast, duplexing document scanner and Adobe Acrobat Standard, which would run you $299 by itself.
Any laser printer will do, but I like the Lexmark E120n, which is a bargain at $149.99.
Save the money you would spend on an extra fax line, and instead just get an online fax service. There are free options, but to get a local number, you will have to pay. GreenFax is $12.95/month for inbound faxes and outbound faxes at $.07/minute. A $25 buy-in will last about two years for most people. That all adds up to about $180.40 for a year of service. A dedicated fax line, by contrast, would add up to about $672 for a year, not counting the fax machine and supplies.
Phone service
You could go with a regular land line, but at $56+/month, it is hardly a deal. Plus, it ties you to one location. A better location for mobile solo practitioners is Skype. While Skype is free, calling phones and getting calls from regular phones is not. A year of SkypePro and SkypeIn is only $43.20 when you buy SkypePro first. You will need a handset, headset, or standalone phone, as well. The Philips VOIP321 at $79.99 is nice, because you don’t need to connect through your computer.
You need an internet connection, of course. Let’s estimate that at $53.15/month, which is what I pay ComCast for cable internet. That adds up to $639/year.
Adding it all up: the $3,000 solo law office
This all adds up to less than $3,000 to start your own solo law practice:
| $1,099 | Computer |
| $169 | FreshBooks or Quickbooks |
| $142.99 | External drive |
| $429 | Scanner |
| $149.99 | Printer |
| $180.40 | Fax service |
| $43.20 | Skype |
| $79.99 | Skype phone |
| $639 | Internet |
|
|
|
| $2,932.57 | TOTAL |
Year 2
Keep in mind that a lot of these expenses do not continue from year to year. Assuming you don’t throw your computer out the window in frustration at some point, your continuing expenses are only for your fax service (minus $25, since you should have plenty of sending time left over), phone service, and internet, for about $837.60. Not bad.
Sam Glover is a business and consumer rights lawyer and the creator of Lawyerist.
Lawyerist is the #1 law practice blog. We write about marketing, practice management, career development, and more.
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Don’t forget about marketing costs. What good is a solo practice if nobody knows it exists? Things like yellow page, internet and newspaper advertisements can cost quite a bit. Also, professional website design can cost a lot too, unless one is technically proficient enough to do it themselves.
Point taken. Marketing costs will vary by practice area, however. You could just start a blog, which costs nothing but time.
Great post. I would demur on Skype. I’ve always found the quality to be hit or miss, and not suitable for professional work. I would probably get a landline, if anything.
Another place to look for a printer: eBay. You can get a very nice used Laserjet for under $100 usually. Those printers are usually very reliable, and with a $80-$90 cartridge (that has lasted me a year) make printing very easy.
If you are in a practice where you’re out and about, and in a location where you can’t always get to Wi-Fi, consider getting a dataplan with your cell phone. For $95 or so, you can get data plus the normal cell phone service through AT&T. If your cell phone has bluetooth (most modern ones do) and your computer has supports bluetooth (Macs do), you can tether the phone to the laptop very easily and then use that to connect to the internet. On a 3G network, you’ll find emailing and doing very light web browsing stuff will work well. Edge is only adequate in a pinch.
Note, certain cell phones do not support tethering (e.g., the iPhone).
Also, keep your eyes open for Google Voice, a new service that is coming this summer. It’s going to have limited message transcribing services for voicemail, and a single number that you can link to any of your several phones.
In terms of marketing, I’m genuinely curious whether anyone still finds marketing in the yellow pages relevant. I guess certain kinds of clients will look in the YellowPages (perhaps, poorer clients or elderly clients).
Is that still suitable? Seems like a waste of money to me.
Also the “start a blog” recommendation could work, but with 50 million blogs out there, unless you have something interesting to say, I’m a little perplexed at how spending hours blogging during a week is an effective use of time (which is money).
Of course, if people do think blogging or yellow pages ads work, then I’d be happy to hear about it. Just skeptical, is all.
I agee on a couple points. I am a Skype user and proponent, but I think for professional utilization, a solid landline is needed. A good voice answering service would probably be a good idea as well. As far as starting a blog, it has become a hard realization that law blogs do not get the level of traffic as some hobby blogs may bring in, but the quality is what’s important. 9 years ago I started a tech website that ran for approximately 3 years and received over 500,000 views per month,. You can have 50,000 page views per day on your tech site, but the revenue from that is strictly from advertising. A legal blog is more about controlling your online reputation and having a say in what Google actually says about you, rather than a huge numbers of readers that will not turn into clients or referring attorneys. From what I have seen, good traffic for a legal blog is around 1000 pageviews (not unique hits) per day. Time is always a factor though, and a lot of time it takes indeed.
I have been using Skype as my only phone for nearly two years. I bought a Phillips Skype phone, which works great. The sound quality is excellent 99% of the time.
On blogging, my consumer law blog, Caveat Emptor is a primary source of referrals. Your results may vary, but it has paid off very well for me.
That’s exciting to hear Sam. I’ll definitely have to check out a phone specifically designed for Skype. My only experience thus far is directly through the computer speakers/mic
Thanks for the article! I’m basically getting on my feet practice – wise, and I basically agree with the estimates you gave. As a debt-laden graduate, its hard to imagine starting a business without going into even more debt, but I’m starting to believe its possible to keep the costs pretty low. You have some good suggestions, and here are a couple things I did that helped me cut costs even more:
1) I use a free billing software: Bill4Time Free which is pretty basic but also… free. It goes up to $20/mo for the basic paid option, I believe.
2) I used Photoshop (anything similar would work) to make letterhead, business cards, etc. A quick tutorial from a friend was all it took to get a logo down on paper.
3) I opted out of buying a long distance plan on the landline. Way cheaper and I use my cell to make long-distance calls.
4) I bought a $60 fax machine. Not as cool as the virtual fax service, but its cheaper to start out – at least for now. Its super basic and I use it as a scanner too but it gets the job done. A $20 phone card covers almost unlimited faxing if I need to do long-distance.
5) Web-hosting + domain registration came to less than $30 for a year. Not a lot of space but hey, I don’t need it yet. I’ll pay someone to do the website, but instead of going to the higher-priced firms, I consulted a couple still-in-school graphics design students. Much cheaper but still quality work.
The only thing I’m stuck on so far is the question of office space, which for me has been a tough one. As a recent grad, I just chose the cheapest option which was to work from home, but lately its been a pain trying to balance that with increasing client demand for meetings, etc. I see the “virtual office” thing gaining popularity, but I think if I’m going to shell out the money, it might as well be for an actual brick and mortar office. Perhaps someone here has a different opinion on that?
By far marketing has been the most expensive thing for my firm. I am in month 7 though, so my name is just now starting to get out there. I picked up a magic-jack and a Verizon internet stick. Verizon internet is $50 and I can take it with me where I go, so if I’m at the office I’ll use it there, but if I’m on the go I have my internet with me.
I found cheap office space on the outskirts of town, but since most of what I do is electronic, I could move it into the apartment if I wanted to, which I don’t. For $400 a month, its nice to have a safe haven.
Jim,
If you are paying $400 a month for office space and $50 a month for internet access, but marketing is your biggest expense, I’d be curious to hear what marketing methods you are using that cost you so much money.
What are you guys doing for lexisnexis or westlaw access? Isn’t that both extremely necessary and extremely expensive, especially compared to the other expenses you have listed here?
Neither Lexis nor Westlaw are extremely necessary, though both are extremely expensive. If you focus on a one or a few areas of law, like I recommend, you will become very familiar with the law you need to know, and you can fill in as necessary. If you just need to get a copy of a case, you can usually do that through FindLaw, Justia, or your local court website.
If you need to do research, law libraries are abundant, and many offer free access to one service or the other. Many bar associations now offer free access to Fastcase or a similar product, as well.
I am perfectly happy using Fastcase, which my bar association offers for free. If I feel like I need access to the other services Lexis or Westlaw offer, I will just spend some time at the local law library.
I am a new admittee, what do you suggest for those of us with families when it comes to maintaining reasonable Health, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance?
First, look to your bar association. For health insurance, for example, Blue Cross Blue Shield cost me about $225 per month for an excellent plan about three years ago. (Now I am on my wife’s employee plan.)
2L here looking at the possibility of starting out with solo practice + contract work in two more years. Does Mozy make sense for storing confidential information? They probably have yada yada about confidentiality posted on their website, but do they really have a duty of any kind?
Any duty any cloud service provider has is a matter of contract. Which is why it may make sense to pay for the premium service.
Backblaze.com is much better than Mozy. I just switched because it’s the same price but backblaze works well on my mac, and mozy did not.
Re: marketing, as a 2L who would enjoy going solo that is my biggest concern. How do you get clients if you start on your own right out of law school?
For research, I think many state bars provide Casemaker access (I know CT and UT do). Casemaker is great. It gives you search capability for most state and federal cases. It’s not nearly as powerful as Westlaw or Lexis, but you can do *a lot* with it, and it’s free.
On marketing, offer to present seminars on legal topics to business groups or to other lawyers who might need your specialty to refer work (e.g., I do only IP work–trademark, copyright, licensing–so bankruptcy lawyers know I’m not going to take business from them). Become an expert, then share your knowledge. People remember.
Re: the comment above on Mozy confidentiality, they have a business option under which all the data stored on their servers is encrypted. It’s not free, but it’s very safe.
Re Lexis and Westlaw: I do contract work for an attorney who has a fixed-fee monthly plan and he lets me use his account for free, even for research I do for other attorneys or for my private clients. I just have to be really careful not to stray outside of the fixed plan.
As a new Sole Practitioner in the UK I wish my indemnity insurance was only 599. Try $7,865!
As to the rest we have the same issues. Except a hostile regulatory regime that wants SP’s gone. (My opinion-others may differ)
I purchased a small number of ‘core texts’ that I use a primer for wider research. As an SP unless you are truly niche you will cover a number of areas. I then use the Law Society library in Central London, I also have access to two local law faculties where I alumni. Then I have a number of on line resources for UK law and cases. One of the Best is bailii which also has US/Canadian resources.
I set up with a Dell p3 laptop. I have a home desktop and external drive for back up.
There are any number of free encryption programs such as ‘Trucrypt’ for securing files. You can then back up the encrypted file to online storage.
I use an business centre for my office address. They also have meeting rooms I can hire. Otherwise I go to the client. Businesses like it. It saves them losing time travelling. given that in the life of a case you will only need to see a client two or three times the rest can be done by phone, email, letter or fax.
Working from home can work if you have separate room and so can get into work mode. Family need to understand that you may be home but office hours are just that! (Guess what I struggle with?)
I have just found an online service called clio which is a great idea. web based practice/case management. Still evaluating it.
I get a lot of work via the web (still want more though) but I have only taken one paid listing and came to the conclusion it is a waste of time. far better to take every free listing you can get. search engines for all the talk of seo are still pretty dumb beasts and if you search for “solicitors Watford” or “Watford solicitors” I always come up in the top 5 most often the top 3. not a bean in cost but a couple of evenings spent form filling online.
As to other advertising I like the look of local radio. An awful lot of bang for your buck! However, it is a bit of an outlay although by no means impossible. I will let people know what happens when I try it.
It sounds obvious but to marketers all lawyers are rich! They obviously believe their own publicity. Most that have approached me want me to sell the kids to fund their idea. So be warned.
I had an all-in-one that was cheap but since I’m making my own copies, I just upgraded to a laser all-in-one from Canon and it’s wonderful. I don’t use the fax, however, because I use eFax. It saves the cost (and headache) of dealing with Verizon for a land line and internet service, and it helps me by forcing me to scan documents for faxing.
Research: Fastcase through the Jenkins Law Library in Pennsylvania. It comes with 20 min/day of Lexis. Not a lot, but enough if you only need to Shepardize. Extremely cost effective, the annual cost is like $100 or $150.
Another nicety: mobile broadband. I have it through Cricket Wireless in the DC Area for $40/month, unlimited. It is more secure than using hotspots and you can do research on the fly. It also impresses the heck out of clients when they see you in action with it. Again, no dealing with Verizon for Internet service, and their fees that fluctuate month to month. Also, as far as mobile broadband goes, all the bigs have colluded to set the amount of transfer to 5gb for $60/month. For normal business use that’s probably fine except you have to worry when you start sending a lot of pdfs in email or fax. And forget it when you have a Windows update to download. Cricket will just throttle speed if you exceed 5gb and it’s a problem.
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