Welcome to The Shingle Life

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Starting a law practice takes a mix of courage and stupidity. Making it successful takes a few extra ingredients, like hard work, self-confidence, business savvy, and—eventually—experience. It’s a hard knock life in the legal trenches, but some are surviving, and a few are even turning into good lawyers with good practices.

Now, one intrepid Lawyerist contributor is wading in and starting his own firm. Josh Camson just launched a two-lawyer criminal defense firm, CamsonRigby, and will be writing about the experience here, in a column we’re calling The Shingle Life.

Stay tuned.

You can discuss The Shingle Life in the comments, in the LAB, or on Twitter using the hashtag #shinglelife.

Last month I officially put my dream of becoming a prosecutor on hold in order to pursue another dream: opening a law firm. My partner and I sent in the incorporation documents to the state, forming CamsonRigby, LLC. That’s right. There’s no space and no ampersand. It’s similar to ReedSmith, but with a much lower hourly rate. Over the upcoming months as we get up and running I’m going to share our trials and tribulations here on Lawyerist.

My goal with this column is to really address the nitty gritty of opening a new law firm. We will be a criminal defense firm, but I think some of the things we do will apply to civil firms, as well. There are plenty of websites out there talking about the big picture when it comes to starting a law firm. For example, we know everyone needs an IOLTA account, but how do you keep track of that in Quickbooks? What’s it like to work without an office? How do you review an insurance policy?

I plan on addressing these things and more in the coming months. Are there aspects of starting a firm that you’re curious about? Let me know in the comments.

Lawyerist is a blog about law practice. We help lawyers find the tools to improve their practices, we lead a conversation about law practice, and we have a strong online community of lawyers, the Lawyerist LAB.