Why hire sole practitioner instead of big firm?
Law firms have a structure. On any given case, you will likely have a senior partner, junior partner/senior associate, and an associate assigned to your case. Each has billable hour requirements. There is also likely to be a paralegal and/or legal secretary working on your case. The odds are that 60-70 percent of the substantive work on your case is going to be handled by the lowest rung on the ladder, i.e., the associate. The junior partner/senior associate is likely to do 20-30% of the work, and the senior partner will likely do anywhere from 0-10% of the work.
When you hire a law firm, you generally hire the senior partner. The senior partner has his name on the firm’s letterhead and trophies of his successes on the wall. And then you sign the fee agreement and shake the senior partner’s hand, oftentimes speaking to the senior partner for the last time. The junior partner/senior associate takes over the big picture handling of your file, and the junior associate – trying to make his or her billable hour requirement in order to make senior associate or junior partner – gets tasked with the day-to-day operation of the file.
Law firms make money by billing, and therefore law firms tend to be really good at billing. Some cases may be complex enough to require a team of lawyers and the built-in support of a law firm; most are not. It is not uncommon for a law firm to bill $30,000 – 40,000 per month on a file. While that sounds like a lot, at a rate of $300/hr., that is roughly half-time for the junior associate assigned to your file.
I am a sole practitioner. I have resources available to me as needed, including experienced contract lawyers (i.e., lawyers who will pick up projects on short notice) and paralegal support. But for the most part, every facet and aspect of my practice has my hands on it. When you call, I answer. When you email, I respond, and generally very quickly. If more than 24 hours have elapsed since you called or emailed and I did not respond then I am not doing my job. I do get very busy, and I do get very wrapped up in deadlines and discovery and research and all of the other things that constitute the practice of law. I shouldn’t ever get so busy that I cannot timely respond to calls or emails.
If I were to be in the process of hiring a lawyer, it would be very important to me that the lawyer I hire be the lawyer who is going to work on my case. It would be very important that the lawyer I hire be the lawyer who is responding to my calls or emails. Personally, I do not care to have a call or an email pawned off to someone else tasked with responding. (The thought just went through my head that when I get big I will probably rue the day I composed this blog, but my structure is a choice and it’s the right choice for me.) To me, the fundamental question you should ask me is whether I have the resources to handle your case. If it’s too complex I will tell you so, and I will refer you on to a firm that bills ethically and has the structure to competently handle your case. Otherwise, in my opinion you are much better off with the sole practitioner who has low overhead and no billable hours requirement than the firm with the marble floors that requires its associates and junior partners to bill 200 hours per month.
As I offer a free 45-minute consultation, I am happy to discuss structure further with you if that is a concern. I would also like to note, in closing, that I do not charge clients for telephone calls between the client and I, as it is my belief that a client should be free to call with a question or concern, or to provide information to me that will help me with his or her case. Ask the big firms if they do that!
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