"Turnaround: Solos seek advice to survive a struggling economy"

The ABA Journal Magazine online recently published an article by G. M. Filisko entitled "Turnaround: Solos seek advice to survive a struggling economy." Anyone in solo practice or interested in pursuing this avenue of legal employment should read this article, a portion of which is reproduced below:

"Andrea Goldman, Leanna Hamill and Fred Bauerlein are alone, but they’re not unique. Like thousands of their colleagues across the country, they are solo practitioners struggling to make ends meet.

Bauerlein’s criminal defense practice and Goldman’s construction law specialty took huge hits from the economy, and by the late summer of 2009 their efforts to rebuild hadn’t borne fruit. Hamill, who specializes in estate planning and elder law, hadn’t been able to comprehend her practice’s month-to-month battle for profitability.

To help these solos understand where they’ve gone astray and get their practices on track, we asked practice management consultants Jerry Schwartz, Dennis McCue and John Olmstead to analyze their business and financial records and conduct telephone consultations. Then the consultants gave a no-holds-barred assessment.

And six months later, we checked in with the lawyers to see what had changed for them."

To read the rest of the article, go here.