Legal Marketing & PR

Dissatisfaction due to failure of law school to teach entrepreneurship?

By Michael

Yesterday, I posted an article about the poll in the recent ABA Journal on what I found to be the surprisingly high rate of professional dissatisfaction among lawyers. I proposed that I thought one of the reasons might be the fact that law schools fail to prepare solo and small firm lawyers for the business side of the law practice.

Then today Susan Cartier Libel at Build a Solo Practice posted an article in which a recent Harvard law grad asked the question, “Why didn’t law school teach me how to hang a shingle?” This quote below confirms my suggestion that this failure on the part of law schools to properly prepare lawyers to run a business contributes to the dissatisfaction that seems to plague our profession, particularly for lawyers practicing under 10 years.

The lawyer quoted in the post, Ryan Alexander, notes than some lawyers who want to hang a shingle do not. Instead they take jobs they don’t want at BigLaw and it end up “hating the law.” Here is the relevant quote from Susan’s blog:

“He further laments how law school fails the entrepreneur:

I wish more students considered “hanging a shingle.” I hope HLS will eventually offer a seminar in running your own practice to open up students’ eyes to the possibility. HLS students are too risk averse for their own good - there is a lot of demand for services that you can provide for people. Many students go to BigLaw against their conscience or interests and hate lawyering, because they are not true to themselves. There is another path. It is exciting, liberating and uniquely fulfilling to have your own practice. You can prepare for it and be ready.”

Full post as published by Law for Profit on October 18, 2007 (boomark / email).