Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Legal Blog Watch

Legal News

: Legal Blog Watch

Starting a Law Firm Using Craigslist

By Carolyn Elefant

Back in the olden days, when lawyers sought to start or expand a law practice they'd place a pricey advertisement in a hard-copy legal trade publication or retain a placement firm as a matchmaker. Lawyers would have to be fairly committed to expanding their practice, given the upfront costs involved in finding a potential partner. But now it's possible to build a new law firm much more cheaply by using Craigslist. That's how former BigLaw associate Afif Ghannoum, founder of the Ghannoum Law Firm, did it, drawing on pool of close to 500 respondents to staff his new firm's life-science and bio-technology practice. According to a recent story in MedCity News, Cleveland-based Ghannoum identified a need for high-quality, competitively priced legal services for new bio-tech companies. So he posted a request on Craigslist for partner-level attorneys with bio-tech experience and chose nine lawyers from among the hundreds who responded. Some of the lawyers come from impressive backgrounds, including a former senior patent attorney at Bristol-Myers Squibb and a venture capitalist who worked at GE Asset Management. Lawyers work on a project basis, with compensation for hours spent on a particular matter. The firm is still growing; Ghannoum has since placed...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).