Solo Practice

Fear Keeps Lawyers from Using Home Offices

By Garrett Worley

Chuck Newton contends that fear keeps many lawyers from moving their offices home. While practicing from a home office may have been significantly more difficult in former years, technology has made this a very feasible proposition.

Newton argues that paying for an office outside the home is not in attorneys’ financial best interest. The simple economics of that proposition show Newton’s contention to be true in most cases. Unfortunately, many lawyers don’t base their business decisions on objective economic principles.

The truth is that fear keeps many lawyers from practicing solo or starting their own firms in the first place. Ironically, such would-be entrepreneurs are stopped in their tracks by fear of economic insecurity. As I see it, the greatest form of economic insecurity is working for someone else.

Those who manage to get past the initial fear of not receiving a regular paycheck often run into fear again when they begin to think about how they’ll finance their solo practice. Operating a home office significantly reduces the startup capital necessary to open a home office and virtual law office technology makes such an office competitive with those of traditional lawyers.

Stop thinking in terms of fear and start thinking in terms of strategic advantages.

Full post as published by Garrett Worley's Blawg on February 10, 2008 (boomark / email).