Law Office on a Laptop: How to Set Up Your Own Successful Law Practice, Second Edition
By Catherine Hodder and Kelly Sturmthal
4.5/5
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About this ebook
What is a Mobile Law Practice? It is being is available when your clients need you. It is structuring your practice to have the flexibility to go to your clients, to work from your home office or to move to different offices. When you set up your Law Office on a Laptop, you have control over your hours, your overhead, and your life.
Attorneys Catherine Hodder and Kelly C. Sturmthal have created a step-by-step interactive resource manual for starting up and running a successful mobile law practice. With sample forms and letters, helpful links, website information and checklists, this book has mapped out everything an attorney needs to set up their law practice with special considerations for the attorneys on the go.
•Considerations For Your Practice
•Setting up Forms and Procedures
•Evaluating Systems and Software
•Marketing Yourself and Getting Clients
•Leveraging with Social Media
•State-by-State Guide for Law Practice Management
•Goals + Opportunities Checklist
•Top 10 Tips for a Successful Solo Law Practice
With Law Office on a Laptop, you will have a concrete plan of action to start or enhance your own law practice.
Catherine Hodder
Catherine Hodder, Esq. is an estate planning attorney turned author. She enjoys working with families who would rather be doing anything else than estate planning. Her Florida law practice, featured in the Palm Beach Post, made “house calls” to help families with their estate planning needs. She now resides in California, writing helpful articles for members of the “Sandwich Generation.” She is also co-author of Law Office on a Laptop: How to Set Up Your Own Successful Mobile Law Practice, an #1 Amazon bestseller in law office education.
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Reviews for Law Office on a Laptop
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is such a great book for people who want to build a new law firm/law office. Many strategies and management stated by the authors that really helpful for the reader. Good job, authors!
Book preview
Law Office on a Laptop - Catherine Hodder
INTRODUCTION
Do you remember the day you passed the bar exam? It took a lot of work to get there, and the feeling of accomplishment after passing was HUGE. The next big hurdle was to find an ideal job, but for many of us, we had to pursue an area of law where we could get a job. Was that the right fit for you?
Are you where you want to be in your career? Are you tired of working for a large firm with no control over your hours? Did you take a break from law? Did you postpone your legal career to start a family or take care of a loved one? Did you just graduate and realize that law school did not teach you how to start or manage a law practice? Regardless of your path, you chose this book to take the next step. So, here we go…
We created this book from a desire to use our experiences of starting our own mobile law office to educate others who wish to have more control over their careers. Although we have tailored this for those in the legal profession, consultants or other entrepreneurs who are interested in the mobile office concept could easily adapt these concepts to use as a blueprint.
WHAT IS A MOBILE LAW OFFICE?
Essentially, a law practice designed to be available whenever your clients need you. You can satisfy those needs without having to travel to a brick and mortar practice. Because of technology, many professionals can run their businesses from their laptops, notebooks, iPads, and smartphones. We embarked on a mission to figure out if we, as lawyers, could also create a practice that was completely mobile. We wanted to control our time, control our overhead, and control our office systems. After some good planning and lots of decisions, we made it happen! Sharing the blueprint was always part of our plan. We know there are many talented lawyers that can make this structure work for their lives and their family. Structuring your practice as a mobile law office allows you the flexibility to meet your clients, to work from your home office or to move between different offices. When you structure your Law Office on a Laptop, you have control over your hours, your overhead, and your life.
GOALS + OPPORTUNITIES = SUCCESS
Throughout this book, we will provide a practical checklist of GOALS for you to accomplish and OPPORTUNITIES to pursue. By the end of your journey within this book, you will have a concrete plan of action to start your own business. Most of this may seem to be common sense, but we have successfully tried each of these items on the checklists and proven that a mobile law office is a viable option. Of course, we have uncovered a few nuggets of wisdom along the way and we will be sharing those as well. At the end of each chapter, look for the goals for you to achieve and the opportunities to go after to help you be more successful. These actionable items will keep you on track by efficiently and effectively providing you with the blueprint to start your own law firm.
SAMPLE FORMS & LINKS
This book is intended to help you, encourage you, and most importantly, to save you time! We have provided sample forms, direct links, and website addresses to state bar associations, businesses, and vendors that may give you more information or help your practice succeed.
SUPPORT AND RESOURCES
In addition to the information and resources in this book, we provide on-going encouragement and support for your practice.
Read our Blog: www.GoSoloForSuccess.com
Like
us on Facebook at GoSoloForSuccess
Follow us on Twitter at @GoSolo4Success
Follow us on Instagram at GoSolo4Success
Follow us on Pinterest at GoSoloForSuccess
You will find practical wisdom and support as you take this journey of starting your own mobile law office.
OUR STORY
Kelly and I met through our local MOM’s club and we found common ground as attorneys and having taken time off from our careers when our kids were young. At that time, Kelly was working part time for a law firm and I was considering going back into the workforce. I asked her: How did you do it? Balancing a legal career and family life?
And she honestly replied with, I didn’t!
The sad reality is that working part time
at a law firm is really full time
in any other profession. Like me, she was looking for an alternative to be able to practice law but still have control over the amount of time she put in at the office while remaining available for her children.
We also had common life experiences. My father had a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Kelly’s father died from an aggressive cancer. From personal experiences, we understood how important estate planning could be to help families. We knew first-hand how having the right documents in place -- Durable Power of Attorney, Health Care Surrogate, Living Will, Last Will and Testament, and Trust -- made huge differences in how our fathers' affairs were handled. We also knew that most people don’t understand these important aspects of their loved one’s estates until they are faced with it themselves. In law school, we were taught about estate planning in a generic manner, but it is different to experience it personally. We wanted to educate others from our experiences and help them navigate through difficult life events like disability and death.
Also, we found that estate planning law firms were largely courting clients with high net worth. Due to the overhead involved, it was not profitable for the firms to make basic estate planning affordable for young families with few assets. We thought it was important to focus our practice on reaching