The other day, I talked about the importance of evaluating the performance of your home – based business at least once a year. Today I am evaluating my solo law practice. I do not spend much time working at this business, yet each hour that I do spend produces a nice amount of income. It is an expensive business to maintain, though, between licensing fees, continuing legal education, and malpractice insurance.
Since I am unable to devote much time to practicing law, I keep a very tiny case load of no more than two cases at a time. This is essential, because any time I have to go to court for a hearing, I have to ask family members to come over and watch the boys. Since they are quite a handful, I try to do that as little as possible. I work on law related business fewer than five hours each week, on average.
As part of my evaluation, I wanted to think about the most positive things that I have done as a lawyer this year. This year, I completed my first uncontested divorce case. This was an important milestone because I was able to help the parties to reach an agreement regarding their divorce instead of fighting it out in front of the judge. Since I don’t spend much time working as a lawyer, there are not a whole lot of things to evaluate, but that does stand out in my mind as an accomplishment.
For things that need improvement, I can definitely say that I still feel a little rough around the edges when it comes to practicing in a courtroom setting. Of course, that’s why they call it law practice, as it is something that you get better at with experience. I definitely need more experience in order to feel more comfortable in court.
I am satisfied that I am able to practice law on such a part time basis because I am a solo practitioner. However, it costs a considerable amount of money to stay licensed and insured. Since I am unable to do a lot of courtroom practice, my goal for the upcoming year is to build my law practice into more of a legal research and writing business because I can do that type of work outside of typical business hours, when the kids are asleep. Sitting down to think about my law practice has helped me to realize that shifting my focus in that direction could help me to do more law related work without increasing the amount of time that I spend in court and away from the kids during the day.
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