James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the Docketwise produced video podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of immigration law, shedding light on the latest developments, cutting edge practice management strategies, and the transformative impact of legal technology. I'm thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey as we empower immigration lawyer with invaluable insights and explore the intricate intersection of law and society. I have as my special guest today Carolyn Elephant. She is a noted authority on legal practice. She runs the Myshingle platform and has produced a number of articles and books and is widely sought after as an authority on small and solo practice and women's equity in the law. Carolyn, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

James Pittman: And to kick things off, could you share a bit about your journey? What led you to become a recognized authority on solo and small firm practice?

Carolyn Elefant: So I guess I'm not really sure what led me to become an authority. I know that back in 2002, I started a blog, which was the first blog on solo and small firm practice. And the reason I started it was because I felt that there was a void in the coverage of the work of solo and small firms. There were at that time a lot of publications like American Lawyer and publications like that that were covering the works of big firms, but I thought there was a void for small firms. So it basically just started out as a topic for a blog, and it expanded from there.

James Pittman: And I mean, you yourself, did you start your career as a solo? Were you in a firm first? How did it evolve?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, so, no, when I started my firm, solo practice was the furthest thing from my mind. I went to a so called top tier law school, and at that time, you didn't have a lot of people who were graduating from those law schools who went into solo and small firm practice. So I didn't really know anybody as a reference point. So I started my career. I had worked during the summers at big law, and I knew that I didn't want to do that. So I started my career with the federal government. I worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and then I worked for a big firm for a couple of years. And then I was told that I wasn't partnership material, so I decided to become partner in my own practice by starting my own practice as the sole partner.

James Pittman: Let's probe that a little bit. I mean, do you think that did they give you a reason why?

Carolyn Elefant: First of all, I think it was a couple of things. I think there may have been some gender bias as I was the only woman working in the firm and I had just gotten married, and I know that the firm was doing poorly economically, so they may have been looking to lay people off, but I also wasn't really happy. I didn't like the work that I was doing. I wasn't doing a lot of litigation. I was doing some very obscure areas of law, and I just didn't enjoy it. And so I think that the firm felt that I wasn't really committed to the work, and in retrospect, they were probably right. I know that the quality of my work was slacking off because I didn't really care about the cases that I was assigned to or some of the client matters that I was working on.

James Pittman: Carolyn, one thing that strikes me about your work is that and one thing that I really admire is that you're unafraid to sort of challenge prevailing wisdom and things like regulatory reform, ethical rules reform, women's equity. I mean, you say what needs to be said. It seems to be maybe part of your nature, that you're independent minded. That's fantastic. What traits do you think allowed you to succeed as a solo practitioner? And what sort of person do you think is cut out for solo and small firm practice?

Carolyn Elefant: So there's so many different kinds of solo and small firm practice. And so because of that, there are so many different opportunities for success in my practice area. It's a very specialized field. It's energy and environmental law. And I've sort of carved out I was able to carve out ignition representing all of the clients that big law wasn't representing. And so being somewhat contrarian or a little bit oppositional was very helpful in that regard. But there are so many other practice areas where people can succeed. I've seen attorneys, women attorneys, who have started firms focusing on family law or estate planning, who have built a practice solely from marketing within PTA groups and school groups and other community events. I've seen other attorneys start personal injury firms because they themselves had been injured in accidents and just were able to stand out by sharing their experience with potential clients. So clients felt that they would have a really personal relationship with the attorney, getting good results for those clients and kind of having it go on. So there are just so many different ways to succeed in a solo or small firm practice. I think some of the characteristics that most successful people share are sort of like a doggedness or a willingness to keep doing things and to change up when things aren't working. So to be nimble, but at the same time to be persistent in your goal of trying to aim towards success.

James Pittman: You'Ve been instrumental, certainly in helping thousands of lawyers launch their own firms through Myshingle.com, specifically about the website. What inspired you to create Myshingle and what impact have you seen it make?

Carolyn Elefant: Well, like I said, I felt at that time when I started blogging was kind of coming on the horizon, and there were a couple of attorneys who had launched blogs. I always liked to write, and I had been writing articles for, I guess it was like called The Legal Times. There were different parts of American law media. They all have been consolidated since then. And so I thought, wow, this idea of being able to self publish and not have this barrier where I have to get something accepted is really cool. So I needed a topic for it and that drew my attention to it. And I think, again, because there were no other resources for solo and small firms, people started following it and it just grew over the years. And many other blogs also covering the same space came up for a while. I've always tried to cover topics that other people weren't covering. So there were lots of blogs that would talk about a particular type of technology, but they would never honestly assess whether it worked. They would never talk about what the possibilities were for it in terms of new business models. And so I just always tried to focus on things that other people weren't talking about.

James Pittman: Well, Colin, the theme of today's episode is starting a successful law firm in 2023. So in terms of comparing when you first started doing it versus today, what new challenges and what new opportunities do lawyers face today when starting out compared to, say, when you first created Mushroom?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, so it's very different. I mean, I think one of the biggest changes has been the reduction in cost. Back in the day when I started, and I did start on a shoestring, that was something that was very unusual. Most people who were starting firms back then were leaving a firm with an established book of business. They were hiring a secretary or receptionist. They were investing in brick and mortar space. There weren't that many people who were sort of doing it from their home office or from a basement or the kitchen table. So I think that's one thing that's changed. It's been facilitated by the availability of technology and also sort of the change in image that ownership has because of entrepreneurs and then also the pandemic. So people are accustomed to other people working from home. So that's kind of one of the changes. On the positive side is that it's much less expensive to start a firm today than it's ever been. On the negative side, people graduating from law school have crushing loans. I had loans which seemed insurmountable to me back in I guess I graduated in 1988. I had about $70,000 in loans. So maybe that's like 130,000 today. But today it's common for people to have 200 and 5300 thousand dollars in student loans. I mean, it's just overwhelming. And the terms of those loans are not necessarily as favorable as the terms that I was able to have. And I think that really is a challenge for people who want to start firms, especially start firms out of law school.

James Pittman: Well, tell us more about the book you wrote a book solo by Choice how to Start a Law Firm and Be the Lawyer You Always Want to Be is the title. Tell us about it.

Carolyn Elefant: So the book grew out of my blog and it's gone through three different editions. The first edition was published, I think in 2007, which was right before 2008, which was the big recession. So at the time it was published, most people who were graduating from law school weren't really having any difficulty in finding jobs. And so in the first edition, the theme was really trying to make the case for starting your own firm at a time when employment numbers were high. The second edition came out in 2012 and at that time the economy had tanked, the market for lawyers at big firms and institutions had sort of gone down. And so I talked about the ways that you could start a firm to get your career back on track. And then the third edition was post pandemic. It just talks about solo practice or law firm ownership in the context of all the changes. But I really wanted know, of course, when my book came out, fumberg's book was already out and his was very much a how to book, how to start a firm, all the details to go about it. But I really felt that there wasn't anybody who was doing sort of the preliminary step, which was making the case for why you should even consider it, or maybe why you shouldn't consider it. And then the other thing that the book has always talked about is different paths to solo or small firm practice. Femberg's book was very rules oriented. I know lawyers like rules. He had the rules originally, I mean, the original episodes or editions of it. I mean, he was very firm. You've got to have a brick and mortar office, you have to charge your fees in a certain way, you have to do networking this way. I felt that there were just so many other different ways that you could go about starting a firm. So I talked about different paths to solo practice, starting part time practices, starting different types of firms, in addition to just this very traditional model that the Funberg book had always talked about.

James Pittman: I want to touch a little bit on women's representation and equity because you've done a number of presentations and given talks on that topic. How do women owned law firms contribute to the overall societal goal of gender equality and what steps can be taken to further this cause?

Carolyn Elefant: So that's a really interesting question. And just to give some sort of a backstory, probably about 15 years ago I went to the first Ms JD conference and the focus of that was not necessarily it was on women in law. And so there were women from all different walks of the legal profession. There were judges, people who worked at big firms, and there were a lot of complaints about what was going on at large firms at the time. That discrimination against women, difficult challenges, and having parenting schedules. So I raised my hand and I said that women should you could try to change it from within, but why waste your time? Why not just start your own firm? To which another woman said, well, if women leave the law firms, we're going to leave them as these male dominated beds. Like, who's going to rescue them? And my feeling is that it's not women's job to rescue big firms and that there are many more opportunities. And I think that you see that when women start their own firms, it opens so many more doors than just trying to change the big firm model. I mean, there's so many different examples. You have women who have started firms who then go on to run for judge and become judges. You have women like Roberta Kaplan, who's suing Donald Trump. She was a partner at a big law firm, and now she's got all these sexy cases all over the country and she's really changing the law and making money at it too. So I feel like the only hope at this point for women to really recognize gender equality is for people to realize the value that woman ownership brings and for women to develop different ways or different types of firms that offer different ways of practicing law. Because big law is not the only way to run a law firm or to practice law.

James Pittman: Well, let's drill down a little bit on the big law. What do you see as the remaining institutional obstacles in big law? To summarize, is it still the age old question of women have a hard time having it all? Is that it because at a certain point you want to have children and then you're expected to put in all these hours and there's just that inherent conflict there? Or is it other things? Is it still institutional biases other than that?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it. Is the sort of women working part time during childbearing years and the work that they contribute not being respected? I think that sometimes there are challenges to women bringing in business because sometimes business and marketing is still handled the same way on the golf course or in times of day where men are more available to do the marketing than women. And then I think there's also just passing clients along. I think a lot of men feel more comfortable passing along their existing clients to other men in the law firm rather than women. So there's just like a whole bunch of different reasons. I mean, honestly, it's been so, so long since I've worked at big firms that really now my knowledge of them is really anecdotal from what I hear on Facebook groups or see on LinkedIn and some of the stuff that goes still, it shocks me. It's just shocking to me to hear that a man is only going to pass his clients on to other women, or that women are credited less given a smaller percentage of revenue from clients that they themselves bring in. So it's just surprising. But I'm not as keyed into that world as I once was.

James Pittman: Some of the same age old things still seem to be persisting. Well, collaboration and innovation are crucial.

James Pittman: And you have some Aba publications that are fascinating. I enjoyed looking through them. One is social media for lawyers. The next frontier. And the other one is a product. The legal closet. Could you share a little bit about those?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah. So The Social Media for Lawyers was a book that I wrote with Nikki Black many years ago. We'd met on social media and I'd had an opportunity to write the book and I couldn't do it myself. I just finished an edition of Solo by Choice, so we worked on it together. And that was first published in 2010. And there wasn't a lot of I mean, it sold well, but there wasn't a lot of interest in social media at that time. And I remember we would go to conferences to promote it and people would say, oh, my teenager uses social media, or do I really need to learn how to use this? So that was kind of the prevailing attitude. I think it took at least seven or eight more years before lawyers really started using it to their advantage. And the legal closet book is actually not an Aba book. That's a product that I've developed through my shingle, and it has different templates for engagement agreements that you might want to use with clients. And then it also has other kinds of contracts that you might want to draft if you're hiring an independent contractor or if you are engaging in a joint venture with another attorney or hiring another counsel. And they're just agreements that are kind of hard to find and the ones that are available are very poor quality. Now, I have to say that I did the last iteration of that book before Chat GPT and AI became a thing, and I know that now you can use a lot of those tools to draft those types of agreements. So I don't know how much value templates are going to have. Actually, one piece of value that accompanies the book is that there's an 85 page guide that goes into kind of the ethics and business reasons for why you want to include certain clauses in your agreement. And so I think that that offers value beyond the template. Or you could use that book as a guide if you're going to use AI to draft your agreements.

James Pittman: You've received notable recognition for your contributions, and you were named an American Bar Association Legal Rebel and a Fast Case 50 Innovator. How do these accolades reflect your own approach to law practice?

Carolyn Elefant: I think that they really just reflect me being an early adopter, I always feel much more comfortable in my legal practice working with cases where there's no clear precedent or making new precedent or trying to advance the law. And the same is true with the way that I practice law. I like to adopt new ideas very quickly and just get out ahead of the curve. And I think that's really what accounts for getting those awards. I'd rather be ahead of the curve than behind it.

James Pittman: And you appeared on The Daily Show as well, which is that's quite an honor of sort. Yeah, that was cool. Right? And discussed law firm business models. That must have been a very unique opportunity. So what key takeaways from The Daily Show experience would you like to share with us?

Carolyn Elefant: Well, just that when you see people on air for like a 15 minutes 15 2nd clip, you have to know that it probably took them like 2 hours to record it. But no, I thought it was very interesting. I'd been a little bit nervous because I know that sometimes the Daily Show likes to make its guests look foolish and I was fine with that, but my part was pretty neutral. I was just commenting on the business model and I wasn't really mocked in any way.

James Pittman: Okay, so they spared you?

Carolyn Elefant: Yes.

James Pittman: Let's get a little bit to the regulatory aspect of it because you've devoted a significant amount of your energy to this issue in 2019. You delivered a talk on how regulation disadvantages solo and small firm lawyers. Could you provide us with some insights into the regulatory challenges and maybe some potential solutions?

Carolyn Elefant: Sure. So I feel like when we talk about access to justice, one of the complaints is always that legal services or lawyers are too expensive and you can use companies like Legal, Zoom or other online services that are just as good as lawyers. And I mean, there's a lot of reasons for why legal services are expensive, but one of them is just that lawyers have to comply with sometimes onerous ethics regulations that don't protect clients and that drive rates up. And so I gave a couple of different examples. One of them is having to put it's not so much having to put funds into trust accounts, but it's all of the intricate accounting that lawyers have to comply with in order to follow bar rules. And clients have many protections when they make payments they can pay by credit card. There are different ways that they can pay for legal services that don't require this onerous bookkeeping that lawyers have to comply with. And it also doesn't protect the public because you see, in California you have the Tom Girardi stealing people's funds. I mean, if anything, making people put money into a trust account, it just makes it a lot easier to steal the money because it's like all in one account. Instead of going into your operating fund and being spent on legal expenses. And then I also talked about advertising rules, which, again, first of all, they're different in all places. They're all over the map. And then many times in certain jurisdictions, you have to have advance approval of what your ad says. And a lot of these non lawyer sites that compete with attorneys don't have to comply with those things either. And so it just seems like, at the very least, if you're going to compare lawyers to non legal service providers, at least have a level playing field, apply the same levels of regulation to both so that you don't hobble the attorneys, especially if you want to be advancing access to justice.

James Pittman: Let's drill down on the trust account issue. I mean, that's age old. I mean, lawyers have had trust accounts for eons. So how would you handle, then the situation where the lawyer has to handle funds which aren't being immediately expended?

Carolyn Elefant: Right? So first of all, just to qualify, if you're selling somebody's house, that's a situation where you would put the funds that you receive, if you're receiving large amounts of money in a settlement or something like that, that would go into trust. I'm talking more about advanced payments in some jurisdictions. And some bars say that if an attorney is charging flat fees, they can accept that fee immediately. It doesn't have to go into their trust account. It can go directly into their operating account. And so it really frees up cash flow when you're getting paid on the front end. I guess some of the other things you can do is if clients are really concerned about not getting their funds, they can pay on credit card because they can do chargebacks. But I think just coming up with a way to allow lawyers, if they're paid upfront, if they're paid advanced fees, to be able to spend some of that money, because it eases up some of the cash flow issues. And it really makes the firm more sustainable, which also, if your firm is sustainable, you're going to serve clients better because they're going to be assured that your firm is going to be around. So I think some jurisdictions are allowing money to go directly into the operating account when flat fees are charged.

James Pittman: So, Carolyn, about the advertising, I mean, lawyer advertising initially years and years ago was disallowed, and then it was frowned upon, and now we've got TV commercials and all sorts of things. So has there been evolution from your standpoint, anything current that's helped to level the playing field?

Carolyn Elefant: Everything is very jurisdiction specific, which is one problem, because depending on where you practice, there may be different advertising laws. I think one of the biggest changes that I think is beneficial is that law firms can now use trade names in virtually every jurisdiction. There were First Amendment challenges to their inability to do that, and I think that's really important. Know many people, if people see a law firm called Legal Zoom or Rocket Lawyer. They may think that it's a large establishment and they may choose something like that over the law firm of Joan Smith. So if Joan Smith can call her the the Estate Planning law firm or the Treetop Law firm, it can help with branding and help them help her stand out in the marketplace. So I think that that was a big development, but it took a First Amendment challenge by a company called HQ Legal or something, which is trying to establish some kind of national brand. I think in terms of other jurisdictions, they still require disclaimers on advertising. Many of them make it somewhat difficult to post referral, post testimonials at your website. So I think some of the requirements are still somewhat restrictive, but it's hard to stand top of what every jurisdiction requires.

James Pittman: So any other regulatory challenges besides the advertising and the trust issues?

Carolyn Elefant: I think another issue is, I think there's two issues. There's restrictions on referral fees. Some jurisdictions allow referral fees freely. Other ones allow referral fees if a lawyer has devoted a certain amount of time to the case and others come very close to banning referral fees. I think referral fees are inefficiency in marketing because you have some firms. I had a colleague who practiced criminal defense law and he had some sort of referral arrangement with a lawyer who liked to market his firm very broadly and would get a lot of DUI claims, and he passed them over to my friend, and the referring firm would take like a 20% cut. My friend was fine with that. He hated advertising. He wanted to try cases. He would do a good job for the clients. The person who did the advertising should be rewarded for it. So I think the restriction on referral fees should be loosened up because it helps also ensure that the best attorneys get cases referred to them. And then other restrictions. I think the restrictions on so called fee splitting either between an attorney and an online platform or even an attorney working with another professional, really have to go away. There are so many instances where lawyers work with other professionals where it's beneficial to the client if they can share the fee. If you are an attorney who does special education work, it would be so beneficial to be able to partner with a person who evaluates children for educational needs that they have. And then if it turns out that they have needs that aren't being satisfied by the school system, have the attorney handle the legal part of the case and then they share the fee. I mean, that's kind of a win win for clients. But under today's regulations, you can't do that. That's fee splitting with a non attorney. And you would either have to have them each do the case separately, which would deter them from working together, or else you would have the attorney I guess could pay the special education person, like out of pocket to work with the client and then build the client for the fees and expense. It's just silly. And as issues become more complicated, there's more of a need for attorneys to work with other experts in different fields and the law should be encouraging something like that. And one of the ways you could do that is through these kinds of partnerships with non attorneys. So I think that's something that really needs to change also.

James Pittman: Do reform efforts just arise spontaneously from the grassroots or is there any sort of systematic efforts to sort of address these issues?

Carolyn Elefant: So I've wondered about that. I mean, sometimes you'll have a vendor, like in the case of the trade names, this company HQ law that decided to bring these lawsuits in a couple of key jurisdictions and then the other ones just kind of fell away when the writing on the wall that trade names, banning trade names is unconstitutional became clear. Other times you'll have I mean, there are a lot of attorney groups and working groups that are working on sort of deregulation issues from an access to justice perspective, but it still seems like it's very random, so it's hard to explain why certain ones gain traction. I know that access to justice people are always pushing for deregulation, getting rid of the restrictions on non attorney ownership, and it's happened in Arizona. I mean, it would be interesting to see what the results of having done that are, what kind of effect that's having on access to justice and on different types of legal services that are being offered to people.

James Pittman: Well, going back to the sort of women's issues for a moment, the Lawyer Mom Owner Summit is an intriguing initiative on that topic. Could you tell us more about the summit and how it aims to support lawyer moms and women entrepreneurs in the legal industry?

Carolyn Elefant: So I think the summit is probably going to have been at least the initial summit itself was sort of a one time thing. During the pandemic, it became clear that women lawyers were really struggling, like around September of 2020, after it looked like kids were going to be out of school for yet another year. And so it focused on all aspects of parents. In practice. There is still a Facebook associated with the group. We'll probably try to have smaller events in different cities to just get people together because there are unique issues to being a lawyer and a mom and an owner that there isn't necessarily enough support for throughout the profession. And the issues are very different than the issues that, say, a lawyer working for a big firm might have.

James Pittman: What were some of the issues that drilled down on it a little one.

Carolyn Elefant: Of the issues might be just figuring out challenges with childcare and with other issues where you own your firm. I guess that's similar to working. With a firm but also just flexibility and management and stress issues because you are carrying more on your plate, you're carrying the administration of your firm and maybe managing teams at your firm and you have to deal with that in addition to the practice of law. So just figuring out how to manage those different kinds of stress. But what many women do find when they own their own firm is that the majority of stress that they experience when they're working for somebody else goes away. Because you may be working more hours, but you have more control over the hours, and you're doing the work, all the work that you're putting in in yours to your benefit, not to somebody else's. And so I think that that also helps eliminate some of the dissatisfaction that women find at bigger law firms.

James Pittman: Well personally, I mean, how do you balance your own roles as an attorney, author, advocate and the various things that you do?

Carolyn Elefant: So my children are grown now. It's hard to express how much extra time you have on your hands when your children and when I say grown, I mean they're actually even out of college, they're not even financially dependent on me anymore. When you have that eliminated, you very quickly forget how you were. I know I did all that stuff. I know that I used to get by on 4 hours of sleep and my house was messier than I would have liked it to be. But you kind of forget all of that once you get past that. But I think the thing that's important to realize is that part of your life is going to be very imperfect and very messy for a while and you just have to push through it.

James Pittman: In your own law practice you're focusing on climate change and renewable energy representation. So how do legal professionals play a role in addressing environmental challenges?

Carolyn Elefant: That's a good question. I think that there are a whole bunch of different things you can do. I mean, certainly working remotely, choosing renewable energy suppliers, working with companies that are climate friendly, I mean, choosing brands that are consistent with fighting climate change are all ways that lawyers can do that. The other thing has to do with the kinds of cases you select and the kinds of clients that you represent. There are certain clients that I just wouldn't represent because of some of the impacts that their work has on climate and that's not necessarily something I can recommend that everybody do. And if people don't feel that strongly about their there's also something to be said for working with clients like that and helping to kind of bring them around. But if climate change or if there are certain issues that are really important to you and your clients take different positions, the easiest response is not to represent them. There's enough attorneys out there that everybody is going to find representation. I've been offered positions to switch sides and work for gas companies that take people's property. It's just a hard stop. It's just not something that I do.

James Pittman: Understood.

James Pittman: Well, I want to leverage your experience, though, and related to the bulk of our audience who are immigration lawyers. So immigration law is a very varied field, but in the small and solo areas, most of the small and solo areas are going to be handling family based immigration cases and a lot of the other general sort of immigration types of cases. You're dealing with a relatively high volume of cases with individual clients. It's a federal administrative area practice. I mean, there can be some litigation involved in it, but oftentimes it's going through the federal agencies. So leveraging your experience, what would be your advice given sort of those parameters for people who are trying to start a successful firm in 2023?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, so one of the things is I am a fan of the niche. You don't have to make all your cases in the niche practice, but it does help subsidize the other areas and it also gives you more flexibility. So you don't have to take every case that comes in the door if you know that there are some lucrative cases you can get. I think the other thing is to take advantage of technology and have technology take care of as many of the non human facing activities as it can so that you can devote your time to clients. When I work with landowner clients who are in the middle of eminent domain cases, it's very stressful their property is being taken. They've often never been involved in court cases before and they like me because I will spend time talking them through the process. But it's also because I can have a lot of the preparation for the trial done by staff or even by using technology to put exhibits together and help kind of with the administrative, the more mechanical parts of putting briefs together. So I think that definitely focus on putting systems in place and hiring support staff who can do some of the lower end work for you so that you can focus on the clients. Because that's kind of the unique value that the attorney brings, is actually being able to deal with the clients or talk them through these stressful issues.

James Pittman: What aspects of your own processes have you successfully automated by this point?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, one of the challenges to the practice area that I'm in working with renewable energy companies and landowners impacted by projects, is I practice across the country and there are different processes and different forms and different everything depending on where I practice. So I've tried to come up with ways to automate things and I have certain things automated, I mean, like intake information and listing clients in cases. Or when I'm working on briefs, there's a certain system or certain rules that I follow through. But unfortunately, I don't have the benefit of being automated, being able to just sort of automate a form that people can fill out to file at an agency. Everything is just very unfortunately, somewhat bespoke with a lot of things that I do.

James Pittman: And mentorship, let's talk about that. And guidance are crucial for new lawyers. What's your advice to aspiring legal professionals on finding mentors? And also as a sort of a follow up to that one positive development has been the increasing number of lawyer incubators and also law school clinics have also been, I think, increasing a number over the years. I mean, as far as lawyer incubators, have you taken a look at any of them? Do you have any thoughts on their value and effectiveness?

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah, so there's an interesting lawyer incubator that I can't think of, the name of it's in North Carolina, and it seems to be almost like a private incubator that's run by an attorney and he's gotten sponsorship from different vendors. And I think that's a really unique model. Attorneys who go through incubator systems usually say that they're valuable. The only objection I had had to sort of the very initial models of the incubator is requiring trying to gear people towards serving only low income people. I think that that's really important. But I think the better way to serve lower income clients or pro bono clients is to have a thriving sustainable practice. So again, you can subsidize those cases and keep your firm afloat instead of just focusing on trying to make money off lower paying cases. But I think the incubators are a good idea in terms of mentorship. I saw this really interesting post on LinkedIn by an attorney, I guess she was a younger attorney, maybe in her early thirty s, and she was saying, we don't want mentors, we want people who are going to open the doors. So I think sometimes a mentor can certainly be helpful if somebody has a question about a complicated case and maybe they feel like they made a mistake and they need somebody to help correct it. I mean, I talk to colleagues about that all the time and younger attorneys, but I'm not so sure how much people want mentors as they want introductions or somebody to actually refer them real cases. I mean, those are the kind of things that are going to help you, is when somebody can contribute to your bottom line. And so one of the things that I do with people who are trying to get into the energy space is I will sometimes make introductions to them. But if I'm able to, I'll hire them to work on projects for me because having that on their resume helps them advance to getting a position in the field if that's the direction that they want to go in or gives them more confidence if they decide to take on their own clients.

James Pittman: Networking is really what you're suggesting then, rather than just mentorship networking and building your referral network. So what are some of your tips on those?

Carolyn Elefant: So building a referral network, I think the only way you do it is you have to get out there in some way. It can be a lot of different ways, but you have to interact with people. So it's either going to bar lunches or going to events in your industry. Maybe it's not necessarily not necessarily with other attorneys, but if you're doing work in the technical field, going to things for the technical industry, getting to know people online, participating in online groups like Facebook and just putting information out so that people can see you, and also just volunteering information and know, saying that you're available to take on cases. So you can interact with people either online or offline, but you have to do some kind of outreach. You can't just wait for people to come to you.

James Pittman: Well, certainly, and I think that this bears repeating, is networking outside of the lawyer community I think is super important, especially if you're trying to build a niche practice. I mean, you need to go to the industry events where potential clients are going to be found and where you're going to be able to get out in front of those people, gain their trust, and also get referrals from them. So I think doing a deep dive into events that are in the industries where your clients work or the industries for which you're trying to represent people is super important. It's super important in immigration, too. Whether you're trying to make a specific community or communities your client base, or if you're doing the employment based immigration, you're going to make a niche out of, let's say, representing physicians or representing entertainers or something, you need to go into those industries.

James Pittman: So in terms of some of the platforms that have evolved for do it yourself legal work, Rocket Lawyer and these types of things, what effect do you think those have had? And would you foresee for the ability of those platforms to shape the future of legal services?

Carolyn Elefant: It's an interesting question, especially now, because I feel like with some of the forms that legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer have traditionally put together, I think that now people may have the ability to just draft things themselves with AI tools. I don't know how long those tools are going to be available for free. But the bottom line is I never understood why lawyers objected to those tools because those are the kinds of clients that people didn't want to hire. I mean, it's not worth a lot of most attorneys are going to charge much more for will or a trust than those services will charge, and they don't want to go through the hassle of doing a $20 incorporation. So if you're not going to handle the case, why keep it out of somebody else's hands? And you can argue as much as you want as to how important it is to have your LLC properly put together, your corporation properly put together, all these things. But if people don't have the money, they're not going to spend it. And I feel like it's better for them to have something than nothing. But I think that one of the benefits of technology is I think that lawyers will be able to set up offer similar do it yourself services. I mean, there are some attorneys who do that already. They offer full service corporate work or full service trademark, but they also offer DIY options. And so I think there's like a whole new market for lawyers to explore unbundled services, right, unbundled services that are just done automatically or kind of attorney assisted. Maybe you would pay a flat fee and somebody would fill out an incorporation form. Then an attorney will sit down and review it with them and it can be done for roughly you could probably charge more than like a legal zoom would because you have this attorney assistance that's involved in it, but the client also gets the benefit of personalized services. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for lawyers to win back some of that market they want to. Yeah, I agree.

James Pittman: And I mean, a lot of lawyers are resistant to that type of thing. Like some have a kind of all or nothing mentality. I'm either going to handle every aspect of the case from the initial consultation to the very end, or I don't want any part of it. A lot of them feel that way, but I think for some lawyers in some legal fields, some lawyers, that can be a good way to go with the unbundled services. And I think, depending on the specifics, I think we need to embrace change. I think you can't deny that there's an increased demand, a huge demand for do it yourself legal services. And that's part of, I think, addressing the crisis of the affordability of legal representation. If it truly is an all or nothing proposition, then there are a lot of segments of society which cannot afford to have legal work done. But by unbundling the services, by utilizing some of these do it yourself platforms, either on their own or in conjunction with some attorney assistance, that can be a very important part of addressing this crisis that we have in access to justice.

Carolyn Elefant: Do you agree with me? Yeah. No, I definitely agree. And I mean, sometimes you need to at least get a case started if you want to eventually change the law. A lot of clients who come to me who have a pipeline in their backyard or even, like, a rate that they want to challenge. I can coach them through some of the initial parts of the process and get them as far as they can go, and then they might be able to come up with money to do an appeal down the line. Just because you help somebody with their legal problems doesn't mean they're not eventually going to have need for an attorney. But, yeah, no, I think we definitely have to be creative and come up with different business models to make law more affordable. And you see it happening in the medical profession, I know it's very different because there's insurance, but there are some doctors who offer concierge service for people who want more personalized service. But you also have, at least where I live, and there must be like five different walk in clinics where you can just walk in and get a physical or get a shot. You can have blood work done. The doctors who are practiced there are all licensed, and they have their reasons for working there, but it just makes health care much more affordable. Even if you have to pay out of pocket, it's not very expensive.

James Pittman: That's right. There are urgent centers or urgent clinics. Call them. And with some of the labs now, you can go onto the website, and if you know what tests you need, you can go order your own tests. You don't have to, and they can do it, and you can send the.

Carolyn Elefant: Results to your doctor.

James Pittman: Carolyn, for yourself, though, it's important for all practicing attorneys to stay up to date on legal trends and developments in the areas that they're practicing in. So what steps do you, Carolyn, take to stay updated on legal trends and developments in your area of expertise?

Carolyn Elefant: So in my practice area, one of the things that I do, which both benefits me but is also marketing, is at the end of the year, I do an annual report on all of the appeals of the agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, that go up to the federal court. So it's usually very managed. It's not going to work if there's like 8000 cases, but usually it's anywhere from 20 to 50 cases. So it doesn't take me more than like a day or two to do the summaries. And then I'll do a webinar for people in my industry on those issues. And so it keeps me up to date because I read every single appeal. So I get a whole picture of all of the different legal issues that have generated from the agency, and then I also get the benefit of taking that expertise and showing it to other people so other people see that I'm current, so they might hire me to do their appeal or to work on a particular case. So that's one of the biggest things that I do. And I'll try to show up at a conference or listen to webinars on trending issues, stay up to date. There's like an energy Twitter list that's kind of an annotation of different events. People will post different news stories that are coming out of their state. So my field, I'm sure, like in immigration law, there's just like a million cases and new law being made all the time and energy. It's the same, especially as we move towards electrification, and more focus is being put on climate change. So that's usually how I stay up to date.

James Pittman: Carolyn, we're getting close to the end of the hour, but could you offer some advice to lawyers who are considering starting their own firms in 2023? So what are some of the key elements to keep in mind for a successful journey? Just give me your short list.

Carolyn Elefant: So I think, first of all, the thing you should do is just start. I wouldn't worry about getting a fancy website together, putting all your systems in place. I think you just need to get out there and start and let people know that you've started. It's very hard for people to hire you. In theory. If you tell people, I'm thinking about starting a firm, I might start a firm. You're not in business, so they're not necessarily going to hire you. So I think the most important piece of advice I can give you is to just start bringing in clients, start generating revenue, and then you can use that to build your website, hire people, put your systems in place. And the second thing is that it's not a solo practice. Starting a firm is not an all or nothing proposition. If you are intrigued by the idea, it's just like if you're working at a job and you don't like it, you don't think, oh, I'm not going to change jobs because this next job is, I'm going to be in it for the rest of my life. But when people start firms, it's almost like they feel like they're making a life decision. Start the firm. If it doesn't work out for a year or two, you're going to have more experience, you're going to have a book of business, you're going to have more confidence. It can take you to other places. It's not a forever proposition, and you shouldn't think of it that way. And the third thing is, there's no stigma to starting a part time practice if you need to keep your day job. I mean, if you're working at a firm, it would be challenging. But if you're working in, like, a legal adjacent job or doing something, maybe teaching at a law school and you want to start a practice, start it on the side. You don't have to cast away all your other sources of revenue to get started. Start it slowly, and if it looks like it's something you enjoy and you want to go further with it, go ahead and do it. But I think lawyers just get too caught up in the analysis paralysis, as if it's going to be a permanent decision. They'll be locked into solo practice. I was going to say that, and.

James Pittman: That'S very important because I think in the past, though it was much in the past, it was somewhat true. It was much more true that, you know, if you're in an established firm and you left to go start your own practice, I think in the past, that was a one way street. I don't think you could easily have come back to the firm world because they had at least some of the bigger firms had a relatively lockstep system of yeah, that's true. What year of associate you're in, and once you jump off that scaffold, you get out of sync and you can't really come back. I think that's really changed as the variety of types of positions that lawyers can fill has broadened. Would you agree with me that even if you did start your own firm, you did it let's say you did it for several years, you can return nowadays to another type of practice situation? I think the opportunities to do that are much more than they ever were before.

Carolyn Elefant: Yeah. No. And if you looked on LinkedIn, you'll often see people who are assistant general counsels at corporations who had their own firm for a couple of years and presumably were maybe doing outside work for that company, and then they brought them in house. Or you see situations where people are of counsel at a law firm who were running their own firm for a while. So you see it very frequently at a lot of different levels.

James Pittman: Absolutely. Well, Carolyn, it's been a fascinating discussion, and you're certainly a remarkable source of information about the solo and small firm world. I would advise everybody to take a look@myshingle.com and familiarize yourself with the platform of Carolyn Elephant.

James Pittman: Carolyn, anything else for our audience before we close the episode?

Carolyn Elefant: No, just thank you so much for this opportunity to be on your podcast.

James Pittman: It's my pleasure. Pleasure. And thank you again.

‍