Susan Cartier Liebel at  Build a Solo Practice has been kind enough to do the math for us:

                               2001                                      2008

Home Heating Oil $ 1,000                                   $ 4,790

Gas                      $ 2,600                                   $ 5,200 

Food                    $ 6,240                                  $ 10,400

Electric                $    600                                  $  1,080

RE Taxes            $  4,200                                  $  6,600

TOTAL                $14,640                                  $ 28,010 

Notice anything?  The net result is almost a doubling of costs to survive, yet it is reasonably safe to say that the difference is not being used to make sure that lawyers are able to timely pay their bills.  Where is it going?  Iraq and Saudi Arabia, perhaps (albeit for different reasons)?  Maybe China and India?  It doesn’t matter for the purpose of this post.  What does matter is that it’s not going to lawyers.

Susan asks the hard question.

The reason I bring this up is to show you while you may be squeezed as a solo practitioner, raising your prices is not necessarily going to be the answer to covering your bills.  Your clients, if you deal with individuals, are going to be looking at their non-negotiable expenses, too, and deeply distressed.  Their discretionary income is evaporating as well.

This begs the question:  How will you be coping with your potential clients loss of discretionary income and their increasing inability to pay you for your services?

While her question is directed at new and fairly new solo practitioners, escaping from the oppression of Biglaw and finding bliss in their control over their own destinies, it applies with equal, if not greater relevance to private criminal defense lawyers. 

While this bodes poorly for public defenders, who will be expected to pick up the flotsam and jetsam of debt and poverty as the police haul them in, but will enjoy no commensurate benefit with the increase of their caseload, it bodes even worse for the private bar.  Without a paycheck every other Friday, we depend on our clients having a certain amount of disposable income.  Without it, our creditors begin to frown at us.

For anyone thinking that I have an easy answer to this question, you’re going to be disappointed.  There is no easy solution for getting blood from a rock.  While we aren’t responsible for creating the situation that demands the payment of a legal fee, most of us feel quite badly when clients are forced into extreme situations to pay the tab.  Not necessarily bad enough to represent defendants for free, but we try very hard to not cause our clients needless pain.

Susan has put together a list of things to do to help our practices through these more difficult financial times. 

• Analyze your overhead; and
• Your (in)effective use of technology; and
• delegation of less profitable tasks;
• See if there is any opportunity to decrease your overhead while increasing your productivity; and
• Look at your pricing structure to see if you can improve upon fees, payment terms and payment options.

To some extent, they require a bit of thinking outside the box, as so many criminal defense lawyers are resistant to change.  But these are practical, doable adjustments that will help us to maintain fiscal stability in a declining market.  Remember, a penny saved is a penny earned.  And you can’t earn a penny if you have no business.