For as long as I can remember, the goal of those nerds who would rather sleep in the library than throw back a beer bong with their “study” group was a signing bonus at Biglaw, the surest path to wealth and prestige the law had to offer.  But the massive associate and even partner layoffs, collapses of firms whose namesakes had died more than century ago, have changed all this overnight.  As Bob Ambrogi wrote at Legal Blog Watch, Solo is the New Soho.

If solo practice was a neighborhood, trendy restaurants would be opening next to long-established pizza parlors and coffee shops. A small art gallery would be setting up shop next to the old corner bar. Apartment buildings would be turning into co-ops and young urban professionals would be snapping them up. As big firms slice jobs, solo is suddenly hip, it seems.

Suddenly, solos are cool and happening.  Not so much because we’re cutting edge, but as we’re Plan B and Plan A just failed.  So those whose efforts at Biglaw prominence were unceremoniously thwarted need to come up with some philosophical justification for doing what losers do, go solo, while making it appear that they aren’t the stone rejects of the profession.  Whatever makes them sleep better at night.

With timing that couldn’t be better, Susan Cartier Leibel has announced that her baby, Solo Practice University, will open its virtual doors on March 20.  If ever there was a gap that needed filling, this was it.  Susan was pushing the solo practice envelope long before it became hip to do so, but is now positioned to be the solo practice messiah to all the Biglaw Philistines who need to find something to occupy their hands rather than sit home grasping the Wii controller and nunchuck.

The question remains, in light of this unanticipated turn of events, whether Susan’s brainchild will do the trick.  During the time since SPU was hatched and now, Susan has grown displeased with me.  She got angry with me when I was mean to one of her marketing buddies.  Even more so when I failed to show blind support of the hype behind SPU.  I went from being the first Professor at SPU to the first former Professor.  After that, Susan started to ignore me, even “unfollowing me on twitter.  I was now the enemy.

But that doesn’t mean that I harbor any anger toward Susan and SPU.  To the contrary, it has the potential to offer something that can not be found anywhere else, and it comes at a time when it is needed more than ever.  Rather than see myself as its critic, I see myself as its conscience.  On the verge of the solo explosion, will Solo Practice University be ground zero for a new breed of competent, passionate and excellent solo practitioners, or the gutter of sleazy lawyer marketing?

There is an extremely disturbing aspect that smacks one in the face at SPU.  The majority of the faculty consists of legal marketers.  Not merely legal marketers, but legal marketers who earn their keep selling to young lawyers desperate for financial success.  Like the sort of lawyers who might be inclined to become the students of SPU.  What lessons do these legal marketers plan to teach?

Not everyone on the faculty fits into this category, and there are some, like Carolyn Elefant and Jay Foonberg, who have dedicated great effort in the nuts and bolts of solo practice management.  To sit at their knee and learn what it takes to open and operate a solo law practice is worth the price of admission.  But will they be enough to counteract the far heavier weight of hucksters and salesmen masquerading as the solo practitioner’s best friend and savior?

The other side of SPU was intended to work on the substantive practice areas where solos plan to focus.  For the newbie lawyer and Biglaw emigre alike, committing malpractice out of the box is hardly a good way to make a name for themselves,  SPU has had significant difficulty in some substantive areas, with few on the faculty equipped to work the substantive end of the law.  Some have been hyped with a string of alluring adjectives to cover the scent of a turd beneath.  Some of the faculty would do far better to enroll as students themselves, yet they are puffed as experts in some amorphous way. 

Some are just “friends” and, frankly, have little to offer, whether because they have yet to learn how to be a solo practitioner themselves or have never attained any reasonable degree of success that would enable them to pass anything of value along.  Being an SPU faculty member is just another way to market themselves, as they must be worthy because Susan has made them an SPU Professor.  Just a tad circular, but logical reasoning isn’t the cornerstone of marketing.

This can be worse, than unhelpful, bordering on the dangerous by pushing the enthusiastic solo wannabe down the wrong road.  Attributed credibility is not a substitute for competence.

So it’s with a mix of both hope and trepidation that I watch as Solo Practice University greets its inaugural class.  Will it teach students that the only thing a solo practitioner needs to do is market the crap out of themselves, hype, hype, hype (and it wouldn’t hurt to retain the services of their professor to show them they way)?  Is solo practice only about getting clients, and puffing one’s virtues unmercifully to do so? 

Unfortunately, many believe exactly that. Who cares if they know what to do with the client once they get him to call.  Who cares if they haven’t the slightest clue how to go about the representation of a real client in a real court of law.  Who cares if the sum total of the lawyers skill set is the ability to promote themselves on a website or blawg.  I care.  Your client will care.  Your malpractice carrier will care.  The disciplinary committee will care.

This is not only a crossroads for new lawyers who want a different life than Biglaw had to offer, and Biglaw refugees who see no future sitting in a law library for a couple hundred grand a year.  This is a crossroads for Susan Cartier Leibel, her dream of Solo Practice University about to come true and a test of whether it will fulfill the purpose ascribed or be shown up as Solo Marketing University, a one-stop informercial for a handful of legal marketers who want to feed off the bones of desperate lawyers sucked in by the promise of going solo. 

As long as Susan remembers that being a lawyer is more than marketing, hype and self-promotion, SPU can serve a vital purpose to potential solo practitioners.  This won’t be done with adjectives and hyperbole, but a real focus on the practice of law rather than the marketing of lawyers.  I hope Susan is listening, even though she doesn’t like me anymore, and I hope SPU fills the gap.