When I posted about Bob Ambrogi’s “Solo Is the New Soho,” I failed to note the significance of a curious paragraph thrown in the middle. Fortunately, Miami’s best criminal defense lawyer, Brian Tannebaum, caught it, proving yet again that even blind squirrels can survive.
Bob picked up on this quote from Ross Kodner :
Technology consultant Ross Kodner has come up with a name for this new breed of large-firm refugees who start their own firms — the BigSolo. “These folks aren’t ordinary solo practitioners in the way we’ve come to think of the category … BigSolos have pinnacle level substantive knowledge in their single chosen practice area,” Kodner says.
When I read this passage the first time, I understood it to mean that former Biglaw associates tended to have an in-depth knowledge of minute points of law, having spent inordinate amounts of time researching and writing memos on pinpoint, perhaps even arcane, issues of law. This did not strike me as a good thing to promote, reflecting their lack of sufficient breadth to actually handle the representation of anybody competently from start to finish. It wasn’t that they weren’t necessarily smart, but that their experience was, if I can put this kindly, extremely limited.
This paragraph, much to my surprise, turned out to be quite controversial, based upon the comments left at Legal Blog Watch. Aside from the obligatory thanks from Susan Cartier Leibel (Esq., as she included) for a post that promotes her new baby, there were some angry substantive comments that challenged Ross’ statement.
Ross explained that his quote was taken out of context from his post at TechnoLawyer.
At a minimum, it’s critical to finish the thought you posted – where I said that while a BigSolo might have “pinnacle” level substantive knowledge, most have little or no knowledge of running a law practice as a business. And to address one of the commenters, I did NOT mean to imply that ALL BigSolos have “pinnacle level knowledge.” The ones I’ve worked with do seem to be at that level, however.
Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He might as well have said that while former Biglaw associates are much better lawyers, solos know the best stores to shop for bargains. This explanation did not help matters any.
Ambrogi jumped back into the fray to explain that his understanding of Ross’ quote was similar to mine, though he adds some spin to the end to try to bridge the gap and bring peace to the valley:
Interestingly, I read the now-controversial quote quite differently. I thought that Ross’s point was that big-firm lawyers who turn solo tend to be highly specialized in a narrow area of law. By contrast, many long-time solos are either generalists or have much broader skill sets. I did not read Ross’s comment to be a slight towards either these nouveau solos or towards more established solos. Rather, it was simply an observation. He gives the example of a big-firm refugee who has one specialty – securities litigation. He contrasts her to other solos who have more general practices. Ultimately, Ross’s point is that these BigSolos lack many of the management and technology skills that longer-term solos learned over time.
It strikes me as obvious that no Biglaw emigre will step out with the management skills needed to run a viable solo practice, but that’s damning with faint praise. It’s not brain surgery, and if business management skills are the best one can say about solo practitioners, then we are the Bruno Magli’s of the legal world. That’s total baloney, and Tannebaum (as well as Bennett and Mike) is quite right to take issue.
While true that many solos, particularly those who operate in areas without 179 lawyers per square mile, maintain a general practice. It’s also true that many solos are highly specialized. The assumption that a solo practitioner’s knowledge of law merely skims the surface, while Biglaw has depth and breadth, however, is ridiculously misguided. Indeed, the solo is compelled to be smarter, know more, work harder than the Biglaw lawyer because he has a far greater need to prevail (survival) and lacks the diffusion of responsibility that Biglaw enjoys. To be blunt, the successful solo must be a better lawyer. That he’s a better businessman may be true, but isn’t nearly enough.
This doesn’t mean that former Biglaw associates can’t or won’t become great solo practitioners. Some have in the past, and no doubt some will in the future. Not all, but some. But the attribution of some cute name, like BigSolos, together with the grossly erroneous assumption that they possess some “pinnacle level of substantive knowledge,” if that’s to be defined as greater or better knowledge of the law than solo practitioners possess, bears the stink of some new-fangled marketing effort. It gives rise to an image of a legal marketer getting down on his knees and sucking for all he’s worth, hoping to snare some of that Biglaw severance pay by telling the laid-off losers that they aren’t the turds everyone thinks they are. Are they really that stupid that they’ll buy this crap? If so, then they are in far deeper trouble than anyone realizes.
Let’s not start yet another class of warfare within the ranks of established solos and the latest marks of the legal marketers. Biglaw emigres come out of the library lacking the legal knowledge demanded of the successful solo practitioner. If this is what Ross means by “pinnacle”, as pin-sized scope of legal knowledge, then we have no issue here. But if Ross is trying to claim that lawyers who have successfully litigated against Biglaw for years, for decades and prevailed, somehow lack the legal acumen that a former second year associate who can’t find his way to the courthouse without map, he’s dead wrong.
As for business management skills, there’s another lesson to be learned. These same solos are not merely better lawyers than their Biglaw counterparts, but can provide legal representation at a fraction of the cost, as they don’t have to split the receivables with a gaggle of associates who add nothing to the case and are going to school on the client’s dime. There’s a cost to the marble reception rooms and redwells with gold-leaf monograms on them. No client ever won a case because of the reception room. Learn how to win cases and you’ll most assuredly get more clients than the guy with the fancy redwells.
So is there a need for a new name for former Biglaw associates who now find themselves constrained to hang out their own shingle? Sure. How about rookie solos, struggling to learn how to be good lawyers capable of deserving the right to represent people in their own solo practice. Let’s not try to pretend that they bring something special to the mix, no matter how much legal marketers want to capture their business.
And let’s not demean the solo practitioners who have been there and done that long before the phrasemakers focused in on their new targets. It’s nonsense and the rest of us are not inclined to put up with it.
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Biglaw associates know how to do the tasks delegated to them by biglaw partners in a manner that pleases the partner. As for substantive knowledge, there’s no reason they would have more than anyone else, as anyone can go out and acquire substantive knowledge. Most likely, they lack big picture knowledge about how to handle a case since they generally, at least at first, only handle discrete assignments.
Rarely would the Biglaw associate handle all aspects of any case. Rarely would the Biglaw associate handle all aspects of a variety of cases within a given practice area. Rarely would the Biglaw associate handle all aspects of a case within a practice area that would be of value to him as a solo practitioner, even if he attempted to remain within the same practice area as Biglaw. Rarely would the Biglaw associate possess a usable knowledge of the law sufficient to represent any client.
But the Biglaw associate can learn all of these things, just like every other successful solo practitioner. It’s just that the experience in Biglaw adds little of value to the ability to be an effective solo practitioner, and efforts to market to these former Biglaw associates by blowing smoke up their butts doesn’t change that.
When I was a p.d. a large firm “donated” one of their top of the class associates as a prosecutor in domestic violence cases. When he appeared at photo ops with elected officials I wondered if any press would ask about his trial record which was consistent, zero for five. He had one set of skills and they didn’t translate to the courtroom.
Biglaw v.s. Solo, Biglaw v.s. Solo, Biglaw v.s. Solo…isn’t there any such thing as Mediumlaw? Are you stretching the definitions so that a handful of lawers is solo and a large handful is Biglaw? Or is the lawyering trade only viable at those two extremes?
A very astute point, my dear Windy. As with most things in life (aside from Jdog’s tactical underwear), there is a spectrum raning from the solo on one end to Biglaw on the other, with all numbers and variations in between. Whether small or medium size firm generally has more to do with their market than anything else. A small firm in NY is a large firm in Oshkosh. But it becomes far harder to characterize, as small and medium sized firms don’t always have the luxury of hiring useless children to train, and so require real lawyers capable of producing real work. Some are more like Biglaw, while others expect every lawyer in the shop to pull their weight, making them much harder to pigeonhole.
But yes, they exist in every conceivable permutation.
“The Pinochle of Substantive Knowledge.” Isn’t that a game? You meant to write “Pinnacle,” but perhaps had a Fruedian moment.
Nope. Pinochle was exactly what I meant. And yes, it is a game. Not a freudian in the bunch.
Scott is way too Jung for that kind of mistake, I am sure. 😉