Spend any amount of time researching the question on the internet, and you’re likely to think that anybody who doesn’t start their own firm is out of their mind.  Every lawyer with a freshly painted shingle touts how great it is, how great they’re doing, and they’ve discovered the good life. 

Sure, they’re not bringing down partner shares, but it’s positive and upbeat, plus they can spend half their day in Starbucks and the other half on the internet writing “winning” on every available social media platform, especially those dedicated to teaching, for a reasonable fee, how to market a new practice.  And then comes the New York Times.

Five and a half years ago, after spending years as commercial litigation lawyers at Proskauer Rose in New York City, Sari Gabay-Rafiy and Anne Marie Bowler decided to strike out on their own. They started Gabay-Rafiy & Bowler more as a lifestyle choice than a money-making venture. The first year in business, Ms. Gabay-Rafiy said, she made “just enough to pay the babysitter.”

And this is a success. They were making money, rather than losing.  According to the story, they learned to work lean and mean, and were able to increase their income to the point where they exceed what they were earning at Proskauer.  Whether that’s true can’t be determined, but reading a  randomly selected story from their “in the news” section of their websites suggested that the most newsworthy thing about the firm was its ability to show empathy in poverty. This isn’t exactly Proskauer’s slogan.  The problem is that every lawyer wants to make it look like their a player in the media, so anytime their name is mention, they make a big deal of it and stick it on the websites.  And hope no one clicks on the link.

The article is positive, but disinclined to puff the common lies being told.

Starting a law firm presents many challenges, especially for associates who have not had much experience running a firm. Michael Yim, Jane Chuang and a third lawyer, all former law school classmates, decided to start a firm in Manhattan last year, taking one large client with them. Three months later that client dropped them, taking 75 percent of the fledging firm’s revenue. Mr. Yim and Ms. Chuang’s third partner could not stomach the loss, and the relationship among the three became tense. He soon left, but Mr. Yim and Ms. Chuang soldiered on. “We started from scratch again, taking a long-term view of profit generation,” Mr. Yim said.

The firm became Yim & Chuang and now, a year later, business is better than Mr. Yim had projected, although marketing has been difficult. “There aren’t a lot of people who know about us yet,” he said. Still, he and Ms. Chuang decided not to take work they could not handle or simply did not want, even when it was tempting. “You can get this sense of desperation where you’ll take any paying client that walks through the door,” Mr. Yim said. “We’ve learned the best clients are people we would socialize with, because the relationship is comfortable, there is trust and it’s far more productive.”

There’s nothing like having a practice dependent on one client, then losing the client. And your third partner when they figure out there’s no money coming in the door.  Not good. As this firm at least has a working website, it was possible to see what they do, though notably their attorney profiles omit the single most significant bit of information that I look for, their year of admission or graduation, suggesting that they’re inexperienced and trying to conceal it from potential clients.  Welcome to the internet business model, 2.0. 

And what of alternative models, the forward-thinking panacea according to some?

In 2007 Joel Kauth and two of his colleagues left Christie Parker Hale in Irvine, Calif., to start Kauth, Pomeroy, Peck & Bailey with Kent Pomeroy, a lawyer and accountant. Mr. Kauth and his former Christie colleagues did not like the traditional billable-hours structure, so they decided to give clients a flat rate for services. “Clients love us because we give them predictability,” Mr. Kauth said. “It’s not some billable black hole.”

The billing system has been profitable for the firm because its partners have enough experience to estimate their time, and they give specific prices for particular tasks. Still, once in a while, Mr. Kauth said, “if the court is being difficult or opposing counsel is crazy, the cost goes up and we just have to eat it.”

“Eat it” is a nice way of saying that you just took a hit that sucks all the profit out of a case. Bummer.

This isn’t intended to suggest that solo or small firm practice is in any way less competent or professional than Biglaw, and those who do are little more than pompous fools trying to rationalize their miserable life by denigrating others. But it is meant to say that this isn’t easy, and hardly any guarantee of wealth and prestige. 

Given the lack of jobs, many are left with no choice but to hang out their own shingle. That puts them in competition with the thousands of similarly situated lawyers, most of whom hand out business cards everywhere they go, only to have the recipients toss them in the garbage at their earliest opportunity.  Those who are sold on the marketing lies, paid for out of the Starbucks budget, hope to overcome their very real deficits, like inexperience, with some very desperate clients with enough cash on hand to cover the nut. 

Over the years, I’ve addressed the ups and downs of many aspects of solo and small firm practice here, and there are ups and there are downs.  Yet the din of liars telling every lawyer, brand new fresh faced kids and wizened veterans of Biglaw layoffs, that everybody who hangs out a shingle can count on a new BMW and dinner with the family every night continues to drown out the realities.  It’s hard work. It takes years to turn a practice profitable, and some never get there because they aren’t good enough.  You have to be pretty tough to sit in your office day after day staring at a silent telephone.

And no, creating a website and blog about how spectacularly fabulous you are, even though it’s made of outrageous lies, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to pay the rent.  You’re just one of many pathetic liars on the internet, trying to scam the same clients as the rest of your classmates.  And those clients, when they do call, are often just trying to scam you.  No, this isn’t an easy life.  No, there is no assurance that you will ever be able to afford a mocha frappucino.  And no, there is no magic bullet that will make it any easier or better.

Some will succeed, and create a great practice consistent with the lifestyle they seek.  Chances are it won’t be you.  And if it’s not, you just have to eat it.