ABA Journal - February 2010

confront and deal with those downsides, the potential for self-fulfillment is high.

R. Nicholas Burton Decatur, Ill.

ONE THING NOT STRESSED ENOUGH IN THIS ARTICLE? The need for capital. As one attorney says, “I am living off my savings.” I cannot stress enough how important it is to have money to begin with; if you’re trying this on a shoestring, your stress will be off the charts. Nothing is more stressful than a $150 phone bill and $1,000 rent when you only have $800 in the account.

Plan better, you say? Sure, you can criticize. But clients don’t pay timely, and sometimes not at all. You may find it’s not so easy to cut and run, and avoid losses too. And at first your estimates of what you’ll need in way of a retainer will be awful— often too low, rarely too high.

Then there’s the recommendation of other work, such as being a contract attorney or temp. Problem is, if you’re not out there marketing yourself, there will be no income once the assignment ends. This is a common solo problem: You’re busy, so you have no time to market; but then when you’re not busy, you have no clients.

Sure there are solos who make big dollars (see the ABA Journal from April 2007 for “The Secrets of Million-Dollar Solos”). But many of them either came from a firm where they’d developed clients they took with, or had the good fortune to get some high-profile work that helped bring in more (often through connections nurtured over the years).

Oh, and myself and many solos I know have seen a serious drop-off in business over the last year, as small businesses and individuals avoid “expensive” lawyers. So there’s that to deal with as well.

Greg Zbylut Chicago

sidiary’s assets may be used to cover the debts of
another entity within the company. Kelly’s quote
on page 57 should read: “Income from one property
can be used to fund the operations of another prop-
erty because the secured creditors were adequately
protected.”
The ABA Journal regrets the error.