Lynda ArtesaniLegal Accountant and Data Migration Specialist at The Proper Trust

How many hats are you wearing in your law business?

9 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker reflects on her journey from the demanding environment of big law—working weekends, sleeping at the office, and eating meals there—to running a solo practice she loves. She highlights a common challenge for solo and small‑firm attorneys: wearing too many “hats,” meaning they handle every aspect of the business, from legal work to business development and administrative duties. The speaker explains that her firm’s primary goal when working with solo practitioners is to assess how many hats the attorney is wearing and to systematically remove or delegate the non‑legal “bookend” tasks—such as intake, conflict checks, and file opening—so the lawyer can avoid overwhelm and focus on core legal work.

Chapters

I'd started in big law and I'd done the weekends, the sleeping at the office, the eating 3 meals a day at the office. I'd done all of that. And I was running a solo practice, which I loved. But at the same time, I was wearing all the hats, which is the problem that we see in all of the small law firms that we start to work with. Our main goal when we start to work with a solo practitioner is to figure out how many hats she's wearing and how many we can get her to take off. And they have to do that. Otherwise, you're in that overwhelm, you're in that grind where you're doing all the business development, you're doing all the business and administrative stuff that's kind of on what Dave and I call the bookends of your practice. So everything about sort of business development and intake and conflicts and opening the file, and then you do the legal work, and then you've got all the bookends at the other end.