Imagine a legal career where you can build more personal relationships with clients and take complete control of each stage of a case. Becoming a solo practitioner can make this vision a reality, but this path also comes with its own demands.
When you start a solo law practice, you can easily find yourself switching gears between legal work, client communication, and financial management within a few hours. This delicate balancing act is challenging, but can be rewarding with the right strategies.
This guide covers considerations before starting a practice, steps to become a solo practitioner, and the benefits of using powerful software to start your firm.
What Key Factors Can Lawyers Consider Before Starting a Solo Practice?
Lawyers starting a solo practice can consider factors like their financial preparedness, personal resilience, and goals to determine if it’s the right fit for them.
Some lawyers may thrive in controlling all aspects of their business, but it may not be the right fit for those who wish to stick strictly to legal work. It can also become emotionally and mentally draining to take on the sole responsibility of a business. We’ll go over these considerations in more depth below.
Financial Feasibility and Goals
Before starting a firm, ask yourself, “Do I have enough capital to cover my initial costs?” To answer this, you’ll first start by calculating the cost of starting a firm.
Law firm startup costs can greatly vary between states and practice areas. Initial expenses can include costs for location, insurance, and software. In addition to the firm's initial expenditures, it’s helpful to also calculate personal expenses. Accounting for living costs can help ensure you have enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle while your business gets off the ground.
Collect information for the following areas to get a better idea of your financial situation:
Projected initial startup costs
Estimated monthly ongoing costs
Estimated monthly personal expenses
Current income
Sources for startup capital, including personal savings, investments, and loans
With these numbers, you can calculate roughly how much you’ll need to begin your business, grow operations, and sustain your lifestyle. As a simplified example, let’s say it costs $8,000 to start your law firm and $5,000 monthly to maintain operations. In addition, let's say your monthly personal expenses are $6,000 per month.
Knowing that you need to make $19,000 for the first month and $11,000 minimum each month moving forward, you can start estimating how much you may need to charge for services, how many clients you may need to hire, and how many hours you may need to work.
Ability to Manage Business and Administrative Needs
You might have assisted with intake or invoices before, but managing a law firm’s full set of administrative needs can be demanding. This can include tasks like:
Client intake
Lead generation and management
Software maintenance
Vendor management
Office management
Records and file management
Invoice generation
Accounting
Payments
Marketing
Financial management
If you don’t have prior experience, you may also spend extra time learning as you go when completing these non-billable tasks. Certain workflows also require much more time and attention to detail than others. For example, managing trust accounts requires up-to-date records at all times to see exactly how you’ve used client funds.
Consider whether you’re willing and able to take on these additional tasks to run your firm, and have the capacity to use software to streamline these demands. Although you can potentially hire help in the future, you’ll likely need to manage most or all of these tasks by yourself when you start.
Self-Discipline and Resourcefulness
Starting and running a law firm will test your time management and problem-solving skills. It will be up to you alone to assist all of your clients, stay up to date with changes in the law, and balance your books.
Below are a few questions you can ask yourself to see how prepared you are to tackle entrepreneurship alone:
Can I build a system to effectively manage my billable, non-billable, and non-work tasks, even when no one is present to hold me accountable?
Can I prioritize tasks and meet deadlines?
Can I stay focused for long periods by myself?
Can I hold myself accountable for staying up to date with changes in the law, local Bar Association requirements, continuing legal education requirements, and other evolving information in the legal field and my practice area?
Can I keep up with emerging legal technology to streamline tasks without sacrificing the quality of my work?
However, going solo also doesn’t mean you can’t reach out for help. Establishing a strong network can help you stay connected with other professionals who can share advice, support, and referrals.
Stress Management
According to Bloomberg Law’s 2024 Attorney Well-Being Report, more than 56% of lawyers experienced disrupted sleep, and another 55% experienced anxiety in the past year. This stress may be even greater for solo lawyers who need to juggle the demands of a business with the needs of their clients.
Before beginning this journey, it’s helpful to honestly consider whether the added stress is worth the benefits of running a firm. You can create a simple list of pros and cons to help you visualize and weigh your options.
If you’re confident about going solo, you can start thinking about proactive ways to manage stress. This can include improving your well-being, like prioritizing a full night’s sleep, or improving your firm’s processes to remove unnecessary frustrations from your day.
Using solutions like MyCase’s workflow automations can take tedious work off your plate, give you more time to complete impactful work, and help you get out the door faster to disconnect from the job.
Work Life Balance
Many lawyers work more than 40 hours a week to meet deadlines and complete necessary legal work for their clients. According to the World Health Organization, working excessive hours can potentially lead to burnout, a syndrome accompanied by exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism toward a job, and reduced ability to perform the job.
Setting boundaries can help you prioritize your personal time while continuing the momentum for your firm. For example, you can establish firm working hours for client communication (excluding emergencies) and set expectations with clients early to avoid unrealistic deadlines and requests. Improving efficiency can also contribute to a healthier work-life balance, such as scheduling the most important tasks when you’re most productive.
Alignment With Long-Term Personal Goals
One of the most important considerations is whether this potential business aligns with your long-term goals. For example, are you excited about owning your own business or simply looking for a work environment different from your current firm?
Your personal lifestyle goals are just as important as your career goals. Do you wish to start a family soon? If so, can you balance the demands of a growing family alongside the needs of a growing law firm?
How to Start a Solo Law Practice
Starting a law firm requires ample preparation to identify the right audience, practice area, and workflows that fit your work style and goals. We’ll go over each step of the process below.
Step 1: Choose a Name, Complete Required Forms, and Open Financial Accounts
Select a business name that you’ll use to complete business forms, open accounts, and promote yourself both on and offline. Once you finalize the name, you can begin to take formal steps to legally establish your business. These steps can include:
Forming a business entity and getting an employer identification number (EIN) (if needed)
Opening necessary bank accounts, like separate operating and trust accounts
Creating a business phone number, email, and website with your information
Getting relevant insurance (malpractice, errors and omissions, cyber liability, etc.)
Following any other requirement by your local jurisdiction and local bar association
Step 2: Select a Practice Area and Research Competition
The best practice areas for solo attorneys offer consistent demand without overwhelming their limited time and resources. For example, bankruptcy law can be a fit since the process is predictable and mostly takes place outside of the courthouse. Solo lawyers can also more easily provide personalized services to bankruptcy clients that larger firms may struggle to provide.
The surrounding competition (or lack thereof) may also influence your practice area and specific legal services. You can ask yourself questions like:
What services do local competitors offer?
How much do they charge?
What do their customers like and dislike about their services?
What unique services can I offer?
You can use this information to determine whether there’s enough demand for specific practice areas or services and whether you can fill any gaps that your competitors aren’t addressing.
Step 3: Set Financial and Business Goals
Select a year-end goal to work backwards from to start fleshing out financial goals. For example, if you currently make $150,000 annually and wish to make this much minimum in your first year, then you can set a goal to make $12,500 per month.
To accomplish this year-end goal, you may need to set smaller milestones that are driven from specific law firm financial metrics. These metrics can include:
Realization rate: Comparing the amount billed to clients vs. the amount collected
Utilization rate: Comparing billable hours worked vs. total hours worked
ROI on client acquisition costs: Comparing the total spend per client to the total number of clients earned
In addition to monitoring goals, it’s also helpful to anticipate common challenges to proactively plan accordingly. For example, 68% of law firms cited fee collection as a major challenge according to our 2025 Legal Industry Report. Knowing this, you will likely need to set aside money for a business emergency fund each month to prepare for potential cash flow challenges. You can also discuss payment options and set billing expectations upfront with clients to help minimize confusion, questions, and delays later on.
Step 4: Calculate Initial Costs and Monthly Budget
To begin estimating the cost to start a law firm, create a list of each expense and categorize them based on payment frequency (e.g., one-time, monthly, annually, etc.). Then, lay out these expenses for each month to calculate total projected costs.
Startup expenses in the first few months typically include several one-time expenditures like filing fees and office space deposits. Minimizing early expenses can help reduce startup costs and potentially lower ongoing costs. For example, you can use digital forms and e-signature tools to avoid the cost of paper, printing, and postage.
Step 5: Decide Where You’ll Work
As a solo lawyer, you have the flexibility to work from home, work remotely in co-working and similar spaces, or rent a formal office space. Below is a quick overview of the pros and cons of each option to help you decide on your work setup.
Work Arrangement | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
Work From Home | No additional cost and the most accessible option | Lacks a formal meeting space for clients |
Co-working Space | Affordable and helps create boundaries between work and home | Lacks privacy, and meeting room availability can vary |
Rented Office Space | Offers the most privacy and can easily meet clients in person | Most expensive option, and it may not be feasible at the start |
Working from home can be the fastest way to get your firm off the ground by avoiding the high costs of renting an office space. This may not sound ideal for some, but many lawyers and clients have gotten used to a remote and hybrid working relationship.
Our 2025 Legal Industry report found that 76% of legal organizations have adopted cloud-based remote working technologies, like video conferencing and e-filing. We also found that 83% of respondents attend remote proceedings regularly, and 42% say their clients are comfortable with video conferencing.
Step 6: Establish a Realistic Schedule
Although you may plan to work a typical 9-5 schedule from Monday to Friday, it’s helpful to think more strategically about the tasks you’ll complete during different time blocks. You can also plan ahead for when you need to take a sick day or otherwise can’t work.
A few questions to consider:
Do you need to dedicate the last couple of hours of each working day to administrative work to stay on track?
Is it helpful to schedule in-person meetings on the same day, or is it better to dedicate full days or blocks of time to specific case work?
Do you have a backup attorney you can rely on in case of urgent deadlines?
Step 7: Create an Initial Marketing Plan
Marketing a small firm can take many routes, but the best plan depends on your strengths, available time, resources, and the most relevant channels for your law firm’s leads and clients.
For example, paid ads can be a low-effort way to promote your firm to potential clients. However, paid ad costs can add up and may take trial and error before finding the right ads and targeting. If you’re low on time and funds, you can set up listings in legal directories at a low cost or none. These directories also don't require much time after initial setup.
Regardless of the path you choose, it’s helpful to solidify the basics early, including:
Logo, colors, and fonts to maintain consistency across documents, social media posts, and other official marketing channels.
A website to provide leads a single source of truth for contact information, services, and other details about your firm. You can also cross-promote your solo practitioner website on social media channels, ads, and legal directories.
Step 8: Strategically Select Tools and Software
The right tools can help you create a productive workspace and potentially save time in the long run. Beyond essentials like a computer and a desk, software and digital tools can require a more strategic investment.
Key digital tools and software can include:
Case management software (e.g., calendar management, task management, and document management tools)
Word processing and document management software
Client communication tools (e.g., email, video conferencing software)
Financial management tools (e.g., accounting software, time tracking tools, payment processors)
Client intake and lead management tools (e.g., client relationship management software)
Managing multiple tools and subscription costs can become tedious and expensive, especially if you manually transfer data between tools with overlapping features. Legal practice management software solutions can house multiple tools under one platform to avoid paying for duplicate tools and automate steps in the case and practice management process. Automation and integration are also helpful for maximizing your time.
For example, MyCase can help you automatically create routine documents and tailor them with the client’s information stored in the system. Then, you can share documents directly with clients and ask for an eSignature through a client portal. You can also manage signature requests and easily send follow-ups directly from MyCase.
AI-enabled tools can also help solo practitioners improve their efficiency. Our 2025 Legal Industry Report found that 21% of solo law firms reported using legal-specific generative AI. Our report also found that the top three tasks accomplished for all respondents were drafting correspondence (54%), brainstorming (47%), and general research (46%).
Step 9: Create Standardized Templates and Workflows
Standardized documents can help you include necessary questions, clauses, and fields without spending too much time recreating the document each time.
To create a template library, save a copy of each routine document you create to use as a template in the future. This can include standard forms like a fee agreement or intake questionnaire. You can also take templates a step further by finding a powerful legal document automation tool that can create multiple documents at a time and auto-fill information.
Establishing standardized workflows can also save time in the long run. For example, following a consistent process for your firm’s client intake process can ensure you’re collecting all necessary information to vet potential cases and address conflicts of interest. Uniform processes also make it easier for future employees to tackle these tasks.
Step 10: Build Your Network
Lawyer referral marketing can be a strong source of new clients and work opportunities. You can begin networking through online and offline events.
For example, if your practice area is estate planning, you can begin attending conferences and networking events where you can meet elder law attorneys or financial planners who work with older adults. In the digital world, you can join professional online groups or engage with others who talk about estate planning on X or LinkedIn. These conversations may start with smaller contracts or part-time work, but can eventually lead to long-term relationships and referrals.
Step 11: Dedicate Time To Grow Your Skills
Skill development is an often-overlooked aspect of running a solo practice. Beyond keeping up with changes in your practice area or the wider legal industry, it’s just as important to grow the business skills needed to effectively run your firm. Areas like client management or legal accounting are often learned on the job, but proactive learning can prepare you for the challenges of managing a law practice.
To get started, you can dedicate a few hours each month to take a CLE course or listen to a podcast. Look for free online resources like LawPay’s Free CLE Webinars and MyCase’s industry reports that provide current and practical insights at no cost.
Below are podcasts you can also begin listening to as you build your solo law practice:
GPSolo Podcast, hosted by Lynn A. Howell from the Solo, Small Firm, and General Practice Division of the American Bar Association, covers tips and trends for solo and small firms.
New Solo, hosted by Adriana Linares, helps answer common questions as a solo attorney.
The Law Entrepreneur, hosted by Sam Mollaei, Esq., shares practical advice and insight into running a successful law firm.
Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, hosted by Gyi Tsakalakis and Conrad Saam, helps law firms grow their client base.
Immigration Uncovered, hosted by James Pittman from Docketwise, helps immigration lawyers build a successful law firm.
Bite-Sized Business Law, hosted by Amy Martella from Fordham University’s School of Law, shares the latest business law news in bite-sized portions.
Justice Team Podcast, hosted by Trial attorneys from the Simon Law Group, covers new developments and trends in personal injury cases.
Below are books you can also begin reading on your lunch breaks or free time:
“Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be” by Carolyn Elefant
“How to Start and Build a Law Practice” by Jay Foonberg
“The E-Myth Attorney: Why Most Legal Practices Don't Work and What to Do About It” by Michael E. Gerber, Robert Armstrong, J.D., and Sanford Fisch, J.D.
“Tiger Tactics CEO Edition: From ZERO to Law Firm CEO” by Jay Ruane, Ryan McKeen, Billie Tarascio, William Umansky, Joey Vitale, Sandy Van, Michelle Dellino, Elise Buie, Mario A. Godoy, Allison McKeen, Allison C. Williams, Seth J. Price
“The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited: A Guide to the Healthy Law Firm of Your Future” by Stephanie Everette and Aaron Street
Step 12: Regularly Evaluate and Iterate
Maintaining your firm’s momentum requires keeping a pulse on the status of cases, finances, and clients. Your workflows may also need to evolve as your practice grows, goals change, and technology expands.
Dedicate time to check in on different aspects of your practice to monitor for progress toward your goals and catch issues early. For example, you can dedicate one hour every Friday to log expenses, check account balances, and compare them to your financial goals for the month, quarter, and year. If you have a tool with a robust financial dashboard, you can quickly check these metrics at a glance and spend more time analyzing than calculating.
What Are the Benefits of Using Legal Practice Management Software for Solo Practitioners?
Solo practitioners can run their practice with a single tool and avoid the stress and costs of juggling multiple platforms by using a single practice management platform. A unified solution can also help centralize critical information, streamline and automate workflows between different aspects of the firm, and improve overall efficiency.
Below are examples of specific benefits solo practitioners can experience by using legal practice management software:
Gain comprehensive visibility into the firm’s cases and financial health through user-friendly dashboards to quickly make data-driven decisions without needing to manually find and calculate data.
Reduce administrative burdens with customized workflow automations that minimize repetitive work and free up time for more billable tasks.
Simplify billing and payment tracking by integrating client and financial data—making it easy to generate invoices and monitor account statuses instantly.
Enhance client engagement and communication through robust client portals to offer secure messaging, case status updates, and document access to clients.
Provide data protection with built-in security features like strong encryption and automated backups to ensure compliance without needing in-house IT experience.
Enable flexibility with cloud-enabled platforms to access information from any location with an internet connection.
“Having everything we reference in one place is a helpful thing for them. For the client, it feels more professional to have everything at their fingertips, specifically [around] billing. There aren’t questions like ‘What are you doing on my case? What is all this money going toward?’ It’s all right there.” — Chelsea Wansley, Easterling Family Law, on the benefits of MyCase’s Client Portal
Chelsea Wansley, Easterling Family Law, on the benefits of MyCase’s Client Portal
Streamline Your Solo Law Practice With MyCase
Starting a career as a solo practitioner is a rewarding, life-changing experience for many. Leveraging comprehensive practice management software can significantly simplify day-to-day tasks to scale your firm efficiently.
MyCase’s solo law firm software streamlines and automates workflows for accounting, time tracking, client intake, and more to help you grow your client base without letting small tasks slip through the cracks. Housing client data, files, deadlines, and financial information in one spot also helps improve visibility across all aspects of your practice.
Schedule a demo to see how you can quickly get your solo law practice up and running with MyCase.
FAQ About Becoming a Solo Practitioner
About the author
Justin FisherContent Writer
Justin Fisher is a content writer and SEO strategist for leading legal software companies, including MyCase, Docketwise, and CASEpeer, as well as LawPay, the #1 legal payment processor. He specializes in writing about emerging legal technology, financial wellness for law firms, and more.