Some days, I think about having my own law firm.
There is plenty that I don't love about this idea. Actually, most of it I don't love. You carry all of the responsibility, all of the liability, all of the work on your head. You aren't just doing legal work, you're also running a business. You have to be organized and disciplined. You have to take cases you don't want because you need the fees. There is no one else to help carry the load; you are completely alone.
That scares me because I know I am not good enough on my own, all by myself, and in every role I've ever had, I have enjoyed working with teammates and I have leaned heavily on them for their strengths. It is invaluable to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to get a second opinion from, to help you draft something when you are pulled in several different directions. Teamwork makes the dream work!
But the one advantage of hanging my shingle is significant enough that it keeps me coming back to this ill-advised cockamamy idea. Implicit in self-employment is freedom. You make your schedule. You choose your cases. You set the culture and the standards for your practice. You can do your work from the beach, if you want, and if that work is drafting and not a confidential client call. I could escape from the geographical difficulties that Peter and I are trying to puzzle through at the moment. I could replace the stress of this decision with a different kind of stress. Ah, freedom.
Tomorrow is my one year workiversary with my small private practice firm. I didn't think I would make it this long, so it's exciting to reach that milestone. When I started I thought that private practice would be hard for me because we wouldn't be able to help every person who came to us for help--but actually what has been hard is justifying taking people's money and not returning to them high quality work.
Before, I thought that self-employment was completely unattainable for me--I simply didn't have the skillset to make it work, and I had no interested in trying. But after seeing a little bit how managing one's own firm actually works, the hubris in me is like, um, hey, I could probably do this. And even if I can't do it well I could probably do it better, right? I'm embarrassed of my arrogance even as I write that, but it is the reason why I still toy with this scary idea.
But still, I call it a scary idea because I have seen self-employment turn into a prison, too. How free are you, really? You answer to clients, to judges, to clerks, to the bar, to your colleagues, all the little demands on your time that fill a day until you don't have any time left to sit in peace. With people counting on you and you alone, once you get on the treadmill, it can be hard to jump off when it gets too be too much.
What reason is a good reason for making such a big and expensive and scary decision? And how can you know how it will pan out before you try? And would I survive failing?
