Greatest American Blog

Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement (but not too much). I just got done reading the latest round of posts over at the Greatest American Lawyer and I have to say both pre-jump and, now, post-jump GAL has been a great source of inspiration and advice. Striking out on your own can be both an exhilarating and lonely experience (at least in the pre-client phase I currently find myself in). And all the solo blogs out there (myshingle.com deserves a special mention as well!) a are a great source of “you-can-do-it” and “your-not-alone” sort of motivation.

I liked yesterday’s GAL post on vertical markets. Over the weekend and driving into work today (I even took a wrong turn as my head was off in the clouds on these issues) I was thinking about how best to use my time in terms of focus on the two areas of law I have decided to practice. If you remember, I have the “front-burner” focus which is business law for new ventures and the “back-burner” new practice area of elder care and estate planning.

My plan was that the front-burner practice would be an easier source of clients and income over the short term and was where I had the most experience. The back-burner was an area I thought held the promise of being an area that I could achieve both satisfaction and economic stability over the long term but about which I knew relatively little.

Now that I have gotten the business law web site and practice up and running and have started to network for clients I am beginning to question whether it will be that easy to find work and also realizing just how time consuming focusing on a single particular area can be (networking events, refreshing my memory on those areas of law, etc.). Would I be better off reversing strategy with the primary focus being on elder care and the back-burner focus being on the business law? What really motivates me? Am I just procrastinating? Can I move aggressively forward in both areas in the short term? The only decision I have made for now is to try and move aggressively in terms of the marketing of the elder care practice (set up separate web site, consider advertising options, etc.) and hope that I can gain the knowledge before the clients come knocking at the door.

The larger premise of all of this thinking is that if you pick an area of law, are smart and focused you can succeed. That was the vague conclusion I had come to over the weekend and it was nice to see some validation in GAL.

Other favorite GAL posts:

Jump, Jump, Jump. I came into my old job feeling particularly miserable and read this post. It was like GAL had written this post just for me, I sprang out of my chair and was literally bouncing down the halls to my next meeting filled with optimism and excitement about my pending career change.

April Fools. GAL got me with this one, I had a nasty sick feeling reading this one.