As always, please review my disclaimer before reading this post by clicking on the link above or by clicking on this link. As always, any legal principles discussed apply only to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Introduction
In looking over my old blog posts today, it occurred to me that I have spent a great deal of time now discussing the law and the details of practicing law. It has been months, possibly even years, since I last talked about relationships between attorneys and clients. Today I want to change that.
I have never hidden the fact that I am not one of these fancy, wealthy, big law, big city, workaholic attorneys. I work for a small law firm, generally handle my cases entirely on my own, work five days a week, and get home in time for dinner with my family almost every night. The experiences of a small law attorney is very different than the attorneys portrayed on TV. Our clients frequently are different, too. Our clients are generally reliably middle class - too poor to afford the fancy downtown law firms, not nearly poor enough to qualify for pro bono assistance. Given the size of the various "classes" in America, then, it should be no surprise that, in actuality, the vast majority of attorneys work for small law firms, and the vast majority of people who retain attorneys, retain attorneys from small law firms.
Nonetheless, that snapshot of our client base is not complete. We do, on occasion, get the Fortune 500 executive, large business owner, or wealthy inheritor in our doors, even though they could afford those downtown attorneys. On one occasion, I asked one of our wealthier clients why he chose to "go small." His answer ("I want an attorney who's actually been in front of a judge before") made me realize something I hadn't thought about before - even when you have the option, financially, to retain a large law firm, there are actually many reasons to still go with a small law firm.
In today's blog post, I will discuss some of the reasons that I, personally, feel like "going small" is frequently the right choice.
Some basic background
To lead off, I want to be clear that there are many situations where, if you can afford representation from a big law firm, that is probably the direction to go. Multi-million dollar mergers and acquisitions, extremely complicated lawsuits with millions of pages of documents, and other high-end business representation is typically best served by big law firms. By and large, this blog post will be talking about personal litigation. As in cases where you, yourself (not your business) are the party involved. While some of this can apply to business litigation and other business work as well, by and large, I am referring to personal matters in this post.
"Going small" supports your community
This might be an odd point, but it's worth considering. There has been a growing appreciation over the last decade or so for "small businesses." This is a well-placed appreciation. Small businesses keep money local, help our local community (by hiring people) and help our local economy (by spending money within the community).
It may be odd to think of us this way, but small law firms are small businesses. A small law firm rarely has more than one office, all of its money tends to be spent locally, and all of its employees (including the lawyers) live locally and spend locally. Just as with any other small business, when you retain a small law firm you are supporting your local community and local economy in a way that you simply don't when you hire a large law firm.
You get more varied experience for less money
In small law, since we generally do not have wealthy clients, we have to rely on having a large volume of cases to keep our lights on. The result is that we tend to see a much wider variety of cases than your typical big law firm does, meaning that we could very well be more prepared for the issues to arise in your case than a big law attorney would be. All of that, even though we cost less than our big law counterparts.
You get more practical experience for less money
I have been practicing law for more than four years now. In that time, I have appeared in court hundreds of times, argued contested hearings scores of times, and handled numerous contested trials (even multi-day trials), all by myself. My classmates from law school who are in large law firms by and large haven't even seen the inside of a courtroom yet - and they're the ones in their firm's "litigation" practice - but their billing rate is substantially higher than mine. You can pay less money by hiring a small law attorney with the same number of years of experience, and substantially more practical courtroom experience, or you can spend a similar amount of money to hire a small law attorney with many more years of experience, and incalculably more courtroom experience.
We get to know you and your whole case
I spent the summer after my second year of law school in a large law firm. You've probably heard of the "gilded" summer associateships at big law firms - the ones with the obscenely expensive events, obscenely high pay, ridiculously garish parties, etc. Well, I had one of those. It was an amazing summer, an experience I will truly never forget, and one that I cherish to this day for a lot of reasons. What I will also never forget, however, is how we handled clients. Clients weren't really clients, they were numbers. I would enter into a database the "client number" for all client work I had done that day, and I would know basically nothing about the case except for the particular issue I was working on.
In small law, I know the client, I know the case, and I know every issue in the case. If you want to know what's going on in your case, you can call me and get an answer from me, not some junior associate who's only worked on one element of your case. That's the kind of personal relationship you rarely get with an attorney in big law.
Conclusion
The reality is, even when you have a choice, there are lots of reasons to choose to hire a small law attorney over a big law attorney. This blog post has summarized some of them, but there are more. If you are searching for an attorney and have a choice, I hope you "go small." If you want to learn more about what we can offer, call (703)281-0134 or e-mail me at SLeven@thebaldwinlawfirm.com to set up an initial consultation. Our initial consultations are free for up to half an hour (something else you generally won't get with big law)!
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