Solo and Small Firm

The Practitioner VOLUME 30, ISSUE 2, AUTUMN 2024

HOW’S THE WATER EVERYONE?

Stuart N. Chelin, Esq.*

I started my law career in Toronto, Canada. When I left in 2006 to pursue a business opportunity in Palm Desert, I had been in practice for almost fifteen years. I knew, and was well known to, a broad spectrum of the Toronto legal community. Of course, none of that helped with being part of a small family-owned real estate development company thousands of miles away in a different country. We were good developers. We mapped thousands of lots and when the financial world came tumbling down in 2007, we held our collective breath and morphed into home builders a couple of years later. When I left in 2018 and moved to Los Angeles, I knew, and was well known by, the real estate community in the Coachella and Imperial valleys. Of course, that mattered little towards opening a solo law practice in a new city 100-200 miles away from the desert.1 The reason I mention the people I knew and the communities of which I was a part is because the ability to carry on a law practice as a sole practitioner is almost entirely dependent on one’s relationships with other people. It is so fundamental that its importance can be missed. There is the parable about two young goldfish swimming in a tank who are passed by an older goldfish who says to them "Good morning boys, how’s the water?" One of the younger fish asks the other "What’s water?" Fundamental. But missed. As author David Foster Wallace noted, sometimes the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see. So, the question to ask yourself as a sole practitioner is "How’s the people?" It is not a banal platitude.

It was November 2018. Building homes and 110-degree summer days were behind me. Based on the pre-COVID advice of the one lawyer I knew in L.A., I now had a spacious office with an awesome view in Century City where, as he said, "all the lawyers are."2 I also had a glitzy and engaging web site. What I did not have was a legal community that I knew and that knew me. I did not have people. Therefore, I had a very quiet law practice. Now it’s July 2024. Would I like to have more clients? Of course, I would. But my practice is quite active. As well, I now feel a part of the legal community in this bustling and sprawling city. When I reflect upon the last five and one-half years and consider how I got here, I realize that everything really had to do with the relationships I have formed along the way. People who refer work to me. People to whom I refer work. People who call on me to work files with them. People who I call on to work files with me. People I can call upon for assistance and advice and vice versa. And, most importantly, people for whom I have had the privilege3 to act as their counsel and provide them with the help they need.

As far as some concrete advice goes for carrying on the practice, and business, of law…here it goes. If I sound a bit like Chauncy Gardiner, please forgive me.

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