Coalition Strives to Make Room for Solos and Small-Firm Lawyers at the Policy Table
Joseph DeWoskin: “The way you change a perpective or an organization is to join and change it from the inside out.” Photo courtesy of Joseph DeWoskin .
The ABA has not been shy in recent years about showing its desire to attract more members from the ranks of lawyers who maintain solo practices or belong to small firms.
That interest is easy to understand, given the demographics of the U.S. lawyer population. The ABA estimates that, of the nation’s 1.2 million active attorneys, nearly 46 percent are sole practitioners or belong to firms with two to five members. About 25,000 of the nation’s 427,000 sole practitioners, or 6 percent, are ABA members. About 22,000 of the nation’s 133,500 small-firm lawyers, or 17 percent, belong to the association. Those percentages lag behind the ABA membership rates for lawyers in larger firms.
In February 2010, the ABA’s policymaking House of Delegates brought dues for sole practitioners in line with discounted dues for judges, government lawyers and lawyers at legal services programs, then reduced dues for all of those groups. Under the new structure, annual dues for solos range from $100 after the first year of practice to $225 in the 10th year of practice and beyond. Previously, solos paid between $125 and $399 in annual dues.
But the ABA has been making efforts to pump up the value of membership for sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers in other ways as well. “We need to do a better job of identifying the many benefits the ABA provides and which will help them in their practices, whether it’s programming, publications or networking opportunities,” says Patricia Lee Refo, a partner at Snell & Wilmer in Phoenix who chairs the ABA Standing Committee on Membership.
The ABA’s practice support services for sole and small-firm practitioners are housed primarily in the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division. Through a combination of CLE programs, publications and the division’s webpage, members have access to a host of resources, including information on starting and running a small firm, insurance and work-life balance, as well as research tools and links to state bar resources.
Much of this information is available online through the division’s Smart Soloing Center. The division also sponsors the popular SoloSez discussion forum on the Internet, and distributes the monthly GPSolo magazine and a quarterly Solo email newsletter.
Photos courtesy of Patricia Lee Refo (top) and James R. Silkenat (bottom), respectively.
A HIGHER PROFILE
There also is a growing effort to raise the profile of solos and small-firm lawyers within the ABA leadership ranks and give them more impact on association policymaking.
The primary vehicle for this effort is the Leadership Coalition for Solo and Small-Firm Lawyers. Formed a little more than a year ago, the coalition serves as a sort of internal lobbying group for the interests of sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers within the complex structure of the ABA. The coalition also wants to make sure there is a place for those lawyers in the ABA leadership ranks and policymaking process.
“Small-firm lawyers have limited amounts of money and time, and historically did not see why ABA membership is a good investment for them,” says James R. Silkenat, a partner at Sullivan & Worcester in New York City who is a past chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Membership. “So we need to improve outreach, including small-firm participation in leadership positions, their issues and the things we can do to be more valuable.”
Silkenat, who represents the New York State Bar Association in the ABA House of Delegates, is spearheading the work of the coalition with Joseph A. DeWoskin, who chairs the GPSolo Division.
“Historically, there has been a view that the ABA is focused on larger law firms,” says DeWoskin, a partner at Waits, Brownlee, Berger and DeWoskin in Kansas City, Mo. “So part of the goal of our efforts is to change that view and help bring solo and small-firm issues to the forefront. The way you change a perspective or an organization is to join and change it from the inside out.”
