September 2010 Issue

Cover Story

Legal Rebels: Riding Solo

There's no one more ordinary—or more inventive—than a solo practitioner. Half of the nation's lawyers in private practice are solos—419,000 in all. Most provide the core services of legal work: serving families, home buyers, the injured, criminal defendants and small businesses.

And yet, as the recession that reached full flower two years ago this month grinds on, a growing number of solos are finding new ways of doing business. They're succeeding in practice areas normally associated with bigger firms, like energy law, international transactions and green-building law. And they're finding new ways of marketing their services, including virtual law practices or boosting their profiles through time-consuming bar association leadership posts that are normally filled by big-firm lawyers.

These solos are building a new kind of one-lawyer practice, remaking their corners of the legal profession through the power of innovation. They're Legal Rebels.

Here, we introduce you to this year's crop of 10 Rebels, all sole practitioners. Full profiles of each, along with video interviews, will be posted on LegalRebels.com throughout September. These 10 join the 50 Legal Rebels from big firms, in-house law departments, law schools and other practice settings we profiled last year. In an economy like this, each of us is responsible for our own professional success. We can all learn from these solos—because when you get right down to it, we all work for a Law Firm of One.

Feature Section

Law, the Investment

Entrepreneurs attract major cash to draw legal services away from law firms.

The Job Seekers

Three in the class of 2009 find full-time work hard to come by.

Their Day in Court

Animal protection attorneys are pushing the law to treat animals more like humans.