Okay, bear with me on this one. I have an idea that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been formally recognized or tested. But just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it.
I have recently been fielding calls from established practitioners who want to shift into a civil rights career. The callers practice in all sorts of areas, from criminal defense to immigration to family law to corporate law. For them, the concern is that they’ve already been practicing too long to suddenly be hired at a firm and trained up – so to speak – in civil rights law. So how do they learn and grow? Well, what about building a legal co-op?
You must be thinking, “What does she mean by legal co-op”? Well, I’m not sure I have it fully thought out yet. How can you set the parameters for an experimental concept before running some experiments?
Overall, here is what I’m thinking: attorneys in different practice areas would agree to co-counsel cases together to build up their legal skills in each other’s practice areas. The co-op would grow slowly, and it would eventually reach a maximum limit of active attorneys based on practice area. (Almost like a study group in law school. Or wait, was that too triggering a reference?)
Let’s think about it. Why do any of us join a law firm or legal organization? Well, first and foremost, we need to pay off our student loans. (Sad, but true.) Second, and more to the point, it’s so that we can learn from those with more experience than us.
But that’s not how every attorney gets their footing. Believe it or not, there are attorneys who leave law school and immediately set up shop. How do they succeed? By calling every mentor they know for help along the way. It’s hard work, but it’s not impossible.
Now imagine a way to do this several years out where you have a niche area of expertise, be it family law, employment discrimination, business litigation, criminal defense, etc. Despite being well versed in this area of law, you want to learn something new. So, how do you do it?
(Note: this advice applies whether you’re looking to break into civil rights or any other area of law.)
Start by Building Connections
First, you need to build connections within the particular practice area’s community. For civil rights here in Colorado, that means joining the CBA Civil Rights Section, setting up calls and Zooms with civil rights practitioners (one day perhaps in-person coffee will be on the table again), and attending CLEs on the topic.
But no matter how many CLEs you attend and practitioners you know, there is no way to learn how to run a civil rights case without actually running one. And that’s a scary proposition for anyone to do on their own, let alone someone who hasn’t done it before. Not only would it be stressful from a learning curve standpoint, but you also don’t want to mess up your client’s case.
Set Up a Mutually Beneficial Co-Counseling Arrangement
Here’s where building connections comes in handy. No one is just going to co-counsel with you if they don’t know you, let alone trust you or your legal skills. Not unless you land an amazing case and are essentially shopping it out for co-counsel that know how to run it better than you. And trust me, I’ve seen many situations where the originating attorney is essentially left out of the process, at least when it comes to the difficult legal matters you’re hoping to learn.
Here’s where my idea of a co-op comes into play. Once you’ve built a relationship with someone in the practice area in which you’re interested, let them know that you are looking to learn from real life experience. Offer to co-counsel a case at a reduced rate for your time, explaining how you’d love to learn from them.
And make sure to follow up, to make it clear you mean business. Send off an email with several different fee split proposals and a list of legal areas you’re interested in. If you don’t hear back, engage in the same discussion with someone else. Follow up with a few people until you get an actual offer.
Keep in mind, if you can offer something similar in exchange, that may help a lot. For example, a lot of younger civil rights attorneys I know want to learn skills that could help them bring in hourly work while they get a new firm off the ground. If you happen to be a criminal defense attorney with more hourly work than you know how to handle, offer to teach them the ropes (and pay them for their time) in exchange. Now you are both learning from each other while growing your practice areas.
Expand Your Network to Build a Functioning Co-Op
Once you build a good connection and see that the process is working, start to expand your network. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn employment law, or practice in fair housing. Or perhaps you’ve been getting calls for personal injury cases but don’t know how to start. Now is the time to reach out to someone else in your growing network to see if you can set up a similar co-counseling arrangement as the one you’ve already built.
I would wait until you have a couple of successful arrangements before expanding. There will inevitably be kinks to work out, and it makes sense to not jump into too many new relationships before you have time to do that. But once you see how it goes, you can reach out to someone new, and preferably in a different practice. Because the whole point is for the group to expand into a functioning co-op where each attorney has something to offer.
For anyone who tests this out, I would love to hear how it goes. When I started my new firm, we entered into several co-counseling relationships. Some are in practice areas I know well, but where it will be nice to see how others handle the same types of cases. That said, others are in relatively new practice areas for me. Recognizing that I lacked expertise in these areas, I reached out to people I knew to co-counsel. So far things are going great. Both sets of attorneys seem to be learning a lot, and the clients are getting much better legal representation than had either firm gone it alone.
Even if you never build an fully functioning co-op, working with attorneys in different practice areas will grow your firm and help you provide holistic services to your clients. So, what are you waiting for?