Barry Zalma, Inc. Benefits of Retaining a Sole Practitioner Barry Zalma, Inc. is a sole practice law firm. Barry Zalma is the only lawyer in the firm and has more than 42-years experience in insurance and insurance coverage issues. The following is presented for the assistance of clients and potential clients to better understand the benefits available to those who retain the services of sole practitioner Barry Zalma rather than a large firm. Responsiveness and Flexibility. A large law firm, like any large organization, is eventually "captured" by its own bureaucracy. Over time, it becomes inflexible and tends to operate more and more for the benefit and convenience of its bureaucracy, rather than the benefit and convenience of its clients.  A sole practitioner is relatively immune from that phenomenon and can provide service that is more responsive and better-tailored to each client's needs. Efficiency.  At a typical large firm, documents and issues often are repeatedly revised by redundant layers of junior associates, mid-level associates, senior associates, and junior partners, before getting the imprimatur of a senior partner. The method is usually slow, inefficient, and expensive. The large firm makes money by leveraging the billable hours of its professional staff. A sole practitioner cannot. You Are a Big Fish. In a large firm, many clients will find they are rather small fish in the firm's pond, and are treated accordingly. In a mega-firm, even a Fortune 500 company may not be a particularly big fish. A sole practitioner has no small fish in his pond. Every client is important and is treated accordingly. Access. Solos are usually happy to have clients contact them, day or night. I give clients as many ways to contact me as I can think of: mail, e-mail, fax, Web site, office phone, and cell phone. My office phone call-forwards to my cell phone which also gets e-mail. Wherever I am, in my back yard or across the world, I am available. I want to be contacted, and often am, even when I am on vacation. I want my clients to call me. If you use a larger firm, try to conceive of when you last were provided by the lawyers a number where he or she could be reached at any time of day, seven days a week? Lower Cost For a Like Kind and Quality of Work. The bills presented by a sole practitioner are for work done by a single lawyer for the client. Large firms can give their staffs a lot: high salaries, bonuses, beautiful offices in "class A" space, catered food at meetings, golf outings at expensive country clubs, limo service home for anyone working late, in-house cafeterias, in-house gyms, expense accounts, etc. Who do you think is paying for that? An experienced and knowledgeable sole practitioner can perform legal tasks in less time than required by a law firm bureaucracy. You pay for the work of only one lawyer not many. A Sole Practitioner is More Likely to be Independent.  Because large law firms have many clients, they will more likely have conflicts of interest. Generally, a law firm cannot handle a legal matter when it gives rise to a conflict of interest between clients of the firm that are not wiling to waive the conflict. Depending on the size of your community, the larger the law firm, the more likely there may be conflicts of interest. A sole practitioner will have less conflicts and will not need to review a major database to determine if the conflict exists. There are no Cross-Selling Pressures From a Sole Practitioner. Large firms have an understandable interest in selling additional services to their clients even if the clients fail to share that interest. No Hidden Billing Pressures.     The dirty, not-so-little, secret of life in many law firms is billing. Each lawyer is compelled to meet minimum numbers of billable hours daily. Whether they call them "expectations," "guidelines," "standards," or "requirements," most firms try to get their staffs to bill at least certain minimum amounts, each and every day, week, month, or year.  At many firms, the professional staff is bombarded with ceaseless exhortations to bill.  Some firms even offer monthly cash bounties to lawyers who bill in excess of a required minimum, or penalize lawyers who fail to record the minimum number of hours. Too often, the result is obvious and easily predictable: lawyers and paralegals feel constant pressure to do billable work whether needed by the case or not. Sole practitioners like to make money just as much as the next guy (I sure do), but no one is pressuring us to do unnecessary work to meet arbitrary goals. Your Matters Will Not Be Used to Train Inexperienced Lawyers.   In larger firms, all but the most serious matters are delegated to junior lawyers for day-to-day handling. From the firm's perspective, this not only gives the junior lawyers something to do (and to bill for), but allows them to get experience. The reality is that  inexperienced lawyers, no matter how bright and well-educated they are, have little or no idea how to be lawyers. They lack the maturity, judgment, seasoning, experience, and specialized knowledge that come only after years of actual practice. As a result, they spend an inordinate amount of time to produce work that a more experienced lawyer could have done better, in less time, and at lower cost to the client. Experienced sole practitioners do not need to train junior lawyers at clients' expense: they have no junior lawyers. A More Personal Working Relationship. You are likely to get to know everyone in your lawyer’s office if he or she is a sole practitioner. This can lead to a better one-on-one working relationship, which may make you feel more comfortable and will get you exactly the service your require. You will never be shuffled from the Associate to the Senior Associate, to the Junior Partner to the Partner and the Senior Partner to get information about your case. I shamelessly, and with his permission, adapted this page from the website of a friend and fellow sole practitioner coverage lawyer, Tom Bower, of New York, who can be reached at http://thomasbower.com/index.html. Return to home page Go to Zalma on Insurance Go to Barry Zalma, Inc. mailto:zalma@zalma.com Updated March 12, 2010