Women Flying Solo

All attorneys who choose to become solo practitioners face the challenges of setting up and running a business. That includes putting together a business plan, separating trust accounts and other funding sources, and attracting and retaining clients.

Women who take the solo journey also face bias and stereotypes that can negatively affect their confidence and their bottom line - although occasionally, being female can be an advantage. That's according to a panel of women lawyers who have started their own firms and who participated earlier this year in an ISBA webinar titled, "On My Own: Starting Your Solo Practice as a Female Attorney."

Criminal defense attorney Sarah Toney of The Toney Law Firm in Chicago notes that some challenges female solos face are not necessarily related to being a woman. When an attorney starts a firm, she says, she or he should create a checklist of everything a solo practitioner needs to do, ranging from registering your entity with the Illinois Supreme Court to getting malpractice insurance.

"There's a lot of minutiae you don't think about," Toney says. "You can't just quit your job, hang a shingle, and start practicing. You need to get an EIN number."

You also need to economize by focusing on the essentials, she says. "You think, 'I need to buy a copy machine' and then you realize, 'What I actually need is a scanner and printer.' You find out, with technology, 'I don't need a landline - I could use that internet-based phone. I don't need a credit-card machine, I can process that over the internet.'"

She adds, "If you're organized, you can be in a very good spot by the time you're ready to start." Part of Toney's organizational scheme: ensuring that she keeps client trust funds separate by ordering checks for her operating account that are a different size and color than her IOLTA checks. That way, "there's never a risk that you mix them up and write a check from a trust account that causes an issue," she says. Find out more in the May Illinois Bar Journal.