Don’t Ignore Rule Number 3

Either they didn’t teach us how to run a law firm in law school, or I was asleep that day. I’m honestly not sure which at this point.

My marketing guru pointed out that my law firm is about to celebrate 25 years of, well, existence. When I first started my practice, it was exciting. I had to find an office, get equipment, source vendors and hire support staff, and balance the checking accounts. Being the captain of a new ship also means patching the holes and baling out the water when it leaks. Exciting? No. Terrifying.

Associates in law firms rarely learn how the business of law works. Older partners either don’t have time to teach them or don’t want them to be tempted to become a competitor.  This fear is unfounded. Knowing what it takes to run a law firm is a big deterrent to hanging out a shingle and doing it. Luckily, I had successful friends who freely shared their knowledge.

Lawyers like rules and they gave me three:

Rule Number 1- Get the case.

It really doesn’t matter how good you are at practicing law if you don’t have any clients. No one else will know and you will quickly go out of business. I would have plagiarized the local restaurant sign that read “Come in and eat before we both starve” if there had been a place to hang it.

Television advertising is expensive for lawyers. Finding niche ways to market your services is less costly if you find the right niche. Unfortunately, that is trial and error. Lots of errors.

Back when phone books existed, I bought the back page a few times. It was awful. Either I didn’t get cases and was angry that I wasted money or I got cases and had to represent clients in a terrible venue. Learning how to market a law firm is expensive, and some lessons cost more than others.

Rule Number 2- See Rule Number 1.

 Get clients. When you open a business and don’t have any clients, you have plenty of time to figure out how to run the thing. Whatever time is left is spent chasing new clients. Most new business owners fail in the first few years, probably from exhaustion.

Rule Number 3- The cases you don’t take are the best ones.

When I first started my practice I took new client calls at 10:30 p.m. Now I am in bed by 10 and the phone is turned off. One of the benefits of not going out of business is that clients know how to find us and (knock on wood) they do so.

I’ve gotten choosier about what clients I take. I used to ignore red flags in new cases the way my wife ignores the “check engine” light. Bad clients won’t leave me stranded on the side of the road. They are worse. A dead car can be revived, a bad client can’t be fixed. Tough cases don’t scare me. If I believe in my client, I am too stubborn to give up on them. Bad clients outstubborn me.

Rule 3 proved itself recently. I parted ways with a client a few years back. I had negotiated a reasonable settlement for him but he wouldn’t take it, he wanted “justice.” I don’t know what justice looked like for him, but the defendant wasn’t going to apologize or go to jail and nothing short of that was acceptable so I got out of the case.

While on the phone to a defense lawyer about a current case, she mentioned this client’s case was still going. He lost in the trial court and filed a pro se appeal. His “brief” is anything but. It is layered in conspiracy theories and random thoughts that make my writing look like Pulitzer prize prose.

I got off the phone feeling good about the bullet I dodged. Sometimes it takes a bulldozer to get you out of the ditch. It is better to take a different road. I don’t turn down many cases but I am getting better at recognizing problems before I encounter them. It isn’t easy to say no to a client. It is essential.

©2026 With All Due Respect. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. If you want to feel good about your writing skill, ask him for a link to the brief he mentioned. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this publication or directly to him via email at farris@farrislaw.net.