Author Topic: Starting a Solo Law Practice Blog — Any Wordpress/Website Builder Folks on Here?  (Read 3270 times)

ReadySetMillionaire

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A few people on here have followed my professional journey (from law firm attorney to solo attorney), which I’ve posted about quite a bit on here. Several of these posters said I should start a blog about my journey in starting my practice, so I decided to take the plunge.

My website is up and running. It’s The100kSolo.com and it’s about running a lean, mean, and profitable solo law practice. Think of it as Mustachianism law practice — being smart with costs and not growing too fast.

Please note that this is still under construction and I have a lot of work to do, but I’m at a roadblock.

My primary plan is to give a way a ton of free, but “evergreen,” content (ie, timeless content like JLCollins Stock Series and MMM). I’d like to build up an email list as I publish this content, and then publish an ebook in about 6-12 months.

I am absolutely lost in what Wordpress plugin to use to do the email list. There seems to be programs who independently generate email signups (eg, Thriveleads), but it seems you need a separate company to actually send the emails (eg, MailChimp).

All I want is a popup form in the bottom corner that would allow you to subscribe, as well something similar at the bottom of each page/post.

This just seems incredibly complicated and I’ve hit a wall before publishing my content.

Any suggestions?


lizh

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I'd sign up with Mailchimp. They allow you up to 2000 subscribers on their free plan. That ought to hold you for a couple of years.  Just checked your site....looks good.  You might want to add an image header to give a bit of interest to your visitors.  One more suggestion is that I think it is always good to have an "about" page as well.
Liz

ReadySetMillionaire

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I'd sign up with Mailchimp. They allow you up to 2000 subscribers on their free plan. That ought to hold you for a couple of years.  Just checked your site....looks good.  You might want to add an image header to give a bit of interest to your visitors.  One more suggestion is that I think it is always good to have an "about" page as well.
Liz

I have mailchimp now but I can't seem to get that additional "sign up here" popup with them, which I understand is critical to running an email campaign.

I definitely thought about having an about page.  I wanted to stay anonymous.  I guess I could model it after MMMs?  Didn't even think of that before.  Probably a good idea.

shingy

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RSM - I've used this plugin a few times in the past and it seems to work pretty well:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-forms-by-mailmunch/

It should do everything you're looking for. It does require an account with Mailmunch to work, but you can use their free tier for this. Good luck!

ReadySetMillionaire

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RSM - I've used this plugin a few times in the past and it seems to work pretty well:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-forms-by-mailmunch/

It should do everything you're looking for. It does require an account with Mailmunch to work, but you can use their free tier for this. Good luck!
You are my hero @shingy !  This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on my site.  Still a work in progress, but I have about the first 4 or 5 posts written.  Just waiting to get my infrastructure up and running.

Poundwise

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Nice clean site!  I suggest you use an SEO plugin like Yoast to help it show up on searches.

ReadySetMillionaire

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Nice clean site!  I suggest you use an SEO plugin like Yoast to help it show up on searches.

I started Yoast yesterday and revised my welcome page.  I'm going to go page by page, probably one every couple of days.  I'm very, very, very glad I found Yoast before publishing a bunch of posts.

I have a couple friends from high school (who are now 10+ year professionals) doing some projects for me.  I'm getting a MMM cartoon like avatar, which should be sweet.

Peachtea

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Very cool, RSM. I have a mustachian friend who was recently talking about liking idea of going solo in a couple years but not really knowing where to start or how doable it would be. I think she’d really like hearing how you got going and the practicalities of starting up a solo! I’ll pass your site along.

shingy

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RSM - I've used this plugin a few times in the past and it seems to work pretty well:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-forms-by-mailmunch/

It should do everything you're looking for. It does require an account with Mailmunch to work, but you can use their free tier for this. Good luck!
You are my hero @shingy !  This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on my site.  Still a work in progress, but I have about the first 4 or 5 posts written.  Just waiting to get my infrastructure up and running.

Excellent - glad that was helpful. The site content and navigation looks very well thought out, but design wise, it's pretty bland. I'd recommend looking for a free or cheap theme to use to give it some pop. Best of luck!

ReadySetMillionaire

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Excellent - glad that was helpful. The site content and navigation looks very well thought out, but design wise, it's pretty bland. I'd recommend looking for a free or cheap theme to use to give it some pop. Best of luck!
My message is to run what I call a "financially minimalist" law practice, so I was trying to echo that with a minimalist theme.  Other legal blogs (see lawyerist.com) are packed with features and tabs and "SIGN UP HERE" and I just want to avoid that by being simple.

To your point, though, I am certainly going to add logos and avatars and more pictures here soon to give it some pop, but I'm really trying to keep it easy.

lexde

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I just went through your site - fantastic. I like the no-nonsense writing style and it's very clean, which I think supports your overall message. Really well done.

I'm signing up now and can't wait to grab a copy of your book when it's out. :-)

BabyShark

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Really looking forward to following this site!  Adding it to my feedly.  I'm not a solo (and likely have no intention of becoming one) but I find I can apply a lot of the same sort of info to my midlaw practice.

BabyShark

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Oh also, it looks like the link to your twitter page actually just goes to the main twitter site.  Was trying to follow you and couldn't.

ReadySetMillionaire

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Thanks for the kind words @lexde and @BabyShark .

I'm still doing site build-out.  Logos, layout, non-intrusive email lists, etc. Will do my social channels and start posting beginning of August. Ebook and product release will probably be early/mid next year.  When do you think would be good?  I'm trying to time it towards the end of law school and have a bunch of 3Ls be interested.

Any thoughts?

BabyShark

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My experience has been that a bunch of 3Ls don't go solo right out of law school, especially now that the economy is a little better, but probably earlier in the year would be better to catch those looking to make the post end of the year bonus leap.

lexde

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Agree - it may serve you well to do some research to see at what point most people go solo and direct it there.

Actually, I'm part of a networking group with several thousand attorneys on facebook. Let me ask them and get some data for you.

My hunch is at the 5-7 year mark, once they're comfortable with practice and maybe poach a client or two. It likely depends on the field of law, though, too.

lexde

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Hi, quick results from my survey (just overnight, I can provide an update later if you want).

The question was: At what point in your career did you go solo?



Looks like the majority of lawyers went solo at Year 1-2, followed by 5-7.
My question also asked why/if there was something that caused it.

Granted, my group is women attorneys only, so a lot of the responses where a specific event caused them to go solo involved being forced to work during maternity leave and/or being fired around the time that they were pregnant/having kids.

Others commented that they wanted out of Biglaw, they became board-certified in their field, and/or realized no one was supervising them/they had their own book of business at that point (5-7 year mark).



Hope this was helpful!
It was 31 comments and 145 poll results total. There are 8,200+ members in this specific group, so more responses will roll in over the next day or so.
I'm also part of a solo group (even though I'm not a solo, but it's helpful I think) with about 6,600 members.

If there's anything else I can do to help with those resources, let me know. Thanks!
« Last Edit: July 16, 2019, 06:00:20 AM by lexde »

UshB37

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Sorry for reviving the thread.

First of all, I want to say that I am proud of what are you doing, I really hope that you succeeded. However, I think one of the best simple website builders is Wix or Squarespace. I used Wix to create sites, but most of my friends are telling me that WordPress has a lot of website builders that are better than with and square space. I got inspired when I saw my friends' travel agencies websites and I decided to create an online perfect website for lawyers and hope it will be useful for everyone.
« Last Edit: June 27, 2021, 06:15:22 AM by UshB37 »

MrThatsDifferent

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@ReadySetMillionaire, the world needs this, keep it going! ;-)