Day #6: Finding a Niche

Before I begin discussing the importance of finding a niche in your law practice, I'd like to go over the troubles and tribulations of having your website indexed by different search engines. My website has already been indexed by google.com, but not yahoo.com, bing.com, or ask.com. I've already requested for yahoo.com and bing.com to index my website but I believe it is going to take some time. For those that are wondering, ask.com does not have a submit url option on its search engine. The makers of ask.com want the "internets" to automatically crawl a website to find its sitemap. It took me a while to understand what crawl and sitemap meant. First, I have never built a website before and understanding the complexity of coding a website and knowing how it all comes together has been a humbling experience. Second, I graduated law school knowing nothing about how to start your own solo practice. You would think that with 20% of law graduates going solo, law schools would equip their students with the tools required to go on your own and be successful. Unfortunately, this is not the case, most of the experience and knowledge you gain in law school occurs outside of its doors. I've gone on another tangent in this blog posting. The whole "law school is worthless posting" will have to continue on another posting. 

Most solo practitioners make the mistake of opening up shop and telling the whole world that they're general practitioners. Last month, when I had a law partnership I made this same mistake of telling the whole world I was a general practitioner. However, I've been browsing how-to-guides and watching informational videos by other solo-practitioners and decided that I need to find my own niche. It is important to find your own niche because clients who have a problem want a lawyer who knows the law applicable to their situation and is knowledgeable enough to provide the client with immediate results (or at least a game plan). Further, other lawyers will refer cases to your firm because they will view your niche law firm as a potential business partner and not as a threat. The whole referral system depends on lawyers referring cases to other lawyers who are specialists in a field of law in exchange for cases in the future. Lawyers are less likely to refer cases to a general practitioner because they will view the general practitioner as a threat. 

First, I choose estate planning because I've always been interested in what happens to your personal and real property after you die. I took every estate planning class in law school and I've drafted several wills for terminally ill patients for a local charity organization. Second, I chose uncontested divorce because it's easy and the dueling spouses will have to reach an some sort of an agreement amongst themselves if they want a divorce. Third, I chose immigration law because I know how the system works because I'm the second generation Egyptian-American. I have lived through the process of my parents coming to America with a green card waiting a period of time before they were naturalized citizens. Fourth, I chose tax law because I spent a year working at the Tax Clinic during law school. If in a couple of weeks, I don't have enough traffic generated to the tax portion of my website then I'll take it done and concentrate on my other niches. 

Today, I'm going to work a little bit on my website and preparing forms for future immigration law clients.