Entrepreneur launches online school for solo lawyers

-- Deborah L. Cohen covers small business for Reuters.com. She can be reached at smallbusinessbigissues@yahoo.com --

By Deborah L. Cohen

CHICAGO (Reuters.com) - The words "attorney" and "entrepreneur" are rarely uttered in the same sentence and the path can be daunting for lawyers who strike out on their own.

Susan Cartier Liebel, who had worked alone or in small firms since finishing law school at Connecticut's Quinnipiac University in 1994, saw this phenomenon as a gap in training that few law schools had attempted to fill.

"I heard what people were saying and I listened to the common refrain, which was, ‘They don't teach me this in law school,'" said Cartier Liebel, 50, who last March launched Solo Practice University (solopracticeuniversity.com/), an online educational community for independent lawyers.

Cartier Liebel's business has benefited from the economic downturn, as downsizing at many mid- and large-sized firms has swelled the ranks of independent attorneys. According to the most recent data from the American Bar Association (ABA), some 62 percent of attorneys in private practice worked on their own or in small shops through 2005.

"It was absolutely serendipitous," Cartier Liebel said, noting the unfortunate trend underscores a need for more extensive education in non-traditional legal areas like business development and marketing. While the ABA and other law organizations offer online networks oriented toward independent lawyers, Cartier Liebel says her site is the first comprehensive remote learning platform targeted to the solo audience.

"With this implosion, with this tremendous reduction in jobs, they don't know what to do, and they've been searching," she said. "All of a sudden, poof, there's Solo Practice University."

LARGE, BUT FRACTIOUS SEGMENT

Bruce Dorner, a Londonderry, New Hampshire-based solo practitioner who founded the ABA's popular "Solo Sez" LISTSERV electronic mailing group 15 years ago, believes that technological advancements are making it possible for Cartier Liebel to cater to the diverse needs of a fractious population of lawyers.

"Solos are a large market segment, but it is extraordinarily difficult to sell to them," said Dorner, who has run a general legal practice for 31 years. "She's trying to take an online university model and customize it for lawyers, and she's gaining traction."

He added: "Given the current economy, there's a lot of young birds being pushed out of the nest before their flight feathers are in place."

Cartier Liebel developed Solo Practice University (SPU) with the help of a tech-savvy lawyer, David Carson, who was one of her former students at Quinnipiac, where she taught a class on going solo. The two of them are the site's only full-time staffers; they rely on virtual assistants to help with ongoing development projects as needed.

"We had to take the feel of being at a tele-seminar or a retreat, and all the elements that are key for lawyers in learning and networking, and put them into a brand new customized site that was cutting edge technology," she said.

Besides virtual classes, there is a variety of networking tools that include online forums, discussion groups, RSS feeds and blogging platforms, as well as a purchasing cooperative that provides discounts on malpractice insurance, software and other legal products.

Subscribers have the opportunity to congregate in specific groups in their interest areas, like family law, or can form their own.