This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

I remember the time when I was planning to quit my job to start working for iPleaders full time. It was a very hard decision to make, given that I had very little savings and I had no idea when I would be able to start paying myself a salary. Not more than 3 months of rent and food expenses!

However, I had it easy, because I had planned my transition from a job into law practice over a long, long time. I had a system up and running. I even had a team to work with. I and my co-founder even worked on and negotiated a major university partnership for over 18 months and got it ready.

When I left my job, even the website of the new business was up. There was machinery in place for us to succeed. And that is why in our first 3 months of operations, what we did was enough to get tens of lakhs of revenue rolling in. That gave us the confidence, stimulus and resources to keep going.

I am a big believer in planning out your transition from a job to a business or independent practice. If you plan it well, prepare for months or years in advance, and take the plunge when the time is right, your chance of success goes way up astronomically.

Unfortunately, I do not see most lawyers do that. A lot of them face a lot of unnecessary struggle and uncertainty simply because they do not plan ahead before starting on their own. 

I can’t imagine how overwhelming it would have been to start from scratch actually after putting resignation. Because a certain amount of ground work was already done, at the time of leaving, I had no problem whatsoever to hit the ground running.  

On the flipside, there are others who keep planning and planning, and never take the plunge. 

That is perhaps even worse. At least those who take a plunge without a plan will be forced to find a workable strategy sooner or later, dictated by market realities. But those who never start due to fear of failure or analysis paralysis stand no chance at all.

The best case scenario though, is that you start investing a little bit of your time, say maybe an hour a day, into your future independent practice or business. How can you do that?

This is a question I frequently get from even experienced lawyers with many years of experience, who now wants to shift from their jobs to an independent set up, offering advice and legal consultancy. There are also younger lawyers who aspire to set up their own law firms. While passion, interest, experience are all very essential ingredients for success, it is hard to come by without preparation. 

Also, luck favours the well prepared. 

Let me share some ideas on how you can prepare well for going independent, that are field-tested by me and my students.

Narrow down your choices

What are you actually going to do? What kind of clients will you service? Why will those clients come to you rather than go to other more established lawyers? The answer can’t be I am cheaper – nobody hires lawyers for important legal work just because they are cheap!

It is not enough to even narrow down the area of practice. You need to also narrow down on the services you will provide, whether you will charge premium rates or mass market rates, whether you want a few high margin matters or volume of low margin matters, whether you will focus on a geography or not, whether you need to have an internet presence or not, etc. 

There are a lot of choices everywhere. If you just jump in without considering various alternatives, during the heat of battle it is unlikely that you would even have the time to dwell on critical decisions and choose wisely. 

It is best to evaluate these choices over time, speak to people who have already tested the waters and made progress, maybe read some books on the subject and take up a legal practice development and management course like this so that you have a workable plan.

When I left my law firm job to work at iPleaders, we were ready to launch a course, and had even some chapters ready. There was no doubt on what we were going to do, or what kind of people we would cater to. That clarity really helped to take rapid action, and results followed!

Market research and viability testing

This is not something I did very well before starting. My understanding of the market was full of assumptions, but I got a few things right intuitively, and from experience.

When we started iPleaders, we thought that our primary buyers would be entrepreneurs and businessmen. However, in reality, the biggest chunk of buyers of our first courses, on business law and entrepreneurship administration, turned out to be law students and practicing lawyers. 

That first experience with the marketplace also worked like eye opening market research. However, there were indeed business professionals and entrepreneurs who also signed up. We knew this would happen based on our experience of taking legal workshops for engineers and managers and also based on our experience of helping entrepreneurs navigate some tough waters.

It is important to see if there is a real market for what you want to do. It is great if you want to be a sports lawyer, but you need to see if it is viable for you to survive by working as a sports lawyer. Is there enough work? What kind of work is that? How much are clients paying for it? How many other lawyers are doing the same work? Are they being paid well.

Contrary to popular perception, it is not always great that you have no competition. At times having no competition just means that there is no attractive market to tap into. There are no space lawyers in India, say, and that is probably because there isn’t enough work for a space lawyer to do. 

On the other hand, my market research suggests that there is a tremendous market for lawyers dealing with motor vehicle cases. Pay is high, competition is low because high calibre lawyers think that such cases would undermine their status, but the volume of such cases is really high!

There would be many other such areas with amazing opportunity for new lawyers that are up for easy pickings.

Developing a business model: What would be your USP?

I remember developing a business model for ClikLawyer. It was developed over two sessions of brainstorming and involved 3 people. We zeroed in on 3 high frequency, highly paid areas of work in law, from a shortlist of 16. These were money recovery in employment matters, recovering payment on behalf of unpaid vendors and money recovery in property cases where builder failed to deliver.  

We also identified mutual consent divorce, trademark opposition, railway compensation, PF money recovery, insurance claims etc as other high frequency, high ticket cases but did not find them to be suitable at the kick off stage. We wanted to get to these at some point too. 

The ones we chose were based on some parameters. Apart from our own abilities and understanding, we also took into account how we would be able to recover these amounts.

After that, we did a few such matters at a super low cost, trying to to just understand what it takes to fight these cases. We discovered that certain matters can be sorted out with initial legal notices and others led to quick settlement after filing certain complaints and suits. 

After we identified these buckets, we put all our energy behind these alone, in exclusion of all else. This strategy really paid off!

We also had to figure out how much we spent on these matters on an average, how much we could charge, and what was the customer acquisition cost. We had to figure out how much we will pay lawyers to do these matters, and what would be the mode or manner of payment from clients. 

One of the trickiest things to get right was pricing.

These are all business model decisions. It is advisable that you begin the research and experiments long before you quit your job and start on your own. If you can figure out the business model through trial and error and experiments before you go out in the field, you are likely to do far better than the rest.

Please figure out how to develop a business model by identifying and aligning yourself with market forces. It should be one of your biggest priorities. 

To get it right, answer the following questions: What do you do for your clients that others cannot do as well as you? What are your USPs? Why would clients keep coming back to you? What are you able to give that your competitors can’t? Why can’t copycat competitors drive you underground with undercutting and unfair practices?

Go-to-market strategy: what would be the steps that can set you up for success?

Knowing your service and business model is one part, but how will your ideal clients figure out that you exist and that they should hire you? This is where go to market strategy comes.

You could ensure that people get to know you through a great online presence, or by holding seminars, or being a regular on TV debates on your area of expertise. 

As long as people are getting exposed to your ideas, content and success stories, your go to market strategy is working.

Our go to market strategy in LawSikho is to give away amazing and valuable content away all the time, so that we are recognised as thought leaders in our domain of work. We also keep in touch with our subscribers with regular newsletters which are widely read. 

What would be your go to market strategy?

When I started ClikLawyer, I relied a lot on my existing network to get referral work. I had a task that I must call 5 people I know every day, including people I haven’t spoken to in a long time. I would reconnect with them, and at the end share about my new venture and the kind of work we were doing. I would also mention it to them that if they knew anyone who could benefit from a service please introduce.

This worked like magic because having unpaid dues is a very common thing in India. From making 30 calls a week, I often got 10-15 referral leads, of which a handful converted into paying clients. In the initial days, when we were trying to get going, this was a big boon!

However, this may not work for everyone. Depending on what you want to do, you may need to network with a lot of CA or CS professionals. Maybe you need to organize events for the kind of professionals you are targeting as ideal clients. Maybe you will start a blog for them. 

For instance, if I was working a lot on legal metrology act, and my target market was in-house counsels, I would start a blog that keeps such counsels up-to-date on developments in legal metrology cases apart from answering all the frequently asked questions that such counsels may have regarding legal metrology act.

What will you do? What would be your go to market strategy?

Can you moonlight while still working a job to test the market?

This is a great idea, especially if you do not plan on doing something that competes with your current employer. Let’s say I work in a law firm, but I want to start a business around mental health of lawyers. Or perhaps I want to start a legal clinic catering to villagers. There is no conflict with the employers, of course. In that circumstance, it may be a good idea to do the new work you want to do eventually full time, as a side gig for some time.

This allows you to figure out what are the challenges of the work, what works and what doesn’t work, and how you need to prepare for the plunge.

A lot of lawyers will allow you to take independent matters while you are working with them as a salaried junior. This is also a great way to cut your teeth before you take on the giganticus. You should look for jobs which will allow you a few hours of independent work every week, so you can build your profile, brand and abilities to operate independently on the side.

Can you start an organization before you actually quit?

You can start a not-for-profit. You can start a company where you can be a sleeping shareholder, and employ others to get the business off the ground. This is not a bad idea if you have the funds to do this. I strongly recommend that you consider hiring employees to work for your organization to get the initial ground work done, while you may be still working a high-paying job.

I had started Intelligent Legal Risk Management Solutions LLP while I was still in college, along with Abhyuday, my co-founder. When we were working in a law firm in Mumbai, we had some friends and employees who kept the work going even in our absence. I used to have weekly calls with them, participated in some brainstorming. However, the fact that the work wasn’t stopped in our absence meant that we did not have to start from scratch when we quit our jobs.

Our blog kept growing, websites and user interfaces were developed, and a rudimentary team was in place for us to work with when we quit our jobs.

I highly recommend this to those in jobs who are looking to start something independently. 

Can you build your brand up before you quit?

Can you write articles? Can you improve your google footprint? Can you create an awesome youtube channel on the topic of your interest? Can you meet people who can refer work in future or help you to get the work done? 

Can you start monthly meetups for quarterly events in your city, where your future clients will gather? Can you get speaking opportunities that would help to build up your brand? Can you publish a book? Can you start volunteering in some non-profits?

There are a lot of things one can do to strengthen their brand even while they are in a job. Which ones will you do? Reply and let me know.

Can you have an anchor client or a big order in queue before you quit your job?

When I quit my law firm job, it was not a hard decision to make at all, because a deal with a big university had just come through. It gave us some space to stand on, and some amount of confidence. Without that, it could have been hard to get started and build momentum. We do not need any university degree or brand to run our courses today. However, when you are just getting started, it can be a big help.

Can you have a big client or an order in the queue that would give you similar cushioning or comfort?

Are there any skills that you want to learn before you quit and go independent?

This is a serious question. The reason I went to work for a law firm was that I wanted to see that world before going independent. I strongly suggest people planning to start up that they should work in a startup for 2-3 years at least. I would also suggest those planning to do independent practice that please work under a bring young independent lawyer for at least a year to get a sense of what the work and the life is like. If you want to set up a law firm, try to apprentice with a law firm founder for at least 6 months. 

However, in reality, learning from others can be quite difficult and impossible given how jealous and stingy most lawyers are with respect to sharing their knowledge and skills. They are afraid that you may compete with them. That is unfortunately short sighted.

In any case, you may want to brush up on various legal skills also. In that case, I would urge you to check out LawSikho.com, where you may find something that is in the line of your interest. Also definitely check out our course on Legal Practice Development and Management.

Do you need to build a financial corpus before you start?

This is also something to consider. I had 3 months of rent and food experience when I started after leaving my job. Then I did some freelance work to keep that corpus intact. It was not that hard really, because I was able to drastically reduce my costs. 

However, these things are to be taken seriously. You need to have a few months of sustenance before you quit. However, I have also seen people who have many years of living expenses saved up already unable to quit in fear. This is quite common.

Please do not wait forever to save up a humongous amount of money before you try your hand at going independent. 6 months of living expenses in the bank is quite good to get started. 1 years expense already saved in the bank will be a luxury. Anything more than that is not quite necessary in most lines of work.

So are you going to start on your own?

When would that happen? What is stopping you? What excites you about starting on your own, and what scares the hell out of you? 

Please share with me. Looking forward to seeing your response!

Meanwhile here are the other courses open for enrollment:

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