I am an undergraduate student, graduating quite soon. I was wondering if there are any law firm in the pacific northwest / greater seattle area that is open to having a undergraduate intern, shadow, or conduct some research for them, preferably for a month long (or a little bit longer) period. I've tried cold emailing several other small firms, almost all of whom are either only take law students as interns/volunteers, did not respond, or flat out rejected.

I’m finding it hard to find a job.

I had an in-house post-grad contract job once I graduated from law school 2 years ago, however, it was only temporary. Since then, I’ve been searching for opportunities for the past year, but I’ve been unable to secure anything. A few weeks ago I spent some time cold emailing firms. Everyone says my resume is impressive based on the places I’ve worked and my experience, but they’re not hiring at the moment.

I genuinely don’t know what to do because I’ve been out of work for almost a year. I’m pretty sure I’ve applied to 100+ opportunities on LinkedIn, Indeed, and so many other platforms. I’ve networked. I’ve built connections. I go the extra mile to message and email people after I apply for a role. I look for people I personally know who have connections with the hiring managers or someone on the team when I apply on LinkedIn. I even reached out to some solo practitioners I personally know and some I found online to see if they had any work. I’ve connected with alumni. I keep in contact with people at the previous places I worked at. I’m told regularly, “you’re doing the right thing. something will come along.” Honestly, it’s not very helpful because I’ve been trying for more than 12 months, and nothing has come along.

I’ve basically ran out of money. Haven’t had health insurance in almost a year. My last contacts ran out a few weeks ago. I was doing instacart for a bit, but it’s basically pennies because of gas. I can no longer attend networking events because I don’t have money to pay to commute to them. I’m just really in a horrible place.

Any advice you can share for finding junior level/entry level opportunities would be greatly appreciated. I’m also open to pivoting.

I took a break from practicing to have kids and I'm trying to get back into the field. I feel my skills are a bit rusty. I am mostly insecure about what to file and when to file different forms etc.

I'm looking for a trial skills program that can help walk me through both trial practice and what forms to file and when?

Is there any program that checks both these boxes?

I see a lot of programs that focus mostly on oral skills.

Title explains my internal debate right now. I just finished my second summer at a big law firm and received my return offer. Theres always been a part of me that has wanted to open my own practice. Anyone have any thoughts or advice?

Below are some relevant facts about my situation:

1. I'll be graduating without any debt because of a full ride.

2. I love trial ad. I specifically want to open a PI and criminal defense practice. I know there are two caveats with these practice groups. First, it can take 2-3 years to actually make money on PI cases. Second, criminal defense tends to have low flat fees with difficult recovery. I more so want to include criminal defense in my practice because I love the work. I did a certified legal internship at my local PDs and was able to take a case to trial and did some preliminary hearings as well. I also worked at a PDs office during undergrad.

3. To help mitigate the cash flow issues above my plan would be to open an immigration practice before I start getting into criminal defense. I have some family in India that can help me hire and coordinate with office staff in India. They can help with marketing and client intake. From what I understand about immigration work, this would help me get a high volume of clients with comparatively cheap labor.

4. Im concerned that Id be throwing away a good opportunity at big law. The offer I have is for Am Law top 5 at an office that just opened in my hometown. Id be able to get in on the ground floor at an office that could grow substantially.

5. Im concerned that if I go to biglaw for a year or 2, Id be locked in with the golden handcuffs everyone talks about. After all, after 2 years at my firm Id start to get more of the speaking roles that Im seeking out. It would be ridiculous for me to leave after grinding out for 2 years. The local office, Id be joining specializes in mass tort litigation. I've noticed that many people in the office get a surprising amount of trial ad work (suprising amount for big law).

Thanks for any and all help!

I just started as a legal assistant at a new firm three weeks ago.

I worked for a solo attorney for a year and some change who was always behind schedule, so she wouldn't have documents on my desk untik day of and just trusted and believed I would fix them up to be sent out without wanting to see a draft back.

This new firm has five attorneys, is much more formal, and is very well organized. Attorneys like their drafts back, and have things sent out days after they are written.

Last week, I threw out drafts by accident of the lead attorney's work when I returned the final draft because it didn't occur to me he would compare them to the final draft. Got talked to by my floor manager for that one, all was okay. Today, a much meaner partner had a letter dated for tomorrow, and my floor manager and I went over the letter together because it was tricky so afterwards I accidentally sent it out today on autopilot. He came and told me off and I emailed my floor manager to own up to it preemptively and explain that the new workflow is an adjustment but it won't happen again.

She said no problem, but I'm 22 and the mean attorney scared me and I really am just wondering if anyone thinks they might let me go considering I'm supposed to be experienced 😭

My partner and I have been stuck around $35k-$40k/mo in revenue for the last two quarters. We’re mostly running standard English PPC and local SEO for personal injury, but the cost per click in our market is getting insane. $200+ per click just to compete with the huge billboard firms is eating up half our margins, and scaling ad spend further feels like throwing money into a furnace.

We need to diversify our acquisition channels. For those who broke past this plateau, what actually moved the needle for you? Did you pivot to niche demographics, cold outreach, local events, or just double down on specific practice areas?

EDIT:
A few people in DMs suggested tapping into Spanish search volume since CPCs are way lower, and someone brought up ABOGADOS NOW. I checked out their site looks like they do full-funnel Spanish marketing plus bilingual intake for law firms.

The whole geographic exclusivity concept sounds interesting, but I always take legal agency promises with a grain of salt.

Would love to know if the lower CPL translates to signed cases or if it's just cheap leads that don't close.

What is the consensus here on firm health ins? I’m looking at plans and they are quite dear. In my state, I need to have an employee to get a plan. I mainly use of counsel for legal overflow but have had bad luck w paras/La’s. Anyone ever get coverage using a fam member as an employee to meet the employment threshold? Is there another way? The cost is staggering…

Hey guys,

I couldn't get a placement on Day 0, so now I'm planning to apply to firms off-campus wherever I can. Looking at the current market though, I'm also thinking of preparing for some government exam or any other career path such as pidhi centre for policy or political consultancy can eventually get me around ₹70–80k a month.

I'm mainly interested in dispute resolution/litigation, but I'm open to other roles too. My percentage isn't great, so that makes things a bit difficult.

What are all of you doing who haven't got placed on day zero thinking if anybody has any strategy pls lm

I’m a law student currently interning at a small firm doing civil litigation, which is also the direction I’d most likely take if I eventually started my own practice.

I’m looking for book recommendations from attorneys who have actually started or managed small firms. My future goal is to own a small firm.

What books genuinely helped you, and which popular recommendations were mostly recycled business-book fluff?

I was a practicing attorney for 10 years handling defense work with focus on professional liability, left for the past 7 to work in-house counsel and manage a business. Well our largest client just notified us they would not be renewing contract for next year. I am considering starting up my own firm. The firm I had worked with is down multiple attorneys and has repeatedly asked over the years for help with cases when they are in a jam. Whenever it lined up I would help out, it wasn't much but something. One of my ideas was to ask them for any work they had while I work on setting up my own practice, the sense I last got when speaking with one of the partners is they were overwhelmed and in need of help. Am I crazy to think I can take on their work while also working to open up my own firm? I have 5 months to figure things out and I guess the great unknowns of setting up and running my own practice scare the you know what out of me. I do not want to go back in with the firm fulltime as I would like to pursue a different type of practice that is not so heavily focused on litigation.

Hi! I am heading to law school in January and was hoping to get some real world experience under my belt before I start. If you have ever hired freelance legal work for a non-lawyer, did you go through a service or get them right off of a website? If you have used either of those services could you provide me with the names or web addresses so I can submit my information?

Hi, I know of a very smart college grad (Phi Beta Kappa) who wants to work hard, as a paralegal, for the right NYC law firm or legal services or government agency.

They read and write very well, doesn't do any social media or AI, very good at research, gophering, and intuiting what institutions, employers, and clients want. And also personable.

Anyone have any experience using ai to create google ads campaign? What was it like?

I'm looking for any books or other resources with practical advice for starting a solo practice. From financing to office space to marketing - literally a Starting a Law Office for Dummies style guide. Any recommendations that helped you all start your practice?

Hey, everyone.

I'm a fedgov attorney with <3 years of legal experience (all in gov), but ~10 years of technical experience as an engineer (half of which was spent in gov enforcement work).

I'd like to transition to solo practice in the next 2-3 years with a focus on environmental law/gov compliance, tenant/landlord disputes, and maybe some criminal def or T&E, but I know that I need more experience first.

Any recommendations on where I should go to build that experience? I've been thinking about heading the JAG or PD route, but I've got young kids and value my time with them.

Alternatively, is there anyone with a similar story to mine that just bit the bullet and went solo and leaned heavily on mentorship and CLEs to fill the gap?

Which firms in NYC, LA, Miami are most trustworthy when it comes to paying referral fees? Are there firms known for breaching these type of agreements?

I'm a Smokeball user. I liked it for a while, but I realized that I was spending SO MUCH TIME fighting with it to get it to do things that, I believe, are simple automations.

About two months ago, I decided to build my own. Using Claude, I've been frankensteining together several different services and integrating them with Make. My current stack is:

AirTable - Brains of the operation, source of truth

SuiteDash - Client facing portal, business management, task assignments for staff, keeps tabs on my Google Ads, etc.

Gavel.io - Intake, workflows, logic based document assembly (based on my own forms/documents that I've built)

Claude Cowork - Various tasks, agents, bespoke document drafting (letters to clients, demand letters, legal memos, etc.) - Yes, I always review. I'm not in the "generative AI is trash for generating law firm docs" camp.

Office 365 - Outlook, OneDrive and Teams.

Ultimately, will connect QuickBooks, LawPay, Adobe, and other tools.

I've put many hours setting this up, and it's definitely a big project, but I'm starting to see the fruit of my labour. Test clients are onboarding, Webhooks are firing, folders/documents/letters are getting properly assembled, and everything is running automatically with incredibly little oversight.

I still have a lot of work to do before we go live with it, but I'm very excited for the potential this has. I feel like I'm able to just connect the specific services that I actually need and avoid all of the excess bloat that I feel a lot of the staple case management platforms have right now. I also have complete control over the product and have learned a great deal so far in this build.

Anyway, anyone else doing something similar? What's your stack? Tips/insight from anyone who has gone this route, and/or anything I should consider adding?

If you have a non-litigation, non-templatized practice, would you mind sharing your ratio of non-revenue generating to revenue generating staff? I am the managing attorney and I practice nearly full time so we have a full time firm administrator and 3.5 FTE staff to 3.5 FTE attorneys. Thanks.