Law360 Canada (June 9, 2026, 1:33 PM EDT) --

Norm Bowley

By virtue of choice or necessity, some of us find ourselves in solo startup mode. Any startup is risky and arduous. In a professional setting, even more so.

Having practised for 37 years, some solo, some in wonderful partnerships and some in hellish ones, let me offer a few factors to make the journey survivable, durable and, with a modicum of luck, enjoyable.

1. Money. You’re setting out on a life venture — you don’t want to run out of gas by the end of the block. Have sufficient cash or reliable credit for at least your first four months. Even if you get good-paying clients on day one, you won’t see sufficient cash flow in the early days to keep the operation alive. This is the optimistic scenario.

2. Reputation. There are actually two reputations: one for ethical behaviour, one for professional excellence. All the trite sayings about “built in a lifetime, destroyed in an instant” are true. Most critically, your professional reputation is your most valuable asset, and it is built only with care and purpose. Do excellent work, of course, but don’t be shy of strutting it in forums such as professional publications, “lunch and learns” and online presentations.

3. Accounting I. There are two critical goals. First, stay out of trouble with your trust accounts. Second, have a dashboard that tells you if you’re making money, and on what kind of work. You’ll want to know where you make the best money easily and safely, and you’ll want to know what each cost element contributes to making this money. Sounds easy. It’s not. Pay attention to it.

4. Accounting II. Keep it as simple and clear as possible. There are excellent packages out there, such as Clio, with minimal learning curves and optimal analyses screens. Get one, learn it, use it. Even when you have good staff doing this work for you, you still need to be able to monitor your trust accounts and your ratios. It’s your licence, your reputation and your living standard on the line.

5. Identify your joyful place and live in it. There is some area of your profession that excites you and brings out the very best in you. Find it, live in it. This will be your compass in the storm.

6. Stop dabbling. Now. No living human being can ever master criminal defence, divorces, real estate transfers, appeal work, estate admin, tax law and corporate reorgs. You can spend 30 years as a hack, or you can spend five years learning a narrow area and the next 25 as a real pro. The days of the generalist ended some time in the seventies.

7. Find a mentor. Seneca said something to the effect that we don’t get to pick our parents, but we do get to choose whose children we wish to be. Associate with and befriend professionals you wish to emulate.

8. Network relentlessly and purposefully. Pick people who can help you professionally but also be sure these are people who are good for you morally, ethically and emotionally. Shun the dark souls and the weirdos who will suck the life out of you. Be kind to the mediocre, but don’t give them more time than it takes to be polite.

9. Assistance I. Get good people to help you as soon as you can afford it, if not sooner. You will never make serious money if you try to run the front desk, do the basic intake, do the bank runs or fix the photocopier. If you can’t afford to stick to your best work and pay people to do the rest, you’re doing something wrong. Stop it.

10. Assistance II. Select help on these three bases, in order: character, competence, compatibility. If there’s anything slightly sketchy, don’t hire. If they aren’t really good at what they do, don’t hire. If they’re not going to fit, don’t hire. “Not hiring” is easy. Firing is hard.

11. Office space. Overrated, yet underperformed. I had a partner once who ran his patent practice for half a year from his VW Westfalia from all over North America. Very successfully. We also had a very elegant office in a dump of a building that was at the geographic centre of the city and offered limitless free parking. Whatever you do, make sure clients feel safe, respected and impressed enough with your good housekeeping to know you care, but not so much they suspect they’re paying for your grandeur.

12. Resources. Don’t skimp on necessities, don’t waste money on frills. CanLII is an amazing free tool, but not all that you need for serious, winning advocacy. On the other hand, resist the siren songs of legal support providers who flatter you and tell you that all the big boys spend on their products. If there’s not a cogent use case, don’t buy, but if something demonstrably leverages your ability, buy it.

13. Plan for your absence. If you can never get away for two weeks’ holidays, back to back, you have a problem. You will burn out, and you’ll hate your life. If a sudden illness or major accident would leave your firm and your clients up the proverbial creek without a paddle, you have an even bigger problem. And if you know you’ll have to keep practising post-mortem just because your files are an impenetrable morass, your estate has a problem. And none of this is to mention that your practice is of absolutely no value and no interest to anyone to pay for, let alone take off your hands as an act of compassion. It takes decades and purpose to build a practice for which someone will pay good money.

14. Be generous. Make time for community work, in appropriate cases be merciful with your billing, shoulder your weight and more in your profession. This kind of thing pays back in spades, but that’s not why you should do it. You do it because it’s the right thing to do.

15. Choose partners and associates carefully. The legal scene is littered with the smoking wreckage of partnership breakups. Disentangling from partnerships and associations is more often than not a soul-wrenching, wealth-burning disaster. Going into the partnership, if suitors don’t earn high marks for professional excellence, enjoy a high reputation for ethical behaviour, and they’re not pleasant company, then why would you even start?
 
In Norm Bowley’s third career he speaks, writes and consults on matters of professional success and happiness. norm@purposeful.ca.

The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

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