Near the end of January two great magazines focusing on solo and small firm law practice showed up on my desk. Both magazines had several personal connections to me (and several friends and colleagues) along with lots of material I wanted to highlight for you. In my prior post I noted that the American Bar Association’s differing intramural Web posting policies made it difficult to cover on my blog what was so simple when it happened.

So the subject of the first post, Law Practice magazine, is freely available on the web, but may go behind the password shield in a few weeks. Today’s subject is GPSolo magazine and the January/February issue of that publication has yet to be posted online. You should be able to find it here soon. And later, like all of the prior issues of GPSolo back to 1995, you should be able to find it here. It is great that the GPSSF Division leaves all this content available online for members and non-member lawyers alike.

So what got me so excited about this GPSolo issue? It focused on the Best of the Solo and Small Firm Conferences, a topic near and dear to my heart. So forgive the lack of links in this post, but with ABA TECHSHOW next week, it is do this now or probably not at all. In this GPSolo Editor-in-chief jennifer rose noted that my colleague with the Missouri Bar, Linda M. Oligschlaeger, is known as the mother of the solo and small firm conference movement. I know when I started our Oklahoma SSF conference calling Linda was the first thing on my list. The Missouri SSF conference still has the largest attendance.

These are really great events and great opportunities to meet other lawyers in similar practice settings. Most conferences mix substantive presentations with practice management and technology programs suited to the small firm market. Some smaller firm lawyers have often felt underserved by some bar associations. These conferences demonstrate a commitment to these lawyers.

For this issue of GPSolo magazine, the editors reviewed materials from numerous SSF conferences for reprinting. The titles should spark your interest. They include Foonberg’s Favorite 70 Rules of Good Client Relations, Keeping ‘Em Happy: Secrets of Client Satisfaction, Representing Non-English Speaking Clients, Sample Engagement Letters and Fee Agreements, two articles on Setting Up a Home Office, The Lawyer as Employer and "Pay Less in Taxes, Sleep Better at Night and Enjoy Life More." So does that sound like a line-up for a great Solo and Small Firm Conference or what? Both the Missouri and Oklahoma conferences were well represented in the articles selected.

Hopefully this great content will be posted online here soon. The good news is that it will be online thereafter without being hidden behind a password.

Several of these conferences are scheduled this summer, including a brand new one in Nebraska, where they’ve invited me to speak. If you are a solo or small firm lawyer, consider attending your local SSF conference or, if you don’t have one, maybe you should do a scouting trip to a nearby conference on behalf of your bar association.