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A. Background
1. I took a break to spend sometime with my folks with the intention to rejoin the same law firm after a few months.
2. I hadn't quit the firm and worked remotely. After few months, I decided to quit and completed the handover.
3. I stayed home longer than I expected and realized that a majority of successful people, including people practicing law don't necessarily work in law firms. Similarly, a large majority of population works in unorganized/ unstructured setup and lead a fulfilling life. Thus, began exploring my options, if I wanted to continue living with my parents in a Tier II town.
B. Before you decide to come back:
1. Must have a mortgage free home in your hometown. If not, hang in there for a couple of years and buy an apartment/ piece of land, which should not cost you more than Rs. 55 lakhs in a small city. Having your own office is an advantage (even a single room in your home should be good enough);
2. Stay mortgage free and keep enough money in your bank account to buy health insurance and car insurance for next 5 years; and some money to afford a meal when you step out with your new found friend circle;
3. I assume you stay in a district, which has a district court and not merely an outlying court;
B.Vocation;
4. Outsourced corporate advisory work is possible, but litigation is the traditional route and easy to set up. I am not suggesting that rendering services remotely is a bad idea, but I am not the best person to comment;
5. Litigation will keep you connected with the cream of the town and open doors for networking and business opportunities, as opposed to remotely rendering corporate law services. Rendering corporate services remotely may have scaling up challenges in the long run, but you never know, when you may hit the jackpot in terms of revenue inflows (as is the case with all other businesses). In litigation, scaling up is not a necessity, if you decide to practice a niche area or do limited matters as you grow older. This is the biggest difference between corporate and litigation practice. In corporate, you need to keep growing in terms of size and revenue.
6. If you wish to rely upon local clientele - people in small cities, including those having businesses don't need a full time corporate lawyer, but need an astute litigator, who understands how basic criminal law, partnership, labour law, contract and succession law works. Paying special attention to local land and revenue law helps. Your knowledge of corporate law helps in visualizing their business arrangements.
7. Drop your inhibitions with litigation (of not having practiced before) and Hindi documentation. It can be easily overcome and it will start coming to you naturally after a few months.
8. Even in small towns, good lawyers make a decent amount of money. Don't compare their average monthly income (from legal practice :-)) with that of a law firm AP salary, because, they live in their own house, large part of their fees is in cash and because you forgot to discount the actual bonus pay out in a law firm. Cost of living between the two cities may be factored in as well.
9. A lawyer whether in a small city or a metro and irrespective of the practice area would remain occupied throughout the day, as there is sufficient work for every one market. If you are sincere, work will keep coming in. The number of cases filed by an average lawyer and the best in town are almost similar, but the difference between the two is their client and fees paid by the client for the same work.
10. Law firm teaches you to be organised, professional, diligent and service oriented. Problem with small town is, big shots don't give audience (not returning phone calls is a common problem) and are stuck with feudal era idea of a client-attorney relationship - don't give too much information, but keep assuring success. This is the pain point you need to address - remain available for the client, meet the deadlines and be a man/ woman of impeccable integrity.
11. You will not get interim relief in 8 out of 10 case in your first year, but the graph gets better with time, after judge starts seeing you regularly appear in his/ her court and sees you as a diligent hard working lawyer. Don't loose patience and don't antagonize the judge or his staff. Litigators don't shout and dramatize - they are precise and persuasive.
12. Remain humble and stop gossiping. Client will come to you for your legal knowledge, but will stick with you, even if you don't get orders all the time, if he sees you to as a humble and honest professional.
13. Chase money, but don't say no to work even if you get paid mere filing expenses. More work means more appearance, More appearances mean better face value in court.
14. Build a team, so that you can expand your practice areas, deliver on time and take on more work. Having a team of your own would also help you confine yourself to stay and final argument matters and you can focus on managing office and client relationships.
15. If you have more than 3 years of work experience, don't join a senior's chamber, else you will get branded as a junior and will find it difficult to charge fees. Taking on their drafting work is fine. Once you get a brief, argue it yourself, unless you are in a tribunal or HC and the client has instructed you to brief a senior. People in small town judge you for engaging an arguing counsel. Network with senior lawyers and request them to send the work outside their practice area your way. Ask your law firm friends to refer you local matters.
16. All districts have consumer and labour courts. Ask corporates to engage you as their counsel.
17. Avoid political affiliation or activism, atleast till you make it big. Representing a political party or activist as a professional is perfectly acceptable.
18. Don't say no to corporate work, unless time management becomes as issue. Please refer to point 14 above.
As it turns out, I wrote more than just my experience, but my earnest piece of advice too :-).
Keep seeing this word a lot
Lot of improvements, remote work available. It doesn't matter where you are, launch a firm (get office in one of the bigger cities), hire a CS (it's gonna be cheap in a small town), start writing on LinkedIn and twitter on items relevant to tech, business and maybe fundraising. A friend ended up in the same situation and launched a retainer program that was cheap and easily available to startup's, especially regulated. Made 40 L first year, had to hire two resources.
Has anyone been in the same situation? How did you make a move-have you been able to do some kind of a corporate law work in your current city?
Also after a few years is it possible to shift back to the firm?
Still in a dilemma whether to move or not. Any tips/advice would help.