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Lot of it involve having a strong mindset. Clients are even more demanding when they know that the lawyer is young/not part of a law firm/new law firm etc.
Try and cultivate contacts and relationships. You will come across that there is a lot of work which your law firm colleagues can pass on due to pricing issue, subject matter knowledge, low end but repetitive work etc. These contacts will be more than happy to refer you work without any expectation (some may have monetary or non-monetary expectations).
You need to be a generalist since you will have to answer to varied client quries, but try to have some strong domain knowledge to differentiate yourself from junta!
Pricing - This is where it gets even more interesting. While you will be under tremendous pressure to start taking up work, but do hold your prices. It will be extremely difficult for you to increase your prices on annual basis or otherwise. There will be various tempting offers such as if you got 100, someone says that they only offer 80, you will say no, but if someone says 97, you may accept. Thereby you have anyways lowered your charge out rates and have left an impression in client's mind that they can downward negotiate fees. This will be very delicate, but do work on this.
On other jurisdictions, you will have to cultivate contacts of freelancers and work with each other in a collaborative manner.
+ shed some light on how to acquire clients?
Some questions I have:
- What legal services work best for freelancing? (Contracts, research, compliance, etc.?)
- How do you price services as a beginner?
- Any challenges to watch out for, especially with international clients?
- How do you handle legal restrictions on offering services across jurisdictions?
Would appreciate any advice from those who have navigated this space. Thanks in advance.