Follow The Work You Actually Love To Do

Looking back over nearly 20 years of solo practice, the advice I would give myself is simple: work out what you really love doing, and just keep moving towards it. Finding your niche as a solo lawyer is not just a marketing exercise. It is part of building a practice that fits your interests, your strengths, and the kind of working life you actually want.

Finding Your Niche As A Solo Lawyer - Lessons From Nearly 20 Years Of Solo Law Practice

“Work out what you really love doing, and just keep moving towards it.”

Too many solo lawyers build their working lives around what appears commercially sensible, what other people tell them they should do, or where the market seems to be moving at any given time.

They follow the money trail, the latest professional fad, or somebody else’s idea of what success is supposed to look like. That may be one way to build a solo practice in theory, but it may also leave you filled with dread actually doing it day to day.

If serious money is the main objective of your lawyering, I would stay in a large firm, tolerate the grief, and at least know the trade-off is clear.

Sorry to be so frank.

Why Most Lawyers Go Solo In The First Place

Most solo lawyers do not however go solo for the big dollars. They go solo because they want freedom.

Freedom to practise how they choose, choose their clients and to shape the kind of working life they actually want. That freedom matters.

But only if you use it properly.

What I would say to any lawyer thinking about solo practice, or already in it, is this - test, experiment, and stay curious about the areas of law you want to practise in and specialise in. Especially at the start, you may have little or no idea what you are genuinely passionate about in law. That is normal. You do not solve that in theory. You solve it by doing some work in different areas and realising, “I actually really like this.”

Try different things. Pay attention. Notice what you enjoy.

Do the work you enjoy properly and well enough that people start to notice. Over time, that becomes your reputation. It becomes your speciality. It becomes your niche. It also becomes your passion. That is also when it becomes the work people seek you out for.

My main point is this - you should enjoy it. Better still, you should also care about it enough to have some real passion for it.

How My Own Solo Practice Changed Over Time

When I started my solo practice, it began as a property and commercial law firm. Later, I added migration law as a natural extension of the commercial side of the practice because it made sense and clients were asking about it. At the time, that made sense because property work was a stable, regular source of cashflow. It paid the bills regularly and well.

There is nothing wrong with that. Reliable work has its place, especially when you are building a business. Over time however, even though property law provided consistency of cashflow, I realised it was not where my real interest lay. Commercial law was. That was the work I was genuinely passionate about. I enjoyed working with small business people. I also enjoyed the strategic and holistic thinking involved, not just the law itself, but also learning more about business so I could add real value. Helping clients think through growth, structure, risk and opportunity from a legal perspective resonated with me.

Within that space, I found myself increasingly drawn to niche work in technology, arts, media and entertainment, and advisory work in the modelling industry and with models. That work really interested me. It suited me. It gave me energy because I felt connected to it. So I followed that. Not in one dramatic leap. Just steadily, deliberately, over time.

I then dropped migration law because I was not enjoying it at all, even though I was making good money from it.

I just kept practising in things that interested me and stayed curious.

Later on as years passed by, when I started scaling back toward semi-retirement, I narrowed again. I stopped advertising for commercial law work and focused instead on estate planning for existing clients. That work suits this stage of practice as I enjoy the continuity of those relationships, and I enjoy the trust that comes with acting for people over many years.

Again, I just kept following the trail of the work I loved doing and was passionate about.

At this stage I am happy practising as a solo lawyer and practising in things I enjoy.

Niching Down

That same principle now sits behind this advisory business. More recently, I have niched down more deliberately into advising solo lawyers, solo solicitors, barristers and consultant lawyers in sole practice. Plenty of people will tell you to go where the bigger market is i.e. BigLaw. Fine. They are welcome to it but I know what I enjoy.

I know the kinds of people I like helping. I know the kind of work that feels useful and worthwhile to me. Helping solo lawyers does.

When you are doing work that genuinely suits you, it changes the nature of the working day. It is still work. It is still business but it does not have that dead weight to it. You are not dragging yourself through it just because someone told you the margins were better or because it was supposed to be the next big thing. You are doing it because it fits who you are and what you enjoy doing. That matters.

You can build a viable practice doing work you tolerate. You build a more meaningful practice doing work you care about. That is the difference. .The money ebbs and flows. So does the work. That is not a sign that something is wrong - it is just how business works.

If you have run a practice long enough, you know this. The issue is not whether everything is perfectly smooth. It never is. The question is whether the work itself still means something to you.

People can tell when you care about what you do.

So my view is straightforward.

Do not build your practice around trends, chase every fad nor spend your working life trying to impress people you do not even want to become.

Build around work that you love doing and that means something to you.

Sometimes that means developing a niche on the side while your main work keeps the lights on.

Sometimes it means slowly letting go of profitable work that no longer fits while transitioning into something more enjoyable and more sustainable.

Practise what you love doing - life is too short.

Resources To Help You Find Your Niche

We offer practical resources to help solo lawyers think through niche selection, positioning and the realities of building a sustainable sole practice.

Explore our self-assessment, checklist and guide designed to help you move from vague interest to deliberate focus.

If you have reached the point where your solo practice needs a reset, a refinement, or a more honest look at what still fits, our Solo Law Practice Tune-Up is designed to help solo lawyers step back, assess where they are, and make deliberate decisions about what comes next.

You can read more at www.paulippolito.com.au

Remember there is no prize for building a practice that looks successful from the outside and feels wrong from the inside.