MFAN Member Karin Ciano Reports from the Great Minnesota Solo and Small Firm Get-Together
Photo Credit: Kelly Jeanetta
Earlier this month I attended Minnesota CLE’s tenth annual Duluth conference, Strategic Solutions for Solo & Small Firms. If you don’t go, you should. It’s a great chance to learn practice management tips applicable to freelance practice, earn CLE credits, get special deals and savings on publications, demo practice management software, get a free headshot, take a harbor cruise, collect serious swag, and best of all, to network with hundreds of solo and small-firm lawyers from all over Minnesota. Mark your calendars: next year’s get-together is August 3-4, 2015.
This year’s conference featured several presentations of interest to freelance attorneys and the lawyers who hire them. Carolyn Elefant’s plenary session, “The Future of Solo Practice in the Next 10 Years: Making Solo Sustainable,” anticipated increasing growth by non-lawyer providers who aggregate legal services, including freelance-services providers such as Custom Counsel, Axiom and Hire an Esquire.
Minnesota’s own ethics maven and former HCBA President Eric Cooperstein presented on several topics, including “The Ethics of ‘Of Counsel’ and Other Attorney Relationships.” Eric’s session addressed the different types of relationships between lawyers, devoting significant time to some of the same issues MFAN addressed in its spring CLEs on working with freelance attorneys, but going into more detail on the differences between freelancers, associates and “of counsel” relationships. I look forward to posting on these great presentations in more detail.
Were you in Duluth this year? What’s your best tip for getting the most out of the conference? Share it with us in the comments!
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