How Do I Build a National Practice?

Excerpted from Pioneering Women Lawyers: From Kate Stoneman to the Present

Edited by Patricia E. Salkin

Government service has been a defining part of my career, and it contributed significantly to my building a national practice and achieving a national reputation. But you need not be a public official to develop a national practice and reputation.

How do you build one? What does it consist of? It is one in which you work outside your state and region, with law firms and governmental entities in other states. But a national practices essentially is one that involves significant issues and entities.

How do you get this business? Who sends it? Often times these are referrals from other law firms, lawyers whom I knew in the government, or lawyers whom I have come to know through my American Bar Association activities. How you develop a national practice is a question the answers to which must be tailored to the practice area and the people. Mine is an outgrowth of having been in government service and knowing environmental lawyers all over the country through public speaking and organizations. The downside of a national practice is travel, although that also is an appealing part of it. However, staying at a Motel 6 because it is the best available, sleeping bolt upright at SFO at midnight awaiting a red-eye flight, flying middle seat coach, unfed, overnight from Anchorage does reflect the true “glamour” of the situation.

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