Solo Practitioners

From Florida Trend
By Art Levy - 7/1/2009

Since going it alone, Eleni Pantaridis says she has already matched the salary she was making before being laid off in March. [Photo: Scott Wiseman]
Apart from the crowded commute into Miami, Eleni Zarbalas Pantaridis was happy practicing law at Kluger Peretz Kaplan & Berlin. She specialized in mergers and acquisitions and also did some real estate work for the midsized firm. But in February, after nearly two years on the job, she was laid off, and by the end of March the firm itself was gone, too.

Pantaridis, 38, with three young children, found herself unemployed at one of the worst times ever for attorneys. Legal recruiters told her the job market was “flooded with unemployed lawyers.” The 40 lawyers who lost their jobs at Kluger Peretz Kaplan & Berlin were just part of a statewide trend. Big firms such as Holland & Knight, Hogan & Hartson and Shutts & Bowen also have laid off attorneys. Across the nation, some 800 lawyers and legal staff were laid off in a single day — Feb. 12 — just one week after Pantaridis lost her job.

Joe Ankus, a one-time Holland & Knight attorney and president of Ankus Consulting in Fort Lauderdale, has been a legal recruiter for 18 years. He says he has seen bad job markets before for lawyers but calls this one “off-the-charts” bad. Some analysts blame the housing bust and the economy for the legal industry’s woes. Others point to firms using the economy as an excuse to reduce numbers or cull underperforming staff. Either way, these are rough times to be an unemployed lawyer. “I’ve never seen this amount and this quality of talent available,” Ankus says. “I have never seen as many Wall Street corporate and real estate and finance attorneys who literally have nowhere to turn.”

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Pantaridis isn’t giving up practicing law — nor is she feeling sorry for herself, even though she uprooted her family from Orlando to take the job at Kluger Peretz Kaplan & Berlin. “People expect for you to be upset, to be depressed,” she says. “But I have three kids. I have no time to feel sorry for myself.”

After becoming unemployed, she had a few interviews with big firms but eventually decided she was wasting her time. There were some opportunities, but most of the firms she spoke with wanted her to bring clients and a sizable business portfolio with her. If she could do that, she told them, she wouldn’t need the job. She felt her best option was to go it alone — a decision that Tampa attorney Paul Rebein says is becoming a trend within the industry.

Formerly with Shook, Hardy & Bacon’s Tampa office, Rebein says he left the national firm last December because he wanted to work for himself. He did extensive research on starting his own firm and has since created a seminar to teach other big-firm attorneys how to build and operate a one-person firm. “At a big firm, everything is done for you, all the marketing and the administrative work,” he says. “All you have to do is practice law. But getting a good job at a big law firm and staying there your whole career isn’t necessarily a guaranteed option anymore.”

Ankus says that while going it alone is a necessity these days for many lawyers, it isn’t a sure path to success. “It is viable, but for someone who lacks effective business generation techniques, they will struggle to earn a decent living,” he says. “Unfortunately, this recession has proven, once again, that the lawyer who has a loyal, portable client following can ride out any storm and the lawyer who pegs their career on servicing another’s clients will be at the mercy of their masters.”

Pantaridis, who mainly works from home now, has opened a “virtual law office” in Boca Raton, where a receptionist answers the phone and where she can arrange to meet clients if necessary. She also works 20 hours a week for a Palm Beach County firm that specializes in bankruptcy law. Meanwhile, she’s networking in hopes of building her practice and has had success so far in attracting new clients. Within two months of going it alone, she was already matching the salary she earned at Kluger Peretz Kaplan & Berlin. “This has been a good thing,” she says. “I don’t see myself going to a firm again.”

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