Why Freelance? The Pros and Cons of Freelance Legal Work.

As I mentioned in my last post, when I originally decided to leave full time practice in favor of freelance work, I left because I had two young daughters and a deployed spouse, and full time practice in a traditional law firm role just wasn't working for me. Many freelancers choose this path for similar reasons: they find that traditional law firm jobs aren't compatible with their other responsibilities as parents (especially in these last few years while dealing with a global pandemic!), or their partner's job involves a lot of business trips and/or requires their family to move frequently. (Since leaving my prior firm, I have freelanced part time to full time from three separate states, and will soon add a fourth!).

Some choose freelancing because they burned out from the often soul-crushing nature of law firm life, and decide to freelance for supplemental income while they pursue other endeavors.

And with a seemingly ever-tightening legal market, many also choose freelance work out of necessity: something to pay (at least some of) the bills and gain legal experience while waiting to secure a full time job.

Whatever the initial motivations to consider freelance work, here is my list of top pros and cons that have remained true over the course of the past five years:

Pros:

1. Flexibility.

Flexibility is probably the top reason people turn to freelancing, and the main perk that makes freelancing so, so worth it! As a freelancer, you have complete control over who you work with, when you work, how much you work, and how you work. You can completely structure your work around your other obligations and interests, and the stress relief that flows from taking control of your schedule back into your own hands should not be undervalued. This is the perk that has made me never look back to firm life, and never once regret leaving.

2. The Ability to Choose Work You Enjoy.

Another huge perk of freelance work is the ability to choose work you enjoy. Since you're generally doing work on a project basis rather than running (or helping with) a whole case or a whole deal, you can often choose projects based on the types of things you like to do, or the types of law that are interesting to you, and avoid the stuff you don't like or that doesn't interest you. Speaking for me personally, I don't have a particular area of law that I enjoy more than others, but I loooove dispositive motions and oppositions. I will say yes to that work all day long. Meanwhile, I haaaaaaate discovery motions. So unless its for a firm that I have a great relationship with already, I absolutely avoid discovery motions. Of course this comes with a caveat that if you need the hours/money, you may sometimes still have to choose work you don't enjoy, but in my experience, I've been able to choose work I actually enjoy way more often than I was able to while I was at a firm.

3. The Ability to Keep Your Skills Fresh.

Finally, and perhaps most important if you're only planning to freelance temporarily, is the ability to keep your skills fresh. When I first left full-time practice, I did not plan on freelancing this long. At the time, my husband was thinking about getting out of the military, and I envisioned starting my own practice, and if that didn't work out, going back to a firm of some kind. In the meantime, I didn't want a gap on my resume, and I wanted to keep my skills fresh so I'd be ready when the time came. Little did I know, a high risk pregnancy with twins was in my future, and here we are over 5 years later, and my husband is still in the military and I'm still freelancing. But by keeping my skills fresh, I've been able to leverage my experience to raise my rates, and I'll still be ready if I decide to start my own practice down the road!

Cons:

1. No Guaranteed Paycheck.

This is probably the biggest hang-up and often a deal-breaker for many people: No guaranteed paycheck. Instead of the comfort of a biweekly or monthly paycheck from a firm, your ability to get paid depends entirely on your ability to find work in a particular month (and that firm paying you for it after the work is completed). That potential unpredictability can be a hard pill to swallow, especially when you need to make a specific amount to cover your bills each month. In my case, I figured out exactly how much I would need to make per month, and was able to line up a few streams of freelance work before quitting my job, so I knew I would be ok. And although I've had a few slow weeks or months here and there in the last few years, it has always more than evened out in the end.

2. No Guaranteed Workflow.

Going hand in hand with "no guaranteed paycheck" is no guaranteed work flow. You might think "I just want to work 15 hours per week every week," but freelancing often doesn't work out that way, at least in my experience. Much like my time at an actual firm, my freelance work tends to ebb and flow, so I'll have some weeks where I have barely anything to do, and some weeks where I perhaps said yes too often and ended up with too much to do. My strategy has always been to have the same consistent childcare for my kids every week, regardless of whether I'm busy or not, and I try to get as much of my work done during those hours as possible, but may occasionally have to do a little work after bedtime or on weekends as well. And when I get lucky and have a slow week, I use that time to do crazy things like paint accent walls and organize closets and binge read Shari Lapena books. :)

3. No "Team".

For the extroverts out there, sometimes freelance work can get a little lonely. You're usually not working with a team, but instead communicating with one person from a firm, and then you work on a project entirely on your own. And for even the non-extroverts out there, sometimes not having anyone to bounce off ideas with can be a big con. In a firm environment, you have other people to consult about things like potential procedural issues or whether an argument is persuasive or not. I personally enjoy working on my own, so this has never been an issue for me, but there are great "team" substitutes you can find if you don't find yourself working with any actual teams on freelance work. For example, you can often clarify rules or bounce ideas off of other freelancers or solo practitioners (being careful not to break privilege of course).

If you are interested in freelancing and these cons haven't scared you away, stay tuned for my next post where I'll cover ways to find freelance work.