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The Life and Career of Peter Olson, Founder of The Olson Law Firm, LLC, and Author of Peter Olson's Solo In Chicago Blog

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  6. The Life and Career of Peter Olson, Founder of The Olson Law Firm, LLC, and Author of Peter Olson's Solo In Chicago Blog

published April 03, 2006

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( 63 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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<<Olson, who has only been practicing law for four years, said he decided to go out on his own for many reasons, one of which was the allure of controlling his own schedule. With a wife who is a flight attendant and weekends that sometimes consist of dinner and a show in New York or San Francisco, a flexible work schedule is essential to Olson.

"I work a lot, but between a good administrative staff and technology, I am able to be out of the office quite a bit and yet be efficient," he said.


Olson also said that both the lack of mentoring and bad management at other firms were factors that led him to go out on his own and he is pleased with the way things have turned out. In fact, he said the sense of accomplishment he felt in starting the firm was one of the emotional highlights of his career. However, growing a firm from the ground up isn't without its difficulties.

"To me, the biggest challenge is less the legal side of things and more the business side of things," he said, "such as how to expand, hiring decisions, and financial management."

"In essence, having started a law practice, I still need to be spending just as much time practicing law as anyone, but I also need to spend time on many administrative tasks, like billing, payroll, and general management," he said.

Looking back on the process of founding the firm, Olson said there are some things he would have done differently, such as bringing in a financial person earlier on.

"I think when I look at a lot of business clients frankly and I see their business plans or just the detailed record keeping, it really opens my eyes regarding what we need to be doing as a business too," he said.

When it comes to mulling over decisions on issues such as business plans, firm organization, and support staff, Olson turns to Peter Olson's Solo In Chicago, his nine-month-old blog. It's here that Olson hashes out his ideas, asks for advice, and gets much-needed inspiration. In fact, he credits blogging with giving him the inspiration to start his own firm in the first place.
"A number of blogs like My Shingle and [non] billable hour were very instrumental in my starting of a law practice, and I want to sort of do the same for other people," he said.

"I've been blogging for less than a year, but I've been reading other blogs for some two years," he said. "I'm sure I initially just saw a blog or two referenced in an article or something and started reading them. Once you get into them, they're just constantly popping up, and they're so empowering for everyone."

Olson describes his blog as "part law firm management and part Chicago-specific legal commentary" for Chicago's entrepreneurial legal community, and he said he gets a lot of ideas for his blogs from what he reads.

"Most typically, I'll have some allotted time during the week to catch up on reading the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, the National Law Journal, and various other bar publications. And usually from my reading, different ideas are hatched; or from a particular article, I'll go off on my own personal tangent," he said. "It's really developed to a point where it's exciting getting contacted by other bloggers, other business people that read the blog, or various law school students."

As someone who is usually one of the first to embrace new technology, Olson has a lot to say about the role of it in the legal field.

"As with many fields, I think the role of technology allows me to sort of practice law anytime and anywhere. I really do like the geographic flexibility that I've put at the center of the practice since we started it," he said. "On the flip side, I think a lot of the do-it-yourself law and legal forms and such available on the Internet are cutting into lawyers' bottom lines. My personal feeling is if the only value that you're adding to clients is filling in forms, you're not much of a lawyer anyways."

Olson mainly practices in the area of family law, but also represents senior living facilities and other issues affecting the elderly.

"I primarily represent individuals in various family law situations," he said. "I get into court quite a bit with a lot of contentious matters related to divorce, post-divorce, and paternity actions. I also represent a number of senior living facilities and some of the overflow matters related to the individual elderly residents. I also continue to represent commercial landlords and tenants in leasing and litigation."

He was first introduced to elder law at the Southern Illinois University Elder Law Clinic while in law school, a clinic that provides pro bono work to men and women in southern Illinois who are 60 years of age or older.

"A lot like family law, I see elder law as a very meaningful and rewarding practice where I can genuinely assist individuals in often-difficult circumstances," he said. "Additionally, I don't think anyone can afford to ignore the aging-population trend as a business matter."

Olson currently does pro bono work for the Center for Disability and Elder Law and the Chicago Bar Association's Senior Citizens Will Program, but he doesn't think pro bono work should be mandated in an attorney's law license.

"I think it should be a very personal choice," he said. "As a Christian, I have a strong need to serve others and, using my specialized legal skills, can often do that. I don't think it should be required. To be honest, as a small-firm lawyer, doing a lot of pro bono work is not realistic as I continue to build my business."

Olson, who was born in Oak Park, IL, and raised in Glenview, IL, worked as both a journalist and a high school social studies teacher before becoming a lawyer.

"I definitely was not one of those people who wanted to be a lawyer from like the age of five," he said. "My two years or so as a journalist was in the Washington, DC, area, and that community is very heavily populated by lawyers both in journalism and in the general political community. Entering the legal field, I really aspired to be more of a politician lawyer than an actual practicing lawyer, and hopefully, that still will happen; but for now, I'm definitely in the practice of law."

"I think my previous careers in education and journalism helped prepare me for the legal field very directly as a writer and as a speaker. Speaking and writing are huge parts of what I'm doing every day," he said.

When it comes to Olson's concerns for the legal community as a whole, he worries that the weight of hefty school loans could be limiting job choices for young attorneys, leading to low job satisfaction.

"I think the ever-increasing amounts of school debt that young attorneys bring into their careers, along with lack of career satisfaction, are two issues I see in my peer group," he said. "I attended a relatively economical state school for law school, but I'm still strapped with some $40,000 in student loans. It's manageable, and I can't say I've let my debt impact my career path; but for others who may have attended private schools with maybe double my debt amount, I think your career options do become limited."

"And on the career-satisfaction issue, that's as much of the reason as any why I started my own law practice. I think this issue speaks partially to the lack of management skills often found in lawyers in law firms. I think also you hear the sort of 'that's the way we did it when I was young' as sort of a rite of passage, rather than constructive analysis regarding career growth and satisfaction," he said.

It was attitudes like these that motivated Olson to found a firm where he would find satisfaction. The result is a firm that promises its clients detail-oriented, thorough service in the areas of family, elder, real estate, and landlord/tenant law; and even though it's still in the early stages of development, Olson is pleased with its progress.

"I am quite happy with how things are nearly a year into it," he said.
  1. Legal Jobs
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  3. Attorney
  4. Legal Profiles
  5. Law Job Star
  6. The Life and Career of Peter Olson, Founder of The Olson Law Firm, LLC, and Author of Peter Olson's Solo In Chicago Blog

published April 03, 2006

( 63 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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