Scaling a Solo Law Firm Without Losing Your Life
By Steve Fretzin, Jordan Ostroff, and Jeremy Baker
Scaling a Solo Law Firm Without Losing Your Life
Growth brings new constraints. Here’s how to manage them, hire wisely, protect your time, and build a profitable solo practice that doesn’t own you
Getting your solo practice off the ground is one challenge. What happens when it actually starts working is a different problem entirely and most lawyers are not prepared for it.
That is where this conversation picks up. Jordan Ostroff and Jeremy Baker are back for part two, and this time we go deeper into what sustainable growth actually looks like from the inside. Jordan is the CEO of Driven Law and Carpe Diem Consulting, a former prosecutor who turned $200,000 in early debt into a thriving low-volume personal injury practice and wrote the bestselling Love Your Law Firm about it. Jeremy is a veteran construction attorney in his sixth year of solo practice, focused on cost-efficient dispute resolution for owners, developers, and design professionals.
If part one was about surviving the launch, this episode is about what it takes to build something that lasts.
Growth Does Not Solve Problems. It Reveals Them.
One of the first things both Jordan and Jeremy make clear is that growth does not fix a struggling solo practice, it amplifies whatever is already broken. If you are disorganized at ten clients, you will be overwhelmed at twenty. If your intake process is unclear, it only gets messier when the volume increases.
The job of a solo attorney at every stage is to identify the single constraint that is limiting the practice right now and address that, without creating a bigger problem somewhere else in the process. That kind of focused, sequential problem-solving is what separates lawyers who scale from lawyers who simply stay busier.
Track Your Time. Then Protect It.
If there is one habit that correlates most directly with sustainable solo practice growth, it is this: knowing exactly where your time goes and being ruthless about eliminating the tasks that have no business being on your plate.
Answering your own phones. Doing your own bookkeeping. Handling scheduling, billing follow-ups, and administrative back-and-forth. Every hour spent on low-value work is an hour not spent on client development, on high-value legal work, or on building the firm. Jordan and Jeremy both point to this as one of the clearest early indicators of whether a solo will stall or scale.
Time tracking is not a corporate exercise. It is the fastest way to see where you are leaking your most valuable resource.
Revenue First. Then Process.
There is a temptation in the early stages of solo practice to build out systems and processes before the revenue is there to justify them. Both Jordan and Jeremy push back on that instinct.
Revenue comes first. Until you have a consistent cash flow, over-engineering your operations is a distraction. That said, and this is an important nuance. Documenting how you do things as you go makes a significant difference when it is finally time to bring someone on. Onboarding a first hire into a firm with even basic written processes is dramatically easier than onboarding into one where everything lives in the founder’s head.
Build for the hire you will need before you need them.
Business Development: Stop Scattering, Start Positioning
One of the most useful frameworks in this episode is around client development for solo attorneys. The lawyers who generate consistent business are not doing more marketing. They are doing more focused marketing.
That starts with defining your ideal client clearly enough that you can answer the question: where do these people already gather? What associations do they belong to? What events do they attend? What content do they read?
Once you have that answer, showing up consistently in those specific spaces, whether through networking, content, speaking, or referral relationships turns scattered activity into a repeatable business development system. It is not complicated. But it requires the discipline to stop doing everything and commit to what actually works for your niche.
Hiring for Profit, Not Just for Help
The conversation around hiring in this episode is some of the most honest you will hear. Both Jordan and Jeremy have made costly hiring mistakes and are candid about what those mistakes actually cost them in time, money, and momentum.
The core principle they both land on: profitability and the life you want to live should drive every decision about firm size, hiring, and practice area, not what the lawyers around you are doing. There is no universal right answer for how big a solo practice should grow or how many people it should employ. The right answer is the one that gets you the results you actually want.
That means being honest about your numbers before you hire. It means vetting candidates for cultural and values alignment, not just credentials. And it means understanding that the wrong hire at the wrong time can set a solo practice back further than no hire at all.
“The beauty of life is you get to make your own scorecard for 99% of things, so make sure you have the right scorecard.” — Jordan Ostroff
About Jordan Ostroff
Jordan Ostroff is the CEO of Driven Law and Carpe Diem Consulting. A former prosecutor and the first lawyer in his family, Jordan overcame $200,000 in early business debt to build a thriving, low-volume personal injury practice. He is the bestselling author of Love Your Law Firm and now works 20–25 hours a week while coaching other attorneys to achieve a similar quality of life and career on their own terms.
About Jeremy Baker
Jeremy Baker is a veteran construction attorney and litigator now in his sixth year of solo practice, representing owners, developers, and design professionals. He specializes in cost-efficient solutions for contract negotiation, dispute avoidance, and alternative dispute resolution, and has litigated in more than 30 venues and dozens of arbitrations. An early proponent of the Guided Choice Dispute Resolution System, Jeremy focuses on resolving high-stakes claims strategically and without the cost of traditional litigation wherever possible.
Connect with Jordan Ostroff
Website: https://www.legaleasemarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-ostroff/
Connect with Jeremy Baker
Website: https://designbuildlaw.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysbaker/
Connect with Steve Fretzin
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more
YouTube: Steve Fretzin Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
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