How to Build a Real Estate Law Practice

Beginning and building a real estate law practice offers many advantages: the underlying law changes relatively slowly while offering a satisfying opportunity to develop a base of steady clients and professional relationships. Written by a veteran real estate law attorney, How to Build a Real Estate Law Practice offers useful and essential guidance, whether you are in your first years of practice and are just starting to focus on real estate as a legal practice, or if you've already started in the area.

Author Dean Alterman shares pointers that you can incorporate into your daily practice as well as for your long-term business plan. Real estate law offers a broad range of specialties, some that lead to the courtroom and others more suited to a desk in an office. Whatever area of real estate law that you practice in, you'll find practice-focused advice that's tailored specifically to the needs of a real estate lawyer. Topics include:

• How to define your practice
• Law practice financials: banking and budgeting
• Law practice management: setting up an office, from location to equipment and staff
• Finding clients and networking
• Engagement letters
• How (and when) to turn down work
• Setting and collecting fees for your work
• Communicating with clients and how to best use boilerplate language and forms
• Doing business with clients, from referrals to conflicts between them
• Growing your practice – and the opposite, how to transition a practice and plan for retirement