Description

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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. How to Build a Real Estate Law Practice focuses on the steps and lessons for attorneys who specifically want to practice real estate law, and offers practice tips and strategies along the way.

This book offers useful advice and 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, a veteran real estate attorney, shares valuable 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
• Setting up an office, from location to equipment and staff
• Finding clients and networking
• Engagement letters
• When to turn down work, and how to do it
• Setting and collecting fees for your work
• Practice management
• Communicating with clients
• How to 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

About the Author

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Dean Alterman is a founding partner of Folawn Alterman & Richardson LLP, in Portland, Oregan, and has practiced real estate and business law since 1989. Previously, he spent eight years as a real estate agent and three years as chairman of a county planning commission.