Touro Law Professors Author New Book on Opening and Operating Your Own Law Firm

Touro Law Center faculty members Lynne Adair Kramer, Director of the Court Observation Program and Adjunct Professor of Law, and Ann Nowak, Director of the Writing Center and Adjunct Professor of Law, have authored a book titled, “The Experiential Guide to Law Practice Management: Opening and Operating Your Own Firm.” The book, the only experiential textbook in the field of Law Practice Management, is suitable for law students and practitioners alike. 

Touro Law has been a leader in the national law firm incubator movement, enabling graduates to begin their own community-based law practices. A solo and small firm concentration was added to the curriculum to support the growing trend in private practice. “Touro Law has always been a leader in experiential education, integrating the classroom and the courtroom and integrating practical skills into doctrinal courses,” explained Dean Patricia Salkin. “This book by Professors Kramer and Nowak is a further demonstration of the faculty commitment to experiential learning as it merges the classroom with the realities of practice in a practical handbook. In a time when more and more law students are going into solo or small practice after graduation, this book is essential for ensuring students are prepared to succeed.”

Professors Kramer and Nowak were approached by LexisNexis to update a Law Practice Management text, but decided to use the opportunity to author a meaningful book that would teach skills that were necessary to succeed in the legal field. Through this teaching tool, students actively engage in the steps necessary to open and operate a new law practice. Also included are vignettes that tell about personal experiences regarding law practice from each of the authors. The book is designed to be used by not only law schools but also incubators, young lawyer sections of bar associations, solo and small practice sections of bar associations and lawyers thinking about starting their own solo and small firm practices.

The book stands out from others in the field not only because it is so complete in its description and discussion of opening a law practice but because it includes forms, sample letters and agreements, a sample grievance and a response to grievance, discussions of personnel issues, supplies, equipment, office management systems, discussion and samples and more. The book also covers how to treat employees, confidential conversations, obligations of employers, marketing principles, dealing with clients and other areas of knowledge imperative for a solo and small-firm practitioner to understand in order to be successful.

Lynne Kramer is an AV-rated matrimonial attorney and SuperLawyer, full-time law school faculty member, author and former bar association president. Kramer grew her practice from a one-person operation to a firm employing fifteen, becoming the largest woman-owned firm on Long Island with its population of three million. She teaches Trial Advocacy; Interviewing Negotiating, and Counseling; Solo Small Practice Skills; and Law Practice Management at Touro Law where she heads the Court Observation Program. Kramer has lectured extensively in the areas of matrimonial and family law, as well as trial advocacy. 

Ann L. Nowak is an educator, attorney and author who set up and ran her own general-practice law firm for 19 years before joining Touro Law Center. At Touro Law, she serves as the Director of the Writing Center, and she teaches a course in Law Practice Management. She has also has taught Law Practice Management internationally as a Pro Bono Legal Specialist with the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative program – conducing workshops in Law Practice Management for Middle Eastern attorneys in Turkey and for Kuwaiti attorneys in conjunction with the Kuwait City Bar Association. She also has taught Law Practice Management as a visiting professor at Bahçesehir University in Istanbul. 

Professors Kramer and Nowak had practices that fit in the solo and small practice category for many years before teaching law. 

The authors said that in this book, they serve as the mentors they wish they'd had when they started their own law firms. "There is absolutely no other book like this to help law students and lawyers who want to start their own practices," Nowak said. Kramer added, "Our book is not only innovative and useful, but it's also an enjoyable read and contains true confessions from our own experiences."

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Touro is a system of non-profit institutions of higher and professional education. Touro College was chartered in 1970 primarily to enrich the Jewish heritage, and to serve the larger American and global community. Approximately 18,000 students are currently enrolled in its various schools and divisions. Touro College has 29 branch campuses, locations and instructional sites in the New York area, as well as branch campuses and programs in Berlin, Jerusalem and Moscow. New York Medical College; Touro University California and its Nevada branch campus; Touro University Worldwide and its Touro College Los Angeles division; as well as Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Ill. are separately accredited institutions within the Touro College and University System. For further information on Touro College, please go to: http://www.touro.edu/news/.

Patti Desrochers

Director of Communications

pattid@tourolaw.edu

(631) 761-7062