March 2026 Margaret’s Notes
Welcome Spring and all the beauty of the season! I hope that you and your family are enjoying a school spring break, an exciting trip, the end of your winter break, or just having fun planting and getting outdoors in this gorgeous weather. I’m hoping to get planting before it gets too hot here in AZ.
I am devoting much of my spare time to the California Lawyer’s Association (CLA) and bringing back one of its signature events to an in-person event, the Solo Small Firm Summit. As you may know, my first law license was in California in the mid-1990s, and I have been actively involved in the Solo Small Firm Section of CLA for close to a decade now. In October I took over as Chair of the Solo and Small Firm Section, after being in other leadership positions during the past 4 years. This group of attorneys are also entrepreneurs who are not only practicing law but running the business of their law firms. We are our own unique breed. We have to run the business of our law firm, as well as be very good in our areas of practice. Our reputation and ability to run our firms is what makes or breaks us.
This subset of lawyers (firms with 5 or fewer attorneys) is the largest demographic of attorneys in California; and they need to create a community because we aren’t part of a big firm or employed by a company or government agency. I am excited to be leading the return of the Solo Small Firm Summit on June 12-13th in-person in Newport Beach, CA. It is entitled Charting your Course for Success (Strategies for Solo and Small Firms).
This is a major conference that has so many aspects to organize. Thankfully, with the help of other veteran attorney volunteers and the expert CLA staff, we plan to have a fantastic event. We started organizing about 7 months ago and it is a major event from what part of the state, what is the theme, where to host, how many days, sponsors, marketing and recently reviewing the significant number of submissions for programs, which took a lot to thoughtfully review with my fellow committee members. Some days, I wonder why I have pushed so hard to bring this signature event back given how much time it takes and the myriads of issues to work out.
Remembering how much it helped me when I started my own practice a decade ago this year, and how much this group continues to support and inspire me, I feel confident we’re doing the right thing. I hope my efforts, along with many others, will result in a great event that supports and inspires other attorneys in their practice, who then serve their communities. I’ll let you know in June whether it was a success. Fingers crossed!
