Going solo, the bar stops being someone else's job. At a firm, somebody else made sure your registration was current, that the trust account was set up correctly, that conflicts got cleared before a matter opened, that your CLE hours were logged. You may never have seen those people. They were there. The day you hang your own shingle, every one of those tasks lands on your desk, and the consequence of dropping one is no longer an awkward internal email. It is a grievance file with your name on it.
Most of what follows is unglamorous administrative work that nobody will praise you for doing. That is exactly why it gets skipped, and skipping it is how otherwise competent lawyers end up in front of a disciplinary board. This piece walks the bar-facing and professional-responsibility setup that quietly changes when you go independent. It is one slice of how to start your own law firm; the point here is narrow and specific to the duties that used to be the firm's problem and are now yours.
One thing before the list: rules of professional conduct vary enormously from state to state. Almost everything below has a version that is true in your jurisdiction and a version that is not. I will tell you what to check. I will not tell you the answer, because the answer depends entirely on your state bar's rules and I would rather you read them than trust a blog. When in doubt, the source of truth is your state's rules of professional conduct and your bar's published guidance, not a checklist you found online.
Confirm you are active and in good standing — everywhere you practice
Start with the most basic thing, the thing you assume is fine: are you currently active and in good standing in every jurisdiction where you will actually practice?
"Active and in good standing" is not the same as "admitted." You can be admitted somewhere and have lapsed to inactive status, or have an administrative suspension you forgot about for an unpaid fee or a missed compliance filing. Pull your status with the bar directly and look at the words on the record, not your memory of it.
The trap for solos is jurisdictional reach. At a firm, the matters you touched were already cleared for the right offices and the right admissions. Now you are deciding what to take. If your practice will cross state lines, handle federal matters, appear before a particular district court, or drift into work that brushes another state's rules, confirm you are properly admitted or have a legitimate path for that work. Unauthorized practice and practicing while not in good standing are both their own category of problem, and "I didn't realize my status had changed" is not a defense anyone has gotten far with.
If you hold admissions in more than one state, each one has its own dues, its own compliance calendar, and its own definition of active. Track them all. The second admission you keep "just in case" is the one that lapses quietly and surfaces at the worst moment.
Decide whether your firm name needs registering
This one straddles two questions and people conflate them. The first is naming compliance — whether the name you have chosen is permitted under your jurisdiction's rules. The second is registration — whether you have to file the name with the state, register a trade name or "doing business as," and clear it with the bar.
Both depend on what you call the firm and how you have organized it, and both vary by state. I am not going to repeat the naming analysis here because it has its own home: see how to name your law firm for what your jurisdiction permits, what a trade name triggers, and the disclosure rules that ride along with certain names. For this checklist, the action item is narrow: once you have settled on a name, find out whether your state requires you to register it as a firm name or trade name, and whether your bar needs to be told. Some states care a great deal. Some barely care. You need to know which one you are in before you order the letterhead.
Register your trust account with the IOLTA program
Before a single client dollar moves, your trust account has to exist and, in most states, be enrolled in the state's IOLTA program. This is the registration step, and it is separate from knowing how to run the account.
Treat these as two different jobs. Registration is bureaucratic: opening the right kind of account at an eligible financial institution, enrolling it in the IOLTA program your jurisdiction designates, and in many states filing a certification or compliance form with the bar confirming you have done so. Some states require this annually. Some tie it to your dues or your registration. Find the form, file the form, keep the proof.
Running the account — the rules about commingling, what gets recorded, three-way reconciliation, when earned money may be moved out — is an entirely separate body of knowledge and the place solos get into the most serious trouble. I am not covering the mechanics here. Read the trust-accounting rules and read them before you accept a retainer. For today: confirm the account is open, confirm it is enrolled, confirm any required certification is filed.
Tip
Build a conflicts system before matter one
At a firm there was a database. You typed in a name, it ran against every client and adverse party the firm had ever touched, and it flagged a hit. You probably grumbled about it. You did not have to build it.
Now you do, and you have to build it before you open your first matter, because a conflicts check is worthless if it only starts existing after you have already taken work that should have been screened. A conflicts system is not software you have to buy. At its core it is a reliable, searchable record of every client, every adverse party, and every matter you take, checked against every new person who walks in. A disciplined spreadsheet beats an expensive tool you do not maintain.
The duties that drive this — checking current and former clients, screening for the adverse parties behind a matter, getting informed written consent where your jurisdiction allows a waiver, knowing which conflicts cannot be waived at all — live in your rules of professional conduct, and the consenting-and-waiver mechanics differ by state. The system is yours to build; the standards are the bar's. Run the check before you talk substance with a prospective client, not after. A conflict you discover three weeks into representation is a much worse day than one you catch at intake.
The professional-responsibility duties with no backstop
Here is the part that is easy to underestimate, because none of it is a form. These are the standing duties you have always had, except the firm used to absorb the risk when you slipped. Now there is no one to cover you.
Competence and diligence. The rule is unchanged — you are obligated to handle matters you are competent for and to move them along — but the cushion is gone. No partner notices the file you have been avoiding. No associate quietly catches the deadline you almost missed. Solo discipline cases very often come down to neglect: matters that went quiet, calls that were not returned, a client left in the dark. Build the systems that used to be ambient — a calendar you actually trust, a way of flagging what is going stale — because nobody else is watching the docket now.
Supervision. The moment you bring on a paralegal, a virtual assistant, a contract lawyer, or anyone who touches client work, you have supervisory obligations under your rules, and their mistakes can become your discipline problem. Contract and overflow help is a perfectly normal way to run a solo practice. It does not outsource your responsibility. Know what your rules require you to oversee.
Client files. You are the records department now. Know your jurisdiction's rule on how long files must be kept, what belongs to the client on demand, and how to return a file when representation ends. File-handling complaints are common and entirely avoidable.
A succession plan. This is the one solos most want to skip and the one a growing number of states now require: a written plan for what happens to your clients and their files if you die, are disabled, or otherwise cannot practice. Some states mandate a designated successor or backup attorney; some make it a recommendation with teeth. Find out which your state is. Beyond the rule, it is the responsible thing — your clients should not be stranded with files no one can reach because you were hit by a bus and never named anyone.
I am deliberately not going down the advertising rabbit hole here. The rules governing how you market the firm, what your website may say, and how you describe your practice are their own dense subject — see bar advertising rules and treat compliance there as a separate project.
Track your own CLE — nobody is reminding you
The continuing legal education hours you owe did not go away when you left the firm. The reminders did. There is no compliance coordinator emailing you in October about the credits you are short.
Know your jurisdiction's CLE or MCLE cycle, the total hours required, and the specific category requirements many states impose — ethics, professional responsibility, sometimes technology or wellness credits that do not count if you take the wrong course. The reporting deadline and the rules can vary by your admission date and even by license type. Put the cycle on a calendar the day you go solo and log hours as you earn them, not in a panic the week before the deadline. Falling short of CLE is a needless administrative discipline matter, and it is entirely within your control.
Know your state's malpractice-insurance disclosure rule
Whether to carry malpractice insurance, and how much, is a real decision with cost and risk on both sides, and it has its own home — that is not what this section is about.
What belongs on this checklist is the disclosure rule. Some states require you to disclose to the bar, or to clients, or both, whether you carry professional liability coverage — and some require a specific written notice to a client if you do not. This is a rule, not a recommendation, and it is independent of whether you are insured. Find out whether your jurisdiction imposes a disclosure obligation and exactly what form it takes, because failing to make a required disclosure is its own violation, separate from anything about the coverage itself. The decision about buying the policy belongs elsewhere; the duty to disclose belongs here, on the day you set up.
The throughline
None of this is hard. All of it is forgettable. That is the danger. The bar-facing setup of a solo practice is a long list of small, dull, individually trivial tasks, each one of which becomes a grievance if you skip it and never the source of any credit when you do it right.
So make the list, work it once, and build the calendar that keeps it worked. Confirm your status everywhere you practice. Settle the firm-name registration question. Register and certify the trust account. Stand up a conflicts check before the first client. Hold the line on competence, supervision, file retention, and a succession plan. Track your own CLE. Make any disclosure your state requires. The firm used to carry all of this for you. It is yours now — and the version of you a year from now, the one who never had a bar inquiry, will be glad you treated it as real work instead of paperwork to get to later.