You have decided to go out on your own. Now you need an office, a phone, and a reason for clients to take you seriously.
That is the part nobody warns you about. The law is the easy bit. It is the address, the reception, the IT, the filing and the meeting room that turn a practising certificate into a practice.
What actually stops people
The fear is almost never the law.
And it is rarely as tidy as it looks from the outside.
Both of them run their own practices now. So do 600+ other independent practices working from Clarence.
“My fear was, where is the work going to come from? But once you transition, it’s no longer unknown. You’ve done it, then you just work, and somehow things work out.”
“I’ve probably had 17 meltdowns, I’ll be honest. It’s that imposter syndrome. You’ve just gotta back yourself and keep going.”
What you actually get
Focus on your work
You do not have to employ anyone to have help.
Reception answers your calls professionally while you are in court. Court filing gets done. Letters get typed. Overflow calls get picked up.
- “I don’t have to employ anyone. I just get all the help that I need without having to engage anyone.”Helena Mrmos
- “There’s a whole team of support here that I can allocate tasks to, including phone calls, overflow calls, filing court documents at the court for me, checking in with clients.”Chelsea
Save your money
No lease. No fit-out. No staff on the payroll before there is revenue to pay them.
One monthly fee covers the room, reception, internet, cleaning and utilities. IT and meeting rooms are one door down when you need them, and paralegal support is a phone call away, at member rates. You scale it as the practice grows, and you are never locked in while you find out what the practice becomes.
- “The rent and everything is just very flexible and very reasonable.”Helena Mrmos
Support your clients
The front matters most when you are new, because that is when clients are deciding whether to trust you.
A CBD address you can put on court documents. A staffed reception. Meeting rooms that hold up. And if you would rather not have your home address on a court file, you do not have to.
- “Clients come for meetings. They like it, they think it’s great. Some of them don’t even realise it’s not my own firm.”Helena Mrmos
- “I didn’t want my home address on those things. Having an option to use Clarence as the virtual address has been amazing.”Chelsea
Practise at your best
You are working for yourself. You are not working by yourself.
CPD runs in-house and is included. The floor is full of practitioners across every area of law, which is where referrals come from in both directions.
- “It feels like a law firm where you can knock on someone’s door, get a second opinion, chat about a matter without revealing confidential information, and feel like you’re in a bigger firm without being in a big firm.”Helena Mrmos
What you get from day one
- A private office, a coworking desk or a virtual address, whichever fits right now
- A CBD business address for your letterhead and court documents
- Reception trained in legal etiquette, answering your calls in your practice name
- Court filing, mail, printing and document handling
- Meeting and mediation rooms bookable by the hour
- Enterprise grade IT and support, with discounted rates on most legal software
- CPD included
- 5 days a month at any other Clarence location
- No lease at any stage
Six addresses across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Most of them a short walk from the courts.
The fastest way to know if it fits is to stand in it.