Should I Go Consultant? An Honest Self-Assessment

Going consultant looks irresistible from inside a traditional firm. No partnership politics, no time recording, no 8am Monday calls about WIP. Higher take-home. Genuine flexibility. The problem is that recruiters have been selling this dream so hard for so long that it has become almost impossible to get an honest read on whether it's actually right for you. This guide is the conversation we wish someone had forced on us before we made the jump.

1. Do you have portable work — really?

The first and biggest question. Not “could you generate work eventually”, but “if you walked out tomorrow, how much fee income would walk with you in the next 12 months?” Be honest. Look at your last two years of files. Strip out the work that came from a partner's relationship, the firm's referrer panel, an institutional client of the firm, or a one-off marketing campaign you didn't run. What's left is your portable book.

A useful rule of thumb: if your portable annual billings are less than £100,000, you need a plan to get there before you go, not after. Consultancy rewards lawyers who already have a client base. It punishes lawyers who think the platform will magic one up.

2. Can you tolerate the silence?

Most consultants will tell you, eventually, that the hardest part of the first six months wasn't the billing or the tech or even the tax. It was the silence. No corridor chat. No colleague to lean over and check a clause with. No team meeting to grumble about. Some lawyers thrive on that. Others quietly fall apart. If you're someone who draws energy from a busy office, plan for it: pick a platform with a real community, schedule regular coffees with peers, work from a members' club one day a week. The silence is real and it's underestimated.

3. Are you genuinely commercial?

Consultancy means running a business. Not a spreadsheet of time recording, but an actual P&L. You will need to think about marketing spend, conversion rates, client lifetime value, write-offs, cash flow, VAT quarters and the cost of a bad debt. Many excellent technical lawyers are not naturally commercial, and the gap shows up fast. If reading the previous sentence made you wince, that's a signal — not a disqualifier, but a signal you'll need to either learn quickly or buy in help.

4. What does your household need?

Consultancy income is lumpy. Some months are extraordinary; some months are alarming. If your household relies on predictable monthly take-home — mortgage, school fees, a partner who isn't earning — you need either a financial buffer (six months of expenses, minimum) or a deliberate smoothing strategy (a salary-equivalent drawing from a limited company, with retained profits). Have this conversation at home before you have it with the firm.

5. Are you ready to be your own marketing department?

No platform firm is going to market you. They will give you a biography page on the firm website and possibly a LinkedIn announcement. Everything else — your own site, content, visibility, referral relationships, conversion of enquiries — is on you. Lawyers who are willing to take that on grow fast. Lawyers who assume the platform brand will do it for them stagnate. There is no third option.

6. Can you sell?

Selling is not what most lawyers think it is. It is not cold-calling or pushy upselling. It is the ability to take an initial enquiry, listen properly, frame a solution, articulate value, agree fees and convert it into a signed engagement letter — without flinching at the price conversation. Consultants who can do this comfortably are unstoppable. Consultants who can't will lose half their enquiries to cheaper alternatives or to inertia.

7. What's your risk appetite?

Self-employment is not high risk in absolute terms — most consultant solicitors do well — but it is meaningfully different from being employed. You carry the income risk, the PII excess risk, the bad debt risk, and the you-have-to-do-your-own-tax-return risk. None of those are scary individually. Together, they require a temperament that is comfortable with ambiguity. If your idea of a good month is knowing exactly what hits the bank account on the 28th, this may not be your model.

8. What does success actually look like for you?

This is the question that gets skipped most often, and it's the most important. Some consultants want to triple their take-home. Some want to halve their hours. Some want both. Some want to be the recognised expert in a niche. Some just want to never sit through another business plan meeting. These are not the same goal and they require different strategies. Write yours down before you start. Re-read it every six months.

The honest verdict

If you answered question 1 well, can tolerate the silence, are commercially curious, have a financial buffer, are willing to do your own marketing, can sell without flinching, have a calm relationship with risk, and know what you actually want from this — then yes, you should probably go consultant. You will most likely earn more, work less, and enjoy your career more in two years' time than you do today.

If you answered three or more of those questions badly, it doesn't mean don't do it. It means do the work first. Build the book before you leave. Talk to your family. Get the buffer in place. Pick the platform that fits the gaps you haven't closed yet. The consultants who fail are almost never the ones who lacked talent — they're the ones who jumped before they were ready, ran out of runway, and had to go back to a salary they'd already mentally left behind.