This is written for the attorney who is admitted in South Dakota and has not yet found the position they went to law school for, and for the one running a solo practice and doing the marketing, the billing, and the chasing alone. If you have a full-time job you are happy in, this is not for you.

Legacy First Law and Amicus Lex Law are two remote firms in Austin, Texas. We cannot serve clients in South Dakota without an attorney admitted there, and we do not have one. We already receive inquiries from South Dakota and turn them away for that reason.

We are looking for one attorney to be attorney of record on those matters. Through Legacy First Law: estate planning and business transactional. Through Amicus Lex Law: the disputes that come out of both - estate and trust pre-litigation, and business pre-litigation.

We do not litigate. Nothing is filed under our name. If a matter has to go to court it is referred out, and the attorney who worked it is the one who decides that.

What already exists is the infrastructure: intake, paralegals, drafting, billing and collections, software, malpractice coverage. What does not exist yet in South Dakota is the attorney. That is the seat, and it is yours alone.

What the work is. Our paralegals and our platform prepare the file. You direct that work on your files, you rule on anything that needs a lawyer's call - a conflict, a capacity question, an ambiguity - and you sign nothing you have not approved. You may send any file back and you may decline any matter. You speak with the client whenever the file flags a reason for it or your own judgment says so, and that time is paid. You are the responsible attorney on every matter bearing your name, and William English is the attorney you call.

The estate pre-litigation is what happens after a plan fails or a family stops agreeing: a beneficiary who was left out, a trustee who will not account, an executor accused of helping himself, a capacity or undue influence question raised after a death, a sibling who will not sign off. The business pre-litigation is the contract someone stopped performing, the partner who wants out, the vendor who did not deliver, the employee who left with the customer list.

In both, the work is the same shape: read the file, judge the claim, write the demand or the response, negotiate it, and paper the end of it - settlement agreement, release, buyout, separation terms. It is the part of a dispute that happens before anyone files, which is where most of them end anyway.

What it pays. Every matter carries a flat fee, quoted to you before you accept it, together with the most work it should take. The fees are set so the work comes out to about $100 an hour. On clients you bring in yourself, you are paid that same fee for your work and 15% of what the client pays on top of it.

Where it goes from there. Volume in a single state is finite; your own hours are the real constraint. So we pay the board fees for any additional state admission you want, and every license you obtain stays yours whatever happens between us. An attorney admitted in two or three states, holding each of them alone, can fill as many hours as they care to work.

If you already have your own practice, none of this touches it. You are named on the fee agreement and on client correspondence. Your own clients stay yours - this is non-exclusive by design - and the only geographic requirement is your license. Malpractice coverage, software, filing fees, and CLE are ours. Your first matter comes from the South Dakota inquiries we are declining today and is expected within fourteen days of a signed agreement.

Stated plainly, because you should have it in writing: you carry professional responsibility for every matter bearing your name.

The attached one-page description has the full detail. The Of Counsel Agreement is available on request.

If you want it, write to William English directly at Garrison@LegacyFirstLaw.com and send two things: a link to your bar profile, and a few sentences on which of those practice areas you want and why. He reads every one himself and answers each one.