After Boies, Schiller & Flexner's revenues rose 18 percent to $295 million in 2008, partners David Stone and Robert Magnanini made a surprising choice. Despite the firm's success, they left to start Stone & Magnanini, a six-lawyer firm in Short Hills, N.J. Stone, 51, hopes that they will continue to score clients, even without the Boies name on the door.

"The myth that you have to hire a Cravath or a Sullivan is dissipating," says Stone, who made the move, in part, to avoid potential conflicts between Boies' corporate clients and the False Claims Act whistleblowers he represents.

Lawyers are increasingly striking out on their own -- both by necessity and by choice. Martindale-Hubbell saw a growth of less than half of 1 percent in the number of firms it tracked between April 2007 and April 2008, but in the last 11 months, the number grew by 2.7 percent.

Venice, Calif., legal consultant Edward Poll says the numbers of inquiries he has received about lawyers starting new firms has more than tripled in the last year. "For some, it's a better model than working with a large firm's bureaucracy," says Poll of LawBiz Management Co. "They want to hang their own shingles, even if it means that they ultimately declare bankruptcy."

To avoid that risk, new firms are keeping costs down. When seven IP lawyers left Keker & Van NestK in February to form San Francisco's Durie Tangri Page Lemley Roberts & Kent, they chose not to hire any associates, brought only laptops, and looked for loft-style office space. "We're less expensive, and more cost-efficient, so we can have lowver rates," says Daralyn Durie, 41. Of course, some firms start with a leg up. Durie is already well-known as an IP litigator, and her partner Mark Lemley is a noted Stanford Law School professor.

But other lawyers may find it harder to hold on to their old client base or their six-figure salaries. After IP associate Omair Farooqui was laid off from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in June, he left behind massive patent litigations for less lucrative trademark licensing and patent prosecution when he formed Ellahie & Farooqui in San Jose. "Now I have marketing and administrative responsibilities, and the pay is about a third of what I made before," says Farooqui, 35.

Financing a new firm is particularly tricky in a tight credit market. When Frederick Jekel and Paul Doolittle left South Carolina plaintiffs powerhouse Motley Rice in September, they had to augment bank loans with personal savings to fund the nearly $200,000 annual costs for Jekel-Doolittle.

But economics can also work in favor of small firms and their clients. For example, Edward Kim, who founded the two-lawyer Kim Law Advisors in San Francisco when Heller Ehrman collapsed, says the venture capital financings he specializes in don't require a large legal team.

His former colleagues, now at Santa Clara, Calif., employment boutique Hixson Nagatani, agree. Former Heller associate Brian Nagatani, 34, still counsels clients like Phoenix Technologies Ltd. and Infineon Technologies AG. "But now our clients aren't forced to pay inflated rates to cover the costs of large summer associate classes or thousand-volume libraries," Nagatani says.