Bloomington, Minn., solo practitioner Larry Frost is in his first year as an attorney.

Bloomington, Minn., solo practitioner Larry Frost is in his first year as an attorney. But as Frost puts it in his SoloCorps interview, he’s an “old new attorney,” who served for 27 years in the U.S. Army and most recently in military intelligence before pursuing a career in law.

When asked what lesson he learned from his nearly three decades of military intelligence work, he tells Lisa Solomon and Carolyn Elefant about learning the “invisible people rule.”

“I learned as an intelligence officer that the best way to get information was to talk to people that nobody sees—receptionists, people who clean rooms, waiters, people who get no visibility and no respect from most people who deal with them,” Frost says in his 3-minute video. By treating people with respect, he was able to cultivate sources who didn’t even know they were being sources.

The lesson translates easily to Frost’s law practice, where he said treating people with respect is key.

“What we do is people. We deal with relationships and how relationships have been affected by legal issues,” he says. “I think treating people with essential respect is something that really makes or breaks a practice.”

Larry Frost - A New Career as a Solo from Carolyn Elefant on Vimeo.