Chuck Newton

You Cannot Spend Your Way To Prosperity

2012-01-10T15:47:56-06:00

Sure there is the old saying that you have to spend money to make money, but in the area of starting a solo law practice that statement is a canard. It is at least deceptive.

One problem is that law firms are not manufacturing companies. They do not borrow money in order to meet a sales goal, so as to make money. They tend to spend money not on advantages but on disadvantages. Money is spent on things that are neither necessary to produce anything nor make money. The money is spent to buy popularity, such as a new computer, or a bigger, fancier office, or something else of little consequence to the act of actually making a living.

Law firms, and especially small law firms, do not adhere to the "Bean Theory", where financing is understood as a commodity in terms of beans -- something that is bought, sold or traded. You look at the cash spent as a bunch of beans. You trade those beans in such a way that you get more beans than those with which you started. The money spent is limited to that which enhances your income. Nothing much purchased by a solo or small law practice actually enhances income.

So, for example, you just have to buy the best, prettiest, new Apple computer in order to make yourself feel good in the practice of law. The computer costs 2,000 beans. Then you have interest over three years to pay off the debt that costs another 1,000 beans. The Apple computer depreciates in value. It does not go up. So, in three years you have spent 3,000 beans and you have a asset worth maybe 200 beans.

Another example might be the urge to rent a nice office in which to work. Now, you already have space at your home or somewhere else. You are virtual in that you have a laptop and a cell phone. But, you convince yourself that having some office space is a good "investment". (Investment is a term we like to use to the spend money on things that do not offer any real return, and to justify what we want to do regardless of any loss). The space costs 1,000 beans a month. The lease is for one year. For 12,000 beans at the end of the year you have an asset worth 0 beans. On top of that, the space cost you more beans in terms of utilities, internet hook up, commuting, and in maintaining that image that is important to you -- but not really anybody else.

The point is that small practices rarely have an opportunity to spend money to make money. So, the saying does not work in this regard. Small practices generally spend money to spend money, and that, in the long run, is usually the doom of most practices.

The one difference might be advertising or marketing. But, my point all along is that advertising is expensive. It generally represents spending money with the hope of making money so you can spend money. It often represents a vicious cycle.

Referral-based marketing, on the other hand, requires a constant and deliberative effort, but it does not have to cost that much money. Further, it continues to reap money for the practice long into the future.

New Year Boredom

2012-01-03T11:18:16-06:00

It is, according to the Urban Dictionary, "the post-festive boredom that occurs after the fun and excitement of Christmas and New Years". I also think it is the low we tend to feel in having to get back to the same old routine after the holidays. For many of us this is the case. But, I also know that the holiday is often the time that many a lawyer starts preparing his or her own law practice, changes firms, or relocates offices. To those among us that have worked, plotted and planned the entire holiday, getting into a more traditional routine is probably more of the blessing and less of a bore. For me anyway, it is off to work I go!

Square Reader

2011-12-29T16:04:21-06:00

The question I get often from those contemplating a more virtual law practice is how to collect money from clients. I have never really considered this much of a problem. So, my typical answer has been to use something like paypal. But, then I get this push back that although the lawyer want to work from home, they still need to initially meet clients at a different locations, such as office suites, conference rooms, courthouses, coffee shops, libraries and the like. Although paypal might be made to work, it does not flow naturally with what needs to be done. Clients pay fees in all sorts of way, but increasingly it is with a debit or credit card. A point of sale system is both too bulky and expensive to use in this way.

In my practice I really do not have this problem, but I understand the issue with those who want to replicate what I do, but for a more consumer-based or retail-type law practice. To these lawyers the solution just might be Square.

It works with a smart phone or tablet. It is a combination app and plastic plugin that allows you to swipe debit and credit cards without the bulkiness and expense of some kind of point of sale system. It also does not require the lawyer to introduce clients to an online gadgets so they can arrange a payment through paypal in a way that might make the client feel insecure. Square can help the lawyer accept payments off-site with a great deal of ease.

Below is a practical video that shows you how it works.

Side Jobs And Other Work

2011-12-28T11:36:41-06:00

The issue of allowing an attorney or paralegal take side jobs or other legal work not associated with your law firm can be a little thorny. Although this can create ethical issues, such as conflicts which could disqualify your firm, I will leave that argument for another day. I would like to focus on the practical aspects of the process for a moment.

Back in the day when I ran a traditional, brick and mortar, law firm, in which lawyers and paralegals were employees, I allowed this practice. I would not allow it now, based upon my experience, with the possible exception of a lawyer feeling the need to help out a family member or pro bono work, gratis. I would not allow a paralegal to do it at all because in this situation they are directly involving me. The lawyer is getting paid for his time by the firm, and the firm is not getting compensated. It is a bad business decision to allow this to happen. The firm's work often suffered, and then the other attorneys and staff feel put out when there was a reward to the attorney for the extra work in which the other lawyers and staff were not allowed to share. That is, after all, the entire purpose of a traditional law firm. All for one and one for all. It is not all for one until some big personal injury case or real estate closing comes along. If the work is important enough to command the resources of the law firm, then the case or project needs to belong to the law firm. It is that simple.

However, this issue comes up in terms of my non-traditional practice of law, and I support such work divisions with some caveats.

In the non-traditional world, or virtual law firm environment, it is called collaboration in which attorneys and paralegals collaborate on a specific piece of work or litigation. Sometimes they are regularly associated, but they are not a law firm. All for one and one for all only comes together in terms of a particular case, litigation, representation or a piece of legal work. It also ends there -- by mutual agreement.

I have collaborated in the legal work I have done with a great deal of success and also with some degree of regret as well. I can say that in terms of any regret, the relationship does not have to continue passed the matter at hand, where the situation is a lot more sticky in a traditional law office environment.

Collaboration works in this environment better because everyone is bootstrapping. There is a lot that a virtual or solo lawyer can do by himself, but sometimes everyone needs a little external help.

At its best, collaboration works extraordinarily well when everyone is dedicated to the transaction at hand, and they see it as their ability to support themselves. In this age of tech, we no longer need to be together in a building or a formal relationship to work in unison to solve a problem for someone or some company or some organization in some capacity.

At its worse, someone in the relationship can feel put out and resentful.

On the referring side of the collaboration, this happens when the other attorney or paralegal involved is more dedicated to their other work and not your project. This does not always manifest itself in untimely work, but it does often manifest itself in non-quality work. It can also result in a lack of appreciation that the referring lawyer was the one that developed the business and is expending resources to monitor it, collect the fees and distribute the money.

On the referred side, it is often a matter of money. Not only when or if money will flow from the arrangement, but in what percentage or amount compared with the division of work both anticipated and actually completed.

For both the referring side and the referred side, this is often a matter of perception of each. Do both sides agree to a premium for the one obtaining the project in the first place? Is there a feeling by one that he or she is doing the most work for the least compensation? Is there a feeling that the other is really more focused on their other work? Is there a concern about the quality of the work product produced?

The issues involved and the feelings felt are often more a matter of nuance.

The key I have found is for mutual transparency. These things need to be discussed upfront. The process and settlement of the case needs to be open to everyone. The general schedule and amount of work dedicated to the case by everyone needs to be disclosed. Otherwise, people can be left feeling violated.

So, although I recommend collaboration, it needs to be approached right.

Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law Denied ABA Provisional Approval

2011-12-26T16:31:06-06:00

Back in July, 2010 I blogged about Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law. SEE BLOG POST BY CLICKING HERE. However, I have just learned that the ABA denied Duncan provisional accreditation. This means essentially that Duncan's graduates cannot take the bar exam in every state in the Country. Duncan is alleging bad politics involved in the denial and has filed suit against the ABA. As I understand it, graduates of the law school may still take the Tennessee Bar and practice at least in that state. Whether Duncan's allegations are true as to the ABA's treatment of Duncan, I do not know. The Court's or the ABA system of appeal will decide this. However, this simply cannot be good news to students at the school or to those applying to the law school.

Finding A Law Job

2011-12-23T14:13:26-06:00

I know this blog centers a lot on the solo practice of law, or on lawyers going out on their own. But, the truth of the matter is that a good many lawyers and law students want to find paying jobs -- at least initially. (Oh, the motivation of student loans).

In this regard, there are a few simple but overlooked things to keep in mind if you really hope to find a law job and to get hired at a reasonable salary.

1. Review your resume. I mean really review it. I am the world's worst about typos and misspellings. I get in a hurry. I feel like I need to move on to other things. But, with a resume it really counts. You need to review your resume repeatedly. You need to get everyone you can encourage to do so to review it. Frankly, I do not know anybody that got hired based upon their resume, but I know people who have been denied jobs based upon their sloppy resume. Andrew Jackson once said "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word", but I am not sure Andrew Jackson never had to rely on his resume to get a job.

2. Interviews are hard to get, so show up on time. I am not talking about oversleeping. I am talking about miscalculating how long it will take to fight traffic to get to the interview location ... to find the location ... to find parking ... to get through security ... to remind the clueless receptionist why you are there. It is better to be early than late. Especially for lawyers who are required to be prompt in making court appearances and the like, it is a real turn off for an applicant to be even a little late. The rule in law is to hurry up and wait. In court it is okay to wait on the judge, but the judge is not going to wait on you. The same is true for the dreaded job interview.

3. Dress your best. Law firms are getting more casual, but unless you know how the firm dresses that day, make sure you wear a suit or some equivalent.

4. Know about the firm and what they do. I cannot emphasis this enough. Believe it or not, most law firms do not want to hire another attorney, and especially one they have to mentor. They are looking for a specific type of attorney, such as a real estate lawyer, family lawyer, bankruptcy lawyer or the like. Maybe you have not actually practiced law yet, but you need to express a proper interest. I know of one law graduate that interviewed for a job at a bankruptcy law firm, and when asked what he sees himself doing in 5 years answered "employment law". That did not go over well with the law firm that does not practice and does not want to practice employment law.

5. Ask questions, please. Most of us have thought that the job interviews we have participated in are silly. Okay, but in truth they are silly because they tend to be monologues on the part of the interviewer. Questions show an interest in the firm and an appreciation for what it does. It clarifies for you what the pay might be, the benefits, insurance and the like. It gives you a feel for the metal of the law firm for which you want to work.

6. Talk to everyone about the fact you are looking for a law job, and especially a law job in a certain practice area. Most law jobs are NOT posted. Let me repeat this. MOST LAW JOBS ARE NOT POSTED ANYWHERE! The overwhelming majority are NOT even advertised except through word of mouth among friends and colleagues. Some represent an inkling on the part of the firm it needs someone else if the right someone shows up. You find these opportunities through networking and asking around. Think of it this way. The posted jobs make up maybe 10% or 15% of the law jobs that may be available. Yet, because they are posted, these firms are absolutely inundated with resumes and requests for interviews. What do you believe are your chances with these firm?

7. Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! I cannot say this more. We all know to send a follow up email or thank you note, but firms put things like this off to complete real work. They get confused. They are distracted. Confused and distracted firms put off making decisions. Those they offer jobs to often accept and then back out. Get these people on a list and stay in touch with them regularly. If nothing else, they can be a valuable resource on who else might be looking for a new lawyer.

How About A $1,800 Law Office? (VIDEO)

2011-12-23T10:49:35-06:00

You know me. I think the amount of space that lawyers need to do their work is exaggerated. It is more ego than necessity, and it leads to a cluttered and complicated life. But, a quiet dedicated work space is good. If you do not have room in your home, then try building a space in back or close to your home. It might be a little industrial shabby chic, but throw in some windows and some planting and you are good to go.

In Berkeley, California Karl Wanaselja, along with his business partner and wife Cate Leger, created their home-office using an old refrigerated shipping container that cost just $1,800. They cut their 40' long refrigerated unit in half and placed it in a T shape in their backyard. Because it was a refrigerated container, they did not need to add any insulation. Using a reciprocating saw, the couple cut huge windows into the aluminum/stainless steel structure.

You can see for yourself.

Solo Means Solo: A Third Wave Practice Does Best With No Financing

2011-12-05T17:05:50-06:00

I think sometimes that law school graduates are so use to debt that they insist they need the extension of even more debt to start a practice. To me, however, solo means solo. Just like you do not need law partners, staff, a law job, a law firm, you do not need financing, with the obligation to pay back interest and principal out of imaginary future earnings. Going solo means solo. Just you, your family and your friends.

The charts below apply to all businesses, but they offer a couple of interesting things. The first chart shows you that 47% of all businesses, which would include law firms, have no financing sources. The second chart shows that businesses that rely just on friends and family have the highest success rate.

There are two points to the no financing option. First, the access to unearned money leads most lawyers starting out to do stupid things. I say stupid when the real term might be something like impractical, senseless, arbitrary, unimportant, foolish or frivolous. In short, like the unaccountability of spending with a credit card, it is too easy to make bad or instantaneous decisions that have long term repercussions. Borrowed money is most often spent in ways that does not secure a return.

Second, the solo practice of law in this day and age only really requires a laptop or notebook computer and a cell phone. Everything else is optional. Everything else is discretionary.

Third, and just as importantly, the success of any law firm in terms of cash flow is the referrals of paying clients. That requires a good degree of marketing. Where there are numerous ways to market, this is where initial attention needs to center when starting a new practice. Money somehow affords a false sense of luxury that distracts from this goal. In this day and age marketing does not take a good deal of money. It does takes a good deal of energy, planning, diligence and tenacity.

Live + Work + Home = Politically Incorrect?

2011-11-29T16:10:01-06:00

I get some flak about my politics and the practice of living and working from my home. Fair enough. These comments come from ardent conservatives who believed, I guess, in the concept of a home office, but seemed to be disturbed with an emphasis in my blog linking the act of working from home with the green movement.

My overall argument over the years, working from The Worldwide Home Office, has been both capitalistic and green. In short, it has been about both green as in money and green as in the environment.

Here is the truth of the matter. Americans are simply wasteful in ways that do not benefit either themselves or the community as a whole. The argument I encounter often is that we have a right to be as wasteful as we want. Where that might be true, I also have a right to be as critical about it as I want. The readers of this blog are free to buy Hummers and waste natural resources, commute hours to work, and duplicate space or build a footprint on this planet as big as his or her ego will allow. I am free to explain that there is, in my humble opinion, a better way that serves each of us better, both individually and the community as a whole. Readers are entitled to their opinions, and I am entitled to mine. Being allowed to express a difference of opinion is really the true meaning of freedom in my book.

But ultimately, the problem arises when some people see my advocacy as impinging on their free speech. These people believe it better that I not speak as it conflicts with their opinion of the World. I think I have a right to express myself and they are free to read it or not, believe it or not, or adhere to it or not.

Now, whether or not my motive for practicing law from home conflicts with someone's view of what is politically correct, my point is pretty simple. Our bedrooms are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eights of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. All of this space is both the largest waste of our personal money and resources, and it is the largest single consumer of energy. Space consumes more energy and results in more pollution than cars, or anything else. Getting to and from our spaces is probably responsbile for a good bit of the oil and gas we use. The more we reduce our footprint, the more money we get to keep to spend as we personally see fit. As an added bonus, with a smaller footprint we are less dependent on foreign sources of energy. There is less polution. We have better air quality. We are less stressed. We have more time. To me, all of this amounts to more freedom.

It is true that I have often viewed this policy of mcmansions in the suburbs, macdaddy offices in the city, and a gas guzzler to get between the two as destructive both economically and environmentally. I believe that reducing our footprint we can benefit us both economically and environmentally, personally and for the greater good.

I think it is okay to be as conservative as you want and still work out of your home. Do it for the personal savings and the extra time it affords you and your family. You do not want to do it for the environment? You want to use the savings to buy a bigger house and a bigger vehicle? That is up to you.

Shingle Of One's Own

2011-11-28T17:45:39-06:00

The New York Times has an interesting article about lawyers forgoing Big Law to start their own small firms. It is worth the read because it demonstrates both the positives and negatives for some attorneys.

One of the points that I take away from the article is that many attorneys are making the change as much for lifestyle choices as for Big Law downsizing and lack of law jobs.

But, it is not for everyone. Some do not wish to, nor can they emotional deal with, the ups and downs involved in "entrepreneurship", as one partner in a legal recruiting firm calls it.

The other is point that entrepreneurship for lawyers should be based upon the strive to obtain and maintain referrals. From my perspective, this is not an impossible task, but it is an unrelenting task. And, the strange part from where I sit are the large number of attorneys who do not mind the strain and stress of spending money, but will just sit around and die before dropping off business cards, CLE, attending parties, and participating in events on any kind of regular or consistent basis.

I personally continue to be a little disheartened with advice, as in this article, that attorneys need six months of earning in the bank before taking the plunge. For most of us that means that we will never take the plunge. I know it feels safe, but I think it is wrongheaded advice. Again, the issue is not how much money you can spend, but how much money you can make and keep. More than money in the bank, what is important is keeping overhead extremely low and having an aggressive plan for obtaining new, paying clients. As stated, attorneys are good at deciding how long they can go on without making money, when little attention is paid for how to bring business and money in the front door.

Solo By Choice (2011-2012 Edition) And The Companion Guide

2011-11-07T17:25:37-06:00

Okay, I am a law practice nerd. I will admit it. So, imagine my delight when I received Carolyn Elefant's most recent edition of Solo By Choice and The Companion Guide that goes with it.

I recently attended a presentation by a law school in which their presenters said all of the right things to students in order to get them to select their law school. They have all learned to mouth the phrase "We train practice-ready lawyers". Admittedly, most law schools are a little better at this than when I attended in th dark ages, but not by much. Just look at their curriculum and you will see that what they say is more of an affirmation of what they recognize that law schools must do but, in fact, do not do well.

I can get into the reasons why law schools do not train practice-ready lawyers when the overwhelming majority of their graduates will be going out on their own or associating in small practices, but it is beside the point. Law schools do not help and then when you graduate you do not really know what to do or where to turn.

That is the reason I like Caroly Elefant's books because they offer a valuable resource to attorneys or law students who have decided to start their own law practices.

I am not as prolific in my writings of late, but I do offer bits and pieces of advice to
those looking to start their own law practice. I hope you read and appreciate those tidbits.

Carolyn Elefant, however, has that unusual knack of being able to assemble all that she knows, has learned and has obtained in discussions with other successful lawyers into a comprehensive and cohesive guide that you need if you are intent on starting your own law practice.

And The Companion Guide!

Have you ever thought I know so little about a subject that I do not even know the questions to ask?

The Companion Guide takes care of this for you. It not only asks the 34 most important questions you need to know, but it seeks to help you answer each one.

Marvelous!

If you are thinking about going out on your own, then you need (and I really do mean NEED) Solo by Choice and The Companion Guide. Go online and buy these books right now.

Working With Your Significant Other

2011-11-01T17:23:03-05:00

I say significant other because you could work with your spouse or the person in which you are in a relationship. Or, I guess, even another family member. And, I say working because both of you do not have to be lawyers to work together in a law firm. One can assist the other.

The question is whether or not working together is a good idea?

I am not sure I really have particular advice for you, but it has worked well for me.

My wife and I applied to law school together. We took every law school class together. We took the bar exam together. We have practiced law in one form or the other together for 25 years. And, we have raised four children together.

We both work out of our home, and we share the same office space within our home.

So, let's just say that we are together most of the time.

At this stage in our lives we can operate on a type of shorthand. We know how the work flow breaks down for childcare, housekeeping and in the workplace, not out of some grand design but out of random selection of duties that have established themselves over the years.

I know those things that irritate me about her work habits, and I am sure she can say the same thing about me. What I can say is that we have both mellowed over the many years as we have come to realize that these irritants are not really that important in the overall scope of things. Also, if you worked with a non-family member, I am sure you would find more irritating habits in that person you will be less likely to tolerate.

Although there are some statistics that suggest that only 5% of couples can make an all-in-one partnership work, I cannot say that I have had this problem.

Do not get me wrong. It takes some learning, a little faith, and the realization that petty matters are not worth the fight. And, it takes this realization on the part of both parties.

Law school was the worse for us in this regard. I recall classmates romanticizing about how wonderful it must be for us to study together. After all, studying for class and exams in law school is a lonely business. But, my wife and I had drastically different study habits. Namely, she studied and I did not.

I tend to think any torment from working together eases with time. Much like rocks that rub together, at first they are rough and jagged. Over time they both smooth out and become more polished. There is less friction.

If you are thinking of working with your significant other, I might be able to provide you a few suggestions that might help.

First, do not get stuck in gender roles. You need to be equals in the workplace and to respect each other.

Second, come to terms with your competitiveness. It is wrong to ignore the fact that we are all competitive in some way and to some extent. In the home environment in which the only goal is to tend the house and take care of the kids, you might not exhibit your competitiveness to each other and save it for the workplace. The problem is what happens when both of you are in the workplace?

Third, I would like to tell you to establish a separation between work and home. That is what the experts would tell you. But, I have come to learn that this advice is simply hogwash. If you live and work together, that is just simply impossible. When you are both sitting at your child's soccer game or track meet do not tell me that work will not come into the conversation. This does not mean that both of you do not need to get away from work and concentrate on something else from time to time. But, when my wife and I were both in Tampa recently with our daughter, from time to time we were on the phone resolving work matters and settling cases. I really tend to believe that drawing lines of demarcation in this way leads to more stress and not less.

Let others talk about the odds of survival. I am here to tell you that working and living together can be a wonderful thing.

Some Ideas About Our Postal Service

2011-10-12T14:20:17-05:00

You know, I have never understood the vileness that many conservatives, and especially many Fox News commentators, have heaped on the Postal Service, and especially the people that work for the service. I have always had a good relationship with the friendly people at my Post Office and the people who deliver my mail.

Mistakes happen in delivery from time to time but, facing the truth, the Postal Service is often blamed many more times for delivery issues that are just not its fault. ("The check is in the mail"). The point is that many conservatives have a political narrative to fulfill. And, hard working, non-partisan, people who work for the government, and get insurance and retirement benefits, often draw the ire of these types.

Besides, the Postal Service has been vital to the establishment of free speech, communication and the growth of our country. We should be proud of it and proud of the people who work there. Did you know, for example, that upon the establishment of our country that the Postal Service had to deliver all newspapers for free to everyone that wanted one, regardless of the political persuasion of the paper. The reason was that everyone wanted speech to be as free and available as possible, and so that diverse opinions would be available in our marketplace.

It is beyond the fault of the Postal Service that the federal government of both parties pull out funds for other purposes, hindering its self-sufficiency. Is short, postage is more than cost of use. It is a tax and the government cannot live without the additional revenue.

It is a shame that this type of misinformation and bombast has been allowed to penetrated the debate over the future of the Postal Service, and whether it should stop service, reduce service or be privatized.

First, let me say that it should not be privatized. I think the privatization of everything is a problem in this country. In order to have free markets, available to everyone, the government's obligation is to keep the backbone or avenues of commerce open and affordable for everyone to use and especially to use in the establishment of businesses (competition). The issue related to the denial of access by cable TV, the net neutrality debates, restrictions of access by phone companies and utilities illustrates the problems of for-profit companies controlling these backbones.

Second, with all of this said, there is nothing wrong with admitting that technology has simply (and rapidly) overtaken much of the needed mechanisms of the Postal Service. It does not have the same need or demand that it once had.

But, this does not mean that there is no need or demand for services from the Postal Services. It is just to say that the Postal Services does not need to go high tech as much as it needs to go all tech.

When I get mail, it is mostly advertisements, magazines, speciality newspapers, and bills. Occasionally, I receive a check.

I do not open much of the advertisements, I can have most of my bills sent to me via email if I really wanted to.

Magazines are the real problem. They will have to likely go fully digital in order to survive if their main source of distribution is the Postal Service, and this they are resisting.

As for bill collectors, it is probably their lifeblood. But, then again, I do not like or care for bill collectors.

Sometimes there is money sent via mail. Much of this can be handled by banks now, but to the degree it cannot, there has to be reasonably simply high tech systems for the deliver of funds to someone via the mail other than by a check stuck in an envelope. Most of the settlement funds to my law firm come via wire transfer or by overnight delivery not involving the Postal Service.

Then, for course, there is certified mail. I receive it. I send it. It is the most important task of most professionals like me. What is interesting, however, is that most of the certified letters I send and received are compiled, packages and mailed automatically through various online services.

Packages and hand delivery are no longer the problem. I can send something UPS ground that gets where it is desired within a day or two. I can track my packages, confirm when they were delivered, and it is typically cheaper than certified mail.

So, what can be done?

You still need the Postal Service because it is the agency that define addresses for everyone. Most industries, websites and services depend on the this division of the government to define this necessary information.

I would simply suggest this:

Magazines will be forced to change their method of distribution. Bill collectors will be forced to comply with the new system.

The postal service can create its own giant mail server that will be based upon, not individual email addresses of people, but on email addresses dedicated for each of the property addresses in the country. A true electronic mailbox for every propery, and not every person.

I am sure techies can figure out how to let people claim their addresses and exclude mail from the email address, and redirect mail from email address, as people move about.

This will eliminate the need for postage, and post office building in every community.

There will undoubtedly have to be some changes in the law enacting the same protection for the emails posted and sent through this system in way of privacy and fraud, as with the regular mail. But, the system will allow everyone to mail an address and a particular person, even if we did not know a persons personal email address.

It would allow me to send a certified letter, which the person can claim and sign for with an established PIN wherever they are at a computer.

The system might actually better than the current physical system of delivery because it should be possible for someone to tell if the mail sent was actually opened or accessed.

Some people might not pick up their certified letters, but that is no different than today. There just has to be a presumption that people will check their mail. In the physical world of mail, checking the mailbox is just a habit that has been reinforced with each of us over the years. The same will be true for this type of address-based email.

It does not require someone to maintain a computer, but they can check and print off their mail at libraries and any place they can get to a computer.

Handwritten letters and cards can be scanned, if needed. It has to be cheaper to have a computer or two and a scanner in every community than to maintain a post office building and people. If we can manage to get some many public locations to install and maintain machines to sell and record lottery tickets, then we should be able to do the same for people checking and mailing via the Postal Services internet.

Again, if someone does not pick up their mail, then the sender can be informed via autoresponders.

As for packages, were are now reaching a point where FedEx, UPS and smaller carriers have this covered, track each package online, and reach even the most isolated areas of the country.

There will be a cost for this kind of broad deliver service, especially for services such as certified mail.

There is always a problem with overseas mail, but I would suggest that as goes the United States will go other governments, and there might just need to be private services to print and ship overseas.

Sett Studio

2011-09-29T11:13:18-05:00

I continue to get throw back from attorneys that they do not have the space or privacy in their homes to have a home office or practice. My question is often, do you have a yard? Even a small yard will do. If so, then add a small studio office. I have posted examples before, but here is an example from Sett Studio in Austin, Texas.

These home offices range in size from about 97 to 192 square feet, they are energy-efficient and cost between $20,000 – $30,000. Construction takes about 45 days and installation is finished in a couple days. Transportation costs between $500-$3,000 depending on where the studio is being shipped. Typically permits are not necessary given the size of the building.

Puke Rates And Default Rates Of Student Loans

2011-09-14T18:00:29-05:00

Now I know the numbers represented in these charts, below, apply to more than law schools, and I know the crux of the story related to these charts concerns the default rate on federally insured student loans related to for-profit schools. But, there are a couple of underlying stories here that should be frieghtening to those in or wanting to go to law school.

First, as to the first chart bemoaning the increase to 8.8% of the default rate for federal insured student loans. With what is essentially government insurance of student loans against default, financial institutions are free to make risk free loans to students seeking such things as law degrees. Because the money is risk free the financial institutions are more free with the money. Because the financial institutions are more free with the money, law schools feel unrestricted in raising tuition to what would be called a "puke level".

In regard to some big law firms firms, the "puke level" is the the guess of how high an hourly rate can be raised until it causes a gag response from the big business that would need to pay it. Taking after their big law counterparts, for which they act like minor league training camps, law schools have been aggressively employing the puke rate analysis in raising tuition and fees to the highest level possible. It is of course denied, but the goal seems to be to get from each student the full and highest amount that can possbily be borrowed for a law school education regardless of the ultimate consequence to the student for this action. And, just like during the houseing bubble, the goal of most law schools is to keep testing those barriers or the puke rate.

This is important to understand because the first chart does not actually show the pain suffered by student loans incurred due to the puke rate of law school tution, so much as it show the penalty for law students getting locked in to federal insured student loans at levels now demanded of law schools. If you were to believe the first chart, the strain of student loans has actually eased since 1990, when the default rate was over 20%. In fact, this is probably not the case at all. This is because before 1990 student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy. After 1990 the laws were changed to allow student loans to be discharged based only upon a number of years and/or the creating of a long term hardship. Then the bankruptcy rules were changes to not allow discharge regardless of the nunber of years that had passed. Now, it is virtually impossible to discharge students loans in bankruptcy, to outlive the student loans other than by death, and the laws have been strengthen further to involuntarily collect the debt through garnishment, tax refund seizures and even the removal of professional licenses, ending a lawyer's ability to build a law practice, which was the entire reason to obtain the loans in the first place. Also, in the interim, law school tution and fees have far outpaced actual inflation.

Second, as to the second chart, the focus of most articles is on the default rate related to for-profit schools. There are a few for-profit law schools, but not many. More interesting to me is the the default rate for public institutions as opposed to private, non-profit institutions. From a law school perspective this make some sense. When someone starts law school they get locked into the school. It is not easy to change law schools for cheaper tution. This is the reason, for example, for teaser scholarships by some law schools. They intice a prospect with the thought of a free legal education, then cut the support, leaving the law student to scramble to unexpectedly pay for their legal education.

Public law schools have been increasing their tution and fees on existing law students more quickly and in higher percentages than private law schools. Often this is happening to students that have less in the way of family resources than those in private institutions.

Something has to be done with law schools and their perception of the puke rate for tution and fees. If not, then our entire legal community will be irreparably harmed in the future.

Now I know the numbers represented in these charts apply to more than law schools, and I know the crux of the story concerning these charts is the default rate related to for-profit schools. But, there are a couple of underlying stories here that are just frieghtening.

Plain And Simple: It Is The Cost Of A Legal Education That Matters

2011-09-12T16:16:53-05:00

Law schools like to talk about their value. In this day and time, when most law schools cannot manage to keep tuition under control, there is no such thing as intrinsic value to a legal education with the exception of bar passage rate and the overall cost of a legal education. All else is extrinsic and it should be ignored as little more than hucksterism on the part of law schools to otherwise justify the princely price on criteria that is just not that important.

Even lists, such as The National Jurist list of Best Value Law Schools, have to be taken with a grain of salt, for a good part of the list is made up of state supported law schools that only offer lower rates to their residents, or religious-based law schools that offer the best rates to those of their faith. But, mainly these lists are being perverted by all law school raising their tuition through the stratosphere, making those that are merely slightly less unreasonable seem to be a value.

A website homepage today is the place where a law school presents what it believes are the values it possesses to the world. So, what are those values? In my mind, a law school tells you its priorities not only by what it makes easily available on its website, and espeicially its homepage, as what it does not tell you or makes difficult to find.

For most law schools, it is certainly not about providing its graduates with an affordable legal education.

Case in point (but there are many more) is the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law of Faulkner University. It is on the National Jurist List. Yet, when you go to its homepage it lists its Mission Statement as the defining reason anyone should attend. Its mission is to (1) provide an "excellent legal education"; (2) "promote a Christian environment"; (3) obtain and retain a competent faculty; (3) attract a "diverse student body"; (4) provide students with "meaningful resources"; (4) "contribute to discussion of the relationship of faith"; and (5) "regularly reassess the program of legal education".

Nowhere on this mission, or on its homepage, does the law school provide a prospective law student with with the cost of its legal education. No link on the home page makes clear to the student to what the cost of its legal education is or might be found.

Only after a great deal of searching do you realize that the law school bunches or hides tuition and fees on a page call "Consumer Information". (Consumers by the way are not people as much as they are statistics). Here, you discover that the great value the law school represents is a present tuition, no counting fees, of $31,000.00 per year.

Another way to look at this is that a costs of legal education, not counting certain tuition increases during the term of education, books and materials, fees, and living expenses will be at least $93,000.00. In reality this is deceiving because with tuition increases and fees alone, the costs will likely be in fare in excess of $100,000.00 by the time anyone graduates.

Most law schools today want to promote their new facilities, either built, in the process of being built, or in the planning stages. Or, the cost of their extensive libraries, even though most what is needed for a legal education is now on a student's laptop. Understand, these are monuments to the law school's vanity and most often results only in outrageous tuition.

While most law schools complain about the difficulty in making ends meet, most of their websites are testaments for spending out of control, spurred on by the thought that their students can simple borrow more and more money in the way of student loans, family contributions and credit cards to scrape their way through.

For example, Thomas M. Cooley Law School purchased the naming rights to a minor league baseball stadium while increasing its tuition on students.

How do we get this problem under control?

It is hard to say. But, we need to insist that each law school must:

1. Have a large red button on the banner of its homepage for anyone reviewing the the law school online to view its tuition and fees. It should be front and center so nobody can be tricked into substituting all of the other glitz for value until the law school accounts for the costs of its education.

2. Disclose how long on average it will take a law school graduate to pay off his or her student loans if the full amount of tuition and fees are financed and only typical minimum payments are made each month on that debt.

3. Much like cigarette packages must have dire waringing, explain the consequential effect of a graduate defaulting on students loans, as opposed to defaulting on any other type of debt in this country.

4. Disclose all forms and the full amount of compensation paid to the law school dean.

5. Much like Cooley Law, have a calculator that states how much a student is likely to receive in scholarships from the law school should they apply and get accepted.

6. If conditional scholarships are offered, to detail for the student how many students are provided those scholarships, what percentage are capable of maintaining those scholarships and, if based upon maintaining a particular grade point average, what percentage of students at the law school maintain that level of grade point average.

7. Provide a tuition guarantee program ensuring each entering student the same cost for their education for the full three or four years of study.

8. Required to present a realistic estimate of living expenses while attending law school.

9. Require that any law school building program be paid for without any contribution from tuition and fees.

10. Get rid of the paper, including most text books, which cost too much and rely primary on published cases which are already available over the student's computers and their WestLaw subscription.

11. Do not allow law school professors to profit off their student by creating course packs or texts that primarily rely on published cases, including outlines or syllabi that primarily refer to case law.

12. Require liquidate damages to be paid for any information used or disclosed that is not absolutely accurate by a law school.

I would suggest that these requirements, and others, could be enforced as requirements for accreditation by the ABA, if either the law schools or the ABA actually cared about their law students as opposed to the amount of money to be made off the student.

It is Time To Boost The Economy By Bailing Out The Solo Practitoner!

2011-09-07T20:18:02-05:00

I watched the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library and thought the answers and rationals for the cures of our economy completely lame. If you understand what will or can drive the economy, you will understand that every one of the candidates ignored the only reasonable solution. Not to mention, what solution for our economic ills can be expected when you invite cultural warriors like Rick Santorum to the debate and bar those like Buddy Roemer from participating.

First, however, a short message to the Administration, which has failed miserably in this regard as well. You bailed out the banks and it did not help anybody but the banks. Then you gave billions to big business thinking that they would share the wealth with everyone else, and they did not. Then you gave money to the states thinking that would help, but they just used it to plug their own sinking ships. You denied the bankruptcy courts the ability to restructure mortgages to keep people in their homes, substantially handicapping the home prices of everyone but the rich and decimating the mortgage market for everyone not paying cash. You passed health reform legislation that did not have a public option and the enactment date was kick out so far in the future it could not possibly help anyone now. You extended unemployment benefits to those that were formally employed, but in no way help the self-employed who have lost business. Then you cut social security taxes temporarily in a way that disproportionately helps those working for others. The tax base has shrunk by millions of people put out of work in the process because you cannot do enough to make big business hire workers. As a result of the shrinking tax base, huge deficits continue to mount, impacting the economy further, and hurting solos disproportionately.

I do not know what the President plans to propose and the GOP plans to oppose, but I can just about guarantee you that BOTH will ignore the main group of people that are building and maintaining this economy, as it is.

Of course, I am talking about the self-employed or, in the case of lawyers, the solo practitioner.

I think we have to face the fact that the workforce of America has substantially changed since we last visited this type of hard times. As a result, prior remedies are not going to work. It is the failure of those in government to not recognize the trend.

I am so tired of hearing the GOP call the mega-rich "job creators". What a canard. The statistics of the last 8 years shows this is not true. As we say in Texas, "a turd is a turd n' callin' it a rose ain't goin' to make no never mine".

Here is the reality of today. Thirty-one percent of our entire labor force (nearly one in three eligible workers), over 40 million people in all, are SELF-EMPLOYED! And, this trend is increasing with an expected 40% of workers to be self-employed by 2019. This includes the overwhelming majority of lawyers.

Solos are the drivers of the economy. It will only be due to the efforts of these self-employed and solo practitioners that the economy will recover. These people represent the future. It is the result of tech, it is the Google-ization of the economy. It is the Third Wave, which has arrived. This fact is being ignored at the risk of our future.

You want employment to increase? You give solos some relief and the ability to expand and grow. You want the housing market to recover? You give solos the ability to buy homes. You want taxable income to increase (meaning more government revenues)? You throw solos a bone or two to help make this happen.

Yet, you will not hear about solos much from the government. They will ignore one out of three workers in this country and talk about what to do for big business, medium business, and small business. They will talk about how to rev the Dow Jones while completely ignoring Doug Jones.

Solos are shouldering all of the risk that were formally borne by companies in this current economy.

Here are a few, but by no means all of, the things that need to happen immediately in order for solos to thrive:

1. Create secured financing for the building and building out of co-working locations. Solos need a place to work and currently construction financing of commercial spaces is based upon long term leases. Shared work environments do not depend on long term leases.

2. Bypass tightfisted bankers and issue small grants and low interest loans to solos.

3. Student loan forgiveness, or at least interest-free abatements, while people are getting their feet wet while going out on their own. We do not need to be bankrupting people before they even start.

4. End the laws that tax solos as medium-sized employers.

5. Allow solos to deduct health-insurance premiums and other expenses in the same fashion as big business.

6. End the employer share of Social Security and Medicare from the solo's contribution. Realize that solos on average make about a third less than people in similar jobs at companies, but have to pay twice as much of their gross income as they are required to pay both the employer and employee shares of Social Security and Medicare.

7. Approximately two thirds of solos work in jurisdictions that tax unincorporated businesses at an average rate of 4% of profits. This needs to end.

8. Solos need to be made eligible for unemployment insurance or subsidies, as well as worker's compensation. Just because you do not work for someone else does not mean you cannot lose your income. Just because you work for yourself does not mean you cannot have a work related injury.

9. Most solos cannot afford health and life insurance, and their only hope is to pray for good health. There has to be actual competition in the market to make quality health care affordable. Start by removing the anti-trust provisions as to insurance carriers and create public options for basic health care in order to make big insurance companies behave. And, allow consumers the right to enforce their own rights in our courts against insurance companies that do not behave. You can forgo all of the requirements of Obamacare, Romneycare, or government mandates IF you have truly competitive competition in insurance coverages that allows abundant choice for the consumer.

10. Congress needs to re-enact the Small Business Jobs Act, which expired at the end of last year. It allowed solos to fully deduct their health care premiums before Social Security and Medicare taxes were assessed. In otherwords, Congress actually increased taxes on solos during these hard economic times while threatening to wreck the economy over taxes on the rich.

11. Labor laws need to be amended to cover non-payment of fees to consultants and solo lawyers that provide services to big businesses on a routine basis. This would level the playing field by shifting the burden from solos to the big businesses charged with nonpayment.

12. The government and the markets need to quit punishing solos for the bad conduct of mortgage originators, and begin again to guarantee stated income loans for solos so that they might be able to buy houses. Should 40 million people and families practically be allowed to buy and sell their homes, trade up and trade down as needed, the houseing crises will be over.

It is time to recognize that the ranks of solos have both increased and they have also been punished the most by this economy. And, since solos represent the single greatest source of job creation today and into the distant future, we cannot have recovery until the solo recovers. Solos cannot leap to the status of healthy employers if the emphasis for reform is not squarely focused on the solo. The housing market will not rebound until the solo can easily buy and sell housing. Big business will not fully prosper until solos can buy all of the tech, vehicles and services they need. Solos cannot buy what they need if every penny they make over expenses is going to pay for health insurance and student loans. When solos quit struggling, then the economy will quit struggling. We will support solos for the benefit of all or we will continue to ignore and punish them at the expense of all. Supporting solos will only strengthen the economy.

Get An Inbox!!!

2011-09-06T17:05:26-05:00

We all have a love-hate relationship with social media. I have a lot of friends (or however you describe people to which I am connected on the various sites). As a result, I often times suffer from feed bankruptcy.

Many lawyers have come to understand that social media can be good for them from a business standpoint. More importantly, those that follow these lawyers have come to relied on their feeds as well.

But, here is a hint.

GET AN INBOX!!!

Just like you might yell "GET A ROOM" at a couple displaying a little too much affection in public, often times I witness too much personal discussion of legal issues on my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

It happens on listservs as well.

It might be described as something like initial-consult porn. Sometimes it is tantalizing to read, but you really should share the information with the World.

Often times I want to yell, "Hey, everyone can read this!".

Just like the lady who insisted on holding a conversation via the speaker function on her cell phone about her daughter's genital warts while waiting in line at the Post Office, I ask, do you not have any discretion?

And, do not think it cannot be harmful. I recently was referred a case in which a lady contacted a banker about how to collect a debt from a "deadbeat" they both knew despite the fact the "deadbeat" had filed bankruptcy. She did not use the private message system on Facebook but each carried on a conversation based upon the message originally posted by her on the banker's wall. Problem was, the so-called "deadbeat", who they also referred to by name, saw the entire conversation between the two, as did a couple hundred of the banks customers.

An inquiry starts out casual enough sometimes, but when it gets beyond niceties, I say, "GET AN INBOX!!!"

Of Candy And Law Firms

2011-08-30T16:59:04-05:00

I do not quote other experts as much as I use to, and I need to do it more. Let me start by directing you to Marrilyn Astin Tarlton's article posted on Attorney At Work entitled Laffy Taffy or Hershey Kiss?

It is a hoot of a title, but it makes a point. You as a lawyer or part of a law firm have to distinguish yourself in ways that really matter to the people, groups, companies, entities, organizations or associations you might wish to hire you.

I like her point: "I can hear you developing your argument now ... 'Our lawyers went to better schools. We office in an historic low-rise building, not a skyscraper. We use purple for our website, for goodness sake!' Alas, as it turns out, those are all features that mean little, if anything, to your client".

The point is that the lawyer and the law firm distinguish themselves in ways that are important to them, and not the potential client. They market to their taste and interest and not to that of their clients. At least that is my take on the comment.

As Ms. Tarlton says, "Become a firm that is uniquely … something. Be extraordinary to a group of clients who want exactly what you’ve got. Patterning your practice after every other firm won’t get you to the next step. Think differently. Create something unique. It’s what they want".

I personally think that lawyers and law firms subtly distinguish themselves. The problem is they distinguish themselves from their perceived competition (Oops, I meant colleagues). To most consumers, these iterations have all of the distinguishing factors of the differences between Dr. Seuss' Thing One and Thing Two.

Here is what I like to say. Clients do not hire lawyers or law firms. They generally do not want anything to do with lawyers or law firms. They do have problems or need solutions and they will hire someone to deal with those. Most ways that law firms try to distinguish themselves is in subtle ways that say, "My lawyers can beat your lawyers". That might please a few psychopaths, but few others. And really, who wants to work with or for a psychopath? Talk about being dissatisfied with the practice of law.

I have stated this in the past again and again. I will do it here as well. Clients do not care if you are in a high rise building or working from your home. They do not care if you drink coffee or tea. They do not care if you buy suits at Men's Warehouse or Needless Markups. They do not really care if you graduated from Harvard Law or Bob's Really Big Law School (formally Fred's). What they care about is that they have a problem to solve and that you can identify that problem and have the expertise and empathy to help them solve it. And, nothing in the description about how good your are, where you work, how you work, what you wear, on what side you comb your hair, or whether you wear boxers or briefs matters in the least.

If what you do as a lawyer does not speak upfront to the specific problem with which your clients need help, you might be making yourself feel superior, but from a client centric standpoint you are spinning your wheels.

It is all about your practice niche. It is all about speaking to your practice niche. It is all about speaking effectively to those in need of your practice niche.

I, as the consumer, do not care if you are a life long resident of Montgomery County, Texas. I do not care if you graduated from The University of Texas. I do not care if you have WestLaw instead of the old law library. Order of the Coif? What in the hell is that, and do they or do they not believe in God? The one I love is the statement that goes something like, "been involved as first chair in over 100 jury trials". Really? Who knows the meaning of first chair, and the one thing I am trying to avoid is going in front of a jury with anybody. That sounds painful. That sounds prohibitively expensive. Don't you know how to settle a case? Your cases must be all about you and not about me. And, I do not care if you received the Bladda Bladda Bladda Award in law school. Leave it with the selection group of the law firm that hires you.

Each of these things tells me nothing about my problem and how you are able to deal with it effectively. It is all about you as a lawyer. All it tells me is that everything is about you. Who wants to be represented by some amorphous attorney or law firm that is into itself?

What is it about you that will help me? And, let me give you a hint. It is not where you placed in your graduating class in law school. It is not that you are a member of the Texas Bar College or are licensed to practice all four federal districts in Texas. I do care a little bit about your beautiful family, but do not take it too far.

Well, I am getting cranky, I guess, so I will end here. But, Ms. Tarlton is right, if not as crude as I might be. What is that distinguishes you in a way that can actually be of some help to me?

Cooley Law School Opening New Campus In Tampa Bay, Florida

2011-08-14T23:21:10-05:00

We have posted great, good and bad things about Thomas M. Cooley Law School.

Click here to see our general discussion of the law school.

We've talked about Cooley in terms of the meaningless of the U.S. News rankings.

We have been kind enough to disagree with Cooley raising its tuition to buy the naming rights to a minor-league stadium in Michigan.

And, we have got to admit that we have been a little perplexed over the years as to why would Cooley opened 4 separate campuses in the same state of Michigan. Michigan? Like that is the state everyone around the country secretly desires to spend the next three to four years of their lives?

Cooley has to be one of most innovative law schools around, if your objective is to get a law degree, pass the bar, and practice law without a bunch of high fives and butt slaps about the prestige of the place. Cooley is also a not-for-profit law school chain of law, unlike for-profit law schools of the The InfiLaw System.

Cooley, like every other law school in the country, is letting tuition get out of hand. Currently, it is at $34,340.00 per year, but the school does give away a lot of money in the way of scholarships.

Cooley has to have one of the best websites of any law school. It is upfront about its tuition, costs and financing, as is not true for a good many law schools in which you have to dig for the information. You can instantly get a feel as to whether admission is possible, and what your likely scholarship might be, if any. Let us just say the website is content rich and most law school websites are content poor, or at best mediocre.

Generally, Cooley is about options. You can, for example attend any campus you wish, attend classes when it is best for you, and you can start your law school career anytime throughout the year. Very few, if any law schools, offer you this degree of flexibility.

Now, Cooley is offering even more alternatives. The ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has acquiesced to Cooley's application to open a new Tampa Bay-area campus in Riverview, Florida.

The campus will begin offering evening classes in May 2012, morning classes in September 2012, and afternoon classes in 2013.

Tampa Bay is great because, although law school can be time consuming, it does not mean you are dead to the world, or that you need to be cloistered for three or four years. There is a lot to do in the Tampa Bay metro area.

The Greater Tampa Bay area has just over 4 million residents. It is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (football), Tampa Bay Lightning (hockey), Tampa Bay Storm (arena football), Tampa Bay Rays (minor league baseball), and the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies (North American Soccer League).

Tampa Bay has been ranked by Forbes as the 5th best outdoor city in the nation. The Washington Square News ranked Tampa as a top city for "twenty-somethings".

Regardless of your politics, Tampa has been tapped to host the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Cooley is traditionally good about given people an opportunity to attend law school who might not otherwise have that opportunity. The school tends to rank college GPA higher than most other schools in selecting students. Their class size is large enough for the school to take some chances. And, it is the champion of providing non-traditional education options, such as weekend law school and evening classes for those who have to work in order to afford law school.

It will be fun to see Cooley's Tampa Bay-area campus progress. It might be an alternative for you as well, if you are considering law school.

I Beg Your Pardon, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

2011-08-12T11:07:48-05:00

Or, maybe the problem is that law schools did promise their applicants a rose garden.

Maybe not in so many words, but there is a lot of commotion these days about what many believe is fudging by law schools on their employment numbers upon their students graduating.

For example, New York Law School and Thomas Cooley Law School were recently included in a class action lawsuit for this reason.

Not long ago, Thomas Jefferson School of Law was sued for the same reason.

I, myself, have complained for some time on a more anecdotal basis on what I see as blatant law school lying so as to improve their rankings.

For example, I can tell you when my daughter graduated from law school, the famed placement office at the University of Houston Law Center did nothing more than refer her to Martindale.Com to look for a job. They tauted the promise of their placement office going in, and then did nothing either during or at the end of law school to really help, other than their counselors drawing their paychecks (paid for by substantial tuition increases).

Not to long ago I complained in this blog of the president of Saint Mary's University School of Law telling the San Antonio newspapers one thing about its graduates ability to find jobs when opposing the creation of a new public law school, than what the law school was obvious reporting to the LACS.

(On a side note, if law schools are willing to find creative ways to fib about potential employment numbers, they are even more likely to find ways to fib about LSAT scores making the entire ranking process itself a sham).

The ranking process has created, in my mind, a terrible situation in which schools, wishing to compete, spend millions of dollars to fudge up their rankings (thereby causing an unnecessary increase in tuition, as well as student and graduate poverty), and create a kind of culture of lying, which is a remedy passed along to too many of its graduates.

Law schools need to be cheaper in tuition, and they need to be impeccably honest. They need to dedicate themselves to a value education (which includes very much the cheapest cost of obtaining a law degree), and they need to tell U.S. News were to stick their rankings.

1st Tier? 2nd Tier? 4th Tier? No tier? Who cares?

The only thing that matters and should matter is the costs to students to become lawyers and the bar passage rate. In short, are you more likely than not to stay solvent as a result of your education, and you will be able to practice law when you graduate?

So, I recognize and have agonized about the state of our law schools more than most. But, to those that use this as an excuse to say that a legal education is not worthwhile, you are simply wrong. I am equally as tired of seeing posts that suggest that a legal education or the legal profession, as a result, is a sham.

Law school is a valuable and beneficial education, even if you never end up practicing law. My sister, for example, has a law degree and works for the VA.

There are problems, not the least of which are law schools that refuse to accept good students just because they have not mastered the meaningless LSAT. Speaking of NYLS, Cooley and Thomas Jefferson, they provide access to motivated students who want to be lawyers. Did they over promise? Did they promise people a rose garden? Maybe. I do not know. Do they charge too much? That is a problem for most every law school these days. But, Cooley and New York Law School have good bar passage rates, which is a figure that cannot be easily fudged, and Thomas Jefferson competes in the state with the most difficult bar exam to pass.

These schools fill needs.

In law we learn that disclosure is everything, and that is obviously where the problem lies. Law is very much an entrepreneurial profession. Schools have become too much like late night infomercials in regard to selling their benefits. The actual benefits are great. You get a profession and possibly live a rewarding life. You get an opportunity to succeed -- not a guarantee.

Law schools do not necessarily paint too rosy of picture as they emphasize the wrong things. They sell everyone like they will be the upper 10% of the graduates in law school without giving them any of the tools or information to understand the likelihood of the possibility. Let's just say that 90% of all students cannot be in the top 10%. Law schools give too little training to the lower 90% on what it will take for each to start and build their own law practices or other entrepreneurial endeavor. Despite touting clinics, there is very little practical training in law schools.

In the meantime, although it dates me considerably, maybe everyone should listen to Lynn Anderson, below.

You Should Not Have To Retrench

2011-08-08T15:18:53-05:00

I understand we can all cut back in hard times. But, what I am saying is that if you feel the need to retrench, you were not running your law practice as you should have been operating it in the first place.

Retrench constitutes a race to sustaintially reduce costs and spending in response to economic difficulty.

The bigger question you should be asking yourself is why did it take a jolt to the economy or your firm's business to decide that maybe you could do without that receptionist, or replace WestLaw with a cheaper service, or reduce the amount of space you have under lease, or move your practice home?

The tragedy is no that you find that you can curtail expesnes, but that you were not doing so all along.

If you can do without these things now, you could have done without them before. The question becomes, why is it that when you are making more money you believe you can simply waste it?

Start At The Top

2011-07-15T22:42:41-05:00

When I graduated from law school, much too long ago to remember, I could not find a law job in Houston as the Texas economy was in a state of collapse. I moved back to my home town of Texarkana, Texas. There I started my own law practice with no experience in anything, except that I worked a little during law school. I did not have a great grasp of business, law, organization, marketing or even speaking with people about what I do. When I brought in my first case (a divorce) I did not even know what the pleadings were suppose to look like or how you filed pleadings with the district clerk. In fact, in Texas, I did not even understand there was a difference between the county clerk and the district clerk.

This was before tech, and I really had only three things going fo me, none of which I learned in law school. First, I had some ambition of sorts. Maybe it would be best to call it curiosity. Or, maybe it would be best to call it confidence that everything will turn out alright. Faith maybe. But, whatever you call it, I had a driving interest to figure things out, to get out of bed everyday regardless of the results of the previous day, and to move forward in meeting people, getting the advice I needed, dispensing the advice to others that was necessary, and to divorce myself from what other lawyers were doing to practice law. I could remove myself from convention to see what worked for me. And, I was excited to work myself through this process.

Second, I learned growing up that when you meet people you greet people with a firm handshake, and look them straight in the eye. It turns out this works well with establishing referral sources.

Third, I knew from politics that grassroots are everything. Today and in business or law we call them referral sources. Regardless, the grassroots represent the community. In a political context it manifests itself in hosting house parties, organizing meetings, handing out literature, talking to people on the streets so to speak, mobilizing letter-writing, phone-calling and, now, emailing, blogging and social media campaigns. It is setting up information tables, and asking people to submit opinions. Today, these communities can be virtual, and paper plays less of a part. But, the concept works no matter what you call it in a modern, business, or legal context.

What I learned though all of this is that the well meaning advice people give young lawyers to not limit yourselves to practice areas, to first work at an existing law firm, to first learn the law, then slowly work yourself into the community does not have to be. The grassroots are ready for you now.

My advice is do not be intimidated. Start at the top. If you can find a law job that is truly beneficial to you, then that is great. Do it. But, if not, then shoulder yourself through the crowd to the front and make yourself known. I am not saying to be impolite, but with little ambition, a firm handshake, some eye contact, you are always going to do yourself well with the grassroots.

Finders. Minders. Grinders.

2011-07-10T18:49:30-05:00

I recently posted about the need to focus on rainmaking. From this I received a number of inquiries from new lawyers that question how anyone can do this when they are not really sure how yet to practice law. "Don't you need to know what you are doing first"?

The question is rather counter intuitive to me. It represents kind of the chicken or the egg argument, if you would think about it. Sure, you need to know about your practice area or niche, but how in the world are you going to get that experience if you do not focus on obtaining paying clients?

We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. We all have the ability to exploit our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. The problem with law school is that it does not deal with two of the three aspects of actually practicing law. Given the law school selection process (the personality types they typically accept), and the concentration on a limited set of tasks, most of us are greatly deficient on the skills not taught.

What you will hear about the practice of law is that the lawyers that make up the field are finders, minders and grinders. The finders bring in well paying clients. The minder keeps the well paying client happy. The grinder reads, briefs, writes, appears in court, argues with other grinders, and rarely sees the well paying client. The grinder certainly is not the chief contact.

Law schools concentrate on developing grinders. The Big Law system concerns itself first on developing grinders. Grinders are needed in order to create the large sum of money that flows up to the finders and minders. According to DealB%k, the average Big Law Partner in the United States makes $640,000.00. They are often paid many more times this amount. But, according to PayScale.Com, the average national salary, with bonuses, profit sharing and commissions for most attorneys is between $45,623 to $172,816 per year.

The irony of the situation is that many lawyers go solo directly out of law school, or leave Big Law, because they do not wish to be, or they are sick of just bing, grinders. They would rather, at least in their inner most thoughts, be finders and minders. And why not? I can assure you that when the legal market collapsed along with the economy a few years ago, it was the grinders that found themselves out of work. Minders would have done okay. And, every firm had room for the finders.

I say it is ironic, because most attorneys that go out on their own for this reason just seem to have so much trouble in going out and building a book of business (reliable referral sources). I am not exactly sure why, but most of it is emotional I am sure. They fear putting themselves out there only to get rejected or slapped down. It is hard work. It means making yourself known and always available to the right people, groups, organizations and associations that need and want you and your firm's services. It means focusing on the task of on follow up like a laser.

And ... what confuses most new lawyers is this thought that you already have to be the expert in your field, or a legal celebrity, in order to be a finder. This is just wrong.

Many lawyers that I consider good finders graduated at or below the fifty percentile of their graduating class. They went to 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier law schools, most held only odd jobs before and during law school. Many went to law school at nights and on the weekends. Let us just say that most finders were (and often are) unremarkable people.

Their biggest quality is that most have a friendly warmth about them -- kind of the opposite of the jackass quality that law schools tend to breed into people. Not an expertise necessarily, but a natural curiosity and a willingness to be available to help when needed. They are people that can listen to what people do not say. They have an ability or self-training to perceive emotion, integrate it, understand it, and regulate it to promote growth. They are great at self-awareness and gut feelings.

Finders are also good at relationship management as an adjunct to, or replacement for, the law school taught skills.

Understand, however, that what I did not mention to be a great finder was experience of the lack thereof. As pointed out by Jacob Stein recently, the experience that is needed is that as described by Aldous Huxley:

"Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."

And,if you are self-conscious, diffident, or reticent, I would tell you not to worry. Those are probably the best qualities to being a great finder. We all suffer from leaner's reticence, but the only way to get over it is to get out there and make yourself available.

In fact, I will tell you that being a little hesitant, demurred, modest, or sedate is a bit of an advantage. Nobody likes an in-your-face lawyer or an unrestrained cheerleader. These lawyers come across as hucksters and people actually try to avoid them.

All that is required is to always be there, and to at least try to be helpful, and to gently follow up.

Maybe that is the problem to some extent. It is hard to convince yourself that you can be reserved and talkative, or unassertive and confident. I tend to think of it as just being yourself as among friends at the kitchen table.

The trait I have found in finders is not that they are not shy or restrained, nervous, humble or retiring, it is that they are there. If you wish to represent builders, for example, you will find that there are a lot of attorneys that are members of the local association of builders. But, what you will not find many that are always there, at the meetings, at the luncheons, and the continuing education, passively making contacts, building friendships, remembering information, but otherwise just being modest. Most attorneys just pay dues.

Sure these people, groups, organizations and associations already have established relationships. But these are always in a state of flux. You have to be there when these people and groups want a change.

The point is when people talk about an over supply of lawyers they are talking about grinders. They are sometimes talking about minders. But, there are very very few attorneys who have a "book of business" and who are -- or aspire to be -- finders. If you are primarily in this latter category, you will never have too much competition.

So, what do you want to be? Finder? Minder? Or, a grinder?

It Is All About Focus. Focus On Making Rain.

2011-07-05T20:49:38-05:00

No, I am not talking about the recent drought in Texas, which is slowly killing my beloved piney woods.

I am talking about the mistake that I and almost every attorney who graduates from law school or leaves an existing firm to start their own practice makes.

Simply put, they are focused on the wrong things.

I say things (plural) because first they are focused top intently on their surroundings and, second, they are focused on the intricacies of their practice area. The former is frivolous. The latter is necessary but it really misses the point.

Two things bring this subject to mind. First, I was communicating with an attorney recently who was concerned with how to keep up with the little work she was receiving, while also fretting about her lack of earnings. I informed her that her focus on work product over feverishly networking was all wrong.

Second, was this article in DealB%k concerning the fact that more law firms are raiding competitors to poach their rainmakers. In short, these are the lawyers that stand out and warrant the big paychecks.

Both reminded me of a conversation (a friendly argument really) in the lawyers lounge at the Bowie County Courthouse in New Boston, Texas in the late 1980s. The conversation was relevant then and it is still relevant today. To pass the time while a bunch of us attorneys waited on the judge to complete the regular docket, the lawyers at the table were arguing as to who made the most money and had the best quality of life -- litigation attorneys or transactional attorneys. The argument got more animated and then Jim Coleman, the named partner of Carrington Coleman, a prestigious firm in Dallas, simply stated that both sides were wrong. He stated the attorneys that make the most money and have the best quality of life are the rainmakers. They can always find the best litigation attorneys and transactional attorneys to do the work.

Put simply, smart, obnoxious attorneys are a dime a dozen. Smart, charming, extroverted attorneys who build relationships easily are in very short supply. Which do you want to be?

The question of how can you be a rainmaker right out of law school misses the point as well. The question is what is your focus as you move forward. Is it in typing pleadings and making jury argument, or in finding clients and developing a book of business (a slew of referral sources you can count on)?

Can you do this without worrying about your work product?

No, but the question is when you get out of bed every day, what is your desire? To go draft pleadings or contracts, or to network? It is true if your work product is not great, you will have a hard time keeping clients, but if you have clients you should not have any problem finding quality lawyers which you can guide through the work product issue.

It is easier to network if you limit yourself to a niche area, and then work it dependably and boldly. It is just easier to dominate a market and make it your own. Notice that most of the rainmakers being recruited in the article are from specific practice areas.

What I think you will learn very quickly is that were there are a lot of attorneys, there is very little competition in this regard. Although most attorneys are very hard working, very few are able to dedicate themselves to this task.

Most attorneys desire success, but most are not focused enough to go get it no matter what the level of desire. Desire and drive are two different things. If you wish to be a success, you desire to be a rainmaker.

Is There A Solar-Powered Shed In Your Future?

2011-07-05T12:33:56-05:00

In order to have a home office, you need a home-based office space. Some people have that inside their home. Some do not. The point is that it easy and relatively inexpensive to add if you need a degree of separation between work and home.

One example is StudioShed. Third Wave has blogged about it before. But, here is an example by Gail Seigel. She is not a lawyer, but a full-time jeweler. It does not matter as it shows the versitality and possibility of the space. After weighing her options, including renting a space and buying a larger home, she decided to install a 14'x10'x9' prefabricated a solar-powered backyard shed by Studio Shed. It includes electrical and plumbing, and has FSC-certified TruWood Collins siding, corrugated metal, a foam-insulated cement floor, energy-efficient windows, and eight 235-watt solar panels. Not counting solar panels or other options, Studio Shed offers a shed of this size for about $7,200 and generates enough energy for the shed and part of the house.

Realrecht

2011-06-23T16:30:47-05:00

Okay, it is my own word, but I think it makes a point about our sometimes poisonous legal environment. I do not mean our laws are poisonous, although some might be. I am talking about many of our lawyers, and especially those associated with big law or those representing big business.

You might have envisioned realrecht recently in the Wal-Mart sex-bias class action suit the Supreme Court eliminated the other day. Now, I do not know if Wal-Mart was in the right or the wrong. That is not the point.

Thousands of individual lawsuit can now be filed against Wal-Mart by the women who work for or have worked for the company. The point is that women are not allowed to join together to enhance their power against the giant organization, underscoring the absurdity of the disparity between people and big business in this day and age.

When you are dealing with moral people that have not been corrupted by the power and money, big business and big law are often not a problem. The problem is when the only objective is to win, and not whether the issue is properly placed or should be properly settled. When lawsuits and legal issues are settled only from a position of power, and not so much the issues, then legal ethics cease to exist.

I take my word for Realpolitik. Taken from the German "real" to mean practical or actual, and Politik meaning politics, it came to mean politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and material factors, as opposed to moralistic or ethical premises. The term came to be used pejoratively to mean coercive, amoral or Machiavellian means.

Likewise, Realrecht or practical law I use in the pejorative. It is based upon a law that is not based on the actual law, or reasonable considerations or differences of opinion to it, but on a consideration of power over morals or principles to take advantage of those harmed.

It is power law whose entire premise is based upon tactics and attacking the legal process and those that represent clients as opposed to focusing on the actions of the client and, if the client committed a legal wrong how that case might be properly settled.

There is no doubt about it, power law exists mainly because of the combination of mega business in which what normal people might consider large awards do not even represent a fraction of earnings of those sued, and lawyers who are corrupted by the fees paid by those companies that insist amoral and Machiavellian means.

I agree that I am a bit of an legal ideologue that tends to favor the principle of the law over other considerations. But, I think there is too much in the way of tactics and not enough in the way of truth currently in the practice of law. It is what makes the practice of law simply unenjoyable.

Advice Is Easy. Executing Is Hard.

2011-06-11T22:00:56-05:00

I get calls and emails all of the time from law students and lawyers who want to start their own law firms. I try to give them my best thoughts and earned opinions to their questions.

Is it appreciated?

Who really knows.

But, I can tell you with many there is a great deal of apathy, halfheartedness or lassitude in the responses. It is a passiveness really boardering on "oh, do I have to".

I understand it. It is someone telling you that it is not going to be a piece of cake to do what you want. It is some one stating things you believe are true, but do not want to do or hear.

What I have learned over the years (too many to count really) is that advice is plentiful. Some people charge for it. Some, like me, offer it freely. And, everyone has an opinion on something. A diversity of opinion is good. You can take it all in, absorb it, and combine the various bits of advice to make your own.

It is not that most lawyers do not want the advice. It is that mere advice is not what they really want. They are wanting someone to do it for them, or at least walk with them through every step. A hand holder. A doer. A confidant is not often enough. Lawyers have come to realize that opinions and advice do not represent action.

You see, advice is easy. It is easy to give, and it is easy to take. It is easy to formulate.

It is executing that is hard (if not just downright impossible) for many people. It requires a sense of purpose, and a sticktoitness that most people cannot imagine themselves doing. You cannot have poor execution habits and expect to succeed. This leads to trepidation.

Most of us can invision ourselves in the final analysis. We can see us as the lawyer, in the nice office, with lots of staff do our bidding, with plenty of time for luxury and vacations. The thought of working hard and playing hard is appealing. It is just the road to that destination that is hard to imagine.

The easy thing is to start at the end with the office and staff, and then to work backward. Although this rarely works out right, this is what you see most new lawyers doing.

There is also an element of faith. If I blindly start down the path I have to know that everything will work out alright.

I tend to think that poor execution habits and a lack of faith is why lawyers and law students want to team up for the journey when there is not enough to feed and care for one. The thought of not being alone is comforting. There is the thought that it will overcome one's culture of resistence to execution. The thought is that somehow a partner will add accountability for execution.

Within most of us there is just a resistance to change. Add this to a lack of discipline, and it can get tough.

To me, it is kind of like trying to put eye drops in your own eye. It is counterintuitive. But, an eye doctor can do it because he, and not you, is in control of the drops.

This is why people, including me at stages in my life, do not seem to get a firm off the ground until we are place in a position of failure. You can say it causes us to focus on priorities, but I think it forces us off our butts to get something done that might otherwise be uncomfortable for us to do otherwise.

It is like the story of the salesman the visits an old country home. The family is on the front porch. As he is trying to pitch the family the old blood hound is just whining, monaing and groaning. The salesman asks, "what's wrong with your dog". The man spits and says, "he's layin' on a nail". The salesman asks, "why doesn't the dog just move?" The man spits again and says, "ain't hurtin' 'nough for 'em to move."

And, that is how it really is with most of us.

I could tell you about goals and plans and the like. That is the easy advice. But, no amount of advice is going to be enough unless you have the gall to execute on it. Nobody is going to do it for you. And, the truth of the matter is that you are not going to move until it is hurting you enough that you cannot stand to lay in place.

Google +1 Button

2011-06-09T17:17:52-05:00

Google's promotional video for the +1 button, above, explains the social feature thusly: "When you click +1, you're telling your friends, your family and the rest of the world, 'this is something you should check out!'"

I guess, then, the Google +1 button is similar to Facebook's "Like" button, which I have always thought a bit strange when you push "Like" as to something that is terrible. You post that you were just involved in a tradgic accident, and one of your friends clicks the "Like" button.

Instead of your "Likes" being posted to your Facebook profile, your +1's are collected in your Google profile and displayed when people within your Google social circle search for something you have recommended.

Here is how I think it works, if you opt in via Google Labs, you'll see a translucent +1 button appear to the right of your Google search results. When you mouse over the button, it becomes solid and you can click it. Each +1 is logged in your Google profile. There, you can manage what you've +1'd and choose whether or not you want to make this information public.

I do not know really how this benefits a law firm or lawyer except to ad the +1 button to your posts on your blog.

We will just have to see how it takes off.

How About A Cheap Solar Powered Law Office Or Space

2011-06-07T10:42:06-05:00

First, as everyone knows, I work from home. But, I hear from people all of the time who say I just do not have the space or the privacy to do this.

Second, although I do not need to meet with clients other than online, over the phone or at the courthouse, I hear from lawyers that say they need a space to meet with their clients. This is perfect either as an adjunct to your home or at a location near your home.

Third, I appreciate cargotecture or the idea of adding space using recycled shipping containers. I have provided a number of examples over time on this blog.

Sometimes these examples take some reimagining as many examples show where the space is built out as a living space. This works too because (1) an increase in living space can free up work space in your house, and (2) shipping containers are just boxes that can be finished out any way you want, and placed any where you want.

For means of more inspiration on the subject comes the Sunset‘s Idea House, or Cargotecture. An ultra-modern small space of only 192 square-feet (this one can actually sleep fourt), it is solar powered. The 24' shipping container was designed and fabricated by Seattle-based HyBrid, it sell for a base price of $59,500. You can view a lot of pictures of its installation at their website HERE.

How Law Schools Trick Students Into Massive Debt

2011-05-02T15:32:25-05:00

Here is the reality. Too many law school have created a cost structure that results in tuition and fees (the cost of legal education) that is too high, unsustainable, and which financially endangers their graduate's futures.

We have to begin to say what is really true. Whether as a result of chasing rankings or whatever, law schoolmanagement and administrations have become so universally deceitful and disrespectful of their applicants, students and the trust expected them that it stands to endanger the success of their alumni in the future, if not the entire legal community as a whole.

It is such that most high scoring applicants, who might have choices, would not agree to attend but for these inducements provided.

These inducements come in the form of scholarships to those with high LSAT scores, because the law schools are after rankings. In other words, law schools with outrageous costs and tuition have to buy LSAT scores in order to maintain their rankings. Or, at least, they have to offer to do so, and they have to pretend they will continue with this commitment after the acceptance.

So, what law schools will do is offer merit scholarships to those with high scores in order to get them to bypass lower-cost institutions, and especially state-supported law schools.

I have seen it time and again. Many of those who are offered merit scholarships feel so proud that somebody has finally recognized their hard work, intellect and self-worth, that they fail to analyze not only what is offered, but the barriers to actually getting paid the money. It is strange since these students are seeking to be lawyers, but most law school applicants accept their seats and scholarship with the same abandon as they do in accepting the terms and conditions to use a free website or app.

These scholarships tend to be gaged by the law school just as the house determines actual payouts of slot machines in Vegas. Let us just say they payout is designed for the house to always win.

The problem is that most of these law schools either cannot afford, or do not intend to actually pay, all of these students this money offered. They avoid this by setting up barriers that prevent most student from continuing to receive the scholarships after a short time. This, of course, then requires the law student to pay the full tuition and fees, usually through obtaining huge student loans that must be paid back. These are debts which the law student never intended to incur in the first place, and they are so large they might have avoided the law school had they known.

This essentially acts to entrap law students at the law school, and to borrow all of the money necessary to pay the school. This is so because generally by the time the student realizes what has happened, it is too late to effectuate a transfer to a lower priced law school, or to achieve any scholarships from the lower priced law school even if they had thought ahead this far. There is also the cost of moving. Then, of course, after you have been at a law school for a while, it is simply impractical to change.

Do not think that law schools do not understand exactly what they are doing.

Recently, David Segal of The New York Times wrote an article that covered this issue, entitled Law Students Lose The Grant Game As Schools Win.

One way that the law schools do this is to offer outrageous amounts of money to smart kids, but otherwise restricting the actual payment of the money to the law student unless they maintain an "average GPA" in law school. The schools understand that law school applicants have no familiarity with law school grading and the applicants judge this requirement from their ability to maintain their undergraduateGPAs. But, it is not the same.

No judgment call on the part of the applicant or students is meaningful because law schools do not publish or provide law students any statistical analysis of how many students maintain the average grade threshold or, for that matter, what percentage of students who have been offered these scholarships have managed to retain them. I can assure you it is few.

Law schools also do not disclose at the stage of acceptance that the law schools often grade on a curse, and intentionally ration the As and Bs necessary students to continue with their scholarships.

In the meantime, to fund this mania, law schools are skimping on financial aid to law students that can least afford the tuition.

How do law school afford to pay for this slight of hand?

The answer is by wildly increasing tuition, hurting the students even more once they have to pay for what they thought was being offered to them as free or low cost.

As I have posted before, there is a problem with transparency, truth and veracity in our law schools in this country, and that is really the biggest problem. If law schools are conducting themselves in this way, then what lessons are they passing on to those that graduate from law school. That is okay to lie and deceive? That lies ofomission are acceptable? That the gotcha practice of law is endearing? That the ends justify the means? Is this really what we need as the basis of legal teaching in this country?

Now Even Begging For Change Goes High Tech

2011-04-26T09:08:56-05:00

There are still lawyers that refuse to use email in their practices, or to do their banking online. However, now we have the invention of Don-8r to replace panhandlers on the street.

Pronounced "donator", the computer is programmed expressly to collect change and be adorable.

The coin-fueled robot was created by the University of Dundee student Tim Pryde to help raise money for charity.

Lies And The Lying Law Schools That Tell Them

2011-04-25T17:00:02-05:00

The New Republic magazine recently published Served: How Law Schools Completely Misrepresent Their Job Numbers.

I recently lambasted St. Mary's University School of Law dean for contradicting his schools reported employment rates in news paper interview as part of my post concerning the prospect and opposition of new public law schools in Texas.

The article points out something that most of us have suspected for a long time. Law schools are routinely lying in an effort to improve rankings.

They might not call it lying. Maybe it is manipulation of statistics. Regardless of the motive and the reasoning, it is at least lying by omission.

The problem is not that the law schools do not provide a valuable service, or are not fine institutions, or serve their students and graduates well. The problem is that applicants rely on the misrepresentations, sometimes to their detriment. In the least, law schools accept money to process an application from students who might not otherwise apply but for the lie.

And, I personally suspect, that most law school are also exaggerating their LSAT numbers, as one cannot doubt that there is LSAT inflation as to most numbers by most law school reporting.

The real problem in my mind is what type of example are law schools setting for their students and future graduates when the schools, by example, teach that it is alright to bend the truth, inappropriately manipulate the facts, and do whatever is necessary to win.

I have run into younger lawyers of late, several years from graduation, and this is exactly how they operate. They often rely on lies and distortions. Worse, to them it is not about right or wrong. The facts do not matter. The law does not matter. It is all tactical t them. There is always a difference of opnion, but this is not how we were taught in law school before the ranking system was king.

I recently called down a newbie working for Big Law who seemed particularily dishonest in his continued dealing with me. It had just reached the point where I could not take his work for anything. It was not based on one incident, but any number. My message to him was private, but resulted in a blasting email from his supervising partner praising his efforts, and stating how well he was serving his client. Of course he was serving his client by lying, intentionally misrepresenting facts, and misleading me. Is this the law school's fault? I do not know, but it certianly cannot help. These young lawyers (recent graduates) are the law schools billboards.

The point is that if the professors and legal institutions that initially nuture students believe it is alright to bend the truth, to lie, to mislead, to misrepresent and to exaggerate then how can they not expect their graduates not to mimick this result? It might be analogous to religious institutions to teach their parishioners to sin.

It is an article worth reading.

And, if nothing else, when selecting a law school, maybe you should take the rankings with a grain of salt and choose the school based on what best fits your needs.

Is A Business Degree A Good Bet For Law School?

2011-04-18T15:57:52-05:00

My daughter received her MBA while attending law school. I have to admit that I worked toward an MBA part time after law school for a while, but I had a family and I could not see how it necessarily benefited a lawyer already in practice. (Maybe I was wrong). I have nothing against business degrees as I believe they complement a JD. I believe it probably helped get my daughter a job.

However, when I was in college, BBAs were all the rage, and as a lowly political science major I was the one enduing all of the ribbing from the business student about what, if anything, one could do with a political science degree. My ongoing joke at the time was that I intended to open a political science store in the mall.

What I thought I had observed then was, despite the hype of a business degree and all of the money colleges were raising to build new business school buildings, that those in the business schools seemed to be the ones who never studied, were always partying and who referred to their classes as "B.S. discussions".

Now, I read in the New York Times that business, the most popular college major, might be a detriment to getting into and succeeding in law school, which is where a lot of business majors head.

Well, the article did not deal directly with law school admissions or employment after graduation. It discussed a survey of the 21% of college students who major in business as maybe academically adrift. What the survey found was that business majors spent the least time of any major studying (less than a hour a day), have the lowest gains on measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication; a whopping 37% are unemployed or under employed after graduation, and 45% have to move back in with their parents or other relatives to survive.

Certainly there is anecdotal evidence of this when you look around. George W. Bush found it impossible to get into law school, but he got accepted to Harvard Business School. Then there is Donald Trump. It is hard to argue with his success, which is more a measure of his tenacity and over sized ego. But, listening to him talk, is there any doubt that, despite the high opinion of himself, he has the lowest measures of critical thinking or complex reasoning among most CEOs.

The lack of stable employment certainly leads business students to apply to law school, but the demonstrated lack of higher order skills, such as critical thinking and complex reasoning will not help them much either on the LSAT or in the law school classroom. At least for undergraduate business majors it might not help them get out of their parent's garage apartments.

At least a law degree has with it a license that allows one passing the bar to do something, and from those without law degrees from not doing it. A business degree has no such exclusion.

It might be an important consideration when thinking about pre-law majors. Maybe the joke was on me in getting a political science degree. But, maybe, the better choice might be engineering, technology, languages, or higher math majors. Maybe consider majors that interrupt your party time and that build those higher order skills.

Solo Practice University Begins To Work With Law Schools To Build Bridges

2011-04-14T12:45:13-05:00

Solo Practice University, which is the number one online educational and professional networking community for lawyers and law students, as developed the Bridges program, which partners with law schools to help bridge the gap from law school to solo practice for its law graduates. It is a program that is intended to start before graduation for most law students.

I have thought about this problem quite a lot lately, with my oldest daughter graduating from law school in December, and as a result of the dozens of soon to be or recent law school graduates that email me for advice on how to make this leap from law school to practice. It really is the problem that can no longer be ignored.

I believe it does start with the realization by law schools that the overwhelming majority of their graduates will go out on their own, or associate with small law firms, where they are expected to be more practice ready, know in what areas they wish to practice, and have some guidance about how to succeed in this regard.

Law school clinics aside, law schools have not been very good in helping in this regard.

Bridges is probably a good name for it, because what the law graduate is trying to do mentally, conceptually, and educationally is to figure out how to make it across that void between law school and the actual practice of law. For most law graduates, that void is deep and uncertain. The consequences of jumping and missing can be devastating financially and emotionally, and law graduates know this. It is the reason for much anxiety. I hear it from them almost every day.

Bar associations and others are starting to recognize this void. For example, The State Bar of Texas has created its Transition to Practice program.

And, it is more than just transitioning to a solo practice. This void in terms of practice readiness, an idea of practice areas in which to engage, and relationship building with the legal community is the difference as to whether law graduates can find law jobs more easily after graduation, especially if they are coveted top 10% of their graduating class (a category not possessed by 90% of the graduating class).

SPU's Bridges program will be unveiled at the 2011 Future Ed conference in New York City on April 16, 2011, and New York Law School will be the first to join in.

It is time law schools, especially, face the facts. Tuition is too high, the amount of student loans too much, and the commitment by law students too overwhelming to continue to ignore the issue of the lack of bridges or transition help for their graduates into the real world of law practice. This is just the truth.

Now, as a disclaimer, SPU does not pay me any money, but it does allow me to hangout in their network community to offer advice where I can.

Is A New Texas Public Law School Possible In These Lean Economic Times?

2011-04-13T11:03:45-05:00

Texas, like most other states, is facing a monumental crises in terms of its budget. That obviously does not lend itself well to starting or funding new public law schools in the state -- at least currently.

According to the San Antonio Express News, the lack of substantial funding for the newly approved University of North Texas Dallas Law School is waning. The law school needs $4 million dollars a year from Texas to fund and begin accepting students. Yet, the Texas House of Representatives is proposing $2 million, and the Texas Senate is proposing nothing. The law school has already put off its entering class.

And, there is a struggle for the funding of a study for establishment of a public law school in the Texas Valley, which is the part of the state that does not have a law school currently.

I understand the argument. There are priorities to set when cuts have to be made, and we know the legal profession has not been a priority of Texas. I think this is unfortunate. The law is an integral part of how Texas and all governments function, and Texas needs cost effective education choices for those wishing to enter the field.

What interest me is the piling on that occurs in addtion to this argument. For example, Charles Cantu, the dean of St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio stating that based upon all economic indicators, the legal market is not absorbing all of current law graduates his school and other law schools are presently generating.

Of course, a public law school in the Texas Valley will not be a help to St. Mary's, which is based in San Antonio, has high tuition, does not much provide any substantial scholarships, and is stuck in 4th Tier status. But, the argument itself is silly. Texas is rapidly growing, and law school seats have not been increasing to keep up. The truth of the matter is that law schools, such as St. Mary's, have been doing an extraordinary bad job of creating a conduit or a bridge for graduates to enter the market. Law schools tend to shoot for the top 10% achieving easier employment, but apart from posting job openings, often tell students to go to Martindale.Com website, a general directly of lawyers, to find a job. It is tantamount to handing someone a big city phone book in times past and tell then to start cold-calling. Let us just say, it is not really a lot of help.

There is no shortage of law jobs. There is a shortage of law school doing anything effective, except for seeing how high they can jack up tuition and to play with rankings. There is no organized effort to create a deep relationship with the Texas bar members so as to get graduates transitioned more easily in the practice of law.

But, even if Dean Cantu actually believes what he is saying, then should not mean St. Mary's Law should stop promoting its law school, accepting as many people, and certainly stop graduating so many students into the market. That would be simply irresponsible for St. Mary's if what Dean Cantu said is correct.

Besides, St. Mary's reports that 89% of its graduates are employed within 9 months of graduating for law school. Now, that statistic is wrong, or Dean Cantu is wrong.

Now, I do have to admit that my youngest daughter applied to St. Mary's recently and was rejected. That is, of course, the schools right. What I found amazing in the process, however, was their website that strongly suggest that they do not accept or reject students just upon their LSAT and GPA. No, they look beyond that to the whole person. Of course the law school makes such claims because it wants to encourage applications for law school seats for which, by the Dean's own comment, there are no law jobs available. So, with a good many of my family having graduated from St. Mary's University, I contacted the Dean concerning my daughter's other qualificaions. The Dean's personnel contacted me back only to state that essentially the only thing that matters in the acceptance process are first the LSAT and then the GPA.

This is only important for this post because it demonstrates again a difference between what has been marketed by law schools, and what is later stated in contradiction.

I tend to believe the law school is engaging in situational facts and analysis. When it wants students to submit applicaitons and large review fees, the facts are one thing, and when they want to oppose a public law school that would directly compete with them, the facts are more gloomy. I get that this happens in life. I am just disappointed that it happened in this situation from the Catholic instituion of higher learning from which I graduated.

My bigger point is that these law schools need competition from public law schools in all parts of this state. I just wish the Texas budget was not getting in the way.

Is Your Conservative Commute Hurting You?

2011-04-08T11:40:11-05:00

We already know that commuting to and from work costs you a whole lot of time and money. And, to all of you ultra conservatives out there, it gives everyone time to listen to NPR. But, it is not NPR that is the problem. (Really). It is the cause and effect of pollution.

I am talking about the air pollution that results from the millions of cars and trucks that crowd our highways each day, and especially during "Fresh Air", "All Things Considered" and "Talk of the Nation". You know, during the heavy commute times when Rush is not spouting his hate filled, thinly racist, anti-women diatribe.

My carpet commute every day takes less than a minute. Although, when I have to drive into Houston or Dallas, Texas for Court I cannot drive with my windows down or open. The smell is terrible. It is hard to breath. And, the noise is deafening. (Besides, I drive a Prius). Occasionally, I see someone on a motorcycle in traffic and wonder how they can stand it.

We know that the particulate matter in all of the exhaust causes respiratory illness, heart disease, cancer, and and other health effects. But, the danger might be greater than that. Your commute to and from work might be endangering you.

Researchers at USC have now linked freeway air pollution to increased brain damage in mice.

Now, I know you are asking what people are doing taking mice with them on their commute, but how else are you going to use the HOV lane.

I know there are those that do not believe in commuting mice, NPR, USC, HOV lanes, hybrid vehicles, something called "science", and believe that researchers reporting findings are "telling you what to do." I am not personally sure when GOD created the freeways, SUVs, and the long, smog filled commute. In all seriousness, however, these scientist and researchers are concerned that commuters might be suffering similarly.

LA Times reports that "exposure to pollution particles roughly one-thousandth the width of a human hair has been linked to brain damage in mice, including signs associated with memory loss and Alzheimer's disease ..."

The study involved utilizing a technology that helped scientists simulate freeway air. It allowed them to hold particulates from auto emissions in liquid suspension in order to recreate a highway-like environment. Mice were then subjected to the faux highway air over long periods of time -- similar durations that humans breathe the stuff in their daily lives.

This pollution caused increased damage to brain tissue, in ways that appear similar to the kind of damage that causes memory loss and Alzheimer's. And the authors of the report believe that humans are prone to similar damage as well.

According to the Times, Todd Morgan, lead author of the new study and a research professor in gerontology at USC explained: "Our data would suggest that freeway pollution could have a profound effect on the development of neurons and brain health in children and young kids, especially those who attend schools built alongside freeways." (Oh Snap! There he goes apparently supporting public schools).

Could the long commutes we have established be contributing to the spike in Alzheimer's in our country?

Although unscientific, I have observed that those that oppose USC, NPR, commuting mice, public schools and science also tend to drive the biggest, gas guzzling and the most polluting vehicles. Or, maybe that is just my prejudice talking.

Regardless, we do know that those that oppose these things also tend to lobby against the EPA, which has been the only agency or organization that has long battled to get emissions standards in vehicles as tight as they are today. And yet, even these standards are slight in comparison to most developed nations who have fewer cases of deases like Alzheimer's. But do not worry, because if your commute causes brian damage of this nature, the GOP has now proposed ending Medicare and Medicaid so that you cannot possibly be cared for in your old age should you contract such a dease.

In the meantime, I have a solution that might help. Close your traditional office, go virtual (or as virtual as possible), move your office home, move your employees, partners and associates home, and stay away from the rush hour commutes. Obviously, you will have more time, more money, less expense, less aggrevation, and an overall better quality of life.

Do I have an Amend?

Why I Care About Texas A&M's College Professor Ranking System

2011-04-07T17:10:08-05:00

Sure, most of my kids will soon be through with college, and none of them have attended Texas A&M University. I greatly care about college funding and the cost of education in Texas, which is continuing to increase dramatically. But, I care about the University's college professor ranking matrix for the reason I believe it is anecdotal to why most businesses, why many law firm do not perform well, and why many attorneys fail.

According to articles published by various outlets, the vice chancellor of academic affairs composed a spreadsheet that listed the faculty members according to how much money they made or lost for Texas A&M. It calculated each professor's revenues based on tutiion each contributed to the school by their class, research awards, and grants, among other factors. So, for example, the greater number of classes the professor taught, and the more students in each class, the greater the revenue attributed to that professor.

As to each professor, if the revenue attributed to him or her was as much or higher than his or her salary, it was listed in black. If his or her salary was higher than the revenues attributed to him or her it was red.

Of the 50 highest compensated professors, only five of them were listed in black, and 45 of them were listed in red. In theory, then, 90% of the professors where not earning their keep. Another way of putting it is that 10% of the professors were supporting the 100% of the falculty and the University.

The University did not really mean for the spreadsheet to be made public, and the methodology of the study has been greatly criticed.

The truth is that it is hard to both understand (or evaluate) a person's true value to an organization, regardless if that organization is a college or a law firm. But, what this spreadsheet indicates is that the overwhelming majority of people in any organization (in the case of A&M 90% of them) are not focused on what makes the organization profitable and comfortable for everyone. Most people neither understand how their job contributes to the profitability of an organization, or what they can do to earn their keep. The majority of lawyers, staff and associates are a drag not only ont he organization but on the 10% the earn most of the money for the firm.

From my experience over the years, I have come to believe that about 10% of the people in any law firm of any size carry the weight for the other 90%. They have to earn enough for the firm through their efforts not only to support themselves, but to support almost everyone else.

This is the problem with the traditional law firm model. The lead lawyers, the money generators, design these hiarchical organizations to keep them (the individual lawyers) as organized and profitable as possible. It rarely works out this way, but the point is that it results in the money maker wasting time managing people who do not manage well, and working to support everyone else instead of the other way around.

On top of this inefficiency, add all of the office space, supplies, equipment, benefits and other overhead issues to each employee's or lawyer's income and salary, and it illustrates well that if you are a profitable lawyer in a traditional practice, you are spending all of your waking hours working for other people ... and, not the other wasy around.

And, this is not really what was intended by the hires. In all likelihood, in the beginning, the lawyer had vision of bringing on people that moved the money upward, to make his or her life more comfortable.

This is what I learned years ago. The more people I hired, the more office space my firm occupied, the more advertising purchased built on itself, but my take home never got better, or bigger, or easier to make.

So, I downshifted. I eventually moved my operation home, only brought on people that in helping me must more often than not understand that they must eat what they help kill, to put it crudely.

There are a lot of lawyers that dream of being a kind of CEO, in which they sit behind their desks and manuver the puppet strings. They wish to overcome the lights on type of business as is the practice of law into a model where others generate the revenues for the master. Some are just see themselves as empire builders. Like the joke of the farmer who claims not to want to own all of the land, he just wants to own all of the land next to his land. But, these practices always seem to struggle, and they rarely work out this way. And, if their plan work out this way, their subordinates always tend to feel victimized.

At some point you have to come to realization that you can work less, and with less stress, if you will just take fewer cases and eliminate all of those "professors" in your life that are constantly in the red.

Backyard Container Office

2011-03-17T15:36:26-05:00

As most know, I like the idea of working at or close to home. I also like the idea of building office work space out of storage containers. Below, Stephen Shoup of building LAB inc., built this modern, green office space from an old freezer and a corrugated shipping container behind his live/work space.

The building is covered in cement-board panels and reclaimed redwood with insulation under it. It has radiant heat, solar thermal panels, a cork floor and paneled walls.

It shows what is possible.

You can find more information on this building at Jetson Green.

Dealing With Potential Clients And Your Competition

2011-02-16T00:23:35-06:00

By Phoenix Criminal Defense Lawyer Joshua Davidson

We’ve all been there. A prospective new client walks into your office and asks you about one of the several other attorneys they have met with in their quest to find representation. How we handle this situation provides tremendous insight regarding our professionalism to both ourselves and new clients. As a matter of personal ethics, I am loath to bad mouth any of my colleagues – even when such criticism would be well founded. In my view, the better course is to inform the potential client that I would like to focus on my background, experience and philosophy rather than waste everyone’s time gossiping about some other lawyer. At the end of the day, if the potential client does not feel comfortable hiring me as her attorney, is she really going to take my advice on whose name should also get crossed off the list? In addition to taking the high road as a matter of professionalism, I believe it also makes good business sense. Prospective clients often come to us because they are facing potentially life-changing issues. The last thing they want to do is entrust their future in the hands of someone who seems more like a car salesman than a lawyer. By trash talking our competition, we ultimately diminish the prospective client’s view of our professionalism and, in the end, damage our own reputation and profitability. The situation can become more complicated when we are asked about another lawyer who is the subject of an ugly sanction by the state bar or has an awful reputation within the legal community. In such a case, do we not owe the potential client some degree of candor if we’re asked directly about the other attorney? Do we expose ourselves to any claims of negligence if the potential client is later harmed by another attorney we knew to be incompetent? In my view, the best way to deal with this dilemma is to avoid it. As soon as a potential client begins to mention another lawyer, it is my practice to politely interrupt and inform them that I don’t want them to tell me anything that they discussed with other counsel or express any opinions about them or the quality of their advice. By reminding the client that the decision of who they hire is ultimately theirs and suggesting that they should make the choice based on who they are most comfortable with, we both empower them and demonstrate our professionalism at the same time.

Hype Aversion

2011-02-06T17:22:20-06:00

It means the rejection of a popular idea or thing simply because it is popular.

I am prone to hype aversion. But then again, I grew up in an age when everyone just had to have a pet rock and mothers tried to kill each other over the fake scarcity of Cabbage Patch Kids. We viewed with skeptism everyone getting aluminum siding on their houses, as if it was a neighborhood competition, because it was hyped by the local tin man.

It is also some part growing up Texan, I guess. We tend to be religious while at the same time having a healthy disrespect for organized religion. Another example, is that we are terribly patriotic while having a general distrust of government.

I do not buy the Mac mania much because I of my hype aversion.

I ignore the "value billing" gurus because I view it as less about how clients agree to be billed as a cute little means of price competing in marketing. Call it what you want, it is all about attorneys making a worse living for more work, or that is what it seems to me.

When partisans and zealots jump up and yell that we have the best healthcare system in the world, I know it is good technologically, but otherwise I know the comment is likely wrong. It is kind of like proclaiming with confidence that our local DMV office is the best in the world because the lines are so long.

Hype usually follows with a contract that is nothing like that which was sold, and yet we sign the contract blindly as if the hype is everything, and we are not bound by the contract that says there was no other representations relied upon.

Law schools, and unfortunately law students, fall for the hype of law school rankings while ignoring what is important. Law schools are creating a bubble by indiscriminately raising tuition year after year by nearly double digits just because other law schools are doing it. If my mother had asked a law school if "everyone else jumped off the Empire State building, would you?" Law schools would seem to answer emphatically "YES!!!", and then ask for directions to the Empire State building. Just like all bubbles, we know that the law school ranking race is harming the practice of law, enjoyment is the practice of law, and the poor, yet we seem powerless to do anything about it.

Students, on the other hand, select law schools for all of the wrong reasons. If each gravitated to the law schools with the lowest costs qne good bar results, those law schools would be the most highly ranked.

Lawyers buy into the hype of status in terms of staff, offices, advertising, expensive tech and the like without considering the financial costs.

Overly hyped movies tend to disappoint.

Overly hyped restaurants are not that good.

Advertising and unscrupulous marketing people, not related to, and less concerned about the product or service they are selling, are good part of the problem.

Those diet supplements showing before and afters are either not real, airbrushed, or are as a result of a workout and diet regiment not revealed and the results of which are little related to the supplements.

We have all come to suspect those that call themselves the best, not to be the best. A guarantee is not a guarantee. Banks will screw you by advertising a free account and then killing you with other less disclosed fees.

Remember the tech bubble when everybody and their dog loved to brag on their stock gains (while conviently never mentioning their stock loses). What about the mortgage bubble. Now everyone is chasing Facebook up the stock latter as if the stock price cannot fall. Generally speaking, insurance companies raise premiums on doctors, lawyers, drivers and those needing medical coverage less because of rising litigation and inflation, but because of repeated bad investments.

What about Enron? Worldcom? Adelphia? Bernie Madoff? For that matter, what about Jack Abramoff? Good grief, does it never end. Any more, show me a company -- directly or through its subordinates -- giving unbelievable amounts of donations to a politician, political party and PACs, and I will show you a company cooking the books or trying to steal from the governement. What politician woud seriously consider on their own the possibility of turning over roads, built with tax dollars, to special business interest who charge each motorist for their use? Or, the right to corral and charge consumers and businesses for each email sent?

There are rarely any free lunches.

Guys, no matter how many dollar bills your toss, no matter how many drinks you buy, and no matter how many lap dances you purchases, those girls at the "gentlemen's clubs" are not going to sleep with you.

The problem exists in the practice of law. I remember when everyone and their dog wanted to dive into FDCPA and TIL litigation because they heard of the few large awards. Also, can we forget the Fen-Phen debacale when lawyers starting quiting what they were doing to gather clients for a potential settlement mechanism that really never happened?

In court, too many lawyer rely on hype rather than facts and the law. It is almost as if they can will some legal theory to be true even though the court of appeals has repeatedly said it is not.

There have been some exceptions. The Internet for one. Pier to pier phone calls over the computer is another. But, it is not the rule.

Just remember, snake oil salespeople are still everywhere. They are hard working people sometimes. Often they are pawns. But, their product or service do not work as hyped. They confuse making a living with selling something accurately and honestly. Accuracy rarely happens. Thus, as I have always said, snake oil salespeople do not believe they are snake oil salespeople.

The problem with hype is that it is almost always designed to separate you from your money.

The first rule is that if it is complicated to understand you are in trouble. Gamblers in Vegas will tell you they have never had a problem with winning or losing money gambling on the Super Bowl. They have only felt taken by the stock market and their brokers.

Everybody, and especially every lawyer, needs to suffer from hype aversion -- to be a little less gulible -- and the entire world might be a little bit better.

The Paradox Of Toothpaste And Law

2011-01-29T14:44:28-06:00

When I think about the practice of law, and what makes it ultimately enjoyable to me and appreciated by my clients, I am reminded of the book entitled The Paradox of Choice.

I think whatever problem exists in this regard can be related toothpaste.

My wife and I tend to go grocery shopping together. I hate it when she sends me into the toothpaste aisle. I cannot find what I want, and I often still pick up the wrong thing. I actually feel stress because of the gazillion choices I face in just trying to find a tube of toothpaste. Hell, toothpaste is just suppose to be an accessory to clean and maintain the aesthetics and health of my teeth. I am not buying it to eat for dinner. But now, instead of just choosing between a few brands, the world has decided to make what really is a combination of abrasives, fluoride and detergents into something sexy. As such, I am forced to choose between gel, paste, striped, cosmetic whiting or not, herbal, natural, tarter control, fluoride or not, antibacterial or not, and any number of flavors. There is the entire size thing. There are endless combinations from travel size to jumbo, requiring me to read the tiny cost or value per unit information post on each one. And there is no longer just a tube of toothpaste but any number of containers. Further, with the purchase of each, these days you have to consider the impact on the environment. It is just too much. It produces information and decision overload. And, what should be a celebration, I guess, of variety just leads to the consumption of my time and causes me anxiety. In the end, I just default to my old fashion tube of Colgate in red box. But even with that default, I will often grab the wrong box and have to make a second trip to the dreaded toothpaste aisle.

The subtitle of the book is "Why More Is Less". Essentially, the World is a contradiction. As stated by Barry Schwartz, "Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people every has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from it psychologically."Essentially, the World is a contradiction that we all must strive to tame for ourselves should we seek to be happy in our practices.

Happiness is ultimately affected by the success or failure of a goal achieved. But, the endless and banal choices we face tend to offer more of a distraction. Hell, in most choices not only do we not know enough to choose what is best, we do not even know what we do not know to make the right decision. As such, choices tend to bring unhappiness to law grads, lawyers and their clients. The legal society, which was once a graduation right, has become a series of debilitating and demanding choices. It is what has made the practice of law and the decision to go to law school so painful for so many people.

I personally overcome this by focusing on a regiment, and eliminating the environments that result in many of the choices that would need to be made in my professional life otherwise. This sometimes produces some regret of the roads not traveled, but the overall result is the most comfortable for me. I seek to control my environment thereby eliminating my array of painful and often regretful options.

1. I NICHED MY LAW PRACTICE. This is more difficult than it sounds. But, I have greatly narrowed my practice area to what is just a few pages of the United States Bankruptcy Code. I try not to vary from it. My goal is to know, understand and apply every nuisance of this part of the Code better than anybody else. I traded some of my freedom for commitment. This is so difficult because most lawyers view this opportunities missed. I know the feeling well as I tend to be like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to practice areas. What I have learned, however, is that the real joy in life is knowing one thing, no matter how obscure, better than most anybody else. You cannot achieve that unless you are willing to take the leap of faith and commit to the niche. For me, geographic and affinity niches do not work. I need a universe the size of which I can master -- a universe that narrows the choices.

2. I MOVED MY LAW FIRM HOME AND ON THE WEB. Call me a hermit, I guess. But, I have a lot of attorneys venturing to my home and to The Woodlands, Texas to see how I do it. Outside office space, and traditional law firms so overwhelm with choices and options, without consideration of the consequences. It can just ruin the practice of law, emotionally if not financially. What type of space? Is there room to enlarge? The terms of the lease? Staffing issues? Overhead issues? Furnishing issues? Location of the space? Amenities? To partner up, to share space, to market the space, and that brings with it the whole ongoing drama of "The Office". And, then there is the commute. That raises issues of transportation, parking, gas cards, maintenance, and the like. And then clothing. Not so much as to whether I dress appropriately, but what will those around me think? Each of these decisions result in endless choices, each with an endless number of consequences the result of which you cannot possibly know. It is time consuming, it is unprofitable, it is anxiety ridden, and it can be ultimately painful. I have never had one of these areas, no matter how successful overall, not lead to regrets.

3. I TAKE CONTROL OF MY CASES. Because I have put myself in a position where I cannot do everything, I have to try to chose my cases and clients well. The practice of law is more of an art than a science. Not every case works out well for the client or the attorney, for that matter. You want the cases to work out all of the time, but they need to work out most of the time. This very much relies on the relationship with your clients, and your decision of how you chose to practice. It seems to me that a client is retaining a lawyer for his or her expertise. If the client wants to analyze the situation legalistically and make the decisions that arises, if the client wants those choices, then the client does not need my expertise that much. People use to go to a lawyer with a problem, and the lawyer would say, "This is what we are going to do"? The client would agree, or not. The client decide on the lawyer and had faith in that lawyer. Today, the client goes to the lawyer and, especially because the law is so much more complicated and full of nuisance, the lawyer says here are the choices. Here is the risk of each choice. Then the lawyer asks, "What choice do you want"? The client asks, "Which should I take", and the lawyer again says, "Here are your choices and the risks". Then the client asks, "If you were me, which would you choose", to which the lawyer says, "But, I am not you". Today, we shift the burden to the client. We shift the burden to the one that does not know the answer and that does not have the legal knowledge or experience. We shift the burden to the one that does not know enough to know what they do not know. Further, we shift the burden to the one who is emotional blinded by the event or problem faced. It is not that I do not explain the options and the risks to my potential clients and clients. It is not that I do not let them decide to settle or litigate a case. I do. I do so thoroughly, openly and above board. What I do is explain to them the choice we, together, are accepting and why. If they do not want that choice, they are free to go elsewhere, and there are no hard feelings with the client making the choice to either not retain me or ending my representation either.

For happiness in the practice of law we attorneys have to shrink the toothpaste aisle of choices. It is really that simple.

Approach The Practice Of Law With A Great Deal Of Suspicion

2011-01-18T18:03:07-06:00

I know this is not what people want to hear. I do not suggest that you should let it sour your life. You can be happy in the practice of law and still be skeptical of what is told you.

The bottom line is that the practice of law is a money game. It is not just a money game for you. It is a money game for everyone associated with, or who wants to be associated with the firm. But, if it is money game, then it needs to be your money game. It needs to be played so that you win. After all, there is a life behind the law firm. That life is yours. It is your family's.

Now, I will readily agree that you are not going to win if you do not treat your clients, courts, lenders, landlords, suppliers and consultants well. The real question is whether or not you should enter into a relationship with these people, groups, companies or organizations in the first place. You need to be first suspicious of every contact you make in the practice of law as to what the person or company wants from your firm, what it is going to cost you for the relationship suggested, and will that relationship eventually lead to larger revenues beyond the cost of the relationship.

Everybody wants something. Sometimes it is services or representation. Sometimes it is to lease space. Sometimes it is to sell you a new, shiny computer, books, electricity, cell phone service, advertising, club membership, prestige or whatever. But, whether it is money out of your pocket or time you cannot recover, it all boils down to money in the sense of profitability.

In short, nearly the entire world is after one thing -- money. Vendors might want to help you, but they want to help themselves as well. Some want to help themselves more than you, and that is the reason for the suspicion. Clients need help, but they are not always looking to pay you what you are worth. The goal of a capitalistic society is to maximize money earned or kept, while maximizing the benefits received to as well. You have got to recognize the motive. It is your motive in running a law practice, and it is the opposite motive of everyone else involved.

There is a saying in the gambling circles. It is, if you cannot look around the room and recognize the mark, then you are the mark.

And, I do not mean to convey that this is evil or obvious or that there is a lack of charity in this world. It is just that everyone needs to make a living. Many of us want a good living. Most people want to look at your firm to help them provide that living. But, a good living for others does not necessarily mean a good living for you.

Sometimes I believe that lawyers are so anxious to get on with their lives after starting a practice, to get their image of the practice in place and to actually represent clients, that they blow caution to the wind. They fail to ask themselves the bottom line question -- what is in it for me?

On everything offered, the attorney will be sold on the prestige of it, the comfort of it, the charity of it, the ease of it, and the convenience of it. But, this is where the suspicion should come in. If you are not being sold realistically on the profit to you or the cost to you, then the true benefit is being ignored, and it is being ignored for a reason. All else needs to be secondary or of no concern at all.

If there were a week and a half left in the month and all you had left was $100.00 to your name, do you not believe you would protect that $100.00?

You do that through suspicion. What is the motive of those that want my money or time? What does it mean to me?

When a client is asking you to represent them, they are essentially asking for money. It is your time and the expenses of your law firm, but that is money. Do not just agree. Look at their case with a great deal of suspicion as to what their motive is in retaining you. Is it to get free or cheaper representation? Are they serious about settling? Can they afford to pay the freight? Are you likely to recover the actual fees you have earned? Do they have a good case or defense, or are you likely to get stuck in a quagmire-type of case in which the time far exceeds your pay?

On the other side, identify landlords and salesmen for what they are. When they speak of benefits to you, what are they talking about? Is what they are selling absolutely necessary or is it a luxury? Will what they are locking you into in the near future likely increase your earning? Or, alternatively, will your earnings decrease if you do not bite.

The biggest disaster I see (and, I have been there myself over the years) are attorneys that simultaneously lack discretion in the cases they accept, fearing if they do not take on bad clients that they will not get the clients they need, and increasing overhead in a way that does not benefit their bottom line.

It does not matter what type of law you practice, the size or make up of the law firm you are with, or how long you have been practicing law. If you do not approach every transaction first with a good healthy dose of suspicion, you will eventually find yourself trapped in a low earning (money after expenses) environment that will be difficult to exit.

Amanda Congdon On Coworking

2011-01-15T15:02:37-06:00

chucknewton

Are You Not Being Heard?

2011-01-11T22:59:20-06:00

You can cast the widest net in terms of marketing yourself as a lawyer and still not get enough high paying business in the door. In those cases, it is not that you are not making yourself known, but that you are not being heard.

To me it is similar to my running a ton of TV spots in a prior life. To most of the people seeing and hearing the spots, it was just noise. The reason was that most of the viewers did not need the services I was selling. The goal was to get those few that did require my services to tune in. That is a lot harder than it sounds. No matter what you do with the sound level, graphics, special effects, narration, etc., it is not going to make much difference if those that you reach cannot ascertain exactly what legal services you are offering or how you can help them. I am not saying that you do not have to be presentable. Even if you are, you have to get the message of how exactly you can help through to the audience that need what you provide.

I do not utilize TV spots any longer as I practice in more defined niche now that does not lend itself to TV. I obtain referrals based on networking and relationship building. But, the process is the same -- it is just that in relationship building it is a hell of a lot cheaper to fail and regroup.

From my distant past, however, I can give you an example of what I am talking about.

When I first got out of law school and past the bar, I produced a series of TV spots entitled "Give A Young Lawyer A Chance". Each spot would open either zooming in on or pulling away from a picture of a famous lawyer, such as Abraham Lincoln, briefly describing their accomplishments as a new lawyer. It would end with the tag line as well as my firm's logo and information.

Those in the Texas Bar and local bar associations praised these spots. It won local advertising awards as to what lawyer advertising should be. Judges and bar-tenders would stop me and thank me for my ingenuity. I even had the named partner in the largest law firm in town invite me over to his office for coffee to tell me how much he appreciated my TV spots.

The only problem was, my award winning TV spots brought in hardly any business. Except for gratitude among my colleagues, it constituted a $30,000 or so financial error on my part. It taught me, however, a valuable, although expensive, lesson that applies in all aspects of of lawyer marketing.

My goal was to attempt to reposition my perceived negative of being a new lawyer as opposed to a more established one. The spots worked in the sense that it reached my colleagues. The spots failed miserably in reaching the people who really mattered in building a successful law firm.

The problem was that I was yelling as loud as I could, but I was not being heard by those that actually matter.

You can yell that you are a lawyer as loud as you can, day and night, but it does not mean that you will be heard. In fact, I would argue that yelling that you are a lawyer will almost guarantee that you will not be heard.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Among these reasons is that there is a whole lot of ambient noise out there. You are not the only lawyer yelling. It is easier for lawyers to mechanically promote themselves in everything from business cards, to yellow pages to TV, than it is to really get out and meet and greet people. So, lawyers default to what is more comfortable for them. Hence, they cannot really get their voices heard above the crowd.

More importantly, I know with all of the pride and money spent on obtaining a law degree and passing the bar exam it is hard to accept that people really do not care if you are a lawyers. Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Generally speaking, it does not matter if you are young or old, a newbie or well established, gregarious or unsociable, attractive or not, or golf or play tiddlywinks in your spare time. People are interested less in these pluses or minuses than in someone that can help them solve a particular problem.

If you are not heard, then no matter how much effort you put into your message it is all for naught.

Some of the best ways to guarantee that you are heard are:

1. Concentrate your practice on a detailed legal niche. The more narrow the niche the better. The fewer niches the better. It allows you the privilege of conveying precisely the problems you may be able to solve. It allows you to reach more easily those that suffer with that problem.

2. Direct your message to those most likely in need of the services provided. Some potential clients looking for solutions are willing to strain through the noise to find someone who can provide the representation needed. Focus not on the public at large. Intently direct your message to the people, groups, organizations and associations that are likely to yield the referrals you seek.

3. Talk your marketing off cruise control. Make your marketing and solicitation personal and original. If you narrow you practice area and narrow your marketing, it is easy to become close and personal with those that are likely to provide you the cases and clients you need.

4. Keep your overhead extremely low. What does this have to do with being heard? Everything. If your overhead is extremely low, then you do not have to generate that many new clients or cases to make a comfortable living. You might not become rich, but that is not likely in any event. If you have to generate a ton of new referrals to maintain viability, you cannot afford to niche your practice, narrow your messaging and be personable. Overhead is a snow ball that gets large and out of control very quickly.

The point is that if your message is heard, you will have money and clients. Even if you yell and your message is not heard, you will not do well. Organize so as to be heard.

Dell Inspiron duo

2011-01-01T11:54:33-06:00

When I travel, even overnight, I do not know what to bring with me. It would seem to be an easy thing to pack just a change of clothes. But, I do not know if it will be cold or hot, wet or dry, or what type or style of clothes I might need. As a result, I tend to pack for all occasions. Black socks. White socks. Tennis shoes. Dress shoes. Blue jeans. Dockers. Dress pants. Suit. Tie. And, I am likely to bring my own pillow to sleep on.

The point is that I want to be prepared for all occasions that might arise. (Okay, I got kicked out of the Boy Scouts, but still I always want to be prepared).

And then in the way of tech, I just want a device that fits my needs. I am not a techie, but I remember a time when I tried to carry a laptop, a cell phone, and an iPod. I thought I needed a freakin' tool belt to keep them on me and to keep up with these devices.

So, on the one hand I want to be prepared for any need that arises, but I do not want to load a suitcase full of electronic devices as well everywhere that I go. I hate that thought so bad, I would prefer carrying no electronic devices. Contrary to the wishes of Amazon and Apple, I absolutely do not wish to carry a separate device for every need.

Juggling various electronic devices, especially in a work environment, reminds me of the expert juggler that, at the same time, juggles a bowling ball, a lit torch and a running chain saw. I am absolutely amazed to watch it, but I know it is not for me.

In this indirect way I come to say this is the reason that I do not understand readers, iPads and tablets.

Do not get me wrong! I can see the uses for tablets. I just also see the limitations. A tablet is good for consuming content, just like my Droid, but only bigger. Or, as David Letterman said about the iPad, "It does everything but make phone calls, just like the iPhone".

The problem is that I am a professional and I am called on all of the time to create content as well. For this a tablet is too cumbersome, if not impossible. (Unless, or course you carry a keyboard, mouse and docking station with you, which in some sense defeats the entire purpose of a tablet).

I was in court the other day. The judge ruled on a matter and wanted the order drafted and uploaded before the parties left the courtroom. Apart from surfing the Net for dirty pictures or pretending to read the great American novel, try doing that effectively on an iPad?

It is not that most of us lawyers do not want the option of a tablet (so that we can turn it into a thousand dollar alarm clock or radio), but we need more.

I am not a techie, a nurd or a geek. I come up with things that work tech wise by using it and, if it is not immediately understandable and useful, I throw it out.

Not being a techie in the spirit of try it, like it or chunk it, I have to think that the possible solution for lawyers might be the new Dell Inspiron duo, with its flip hinge design that allows one to switch it from a netbook to a tablet. I do not yet know, but I think it might work because it has all of the attributes of my big suitcase with the convenience of an all-in-one device.

Sure it is probably a little heavier, a little clunkier, and a little slower than the iPad or other tablets, but it is primarily a content consumption device when you want that, but it can flip open and become a content production device when that is needed. (And, it can still function as an expensive alarm clock or radio when you want that).

Now I know I will get a ton of email from the Apple fanatics who believe that in writing such a review believing that I insulted the one true God. And, I have got to admit that I am pretty much a computer agnostic. I take a little from this computer group and that computer group. But, it is what I feel.

And whether the duo is the answer or not, then maybe it can be a jumping off point for others to develop a solution to my suitcase and multi-device dilemmas.

Texas Southern University Achieves An Important Milestone

2010-12-22T16:29:36-06:00

I have written before about the ever improving Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston, Texas. Mainly the University, but both the University and the Law School have had their problems, but matters are turning around for both.

The TSU law school was created by the 1946 Texas Legislature to create a separate program for African-Americans after Herman Sweatt sued when he was denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law. So, the school's history is rich. But, the law school has evolved from this to be not just an African-American law school, but the most diversified law school in the country, catering to the needs of all races, gender and economic background.

The law school has been the starting place for many legendary congresspeople, judges and legislators in Texas.

As reported recently by the Houston Chronicle, TSU Law achieved a 75% bar passage rate on the most recent bar exam taken in Texas. And, although that was still the lowest of all of the law schools in Texas, it is extremely competitive. More importantly, the bar passage rate reflects the yeoman's work that the Thurgood Marshall School of Law has done to bring it into the top ranks of law schools in Texas.

It is important to keep in mind that TSU Law is a public law school and is ABA accredited. And, one of the great benefits of attending is that it has the lowest tuition in Texas. This last year, tuition and fees were at $12,856.00. Add this to the lower cost of living in Houston, Texas than in most parts of the country, and you have a bargain. There is a lot to say about graduating from law school with little or no debt.

If I were seeking to attend law school, especially in Texas, would TSU be my top pick? Probably not. But, it would be on my short list.

Bed Bug Law Niche

2010-12-12T11:18:00-06:00

This is my point exactly. Legal niche practices are all around you. You just need to look around at what is going on and ask yourself where is the legal implications of that? Who are the prospective parties involved? Who could pay for my services?

I know this is likely to open up to a lot of humor. Laugh at it if you will. But, the return of bed bugs is a serious legal issue as well as a medical issue. They are blood suckers. They are proving devastating to those that have bed bug infestations. From my limited reading, bed bug infestations are up -- get this -- 5,000%. It takes only one bed bug to hitch a ride on clothing, or furniture delivered, or your suit case left in an infected hotel room, for example, to cause an over-powering infestation at some other location. And worse, bed bugs can survive for a year without feeding. An infestation is very difficult, costly and embarrassing with which to deal.

According to an article in The Washington Post, Daniel Whitney, has filed eight lawsuits on behalf of bed bug victims in the State of Maryland, seeking a total of $7 million in damages. And, he has even more lawsuits in the pipeline.

Whitney works on a contingency basis, recovering for his firm 33% to 40% of any settlement of judgment collected. Not a bad little niche discovery for an attorney that typically defended corporate clients in product liability and toxic tort cases.

Bed Bugs were thought extinct in the United States due to liberal use of the infamous poison DDT in the 1950s. But, they survived elsewhere in the World and are now invading hotels, college dorms, government building, department stores, and even Google.

According to George Washington University's newspaper The GW Hatchet, bed bugs have been found in five residence halls.

Sleepy's, the largest mattress retailer in the county, just settled a claim after being accused of delivering mattresses that were infested with bed bugs.

Bed bugs were recently found in the BBC studios at the UN.

Bed bugs were found in the Bloomington hospital in Indiana.

According to NY 1, there have been 336 confirmed cases of bed bugs in the New York school system.

Bed bugs have infiltrated Lincoln Center and the New York Ballet.

And, not that it overly concerns me, but, according to the New York Post, Howard Stern's radio studio in Manhattan as become infested.

According to Fox News, beg bugs have infested the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

ABC 7 News in Denver reports firefighters overcome with bed bugs when putting out a house fire.

Bloomingdale's department store in Manhattan has become invested with beg bugs.

The Bed Bug Registry recently twittered, warning that at holiday parties not to use a bed for a place to put your coat.

And really, where there is an issue, there is a need for expert legal advice on both sides of the divide. There has to be room for lawyers to not only defend those sued for exposing others to bed bugs, but in advising large companies, hotels, schools, retail establishments and others on the proper protocol to protect against legal action.

You can just imagine the serious issues concerning bed bugs apart from the inconvenience of treating for them. What if they are allowed to invest a nursing care facility or a hospice? What if there is a new born in the house infested? What if a mission critical office is infested? An apartment complex in which the ownership is not taking effective corrective measures? A jail? A courthouse?

What if you generally represent a company or investors that own or operate apartment buildings, commercial properties, public storage facilities, HOA or community associations, condos, maid or cleaning services, medical facilities or doctor groups, hospitals, luxury cruise lines, airlines, or ship product to the public?

It is probably a niche many lawyers should look into.

2000 BLOG POSTS AND COUNTING

2010-12-03T16:57:11-06:00

I just recently past my 2,000th post on this blog. And, most of these are not throw away posts but original content.

I am not asking that you be proud of me or impressed. I am, however, impressed with myself for reasons you might not expect.

First, I have blogged for me and my interest in ways that I hope might help others, but primarily to interest myself. To keep me engaged. Hundreds of thousands have read my posts, but I think I would have done so even if it were only me readying my posts. In fact, before the Internet and blogging, I use to write down my thoughts on things like I cover on this blog, as well as business ideas, and just keep them in the top drawer of my desk.

Second, it is a chore. Sometimes it is a chore you do not want to do at the moment. But, most blogs result in a flurry of unimpressive posts about things like the directions to the courthouse, and then all updates end. Then, like most things, lawyers cry that blogging does not work. Well, it does. Like most things in life it takes time, patients and a general commitment and stick-to-it-ness for it to payoff.

Third, I am generally out of shape, but I image this is something like what a long distant runner feels. (Can you have a blogger's high)? The point is that you start off in a direction, you struggle with the commitment at times, often just feeling the pain but not the overall benefit, but you keep moving on. It is long term goal setting and you can always look back and be proud of yourself for continuing with it day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

Fourth, life is really serendipitous. Most things start out as an act of faith. You do not know where this is leading, or where it will take you, or if it will ultimately pay off in some way. You can fret yourself out of it if you are not careful. But, you do it because something in you says you have to. Even if it makes no sense to others, or your children think you are a little weird.

This is not my practice blog. It is just one of those things that interest me for whatever slightly strange or perverted reason. Kind of like my enjoyment of trying to find the perfect green olive or blue cheese, or my lack of basis for wanting to build a digital title plant, or trying to figure out in my mind (if nowhere else for now) how to build dirt cheap, cool and quick housing (you know in a George Jetson kind of way). I am not sure where this interest comes or how it get in my mind. Is it a gift or a ministry or a curse of some sort? Who knows really. All I know is that if I do not do it, I am not overly satisfied. I do it for me, but I have very much appreciated you coming along for part of the ride.

Add other blogs on which I have participated, and I do not know how many posts are out there in Googleland. And, this does not count Twitter and Facebook. Frankly, it does not include Basecamp, which is nothing more than a glorified blog on which I conduct and maintain my practice.

I do not consider this the finish line. But also, I am considering some changes ahead as to this blog.

Thanks everyone.