What is a Miller Act Claim?

How do you file a Miller Act Claim?

Am I entitled to file a Miller Act Claim?

These are some of the questions answered by Scott Wolfe’s latest Legal Guide published on Avvo.com, titled “How To File A Miller Act Claim.”  In the guide, Scott breaks the federal filing down into four steps, introducing the topic as follows:

If you furnished labor and/or materials to a federal construction project, and were not paid, contractors or suppliers may file a “Miller Act Claim” against the general contractor’s payment bond. You can file a claim on your own, through a filing service, or with an experienced attorney.

Click here to read all of Scott’s Legal Guides at Avvo.com.

Scott Wolfe Jr., a graduate of Loyola’s College of Law, returned to the campus to teach a second Skills course (the first was written about here).

This time, Scott taught “Solo from Scratch: Starting Up, Marketing & Finding Success.”

The presentation was given to 100 students at the school, and focused on the administrative tasks required to open a law practice, marketing concepts like “Positioning,” the use of Web 2.0 tools in business, and a practice’s short and long term goals.

The Keynote slides for the presentation are shared through Slideshare, and embedded directly within this post below.

Scott is a LEED AP, and is the founding author of two construction law blogs that focus exclusively on green building issues:  (1) the Louisiana Green Building Law Blog, focusing on green building legal issues in Louisiana; and (2) the Pacific Northwest Green Building Law Blog, focusing on green building legal issues in the Pacific Northwest.

The presentation for Sterling Education focused on the growth of green building in Louisiana and across the country, an overview of green building principals and the concept of green leases.   The Keynote slides for the presentation are shared through Slideshare, and embedded directly within this post below.

How Do You Access It?

If you’re a client, you should have received an invitation email from billing@wolfelaw.com.   Click on the link through that email and set up your username and password, and from there, you’ll see your open and paid invoices.   It’s really that easy.

The login page for our new online billing center can be accessed here:  https://wolfelawgroup.freshbooks.com/

What is Freshbooks?

Freshbooks is an industry leading Web 2.0 App for online invoicing.   Instead of sending our clients paper invoices, with pages and pages of timesheets, we’re now able to send those invoices and timesheets via email.

Not only is the invoice instantly accessible to the client, but the online billing center keeps a historical record of the invoices.  Clients can view open and paid invoices, and can run different reports to see how much they’ve spent on any given legal matter.

For those clients who rather receive paper invoices, the Freshbooks system sends the invoice via ordinary mail.

Why We Did It & What It Means to Our Clients

If there is one thing businesses loathe about attorneys (and rightfully so), it’s the money spent with the law firm.   In large part, business dislike a few things:

- Law firms sell a service, and its difficult to see what is being purchased;

- Law firms have inconsistent billing practices, where invoices are delivered only periodically, and sometimes request huge payments

- Businesses have difficulty predicting and budgeting the costs of a legal matter.

Our new online billing center advances our efforts to combat these issues.   Each invoice explains the work performed during the invoicing period in detail, and with 24/7 access to client billing histories, the cost of the legal matter are made transparent.

To help businesses budget and predict the costs of litigation (in addition to Alternative Billing Methods), we send invoices out once every three weeks.   It’s like clock-work, and it ensures that you know exactly what is happening on your case and how much it is costing.

Want To Use Freshbooks For Your Own Business – Go Through Us

Freshbooks is an affordable and useful web 2.0 tool for businesses.   Not only does it help us bill more efficiently, but it could help many of our clients and readers who send invoices as part of their business.

So, if you do go to the Freshbooks homepage, and like what you see – please mention Wolfe Law Group when you sign up.

Folks, we’ve never raised our billing rates on a client.

Think we’re going out of our way to brag about this?    Think again.   It’s almost a tradition in the legal profession for firms to annually raise rates on their clients.

Even the turbulent economic client isn’t enough to stop firms from raising rates.   Reports and surveys are abound certifying that firms are raising rates on clients in 2010.   Take a look:

• New Survey Shows Law Firms Will Raise Rates in 2010
• Despite Down Economy, Law Firms Say They’re Raising Rates
• Law Firms Likely to Hike Billing Rates in 2010

We’ve said it a thousand times:   Wolfe Law Group is different.   Is your company ready for an attorney/client relationship that appreciates you?  That’s focused on results?   That understands the bottom line?

Happy New Year to our clients.   And don’t worry – at Wolfe Law Group, we’re sticking to our original agreement with you.

Anyone who has used Skype will go on and on about how great of an application it is.  You can make regular phone calls through the app, video conference, or just chat.   It is a great way to get in touch with our attorneys because they’re online all day long, and if they step away from their desk or are on the other line, you’re message will be sitting there when they get back.

If you go to any of the attorney’s bio pages on our website there is now a button that shows when the attorney is on or offline.  Just click on that button to send them a message through Skype.  It’s that simple.

We’d love to hear from you, and to put you on our list of contacts.  It’s just another way we can reach out to clients and underline the difference between us and those folks in the skyscrapers.

Don’t have Skype?  It’s a free download for Macs (yay) and PCs (yuck).

The old blog simply kept folks abreast on news and updates from our firm, and we thought it better for those updates to get posted right within our website, as opposed to a separate domain.

We made some other changes to our blogs over the holidays, and we’ll be posting an update about this soon.

Happy New Year!

Our holiday hours are:

December 24, 25, 26, 27 – Closed

December 28 – 30, Open, but limited time for appointments, phone calls.  Email works best.

December 31, Jan 1, 2, 3 – Closed

January 4th, we resume normal operations.

You can always contact us by email at the following addresses, and we’ll get back to you promptly:

Scott Wolfe – scott@wolfelaw.com

Doug Reiser – doug@wolfelaw.com

Seth Smiley – ssmiley@wolfelaw.com

Jessica Reiser – jess@wolfelaw.com

See you next year!

The traditional “first Thanksgiving” is the celebration that occurred at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in 1621. The Plymouth celebration occurred early in the history of what would become one of the original thirteen colonies that became the United States. The celebration became an important part of the American myth by the 1800s.

Staying true to tradition, the Thanksgiving feast or dinner generally includes food items of the native land. Corn, potatoes, meats (such as the Turkey) and pumpkin based foods. Thanksgiving fact: The pumpkin is native to North America and was an early export to France. From there it was introduced to Tudor England, and the flesh of the “pompion” was quickly accepted as pie filler. The Pilgrims brought the pumpkin pie back to New England, but it subsequently died out in England itself.

Now that your history lesson is complete, Wolfe Law Group would like to wish everyone a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The LES has three main chapters in the state of Louisiana and is dedicated to the advancement of the engineering profession by pursing an active leadership role through various resources.

For LES’ full mission and vision statements, click here. Incorporating speakers during the monthly meetings is just one of the many ways the LES provides its members with resources and information relevant to the field of engineering.

As a construction lawyer, Scott Wolfe consults with engineers as experts on various cases. Since the discovery of Chinese Drywall in completed construction projects across the state, he has become familiar with the basic problems of Chinese Drywall, how it effects individuals and contractors and how to proceed in the case that Chinese Drywall is detected.

The issue of Chinese Drywall is not only relevant to contractors and home/property owners, it extends to architects, engineers and attorneys. Engineers in particular are being contracted to perform inspections of homes and businesses suspected of harboring Chinese Drywall.

Scott focused his presentation on the pertinent issue of Chinese Drywall in the state of Louisiana. Below is the slide presentation that was used during the meeting yesterday.