Or if I’m a tad less fatalistic, what would happen to your active cases for the next 2 weeks if you suddenly had a family or health emergency or even a planned vacation that wouldn’t allow you to practice law for the next 14 days?
This is not intended as a re-post on vacation planning although some of those principals DO likely apply here. Nope rather I’m dwelling on a simple yet instructive experience I had recently when a colleague of mine asked me to step into a real estate transaction that got delayed and he had to skip out-of-town. Plus, Nerino Petro also made reference to a bar association’s clean-up of a lawyer’s practice upon the lawyer’s death recently at his scanner presentation at the Solo and Small Firm Conference. And it was a little challenging to get my transaction closed. By no means was the transaction in bad shape nor horribly organized yet I think a few moments dwelling on how your cases/files/firm would look to someone else just picking them up for the first time, might be useful.
Because even for a “simple” residential real estate transaction file it was very challenging to understand the status with a mere review of this file. If the lawyer whose transaction I was covering had not been reachable this would have been a very challenging transaction for me.
A Solo’s solution?
–Keep a well-organized hard/soft case file.
–Keep a detailed case log on all of your cases…this is a no-brainer for things like a real estate transaction where many people might be working the file and it’s almost more logistics than law.
–Keep a more general listing of all your current cases with status and pertinent dates.
