Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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And Now, the Tricky Part:  Naming Your Business. We’ve written about the ethical issues related to law firm naming in the past here but it still seems to me that there’s a real dearth of creativity when it comes to the law firm names that I see.   Quick, how many firms do you know that don’t simply include some lame/uncreative use only of a practitioner’s or various partners’ last names? I think I know two, other than the gentleman profiled in the WSJ article. The piece includes 12 examples of different companies and their strategy in company naming. I’d suggest that is an area ripe for innovation and an instant marketing advantage for someone starting a practice.

Divorce lawyers:  Facebook tops in online evidence. Not a bad place to start if you have a dicey case particularly with child custody issues.  Good old social media! The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years. I have. Some examples from the piece:

– Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.

– Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his “write something about yourself” section: “If you have the balls to get in my face, I’ll kick your ass into submission.”

– Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.

– Mom denies in court that she smokes marijuana but posts partying, pot-smoking photos of herself on Facebook.

How to get more business:  20 tips on marketing the small law firm (page 10). Plenty of ideas, pick a couple and implement now. A couple easy ones:  *Get out of the office & *Get your newsletter on track on a consistent basis (at least quarterly).

Taking the Leap to Self-Employment. Good piece really taking a hard look at the challenges of self-employment. You must be motivated to sell a product or service for which there’s demand & the business idea should be based on expertise you already have. Good teaching point for lawyers, you’ve got to be marketing like crazy early in the history of your practice and can’t be learning your business idea from scratch at the same time. The light at the end of the tunnel:  Even in the face of failure, most entrepreneurs are not willing to give up. “Once they taste having more control over their lives,” he said, “they almost never go back.”

In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That. And finally a mildly humorous story from our current, touch economic climate (perhaps I need to take a look at my law school transcript)…

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average.

But it’s not because they are all working harder.

The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.

The phone ain’t ringin’…it’s Christmas Eve! So I decided to skim some articles I’d been wanting to get around to reading…the highlights:

1. Some news for those of you on the front lines of lawyering in the Circuit Court of Cook County. First, here’s the piece announcing the creation of a new domestic violence division within the Court.  My understanding is this will primarily impact the life of judges (and less that of me as private lawyer) over at 555 W. Harrison since previously the judges over there had been split between the criminal and domestic relations divisions.  As a citizen of Cook County I was a tad saddened to see this proposal regarding the closure of 4 suburban courthouses over the weekend to save $$$. Am I missing something or isn’t there an obvious compromise to close a couple versus the only choices being close 4 or none?

2. The Double-Edged Sword of Suing a Client. A nice analysis from our friend Ed Poll with an analytical process to undertake before suing a client…first, there’s the loss of future business/referrals; second, possible negative publicity; third, possible negative press/perception. Remember regarding these sorts of matters, client communication is key. And I must say I’ve frowned a bit of late on using collection agencies who can be as much of a pain in the butt for creditor or for debtor.

3. One Lawyer’s Definitive Guide to Video Marketing for Lawyers. It’s hard to think of reasons NOT to do this as any cost barriers to entering the camcorder/video market have virtually disappeared. I’m going to make a big push here in 2010.

4. How to Market Your Business with Facebook. Well, since I only use FB to criticize Notre Dame football, converse about golf, and for the occasional political rank this blog ain’t the place to learn about FB marketing. But I WILL have a Facebook Page up shortly! As a non-expert on all things “social networking” it sure seems like FB and Twitter are where the buzz is. A separate link on 21 small to mid-sized Chicago businesses using social media effectively.

5. Total Attorneys:  For-Profit Lawyer Referrals? I honestly had never heard of Total Attorneys until the Tribune ran this piece a couple weeks back (it is a Chicago-based company). It doesn’t sound that different than LegalMatch that I used a couple years back although the article makes it sound like Total Attorneys directs the prospect to a single lawyer whereas LegalMatch merely allowed me as one of 5-10 lawyers respond to a prospect’s fact pattern. Far from being a legal ethics expert, I would only ask why it’s okay for bar associations to have referral services but not private, for-profit companies? SOME of the bar referral services are fairly lame w/o that profit motive.

6. Far From Field, Lawyer’s Blog a Player in N.F.L. A little off topic but I liked this piece because I am more jock than lawyer & it does emphasize a point that I and likely many lawyers should open their eyes to which is something to the effect that social media – Internet business likely has much better business potential than merely providing traditional, bricks/mortar legal services. Florio, 44, an erstwhile Vikings fan living in Steelers country, began his blog in 2001 as a sideline to his law practice. Is 2010 the year your blog income exceeds your lawyer income?

7. And to close with some “light” reading…a primer on international child abduction. Because if you’re a domestic relations lawyer like yours truly one of these IS going to walk into the office sometime…likely sooner rather than later. It’s got something to do with the Hague Convention, no?

Stumbled upon this resource from a tweet by the venerable Ed Poll. He’s got a bunch of great instructive videos up on YouTube that look like they’re worth exploring. He provides an easy-to-follow ‘to-do’ list.

What I’ve been reading of late…

Big firms cut back on law school recruiting. Yada, yada, yada.  Some examples from the article seemed to be 50%-60% cuts in summer associate positions and on-campus fall interviews. Well, you’re at the right place, Solo in Chicago.

Was it worth it? With debt of up to $250k, some law grads are dubious. Some? I don’t think it’s only a DEBT issue. This is my story which I bet is common. I decided to attend law school without giving that decision nearly enough thought…it was sort of an after-thought to generally boost my career prospects and to temporarily avoid permanent career decisions. I had no specific goal to work at a big firm or necessarily to work directly as a lawyer in private practice at all. Now I’m out and not particularly enamored with the “practice of law,” thinking of things to do that I would enjoy more, and I’m got this $40,000 weight around my neck.

Blogging Assistant PD Accused of Revealing Secrets of Little-Disguised Clients. Yeah, a little more anonymity and avoiding calling specific judges A-holes might best be avoided.

The article’s title says it all:  Law Firms Make Easy Pickings for Embezzlers. The piece outlines a series of support staff horror stories of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars being stolen from law firms. Generally the stories seem to just be examples of too little oversight.

I’ve never had too complex of a set-up…essentially we have three accounts:  1) Client funds trust account; 2) General checking; and, 3) High balance checking. My assistant(s) have access to #2 to pay run-of-the-mill office expenses and that’s it. There’s never too much money in the general checking account since it’s non-interest bearing and we don’t have too many expenses…court filing fees are probably the largest checks I’m ever writing.

I saw a couple things in court recently I didn’t love and thought I’d write about them here.

First, a lawyer who doesn’t appear on a client’s case in court even though client was told about it in advance.  I observed this while sitting in a courtroom recently and didn’t like it. It wasn’t just entering an agreed order or something like that. There were lawyers for one parent and a child’s representative and then a client who just said my lawyer can’t be here today. You shouldn’t do that both for client perception reasons and ethical reasons. I mean how would you feel if your lawyer essentially says you’re not important…I’m not showing up today. I wouldn’t call that diligent representation (rule 1.3).

Second, lawyer’s who whine about getting paid by their client to me as the opposing lawyer. Obviously this is an issue we all face but I think it’s just plain tacky to complain to your opposing lawyer about it and it’s admitting weakness to your opponent giving her an advantage. I wouldn’t hesitate to file some papers and cause you to do some additional work to push a lawyer out of the case if it helps my client.

A serious topic for these hard times.  The only rule governing a lawyer’s nonpayment of debt is 8.4(a)(8), “avoid in bad faith the repayment of an education loan guaranteed by the Illinois Student Assistance Commission or other governmental entity. The lawful discharge of an education loan in a bankruptcy proceeding shall not constitute bad faith under this rule, but the discharge shall not preclude a review of the attorney’s conduct to determine if it constitutes bad faith.”

Chicago Lawyer’s monthly ethics page recently covered Failure to keep financial commitments. CL tends to be a little fluffy and too big firm focused for a solo in Chicago but their writing on professional ethics is the best around in my opinion.  Here were some excerpts that opened my eyes:

Notwithstanding the absence of a rule specifically making the nonpayment of financial obligations professional misconduct, the Supreme Court disciplined an attorney in In re Stone, 108 Ill.2d 253, 486 N.E.2d 915, 93 Ill.Dec. 382 (1985), for misconduct based in part on the attorney’s payment to a secretary with checks he knew would be dishonored….

A different result occurred in In re Glasson, 00 SH 20, M.R. 17584 (Sept. 20, 2001), in which a lawyer was disciplined, in part, for issuing 29 checks on his personal bank account to local stores, restaurants, and others, that were not honored due to insufficient funds, where he knew or should have known that the checks would not be honored….

Recently, a panel of the Hearing Board found that an attorney engaged in misconduct by failing to comply with court orders to pay child support for about 11 weeks, failing to contribute to day care and medical insurance, and dissipating marital assets by transferring funds to a bank account held in his name in Costa Rica. In re Kline, 07 CH 44, M.R. 22388 (Sept. 16, 2008)….another sword for you family lawyers if the opposing party is a lawyer.

Okay so not only do us domestic relations lawyers get the most ARDC complaints filed against us but now we’ve seen two of us get jailed in the last 6 months by judges up on the 30th Floor. Here’s the bit regarding the most recent jailing…

I’m not jumping to any conclusions on this situation. I know and respect the judge doing the jailing greatly in this case and I believe the judicial canon of ethics never allows judges to respond to these sorts of situations so we’ll likely never know the full story. A tad scary though…both jailings are along the same corridor where most of my cases are.

The opposing counsel in my case this morning at the Rolling Meadows courthouse who sends a lawyer over on our case 15 minutes before we’re set for hearing and has an Agreed (not) Order entered continuing hearing for 2 weeks. My client and I arrive before court time but after other lawyer has left and are expecting a full hearing today .