A thoughtful post from the Dirty Lawyer on being “available” as an attorney.
Archive for September, 2007
Defendant hurls file, striking judge in face
Judges sometimes throw the book at defendants, but defendants don’t usually throw things at judges.
On Wednesday, though, Damen Toy hurled a thick legal file at Cook County Judge James Obbish during a sentencing, striking the judge in the face, according to witnesses. The incident prompted Obbish to slap an extra six months onto Toy’s 75-year sentence.
Full article. This is why I’m civil only…all I ever see is the occasional verbal outburst.
Well I had a paternity case over 32 W. Randolph recently and lo and behold the opposing attorney withdrew. How to proceed? This comes up a bit in some of these domestic relations cases and in eviction matters.
1. My client’s interests come first. If you can take advantage of the opposing party’s lack of experience (frankly whether a pro se or attorney situation) for the advantage of your client, do it! I didn’t say be fraudulent or unethical. I said get the best result for your client using this potential advantage. Use discovery and pleading formalities to your advantage.
2. Be the “objective voice” and lower the temperature. This is important in most of my cases where we’re dealing with people bickering about totally not relevant issues in domestic relations cases. Cut to chase and see what the pro se litigant wants…it might be tenable and you can get the case settled.
3. How to handle judge “softness” with pro se litigants. This is a tough one and I don’t think there’s one answer. The issue is pro se litigants being able to get away with stuff and just ramble on in court. I don’t think too many judges do a great job of “controlling” the pro se litigants. And then your client thinks, oh, she/he is getting to spout off and such and why aren’t I? You as lawyer may need to aggressively stop these outbursts in court.
ABA’s Law Practice Today had a good piece entitled, Ten Golden Rules to Make Your New Client Happy. Some of the tips we’ve seen before, but I thought this was a good, new one:
1) Send Your New Client a “Client Welcome Kit”
I am amazed at how few law firms do this. In addition to a well-written cover letter from the managing partner, include your firm brochure, a client service pledge, a current list of contacts with direct dial phone numbers and email addresses and a nice gift.
CBA is starting to post podcasts of various seminars. Not too many posted yet, but what’s there is free.
Well another year missed on making the list…six more for me to remain eligible. Why does Clifford Law get somone on it every year? Is this an accomplishment? There was a sole practitioner on the list…congrats!
More evidence that seniors are on the Web in big ways. If the venture capitalists are going aften them, are you marketing to them as potential clients on the Web?
Thanks for the link to our attorney referral article Chuck. He makes another point about attorney referrals: getting these from attorneys inside your practice area (not just from people outside your practice area like I listed). I think I could argue that these are “outside” one’s practice area within our list…but then I’d be being too much of a lawyer…
But absolutely…Chuck claims to get these sort of referrals within the bankruptcy field. An obvious one within domestic relations would be attorneys who specialize in Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDRO). For those of you outside the field, this is a specialized order required to divide pension rights in a divorce. Many or perhaps most “pure” divorce lawyers refer all of these out because they’re pretty high risk with often a lot of $$ at stake and they involve quite a bit of nuanced federal law that most of us in the domestic relations don’t work with too much. Elizabeth Wells is well-known in the Chicago area as a specialist in this field. Another thought in our practice areas: real estate – a lot of these pure real estate transactional lawyers need a litigation referral or an attorney who specializes in real estate assessment appeals.
I read many of the obits on Body Shop founder Anita Roddick with interest…quite a fascinating entrepreneur.
Here’s a blurb from the Times’ piece:
A woman of fierce passions, boundless energy, unconventional idealism and sometimes diva-like temperament, Ms. Roddick was one of Britain’s most visible business executives, and not just because of the ubiquitous and instantly recognizable Body Shop franchises. Working on behalf of numerous causes — the rain forest, debt relief for developing countries, indigenous farmers in impoverished nations, whales, voting rights, anti-sexism and anti-ageism, to name a few — Ms. Roddick believed that businesses could be run ethically, with what she called “moral leadership,” and still turn a profit.
Is there passion in your law firm? How do you get it? Or do you have passion for an “end” that your law firm can contribute towards?
I struggle on this front…too often it’s just the day-to-day “grind.” Is there a practice area I can be more passionate about? Is there a cause outside the firm that can help create that passion within the firm? I’m looking.
Well on my second attempt I did get appointed to the Cook County domestic relations contempt of court appointed counsel list (see local rule 13.8). So now about once a month if a domestic relations judge wants to appoint counsel in a contempt case I’m their guy. And the fees come right from the old Cook County Board or I guess I should say my property tax bill. It’s a semi-cut rate fee but you might look into this if you do a lot of domestic relations work in Cook County.
