Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

I had one of my fairly irregular appearances out at Suburban District 4 today. I enjoy the Maywood Courthouse. It’s very quiet and not jammed like many of the facilities. Once you know that as an attorney you just need to show your Cook County employee card to park in the back parking lot you’re fine. For non-employees the parking is horrible. I got my car towed the first time I went to court there. I think it’s second best in the Cook County system behind Skokie.

Alright this is a bit off topic but it’s too funny to ignore and indeed very lawyerly and tangentially related to me personally. So, the President of SIU, former Congressman Glen Poshard, has been getting heat for not properly attributing parts of his PHD dissertation. I think the conclusion has been reached that the Board of Trustees is going to allow him to remain as President he’ll just have to revise the dissertation. Nonetheless, he’s still been taking some heat, particularly from the SIU faculty.

Here’s a Letter to the Editor published in the Trib. by my first year torts professor Patrick J. Kelley in support of Poshard. Kelley’s a great guy and very bright. That said, who but a law school professor would base his argument on the “secondary” mean of plagiarism. Go Pat Go!

Illinois Bar Journal recently had a nice mix of attorneys respond to this question. An interesting range of responses…we concur with the “I don’t use file numbers” answer…ooops didn’t realize the piece was password protected. It’s in the August 2007 issue if you can get your hands on a copy.

To Summarize:

Not to oversimplify but essentially most people either filed alphabetically or numerically. Within those two classification types some people suggested using file colors for particular types of cases. A number of people said certain case management software packages sort of create the numbering system for you.

I think if you’re solo it’s simple…when you start having multiple attorneys with certain clients being “owned” by a certain lawyer then it gets more difficult.

Here’s the top 10 from the Home Office Warrior. I think the only one of ten I really struggle with is self-discipline…turning off C-Span’s Washington Journal and my “Washington Dreams” in the morning and heading into lawyer mode.

Here’s a recent 1st District holding whereby it held that a trial court was wrong from disqualifying a law firm from representing itself in a lawsuit against former clients for unpaid attorneys fees and costs.

Start-Up Nation’s 100 top home-based businesses were announced here. No lawyers surprise, surprise.

Read this interesting piece about some changes being considered at some of the nation’s elite law schools. It also mentions a recent Carnegie Foundation study on legal education.

It’s humorous how little change has occurred in legal education over time. Here’s a quote:

“When you haven’t changed your curriculum in 150 years, at some point you look around,” said Elena Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law.

The piece talks about the use of greater clinical education and changes to first year curriculum to include statutory interpretation. My $.02 are maybe some of the elite “name” schools aren’t the place to be for the best and most relevant legal education.