Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

These cases bother me!

So for some of you out there not in domestic relations land, a “IV-D” case is a federal, state, and local  effort to collect child support from  parents who are legally obligated to pay. Established in 1975 as Title IV-D (4-D) of the Social Security Act, the child support enforcement  program functions in all 50 states and  some foreign countries as  well. Through the IV-D Program absent parents can be located, parentage can be established, and support  orders can be enforced to ensure child  support payments. Practically it’s free child support collection services for custodial parents.

But here’s the problem…all the IV-D attorneys (in IL usually the Attorney General or Cook County State’s Attorney) deal with is child support. They cannot deal with any child custody/visitation issues. So oftentimes a custodial parent has two attorneys the IV-D attorney and then say me as private counsel dealing with custody/visitation issues. Fine.

But then over at the lovely Daley Center there are so many courtrooms that a IV-D attorney is often in the courtroom only one day a week. So the case ends up getting bifurcated in the sense that there are court dates for child support issues and court dates for everything else. Yet, the non-custodial parent often only has one attorney. So non-custodial parent is at every court date and even when only child support issues are up in court he can bring up other issues when custodial parent’s non-IV-D attorney isn’t there.

I don’t like the system!

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 .

A quick shout out to Ms. JD. Not sure why I hadn’t been there before, but great resources regarding woman in the legal profession (and I bet a lot of what they discuss just might apply to us guys too) and a real cool design. Plus I got invited to speak at their fall conference so they must know a bit about what they’re doing.

Save the Date! Ms. JD’s Third Annual Conference on Women in the Law: Avenues to Advancement will be hosted by Northwestern University Law School’s campus and the surrounding downtown Chicago area on Friday, November 20, 2009 and Saturday, November 21, 2009.

Are you good at this? Are your clients? I think both groups need to be good at this but too often they’re not. And I’m particularly amazed when lawyers HAVE TO say something that hurts their reputation and often their clients case.

As for clients, I’ve definitely learned this is something that you must actively counsel and not just expect clients to testify properly. Critically, clients must control emotions. I can think of a long-term case of mine where one sentence at a deposition has continued to bite my client in the butt for several years running. And it was mainly because the client was/is far too emotional.

But lawyers do it too. And I’m talking from different lawyer forums where the issue is just offending another lawyer (I say it’s probably better to keep friends) to the pre-trial stage of court proceedings where over disclosure is potentially hurtful to a client’s negotiation or at a potential trial in the future.

Be a disciplined lawyer who brings value to a client’s case and not an egotistical lawyer who wins the argument out in the hallway while torpedoing the larger case.

As a forthright admission that I love a good countown of the top songs of the 80s and more importantly that a blog’s audience is constantly changing and evolving, this is the first of the occasional looks back into the archives (I mean we’ve got almost 4 years of articles now) at pieces that were most popular or that I arbitrarily think contain some useful tips. There are “archives” on the sidebar but I really doubt too many people are clicking. So…

You can make almost any service upscale (10/06). This post was triggered by something I’d read about a white glove moving company but it’s applicable across businesses. There’s nothing wrong with Wal-Mart right, and they make billions of dollars. But I’m guessing most small law firms can’t compete on volume like Wal-Mart so perhaps the better way to build your business is aiming more upscale without a lot of necessary new expenditures or staff expansion.

You want ‘Clients for Life’ (2/06). Absolutely the best business book tailored to professional service workers…some tips:

a. Selfless Independence. Balance between dedication to clients and detachment.
b. Empathetic. Listening & learning. Put yourself into new situations, travel. More listening than talking.
c. Deep Generalists. Clients want your expertise beyond your core expertise. Enjoy exploring subjects that have nothing to do with work.
d. Cultivate Powers of Synthesis.
e. Develop Great Judgment.
f. Powers of Conviction.
g. Trust through Integrity. Deeper broader trust based on professional competence and personal integrity.

Client service in law firms (11/06). This was a short little article but it contains some gold…remember:  Most clients can’t evaluate the quality of your legal work. What they can and do is evaluate the experience of working with you.

If you’re with me and part of the 20% or whatever percentage of the alphabet contained in letters N-Z, look at a couple of free PMCLE options:

One for 2 hours from our friends at ARDC. And, another from ISBA for .75.

So a primary problem with under billing clients is obvious:  you lawyer are earning less money for your firm and your family. But that’s just one of many potential problems that often starts in moments of weakness when you think…aw, I kinda feel bad for this persons struggles and you give them a $$ break.

Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it! and did I mention:  Don’t do it!

Here’s another negative I’ve observed in yours truly in a case or two where I should not have under billed and I only ended up hurting myself.

It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and really a vicious circle where I’ve caused myself to under-perform and lower my standards as an attorney. It goes something like this…

You take on client X perhaps due to a healthy degree of human empathy due to client’s difficult circumstances, often both legal and financial. And perhaps you take a smaller retainer than you should and you charge a lower hourly rate than you should. I don’t think the lower hourly has to kill ya but the lower retainer is poor judgment. But it’s what I’ve seen happen next that’s the real killer. Because you want to “keep the bill down” for the poor client you sort of “under work” the case. And speaking about a time or two in my own practice I’m surely not saying I was at the level of ignoring the case or being at a level were the ARDC might come calling. But instead of say regular “A+” work I was doing “B” level work to keep the bill down. But, when the case doesn’t go just like the poor, sympathetic client wants it to go, he/she is just as unhappy as the well-heeled client whom you gave the A+ service too.

And the inevitable result is a client who you’ve under-billed and who is now unhappy and who likely will be under-paying and you’re unsatisfied because you didn’t do your best work and you’re now both underpaid and under-appreciated.

I’m not the tourism bureau here so I’m not comparing the Sycamore Pumpkin Festival to the Taste of Chicago or anything like that, but I do work as a lawyer primarily in Cook County and due to a quark of fate I’ve had a case running in DeKalb County for some 7 years now (long story). And wanted to point out a couple of troubling facts related to the administration of justice in Cook County, using DeKalb to highlight a couple examples.

I wanted to post this now because I have two very similar situations currently unfolding in the respective counties and I like how DeKalb’s handling my “situation” better than Cook.

In Cook County, I had a contested hearing in the last couple weeks. And it was fairly involved and went for 2ish hours and then the Court issued its oral ruling. I was the only lawyer in the case. The same day of the hearing I entered a handwritten ordering highlighting the Court’s ruling and ordering that I would later submit a clean, type-written Order covering everything in detail. However, between the day of the hearing and entry of the final, “clean” copy of the Order there are discrepancies as to what specifically was the Judge’s ruling. And the only two things we have to go to assure accuracy are my handwritten notes of the ruling and the Judge’s notes. Unless you bring your own, there are generally no court reporters in most hearings and the hearings are not recorded. So the result of a very important court hearing and judgment hinges on the ability of two people to read their own chicken scratch (I tend to be very detailed but in the midst of a court hearing where paper is flying everywhere I would admit my thoroughness suffers).  

In DeKalb County I encountered a similar situation recently and asked the Court to amend an Order that I think contained a scriveners error…i.e. something was written up wrong and inconsistent with the Court’s oral ruling. I should have caught this the first time but I’m human. Well, in DeKalb everything in the courtrooms is recorded in real time. So Judge said to order the transcipt and we’ll see.

What I’m getting at is a concern for the fundamental administration of justice issues that I see in Cook County, like the above. This isn’t just something to laugh about or a minor hassle for me to have to look in a court file or any of those things that I and others have blogged about. Right?

In the example above, in DeKalb we’ll have the assurance of a transcript saying what the Court’s judgment was whereas in Cook, we might get it wrong. So you add that to another big problem I encounter a lot, the fact of lost court orders and court pleadings in Cook County, due to no electronic filing system and I hope some of the powers that be start to make some changes. Because you just don’t know who will be the next victim of an injustice

Do ya have any of these?

I would add this to the list of “red flags” in terms of client selection along with obvious things like an individual who has fired or not paid 5 other lawyers before showing up on your doorstep. Of course this one isn’t always easy to sniff out, particularly since if you’re the attorney starting the case it would not be possible to know a client’s court tendencies.

But in thinking of several client matters I’ve dealt with over the years, there’s something too passionate or mentally imbalanced or just abnormal in the lifestyle of a non-lawyer who wants to come to court every month. I think it’s the “over” passion or mental irregularities that make these potential “red flags.” Flat-out, it’s not easy to deal with an irrational person.

Of course the above should be distinguished from the fact that the case IS HER CASE (not mine as just lawyer). And lawyer must communicate absolutely everything that’s going on and sending court orders, ect. But a case shouldn’t consume the life of a client (at least with civil litigation) and if it does, she may consume you!