Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

Real nuggets from my travels around the Cook, 12th, 16th, 18th, and 19th circuits…

*Lawyers and restrooms. Heard this one sitting in a domestic relations courtroom recently, not my case but sounded like a pre-decree dissolution of marriage. The respective spouses’ attorneys were really arguing about which spouse should be allowed to use which bathroom on the second floor of the marital residence which is currently being shared. Though I found this give-and-take amusing as I sat in the jury box waiting for my case to be called I thought, this really shouldn’t happen. This isn’t always possible but generally I would suggest that lawyer must impose his will on situations about things he simply won’t do. I remember having a dissolution early in my career with an older attorney and his comment being, I’m not fighting over the furniture…good point.

*Lawyers sponsored by Dorothy. Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown that is…I was on the Website today and noticed lawyer advertisements on the front page. Good marketing opportunity? Quite possibly, I’d like to hear some experiences.

*Time/money wasted on civil status hearings…that’s almost criminal. Granted this is very antidotal, primarily because I’ve probably represented 500 people in various civil legal matters over the last 8 years and am currently a part of my very first criminal matter down at 26th and California, but I’m just asking, why can we simply call a judge’s coordinator to continue cases down at the criminal court yet the dreaded “status hearing” remains oh so popular in civil land?

How to manage e-mail, IT and more…compliments of The Connected Lawyer.

SIC:  How should a small law firm manage IT? Self-manage? Outside consultant?

TCL:

There a lot of factors that must be considered when answering this question. The two key questions are the number of computers involved and knowledge the attorney has about technology. The smaller the set up (e.g. 1 desktop, 1 laptop) the more easily that it is for a tech savvy attorney to handle his own IT issues. However, if complications develop or the set up becomes more complicated, then it may be time to hire an outside consultant. It does not have to be a complicated issue for you to waste an entire day of billings trying to solve a computer problem.

My advice is to look for an IT consultant who can help you before you have problems. One of the best ways to do this is to ask other attorneys who they use. For example, chances are that a consultant can set you up with a backup system more efficiently and more cost effectively (once your lost time is included) than you can do yourself. Once you find such a person, keep his info handy to help you with issues as they arise.

On the flip side, I don’t think it benefits anyone if you don’t have someone in your office who at least has a basic understanding of how your computer system works. Just make sure that you are spending your time practicing law and not fixing computers.

SIC:  How should folks efficiently balance the constant flow of e-mail with the need for uninterrupted, billable work time?

TCL:

Oh, if only I had a magical solution for this problem. The best advice I can give is to turn off your automatic notifications that tell you that you have received an email. Once you do this, keep your email program minimized and check it only when you want it. For example take a break every hour or so and spend 5 to 10 minutes handling your email. Alternatively you can ignore your email for longer periods of time and then allocate more time to check it, for example, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

I have one additional recommendation that applies regardless of how you manage your email when you are at your computer: on your smartphone, turn off the automatic notification that you have received an email. If you want to check your email on your phone that is fine. However, do not be a slave to it.

SIC:  What’s a common technology mistake or two you often see in the legal profession?

TCL:

The biggest mistake that I see is that attorneys do not effectively use the technology that they have. For example, I see attorneys all of the time who treat their word processor as an expensive typewriter. They never take advantage of the various features that allow them to properly format a document, or track changes, or generate a table of contents. Instead, they try to do all of these things by hand.

Similarly, I see attorneys will full versions of Adobe Acrobat who use it only to print PDFs they download from the Internet. I have seen attorneys create a document in Word, print it, and then scan it so they can have an electronic copy rather than simply printing the document to PDF from Word.

Simply put, the biggest mistake you can make is to not understand how to use and leverage the technology that you have already paid for.

Then don’t say anything at all! That’s the old adage at least. I wish I saw it followed more in the legal field.

I got to thinking about this recently when reviewing a letter/counter-offer written to me by an opposing attorney as part of negotiations in a dissolution of marriage (divorce) proceeding. Because in my example, the attorney (and ostensibly her client) were agreeing with us and on the substance doing exactly what we and they wanted. Simply, they were in agreement with me and my client about how to divide a marital asset. But, in the sentence before it’s stated that we agree to divide said asset in such-and-such way, the attorney states, “Client X has done nothing to contribute to the acquisition of assets in recent years.”

Now, I’m not naive here, there’s a place for criticism and threats as a negotiating tactic when you can back them up and when they serve a purpose. But, if you’re in agreement, what purpose does the “dig” serve? The purpose it often serves is to upset the recipient to an extent he/she may no longer be too thrilled about settling something that you just agreed to settle.

Now, why’d ya make that stupid comment again?

A nugget I’ve had sitting in my inbox from Law.com for a bit…

Some free value-added services you might provide to clients.

A couple I’ve done before:

9. Conduct free, on-site CLE programs for in-house counsel clients.
24. Look out for their backs. If you see an article in The Wall Street Journal or The Legal , for example, that could help their business or those of their clients, send it to them with a short handwritten note. By the way — in my book — handwritten notes trump e-mail notes.

A couple I’d like to do better:

2. Ask clients for feedback on your services. How could you have done better? How could your team have done better? Were you accessible and responsive enough? Again, tell them that the conversation is gratis because they are such valued clients.
13. Specifically tell your client they will not be billed for quick questions or e-mails — ever.

Find out more than you’d probably like to know about the author…updated our About page. Yaro calls it the “cult of personality” in his Blog Mastermind program…I’ll just wait for all those new RSS subscribers then.

If a large percentage of your practice is prosecuting and defending various sorts of contempt of court matters as mine is, you may have heard of the former husband in a PA divorce case (who also happened to be an attorney) who was subject to the longest sentence in U.S. history stemming from a civil contempt finding. I know that at several of the trainings I’ve attended periodically he was brought up. The thumbnail is some $2.5 million in marital assets disappeared which according to him were lost in poorly performing investments and the former wife likely thinks that they’re still sitting around in some Swiss bank account. Well, since civil contempt is supposed to be coercive and not punishing, a PA judge said that jail has lost its coercive affect after 14 years. He’s out!

And while we’re talking contempt, can anyone help me with this riddle that I’ve struggled with all morning:

Court orders entered and party brings petition for indirect criminal contempt (aimed to punish for past acts). Later on, the orders that are the basis of the criminal contempt case get vacated/terminated, there has yet to be a hearing/trial on the criminal contempt case. Should the contempt case be dismissed or can it still be brought since the orders that were allegedly violated were enforceable at the time the case was brought??