Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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I don’t like to re-post the work of others too often but I saw a couple things recently that are too good to ignore….Never compete on price from LexBlog & Never Ever Compete on Price from Flourishing Business.

First from LexBlog:

That’s right. Any business can compete on two of three fronts. Service. Quality. Price. But not all three. And I’ll take competing on outstanding service and quality of product over competing on price any day. One because it’s the right thing to do when you’re looking to serve others. And two, because that’s what most people want – quality and service.

Second from Flourishing Business:

6 reasons to never compete on price…

• Don’t be afraid to charge what you are you worth.
• People like paying for quality.
• Take your focus off price and onto to value.
• Put the emphasis on quality and service and the experience.
• Use your price point to cultivate your niche.
• Ask what you can do to add more value and listen.

I have made the mistake of competing on price far too often during my career as a legal services business owner and hurt myself. For me personally I’d say it’s one of those things where perception is more important than reality. In other words, the highest cost product or service is NOT necessarily the best product or service…I know that to be fact. I’ve stayed and eaten at crappy 5 star hotels/restaurants and conversely had a wonderful meal just a couple weeks back eating some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had beneath a cheap party tent on a picnic table outside.

So it’s been one of those things with me where I’ve let truth and also my personal values trump the reality that for a pretty large population segment Higher Cost DOES = Higher Quality. I need to listen to the advice given frequently by the host of TLC’s Property Ladder which my wife and I enjoy about house flipping…take your personal tastes out of the equation, this is a business transaction where the goal is to make money.

So although SIC’s official tag line is “Down-To-Earth Legal Advice for Legal Entrepreneurs” it could just as easily be, “Learn From My Dumb Mistakes”. Here’s yet another example that left me aghast for a moment or two but, thankfully, quite satisfied in the end. And it’s something that comes up quite often so please, learn from my DUMB MISTAKES as I try to as well (Churchill:  “All men make mistakes, only wise men learn from their mistakes”).

The issue is references to “exhibits” in long legal forms that may not get included in the final executed document (and yet the “exhibit” references remain in the body of the form/document).

I need to be aware of this in my practice in both real estate contracts and landlord/tenant leasing situations. Many of the form real estate contracts flying around include various form exhibits/addendum for real estate agents to use to quickly add certain provisions into real estate transactions. In residential real estate this usually isn’t a problem since there’s a 5-7 attorney review period up front when I review a contract and as long as I’m doing my job thoroughly if there’s an exhibit referenced in the contract I’m going to make sure I have that exhibit or if it’s improperly referenced then I’ll modify the contract to clarify that point.

It was during a commercial landlord-tenant trial recently where things got dicey and the Judge popped-the-question to me, “Counsel, Where’s Exhibit D?” I represented the landlord and we had a pretty strong case essentially based on unpaid back-rent. However, the tenant was represented by counsel so it wasn’t a total push-over. Thankfully we had admitted the lease into evidence and the tenant stipulated that this indeed was THE LEASE. The tenant was defending on the basis that landlord was to make certain repairs up front that had not been made. Well, testimony and argument were over and I thought our case was airtight when the judge popped the question. Of course the real answer was that there was NO exhibit D…this was just some form lease that a non-lawyer leasing agent uses and not every exhibit gets used with every lease. But those exhibit references remained in the lease.

Well, the story has a happy ending (for Plaintiff’s counsel at least), the judge took a brief recess and looked through the 40 page lease  and did exactly what I wanted her to do…Order for Possession and $$$ Judgment for the Plaintiff. And she specifically referenced the fact that the lease was admitted into evidence and Defendant acknowledged its terms.

What’s a better way to handle the above?

Ideally I’m doing the leasing but in reality that’s going to be a broker function more often than not. But I should look at the leases more closely BEFORE filing suit to clarify with landlord which exhibits are part of the lease & bring out this fact on my direct examination of Plaintiff during trial rather than leaving it up to the Judge to uncover this nugget which makes it look like we’re hiding something.

Here’s the Sun-Times coverage plus here of the contest between Evans and Judge Maddux. I don’t know Evans or Maddux personally but I suppose I was happy to see Evans win only because of his history as the head judge of the domestic relations division and thus his having a better understanding of my needs as a domestic relations attorney.

I heard this nugget from a judge in one of my usual courtrooms today…the comment was made to one of the lawyers in the case and his client happened to be standing right next to him in open court. Not too confidence inspiring for the client I would imagine:

“That’s kind of LAME to make those arguments at this point.”

Funny, the arguments were lame…attorney trying to say a parent’s allowing a 5-year-old child to go tubing behind a speedboat should somehow be grounds to restrict that parent’s visitation rights.