What if you went to a client and boasted that in the past year, you spent 300 hours working on his case? The client would probably respond, “So what, what kind of results did you get me?” Yet apparently, the American Bar Association (whose efforts at blogging the ABA annual meeting are a little bit
Future Trends
Free Legal Research Hits Florida
Add Florida to the list of jurisdictions with free legal research services, as reported in this article. Florida is using Fast Case for its service which provides access to US Supreme Court Cases, Florida Supreme Court cases and Florida statutes and regulations. I’ve always thought that free legal research is one of the most…
Solos Learn From Clients’ Bad Experiences
Within the past few months, I read an article, I believe at law.com by a large firm associate, complaining about how much she disliked when other people she encountered shared their negative experiences with other attorneys. (as I recall, in this case, the hotel bellhop had cornered her). The associate wrote that she didn’t quite…
It’s Cool to Be Solo
SmallFirm Business columnist Kim Fanady writes that it’s cool to be solo, while Susan Cartier-Liebel laments that law school doesn’t teach students about the option solo practice. Which all makes sense, because since when did law schools ever teach how to be cool?
Most Attorneys Would Not Go Solo – A Survey I Don’t Believe
According to this Press Release of May 25, 2005 by legal placement agency Robert Half, 93 percent of lawyers polled said that they would not establish a law firm even if they had the necessary capital. OK, I’m biased, but frankly, I don’t believe the survey at all. Here are some of the problems…
Are the Bars Out of Touch on Ethics?
Blogger Stuart Levine of the always first rate Tax and Business Law Blog has a provocative post on the Maryland Disciplinary Committee’s Mechanical Ethics. In the post, Levine offers several examples of how the Maryland committee ignores technologic developments that facilitate the practice of law and “regularly disregards the economic consequences of its decisions.”…
Maryland Bar Ruling Banning NonLawyer/Lawyer Referral Groups Discriminates Against Solo and Small Firms
Sometimes a bar association issues a decision that’s so impervious to the realities of legal practice that you have to wonder whether those who drafted it ever practiced law. That’s my thought about the Maryland Disciplinary Committee’s recent Ethics Decision, Ethics Docket 05-11, Participation in For-Profit Referral Organization with Non-Attorneys and discussed further in this…
Former Biglaw Telecom Attorney on the Cutting Edge in Solo Practice
I came across this March 2005 article by my colleague here in the D.C. area, Mark del Bianco entitled Being on the Cutting Edge. Among other things, the article offers both an amusing and realistic assessment of the benefits and occasional drawbacks to a small regulatory practitioner with a wide reaching Internet presence.
Lawyer Successfully Challenges NC Bar’s Comity Rules
This article, A Break from the Comity Routine, Cynthia Lane, ABA e-report (4/22/05) reports on lawyer Steven Morrison’s successful challenge to North Carolina’s rules on comity admissions. Under the rule declared overly restrictive by the federal court, North Carolina allowed an attorney in a state with which North Carolina has a comity agreement to…
Anonymous Associates
I’ve always explained that the reason I went solo was because a big firm wasn’t big enough. Not big enough for my ego or
aspirations, not even big enough to fit two tiny words – my name – on the
door. Apparently, these days, a big firm isn’t big enough (in heart,
not size) to…