Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Practice in General
It’s Lonely Being Perfect
I set aside a few hours on several different days during my recent hike to make sure everything was okay back at the firm. On those partial “work” days, I mostly made sure my clients were happy and everything was going as planned in their cases. I returned calls from a few prospective clients as well. At first, the prospective clients would leave polite messages. They’d ask that I call them back at my convenience, acknowledging that my voice mail greetings said I would have limited availability until May. A few wished me well on my walk and said they’d be contacting Adrian because time was of the essence. What nice people I get to meet sometimes. At some point after climbing onto the Colorado Plateau, however, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Practice in General
Grow!
I’m going for a long hike soon, and for it, I bought a really light tent. Some guy made it himself. I have to seal my own seams because he doesn’t do that. He just makes tents. They’re awesome tents. The guy I bought the tent from has a little store that sells some gear, but he mostly rents stuff to backpackers. If he doesn’t have it, he’s not going to go out of his way to find it and make some cash selling it. He’ll point you in the right direction, though. He’s really nice like that. His store is great. What if those guys joined forces? What if the tent guy found a seam-sealing guy and tried to go big? … Read entire article »
Filed under: Practice in General
Reinventing The Wheel Into Something Else
After reading a post at My Shingle, I clicked through to a post by Jordan Furlong discussing his thoughts on the future of the practice of law. He divides what he calls “the evolution of the legal services market” into stages, the first being what he calls a “closed market,” the second being a “breached market,” the third being a “fully open market,” the fourth being an “expanding market,” and the fifth being a “multi-dimensional market.” He sees competition growing and lawyers having to drastically change what we do. We’re all going to have to think outside the box, reinvent ourselves. My initial reaction was that he was just making up stuff, providing intricate details about a fictional future where his services will be in far greater demand … Read entire article »
Filed under: Marketing, Practice in General
Getting Internet “Clients”
I’m a big deal. I have a blog. The ABA even gave me a little badgy thingy despite the fact I placed last. Regardless, I’m a badass. Check out what my enduring internet fame has given me: Is my plea going to get better? Do prosecutors quit giving offers after it’s set for trial? And this: Can I possess a firearm? Or have a look at this one: The police are at my door. I’m in New Jersey. What do I do? Need free advice ASAP. No money, LOL. I’m making these up, of course, but the real ones are worse. Trust me. Sadly, these types of messages are the fruits of my labors. I’m no Eric Mayer of Unwashed Advocate fame (have a listen here), … Read entire article »
Filed under: Marketing, Practice in General
Understanding People
TED is a wealth of inspiration. I recently watched a talk by Andrew Stanton, who wrote Toy Story. Discussing the story’s hero, Woody, he explained the character’s selfishness in the context of his various other, more positive attributes. He noted something to the effect that we are all willing to act certain ways as long as certain conditions are met. It’s true. Experience has taught me that people are rarely just bad. People are filled with desires; they want certain conditions to be met. Some want the sun and moon but thrive in modern society on far less. Others want something very simple and violate society’s norms in all kinds of horrible ways fulfilling their desires. In many instances, the issue isn’t any … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government Rants, Practice in General
An Unemployed Lawyer Is Still a Lawyer
The legal market is not good. You probably knew that already. There are unemployed lawyers everywhere and probably even more soon-to-be-unemployed-lawyers sitting in law school classrooms around the country. You probably knew that too. It seems like everyone knows it’s a rough economy for legal services, but people are entering the profession in droves. Is it that they all assume they’re the best? That they’re the ones who are going to be first in their class and skyrocket to lawyerly fame and fortune? I don’t have an awful lot of sympathy for law grads struggling to find work. It wasn’t too long ago that I had nothing but a bar number, an awareness that I had no clue what the hell I was doing, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Practice in General, Solo Practice
Creativity
I’ve had creativity on the brain lately. Always looking for ways to improve the way I represent my clients, I’ve been tying to address my faults as a lawyer by emulating in my problem areas the way I approach those aspects of my job that I believe to be my strengths. Strangely, hiding behind every single thing I ever even arguably thought I did somewhat well was creativity. It turns out that most of the supposed talents I occasionally think I have are just symptoms of the underlying disease of an occasional abundance of imagination. I sucked at cross-examination five years ago. I was terrible. Prior to that, however, I vaguely recall performing what I thought was a great cross of a cop while I was … Read entire article »
Filed under: Practice in General, Trial
Discharging Student Loans in Bankruptcy
According to the ABA Journal, Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, has been trying to drum up support for a bill to allow the discharge of private student loan debt in bankruptcy. I wish him luck. I think he’s going to fail, however, seeing how banks seem to run everything. The government happily lets them dip into its resources whenever the negative implications of their own poor decision-making come back to haunt them, and the poor graduates who are struggling with their loans don’t exactly have the kind of money it takes to elect themselves a congress. Regardless, I’m glad Senator Durbin is at least bringing up the topic. I have student loans, and I dutifully pay them each month. I probably wouldn’t take advantage of the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government Rants, Practice in General
The Conveyor Belt
There’s a dead person. That’s what starts the conveyor belt. People don’t just die anymore. Unless you’re a hundred years old with cancer and dementia and doctors gather around remaking about how incredible it is you’ve held on so long, death is murder. People are murdered by their greedy next of kin. They’re murdered by corrupt businesses. They’re murdered by drugs that are fun or helpful, occasionally the drugs that stop the murderers themselves from suffering. People are always murdered by an enemy of some kind. The enemy can be disease or lightning, but if it isn’t, the enemy is a person. When it is, we often still look for a person to blame. The person we find is guilty. The person must die too. The person needs … Read entire article »
Filed under: Death Penalty, Government Rants, Practice in General
What Would I Have Done?
I finally subscribed to Above the Law. I thought about it once before after clicking on links to it from Simple Justice, but I quickly realized that Scott Greenfield’s commentary on articles far exceeded the quality of the articles themselves. It popped up on my radar again after people kept asking me if someone there found out about something from me and didn’t attribute it, but I doubted that was true and didn’t have enough time to worry about it anyway. I forgot about the site again until recently, when Brian Tannebaum began posting there. I couldn’t figure out how to just subscribe to his posts, so I’ve been getting everything. It’s way too much to read, what with running a practice and all, but some of … Read entire article »
Filed under: Practice in General
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