My Shingle

June 2005

I’m A Smiling Lawyer – Are You?

June 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

I’ve always been a smiling lawyer.  During the later round of my first year moot court competition (where I made it, out of 80 students, to the finals!), one of the judges told me that he appreciated my smile when I started my argument and since then, I’ve always smiled in court, to juries and [...]

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Doing the Right Thing

June 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

All of us solo and small firm lawyers have experience with those “dog” cases that drive us crazy and often lose us money in the process.  This article, Spotting the Losers, James McElhaney (ABA Journal June 2005) offers some ways to clear the duds off your desk – or pass off cases that may not [...]

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What’s the Hourly Cost of Running Your Office?

June 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Have you ever sat down and calculated how much it costs per hour to run your law office?  I haven’t (though I know what my overhead and expenses are from my tax returns, just haven’t reduced them to an hourly rate).  Yet it seems that most of us ought to know that number off the [...]

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A Unique Marketing Tips – Free Coffee

June 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Via Matt Homann comes this very cool marketing tip:  set yourself up in you local coffee store for a designated hour where anyone can sit down and ask a question about your area of expertise.  And, as an added bonus, coffee for anyone in the store is on you for that hour.  (That is if [...]

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Billing for Contract Attorneys – My Mixed Views

June 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

When I put up this post about the ethics of collecting a profit on fees paid to contract attorneys, I didn’t include my own thoughts because my views are mixed. From an ethical perspective, I’m fairly certain there’s no problem with the practice, so long as overall rates are reasonable.  In fact, the entire large [...]

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Do You Speak “Partner-Ese?”

June 27, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Sometimes I just know that I’ve been practicing solo too long.  One reason?  I’ve completely forgotten how to converse in “partner-ese,” that obscure language used between partners and associates where associates must read between lines, jump through hoops and do everything else short of just asking direct and time saving questions. Consider these encounters described [...]

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Is There An Ethical Obligation toPass On Cost Savingsfrom Outsourcing?

June 27, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Are lawyers required to pass on cost savings from legal outsourcing (or any other cost savings measures to clients?  Rees Morrison considers this question, first raised in another article on outsourcing to India (Daniel Brook, Legal Affairs, May/June 2005 issue)  The article quotes Thomas Morgan, a law professor at GW as stating that bar association [...]

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Some Solo Nostalgia

June 27, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Fellow small firm lawyer and former solo, David Leffler takes readers on a trip in the Solo Time Machine (GPSolo Magazine – June 2005), revisiting key moments in the history of the Internet.  David recalls 1995 – the first year that he put an email address on his stationary (I put email on my business [...]

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Maryland’s LOMA Gets A Blog

June 23, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Pat Yevics, who heads the Maryland State Bar Asssociation’s Law Office Management Assistance (LOMA) Program recently launched the LOMA blog, putting her in good company with law practice specialists Reid Trautz (DC) and Jim Calloway (OK).  The bars’ law practice management offices are one of the best developments that I’ve seen to assist solo and [...]

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The Musical Baton Passes to MyShingle

June 22, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

The musical baton and its five questions that I must answer have made their way to MyShingle, via my fellow bloggers and sezzers Stephen Terrell of Hoosier Lawyer and Bob Kraft of P.I.S.S.D.  Since I rarely blog about anything not law related, this baton gives me a chance to share more about myself, including some [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 8 comments

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