My Shingle

June 2006

Dave Swanner’s No Frills Advice on Starting a Firm

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Dave Swanner has some great, defy-the-experts advice on starting a law firm.  The essence:  Don’t overplan, get a phone line and some business cards, and just do it.  Though Dave admits in his comments that this no frills approach may not work for everyone, particularly those with major financial commitments, he’s definitely on to something.  [...]

Read more Law Practice Management 9 comments

Should you go with a judge or a jury?

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at Legal Blogwatch, I posted here  about a recent analysis by Volokh guest blogger Andy Leipold, who found that criminal defendants stand a better chance of acquittal before a jury.  I thought that the study might help some of my readers who practice criminal law to make more informed decisions about a bench or [...]

Read more Criminal Law, Practice & Policy 5 comments

Would You Run This Ad?

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

At Law Firm Blogging, Nathan Burke offers this stand-out ad with the tagline “800 Pound Gorillas are great at getting your attention…but does that make them the right attorney for you?”  As Burke admits, the ad might be a bit “out there,” but the point is valid: just getting your name out there is not [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 6 comments

Solos Have ZEAL!

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Many state ethics codes talk about the duty to zealously represent clients, but if that’s the case, where has all the zeal gone?  That’s the topic of an intriguing paper by Anita Bernstein entitled The Zeal Shortage that I read about in this post at the Legal Ethics Forum weblog. Here are some excerpts from [...]

Read more Encouragement 2 comments

Who’s paying this ABA Cost?

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

OK, as regular readers know, I’m not a huge fan of the ABA. So I didn’t feel badly to learn about this somewhat underpublicized announcement (6/23/06) about the ABA’s agreement to pay $185,000 for violating a 1996 antitrust consent decree.  From the  Department of Justice press release: The consent decree prohibited the ABA from misusing [...]

Read more MyShingle Solo 2 comments

Tips for Family Law Practitioners

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Though not every family law case ends up like this one, nonetheless, family law cases are often fraught with more emotion and problems than any other type of case.  Clients often come with misinformation about the process and unreasonable expectations about how much the case should cost. While trends such as collaborative lawyering may address [...]

Read more Ideas & Tips 2 comments

Rooting for GAL

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

It’s one thing to write about the  ethics rules relating to leaving a law firm, as I did at this post.  But the way that a law firm should treat a departing attorney and shared clients in theory and the way that things actually work in practice are often entirely different realities, as this post [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 2 comments

Solo practice: the most overlooked, underrated law option

June 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

With all of the terrific solo blogs, I’m still amazed that people still don’t get solo practice.  Among the prime offenders are Ann Israel, who writes the Advice for the Lawlorn column for New York Lawyer and her correspondents.  Israel would rather advise folks to leave the practice of law than to give solo practice [...]

Read more Legal Profession Trends 6 comments

To the Bars: Don’t Make Me Part of Your PR Scam With Mandatory Pro Bono Reporting

June 21, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Evan Schaeffer posts here that the Illinois Bar is the latest bar to implement a mandatory pro bono reporting requirement whereby lawyers must report pro bono activity annually to the bar.  According to Schaeffer, “the Illinois Supreme Court hopes that the new reporting requirement will serve as a reminder that pro-bono work is important. In [...]

Read more Legal Profession Trends 18 comments

Ed Poll Stands Up For Solos

June 18, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Here’s a huge public thanks to Ed Poll, one of today’s preeminent law practice management experts and coaches, for sticking up for solos.  In this post, Ed joins the chorus of bloggers speaking out against the New York bar’s recently proposed restrictive advertising rules.  And in this post, Ed takes on the California bar, lambasting [...]

Read more Law Practice Management 2 comments

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