My Shingle

July 2010

SoloCorps Takes the Heartland: Video-Capturing the Solo Experience

July 16, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

So, what is SoloCorps? Well, it started out as a kind of modern-day road trip — two good friends who met online, driving across the heartland from Duluth, Minnesota to Omaha, Nebraska, Foursquaring our location and tweeting up with online colleagues along the way.  But as  Lisa Solomon and I got to talking about the [...]

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The Shout-Out Lawyer

July 13, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

This tape is remarkable not so much for the content (the abuses of freemium – which is somewhat interesting) but rather, for displaying something that we rarely see:  a client giving a lawyer a shout-out. If you don’t believe me, skip ahead to 1:38 of the tape, where Ben Chestnut, MailChimp’s co-founder, describes how moving [...]

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Why You Should Register for MyShingle

July 12, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

For over seven years, MyShingle was an entirely free blog, full of open content:  hundreds of blog posts as well as static resources like Soloformania (a compilation of forms commonly used by solos), Bars, Reviewed (a summary of benefits to solos offered by state bars) and the OnLine Guide to Starting A Practice (already well [...]

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The One-Sheet Generator. Yours, FREE, At MyShingle

July 12, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

So, ever heard of a one-sheet?  Perhaps the best description comes from Wise Geek, which defines a one-sheet as a single page document designed to provide a burst of information about a product for the purpose of sales or advertising….one-sheets are also usually constructed with some care to create a flashy, appealing image which makes [...]

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Sweltering Summer Heat and Frigid Air-Conditioned Offices

July 12, 2010 by HumaRashid

A heat wave seems to be sweeping the country, and temperatures are soaring even into the triple digits. All you want to do is turn the fan on and sit around in your swimsuit. Or, perhaps if you live in one of the thirty-four U.S. cities named “Springfield,” all you want to do is set [...]

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Lindsay Lohan: Dream or Nightmare Client for Newbie Solo?

July 9, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

So here’s a practice management issue that law school doesn’t teach: You’re a newbie solo who passed the bar nine months ago and opened a law firm right afterwards.  Suddenly, the phone rings:  it’s a Hollywood superstar on the line, she’s  looking for a criminal defense lawyer to represent her and she’s picked you!  Trouble [...]

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The Declaration of Independence: The World’s Most Successful Mission Statement

July 4, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. [...]

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Postcards from the Bar Exam (circa 1988), Up At An Associate’s Mind

July 3, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

In anticipation of a trip up to Ithaca, New York (more on that later) where I attended law school and studied for the bar exam, I decided to take another trip down memory lane and rifle through an old box of writings from that time in my life.  I uncovered an essay that I’d written, [...]

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Why Biglaw Billing Is Like Brown M&M’s

July 1, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

In the context of $201 million in legal fees,  a superfluous $1600 charge — for a fancy dinner and reading a newspaper article — is chump change, something that wouldn’t have registered a blip on the client’s radar screen but for this New York Post article.  Yet while the monetary value of the $1600 charge [...]

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