Archive for June 2009
New York Bar Asks What Solos Want and Tries to Deliver
Not sure how I missed this when it first issued, but via Leonard Sienko of the NYSBA General Practice Blog, I learned about the New York State Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Report, issued June 18, 2009. I approached the report with some trepidation, fearful that like many others of its kind, it would…
Read MoreWalter James, Environmental Counseling and Environmental Litigation
Though you don’t find many solos practicing in areas like environmental law, that’s Walter D. James expertise. Walter focuses his practice primarily on environmental counseling and environmental litigation, which includes civil enforcement and cost recovery litigation, criminal defense and toxic tort/property damage matters. Though the law firm is located in Grapevine, Texas, the Firm’s practice…
Read MoreMyShingle Profile: Jay Fleischman, New York Bankruptcy Lawyer
The MyShingle profiles are an experimental feature here at MyShingle – to offer some insight into the careers of practicing solo and small firm attorneys, with questions on how they got their start to what gets them going in the morning. My thanks to Jay Fleischman and Walter James (next post) for serving as guinea…
Read MoreClients Search Globally, Act Locally
Over at my roost at Nolo Legal Marketing Blawg, I posted about the Google Local Business Center where in exchange for listing a business, users receive access to a suite of tools that enables them to track traffic to their site and even identify the locations where clients are coming from. I registered my firm…
Read MoreThe Solo Bandwagon Marches On…
This week’s news brings a handful of law firm start up stories. First, the Las Vegas Sun profiles two young female lawyers, Tara Young and Elizabeth Sorokac who lost their jobs in February and have already started their own practices. Both had been practicing for only a few years and never expected to start a…
Read MoreHappy Fathers’ Day to the Unsung Solo Dads
My dad was what you’d call a company man; he worked as a chemist for a major pharmaceutical company for 35 years until he retired in 1997, avid to spend time with his first grandchild and the six others who would later follow. My dad’s job didn’t offer much flexibility in terms of dress…
Read MoreWhy Is Findlaw Charging Money for Inaccurate Forms When the Correct Forms Are Available Online for Free?
OK, so I understand that a company like Thomson Reuters doesn’t "get" the concept of free. After all, Westlaw, one of Thomson Reuters’ flagship legal products costs a pretty penny. Even so, it’s one thing to charge for a product that delivers value, as Westlaw undeniably does. It’s quite another to extract payment for materials…
Read MoreShingular Sensation Scott Greenfield Wins Landmark Victory Protecting Lawyer Speech, With Help from the Blogosphere
On June 9, 2009, New York solo and Simple Justice blogger Scott Greenfield won a unanimous, landmark ruling from the the New York Court of Appeals in Stern v. Bluestone, which ruled that unsolicited, informational faxes distributed by solo Andrew Lavoot Bluestone on legal malpractice issues do not violate the Telephone_Consumer_Protection_Act_of_1991 or the Junk Fax…
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