Operations

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I’ll admit that there are many tasks currently handled by lawyers that a non-lawyer or pro se could take on just as competently.   At the same time, there are  certain  matters that a nonlawyer is bound to  screw  up,  often with  tragic  consequences,  as this article,  Paralegal Accused of Posing As Lawyer (Dallas Morning News,…

Law Girl of On Firm Ground posts the second installment of her biglaw-small law comparison.  This time, the focus is on the differences in client contact between the two venues (essentially, client contact at one of those places is a myth, I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one) and what Law Girl…