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Fee Schedules – Hammering out the details

My first month of solo practice is almost over.  Overall, I am really happy with how it has been going.  I’m pulling in new clients through the marketing I am doing and I am actually doing lawyering work.  Now, along with getting better at lawyering and getting new clients, I feel like I also need to work on how I run my business.

So, I spent the evening doing some market research.  I looked up Texas Bar stats on what lawyers are charging in my area, and I realized that I am not pricing my hourly rate high enough.  Also, I’m doing a lot of flat rate work and working with payment plans, but I haven’t, until now, hammered out the specifics of payments or flat rates.

Flat rates are good for new lawyers

Flat rates are great for new lawyers, because it doesn’t matter how long a task takes me, I am only charging the client for what it should take me.  That said, the problem with setting flat rates without any other stipulations is that I don’t make any money until I finish the project.  Which is great for a short project, but if its a project that will take a month or more, even though my time involvement is fairly little, cash flow gets tight.  It is nice to have the money in my trust account and know that I am owed a certain amount, but I am not always in control of how long a process is going to take and therefore I don’t control when I get paid.

Cash flow issues with marketing

Currently, the most effective marketing I am using seems to be through Unbundled Attorney: they are bringing in a lot of good leads and I am managing to convert more than enough to get a great ROI.  The problem is that marketing costs money.  I am paying for leads, or in the case of Unbundled, I am racking up a bill for leads that is going to come due soon.  And, although I’m engaging new clients, I am fighting with the fact that the money they give me isn’t earned yet, because my flat fee agreements only state that the money is earned for the whole case.  Example:  If I am charging $2500 for a divorce, then I might have money in my trust account to pay that $2500, but the money is still the client’s money until the divorce is complete.  Therein lies the problem, I’m racking up bills, but I am not really getting paid until everything is said and done.

Structuring fee agreements differently

I talked to another attorney that works with Unbundled Attorney about the cash flow problem of flat fees and payment plans, and she had some good insight.  She suggested that I structure my fee agreements so that I am earning money on a task by task basis, so that as the client is paying the money is already earned.  This seems simple, now that I think about it, but conceptually it was a stretch at first.

There are really a couple of ways to make this work, I am tossing around which works best for my practice:

1. Bill hourly, but cap your fees.

Total attorney fees are going to be $2500.  Client is required to make a 20% down payment ($500) and then is required to make weekly payments of $100 until the total amount is paid.  So, after the down payment client owes $2000, which he will pay off in 20 weekly payments.  Engagement agreement states that attorney is earning the fees at $200 per hour, up to $2500, and upon completion of the project the full $2500 is owed.  I just track my time as I do the work, and bill weekly for the time I have spent against the trust balance.

2. Benchmark Fees

Add language to the engagement agreement that sets out fees per task completed.  Pleadings or motions are a certain amount.  Appearances are a certain amount.  Depositions are a certain amount.  Again, cap the maximum fee charged at whatever the agreed upon amount is, and state in the agreement that upon completion of the final order or judgement, the full fee amount is earned.

This is all going to take some time to work out

The problem I am having right now is that I haven’t done enough cases to know what to expect on average.  I know what I have dealt with so far, but it will probably take me a year of doing this solo to have a good idea of how many appearances an average divorce is going to require, et cetera.  Until then, I will keep making tweaks to my agreements to make sure I keep my clients in reasonable fees and don’t run my business into the ground.

Finally, follow Foonberg’s rule where possible

There is a good book by Jay Foonberg called How to Start & Build a Law Practice.  Foonberg has a rule, which I’ll paraphrase to, always get paid in advance.  I like this rule.  Because of the way I’m starting my practice, it isn’t always possible, but I sure like when I get a client who is willing and able to just give me the full retainer for the work I am doing, or going to do, and I can just bill against that, as needed.   Other lawyers on LawyerSmack have suggested that I am going to regret not following this rule more strictly, which I may, but I probably need the experience of losing some fees to let me know that.

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Back To Work – And How!

For all the complaining and moaning I did about Unbundled Attorney, I’ve got to say that I am pretty glad I signed up.  Since I signed up on Friday, I’ve gotten 6 leads from Unbundled Attorney and pulled in 5 new clients.  The ROI on this is pretty fantastic, so far.  The UA system seems to work, and many of the clients I’ve been able to sign wanted a full representation instead of Unbundled services.

Now, I have to get to work lawyering

So I’ve got clients, now I have to get to work lawyering.  Law school and the bar exam are great for learning the logical methods for lawyering and the actual substance of the law, but actually putting it to use requires practice.  There are already things that have come up that I think, “oh yeah, that is a XXXX”, but actually putting that down and making it fit into a petition or answer that I can file with the courts is a whole other ball game.

And, I’ve got to say that a lot of the logical games and talking out the problems with other lawyers, new or not, seems to help.  Multiple times today I’ve spitballed a problem with another lawyer and with my own research, plus bouncing the ideas off of someone else, gotten to the answer.  The process works, and apparently the logic from law school actually does help, but I do have to say that real lawyering wears me out.

But, I do feel pretty hopeful with the whole thing.  Not to say that I haven’t dealt with imposter syndrome all day, but it is nice to understand the client’s basic need and then just have to drill down on the specific issues as they come up.

Cyclical challenges of new lawyering

The first week of practice I had a feeling of “I’m getting new clients, but what do I do with them?”

Then, after those first weeks, I got the work done and got back to “I don’t have work, I need to find clients!”

Now, I’m back to “I’ve got clients, now how am I going to find time to do all this work?”

I suspect this is going to be an ongoing thing.  I got a chance to spend a good deal of my time with an experienced lawyer yesterday, and he gave me some good “older-lawyer” advice, including “Just do the work, the rest will take care of itself.”  I am going to keep that in mind and just trudge through.  Although I am pretty worn out from talking to new clients and trying to figure out how to help them all day, I do have to say that I am probably happier with my new practice today than I have been yet.  I guess the thrill of signing new engagement letters is a big deal.

I slacked on getting anything written yesterday, so I’m going to have to make up for it later this week, but for now I am worn out and only feel like 500 words are going to come out.

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Dress For Success

One of the perks of my previous job was that as a senior manager for a railroad construction company, I was able to dress in jeans most days and not feel out of place.  After passing the bar, I tried to wear a suit to work a few times and felt pretty out of place, so I gave up and went back to jeans and a shirt.

New Year, new look

I have enough suits to wear a suit every day for work.  I’ve lost some inches since I bought some of the suits, so I probably need to get the ones that don’t fit quite right fixed up so that they fit me properly.  That said, since I am hoping to spend a lot more of my time in court this coming year, I am going to try to wear a suit to work every day.  I might take Fridays off if I don’t have court, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to pull off jeans much anymore.

I feel like clients expect a certain something

I think clients expect their lawyers to be well dressed.  I know that I see people dressed in suits around town and I immediately think they are lawyers.  In fact, I am often surprised when I see people wearing a suit and tie for work that aren’t lawyers.  This Thursday I was in my office in jeans and a tee because I didn’t expect to do much client-facing work that day, and got a request for an appointment which led me to go home and change into something more professional.

Not only does it look good, suits seem to change my attitude

When I put on a suit, especially a good suit, I feel more formidable.  More confident.  The idea that a simple wardrobe change would make a difference in the way that I carry myself seems a little bit silly to me, but I am conscious of  the occurrence.

Where to get decent suits cheap?

I don’t like wearing cheap suits. I have a couple of really cheap suits that I wear as a last resort, but I really prefer a decent suit to work in.  Buying decent suits is a pretty serious investment, but I imagine it will be worth it in the end.  My favorite suit right now is one that I purchased on Indochino.com, in what I’ve heard called “heteronormative blue”.  I think that describes it pretty well.  Men’s Wearhouse has a pretty decent selection of suits as well, but their business model of 2-for-1 makes buying suits from them costly because you have to buy two at a time.

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I Got Bored Before Christmas and Signed Up For Unbundled Attorney

Although we had snow earlier this year, that kind of shenanigans is not typical for Southeast Texas.  For the years that I’ve been here Christmas has been chilly at most, and some years downright warmish. That said, the Courts are still closed and people are still more focused on their holiday preparations than getting any real work done.  I, on the other hand, feel more productive this Christmas season than I have in a while. I remember thinking last year that the majority of the month of December was a waste of payroll for the company that I left to start my law practice, because of everyone’s preoccupation with the holidays.  That said, as a new business owner, I am trying to make the most of the slow time.

Cranking up the marketing for the New Year

Yesterday (Friday the 22nd), I decided at about noon, after getting a message on LinkedIn from the salesbro from Unbundled Attorney about a new Unbundled Attorney podcast featuring someone I’ve corresponded with on LawyerSmack, and listening to that podcast, that I should probably pull the trigger on Unbundled Attorney to start the New Year.  So, I sent an email to Unbundled saying that we should do the deal, and an hour later the salesbro called me from whatever beach he was sitting on (I am pretty sure I heard seagulls in the background of the call).

I’ve said it before, I don’t always like salespeople, and some of the sales tactics this guy have used have bothered me in the past, but he offers a solid product and I don’t fault him for doing his job.  I’ve got to say, he knows his pitch and he does a good job wrangling difficult attorneys (imagine how much work it must be to convince naturally skeptical attorneys of the benefit of a service like this).  That said, once I had decided to just do it, despite my skepticism, a lot of what he said was useful.

You want me to what?

The sales guy told me we were going to role play a script, and I for 30 seconds I thought that he might be mistaken, but he gently convinced me that we needed to practice what I was going to say to prospective clients.  We went through it, and at one point he had to stop me and scold me for not following the script, but we got through it.  At the end of it, I felt better about the whole thing and I am pretty hopeful that this is going to work.

I committed to a larger geographical area than I originally wanted to, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.  Originally, I only wanted to serve Jefferson, Chambers, Hardin and Orange counties, but the sales guy also convinced me to take on Galveston.  I objected to the idea at first because Galveston is practically farther than I’d like to go, even though geographically it isn’t that far – it just takes 2 hours to get there no matter how you go.  Sales guy suggested that I look into virtual office space and if I get multiple leads in Galveston I would just stay the night there.

What have I got to lose?

My initial hesitation and worry about this service still exists, but I have had a couple of conversations now with an attorney in Mississippi who has done very well using this system – she uses it almost exclusively for new business – and her story sort of inspired me to try.

I’ve also talked to an attorney who recently canceled the Unbundled Attorney services after about a week of trying it.  He didn’t have a great conversion rate on the leads, I think he got business from 2 of the 8 leads he paid for, but his ROI was still about 200%.  Unbundled Attorney itself, as well as the attorney I know who is happy with the service, both say that the typical conversion rate on leads is much higher than 25%, but even if I only make 200% ROI, I’ll probably be ok with the service.

Unbundled doesn’t require a contract, but they have asked me to try 15-20 leads before I make any decisions about the service. I was hesitant at first about this, but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think 15-20 leads is unreasonable.  There are a lot of stories on the Unbundled site about successes by new lawyers with their services, so I’m hoping that I’ll have the same results.

New software service lead

One of the things that Unbundled suggested I try out for my practice was Lexicata, an automated intake service.  I like the idea of the service, and I hope I can make it work in my business regardless of whether I have a smash success with Unbundled. Lexicata lets me send intakes and retainer agreements to clients on their mobile devices, so no print-sign-scan-email process is necessary.  I really like this idea, and for what they charge per month I think the service will pay for itself.

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Getting Paying Work As A New Solo

The hardest part about being a new solo is sitting in my office thinking about all the ways I’m not making any income today.  The only way that I can get over that feeling is to try to do things that will bring in new work.  Blogging helps, but sometimes blogging doesn’t really feel like it is going to pay off.   So, I’m making a list of different sources of work that seem to work for other lawyers, or that I have been working on developing myself.

Court appointments

The first day I was a new solo I went to my local bar association window at the courthouse and talked to the wonderful bar staff there about getting started.  They gave me a list of the different courts that I should talk to and what I needed to do to get appointed to each.

Before getting getting on the appointment list at the probate courts, the civil courts, and the family courts for some cases, I needed to get my Attorney Ad Litem certificate from the Texas Bar.  The bar association offers the course and certificate for a discounted rate, and I was able to get the packet from them and get started on that.  The course is a 4 hour video course and some reading.  Once done with that, I submitted my packet to the bar and have to wait for the certificate.

I also was instructed to go talk to the family court judges and their staff.  I did that.  One of the judges asked me to sit in on his court for a while to get the lay of the land, and it seems to me that if a judge asks me to do something I probably should.  So I sat in on his court a couple of days.  It was interesting, to say the least.  I haven’t gotten an appointment from this yet, but I feel like it will probably happen soon.  The family court docket is pretty busy.

Next, I stuck my head into the office of one of the criminal court judges.  He welcomed me in and spent almost an hour explaining to me how things work in his court.  I was impressed with him, and I was very happy to have a judge that welcomed new lawyers to his court.  He also walked me into the office of the other criminal misdemeanor judge and introduced me to him, and his staff. Finally, and maybe most importantly, he walked me through the fee request motion so I could get paid.  After signing up, and spending a morning sitting in on criminal court, I received an appointed case yesterday.

Veteran’s Administration cases

You can also sign up with the Veteran’s Administration to do VA benefits cases.  If your VA cases go to appeal, you can apply for attorney’s fees under the Equal Access for Justice Act (EAJA) if you win the case (under certain circumstances).  These EAJA fees are statutorily set and based on cost-of-living adjustments, but the fee seems pretty reasonable.  I’ve talked to a couple of attorneys that are advocates of making money this way.

Lawyer referral services

I’ve talked about this before, but lawyer referral services seem like a worthy way to make money.  The Texas Bar has a service that offers referrals for a large part of the state, but my Local Bar does the referral service for my area.  I pay a yearly fee and agree to do $20 half-hour initial consults with prospective clients and then can charge them as I see fit from there.  I’ve heard that this system has its drawbacks, but I’m willing to try it out.

Legal insurance providers

There are various legal insurance providers set up around the nation that allow their members to pay a monthly fee to have access to a lawyer when they need them.  I signed up for this a month ago and have gotten one case out of them so far.  I’m only allowed to charge the fees that I agreed to at the outset of my relationship with the system, but income is income.  I’m using Texas Legal, but I know of others as well.

Lead generation

There are some decent lead generation systems that seem to meet with ethical requirements.  They charge a flat fee per lead they drop in your mailbox, and it is your responsibility to convert the clients.  I’m wary of these because I don’t know how well they curate their leads, but I know attorneys who have had success with these programs.  The one that comes to mind is Unbundled Attorney, which I have been flirting with signing up for, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.

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Disclaimers in Lawyer Advertising (In Texas)

This is a bit of a rant. And it certainly isn’t giving any legal advice.  Nor does reading this create any kind of attorney-client relationship.  Furthermore, I don’t claim to be an expert on Texas Legal Ethics, and have not been granted any special certification of ethics by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, the Pope, or President Trump.  And there are no fees attached, but if there were, I wouldn’t publish them because ethics.

Advertising rules are hard

The Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct are hard to follow, and I have a law degree.  I’ve spent my day reading through them and trying to make sense of the requirements.  They are pretty non-committal on what is and isn’t required.  The only true mandate that I can 100% say I believe to be objectively obtainable is the one that requires attorneys to send the Bar $100 every time they want to make a new advertisement.  The rest is really debatable.

Rule 7 of the TDRPC talks about advertising.  Summing it up, it says:

  1. Don’t chase ambulances (or, more generally, target clients because something has happened to them that they need a lawyer for).
  2. Be honest (do not be deceptive by commission or omission).
  3. Don’t say you “specialize” unless you have paid for your certification of Specialization (to the Texas Bar).
  4. Send the bar $100 each time you want to create a new advertisement*.

*Blogs are probably not advertising.  And “Tombstone Advertising”, ads that just have name, address, practice areas, and other identifying information are exempted from the $100 fee.

That is a huge simplification, but the rules have made me bitter

The rules have lots of if this then thats in them, and talk about required disclaimers without ever actually saying what the required disclaimers are, and constantly refer you to other sections of the rule.  I reread the rules multiple times, and got some secondary interpretations of them, and from what I can tell I am doing everything right with my advertising.  That said, I don’t like that the rules are as hard to follow as they are, because it seems like this should be easier.  I just want to get clients.

Required disclaimers

Like I said, the rules mention a need for required disclaimers, without explicitly saying what the required disclaimers are.  That said, I’ve been able to pick up the following:

  1. Disclose the location of your principal office.
  2. Disclose a lawyer who is in charge of your advertising (probably you).
  3. If you aren’t a specialist but advertise a practice area, maybe disclaim that you aren’t a specialist.
  4. If you commit to fees in your advertising, you have to stick with the fees you committed to.
  5. If you know at the outset of the advertising that there is a likelihood that you are going to refer work out that you get from the ads, you need to let the readers know.
  6. If you talk about past results, disclaim that your past successes don’t predict the outcomes of future cases.
  7. If your advertisement is in another language, then your disclaimers should be in the same other language.

This is a major simplification of the rules and if you just follow the rules above without actually reading rule 7 fourteen times, you are probably going to get disbarred.  But that is a decent summary for rant purposes.

The purpose of the rules is to protect the public

The idea behind the majority of these rules, apart from the “send $100 to your Bar if you want to advertise” rule, is that we sophisticated, unscrupulous lawyers need these rules opposed upon us to protect the unsuspecting public from our nefarious ways.  And I get that.  We have a whole lot of training and experience in crafting a message out of the truth that fits our needs, so I understand how we could use advertising to really dupe the consumers.  And I am all for protecting the consumers, without them we don’t have anything to do, like vampires and villagers.

That said, I think that the “send $100” rule is a little bit ridiculous.  We are expected to follow the rules, because if we don’t it is a disciplinary violation, so having us submit our advertisements to the Bar for review seems a bit like the Bar doesn’t trust us.  I, personally, am going to do my best to comply with the advertising rules because I am pretty pleased that I have a law license and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.

So, that means for now I am going to keep sending my lawyer advertising to the Bar for review, $100 at a time…

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Man Plans and Then Works On Marketing All Day

There is a saying “Man plans and God laughs”.  I had planned to get together with some other professionals today to do some networking.  This didn’t work out.  I didn’t feel like wearing a tie today, and its almost Christmas.  I still need to spend some time getting with other professionals, but with my new focus on the Spanish speaking market I decided that I should spend my day making a pamphlet to promote my services in Spanish.

Rabbit-holes everywhere

I don’t know if I was overthinking it, but I wanted to look into some theory about creating a trim-fold pamphlet before I got started.  Since there are basically six useable spaces on a pamphlet, I wanted to know where to put the critical content.  I really didn’t get any useful advice on that from any sources on the internet, but I just went with it.

Then, I decided I needed to look into marketing to the latino population.  There is a whole lot of content on the internet about marketing to latinos, but I realized that everyone basically referenced the same playbook and gave pretty nebulous advice about “market to the culture”.  I’m not sure what that means.

Then, I got sidetracked into a couple of Pew surveys talking about whether people of Latin-American decent prefer the term “latino” or “hispanic”.  I like latino more, but since I don’t qualify, I guess I was wrong – sort of.  According to Pew, people of Latin-American decent in Texas prefer the term Hispanic to Latino.  Or, more accurately, of those that prefer one designation over the other, the majority prefer Hispanic to Latino.  I’ll keep that in mind.

Then I looked into more pamphlet design theory, but really got no where.  So I looked at Pamphlet design software.  I have an Office 365 subscription, which includes MS Publisher for Windows, which would do a sufficient job for my purposes, but I don’t have a Windows machine.  So I looked at an Adobe Cloud solution, which was nice, but a little much for my purposes.  I ended up going for a Vistaprint pamphlet design template that allowed me to design the pamphlet online.

Writing “copy” is hard

I spent a significant part of the day trying to write catchy publicity copy that I could use for the pamphlet.  I am pretty happy with what I got down. It took a lot longer than I was hoping for, but it looks pretty good and I am excited to get this going.  Because of legal advertising rules, getting the right wording on the advertisement can be pretty tough.  I had to go to the advertising rules a couple of times so that I could make sure I wasn’t violating anything.

Strict bar rules

Now that the pamphlets are done, it is just a matter of waiting to get them and then starting to hand them out.  Well, not quite, I also have to translate them back to English and send copies to the State Bar for review.  This rules seems to be Texas specific, and is probably there to protect the public.  It isn’t that big of a deal, except the bar charges $100 for each advertisement they review.  I think that once I get the ads reviewed, I’ll have to hold on to the design for a while to get my money’s worth out fo the review fee.

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Target Area Marketing Plan

This post is basically pure brainstorming, so it might not go where I want it to.  I keep coming back to the idea that I want to target a specific kind of clients instead of targeting a specific area of the law.  I know that lots of people say that you should get into one practice area and get good at it, but I really am interested in serving a type of client more than a specific area.

Filling the need

I live in an area of Texas with a racial distribution of over 10% latinos, according to Wikipedia.  Now, according to the Texas Bar, 644 attorneys are active in this county.  The logic behind the next statement is probably easily arguable, but it seems that 10% of the attorneys in the area should be latino (and therefore, should speak Spanish).  That said, according to the local bar and to most of the other attorneys that I know, only a few attorneys in the county speak Spanish.

So, instead of targeting a specific practice area, I am really interested in just targeting the Spanish speaking community, since I am fluent in Spanish.  The abundance of Spanish speaking clients mixed with the dearth of Spanish speaking lawyers is a major draw for this client-base, but it isn’t the only one:  Spanish speaking clients are purported to pay on time, this is probably a huge generalization, but I am willing to believe it;  Spanish speaking clients are likely to tell their Spanish speaking friends about the great Spanish speaking lawyer they found; and, (another generalization) Spanish speaking clients probably are pretty decent people who have run into a little problem they can’t solve themselves.

Client base decided, now what?

That is the rub.  Now that I have picked the client base, I have to figure out how to get my name out there.  Like I mentioned previously, once I start getting a few Spanish speaking clients, I’ll probably get more by word-of-mouth, but how do I get the original set?

Some ideas I’ve had are:

  1. Flyers

    My wife, a Spanish speaking Latina, keeps suggesting I come up with a flyer of some sort to leave in the Latino-owned businesses.  I like the idea, but I struggle with what the content needs to be.  Although I am not Latino, and don’t appear to be Latino, publishing that my first law license is from Mexico and that I speak Spanish will help.  Not only that, I probably need to summarize the areas that I think are going to be the most useful and talk about the struggles that people may face in their daily lives, but I need to talk about them in Spanish.  This option is probably the one I need to try first, because I think it is going to be relatively the cheapest.

  2. Radio Ads

    There is a Spanish speaking radio station locally that I think will help to advertise.  I need to come up with a decent ad and try to record it in Spanish so that I can get it broadcast on the radio.  This is going to be a little more expensive, but I have heard that radio is a pretty effective media for publicity.

  3. Presentations at civic organizations

    There is are a couple of Latino civic organizations locally.  I think I might try to give some talks to those on an area of the law that affects the Latino community.  I immediately think of immigration law, but I think that focus may be shortsighted, this community needs a lawyer that can help in all areas of the law, not just immigration.  Also, I think I could advertise with the Catholic Church that is predominantly Spanish speaking – I have an ad in my own church’s bulletin and wouldn’t mind doing the same with the church down the road (although I have yet to see any result from my church bulletin).

I’m going to keep looking for different ideas that might help to break into this area, but I am also confident that word will get around.  Because I am on the court appointment lists, I will get clients who are Spanish speaking through those, and those people will tell their friends and relatives that they know a Spanish speaking attorney.

I probably need to keep working on the idea, but the more I dabble in different areas of the law the more I begin to think that General Practice is really right for me.  Now I just have to get good at everything.

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The Week Ahead – Week 3 Plan

Before I get started, I have to admit that I missed a day yesterday.  I got busy and got home later than usual, and didn’t have time to get my 500 words out.  I had planned to do this “The Week Ahead” post yesterday, so what I had planned for today hadn’t been done yet, but now it has, so I will write about what happened and not what I am planning.  That said, I don’t know if this post is going to get to 500 words or 1000, so I’ll see if I need to write an extra post today if I don’t get to 1000 words.  Bare with me.

The week ahead – New post category

In an attempt to organize the blog a little more, I want to dedicate my Sundays to writing a tentative plan for the week ahead.  I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to do during the week, but using this format I can get it down on the page and will hopefully be more organized with what I end up writing about.

Monday – Attorney Ad Litem Certificate

My goal for Monday is (was) get my Attorney Ad Litem certificate submitted to the State Bar of Texas.  In order to act as a court appointed guardian, or to represent guardians in a case in Texas, attorneys need to have an Attorney Ad Litem Certificate.  This certificate is outlined in the Texas Government Code §81.114 and requires that attorneys seeking the certificate take 4 hours of courses related to law relating to guardianship, disability issues, and other issues relating to dealing with people who may need guardianship.

Getting the certificate is pretty simple, the State Bar page gives a link from the CLE tab to courses that apply to the Ad Litem Certificate, and once you take those courses you submit an affidavit to the State Bar stating that you have done so, along with a payment of $25.  My local bar association offers a deal on the courses and certificate, and I like dealing with them, so I took them up on that.  Last week I paid for the course materials and brought them to my office, where I spent the afternoon viewing the courses and reading the material.

Then today, I returned the course materials to bar office at the courthouse and the local bar staff got my affidavit sent to the State Bar.  I wanted to get this done today, because the local bar closes for Christmas break on Wednesday, but they said that if they get everything turned in today they might be able to sweet talk the State Bar office to send the certificate before they go.  That would be nice, because I could be on the appointments list as soon as the Courts open up in January.

Tuesday – Docket Call at CPS Court

Tuesdays at 8:30am our County Court at Law has CPS docket.  I’m already on the appointments list for this Court, but when I met the presiding Judge for this Court last week he asked that I sit in on a few cases before getting any appointments.  I sat through the Court last week and the Judge saw me there, but didn’t appoint me to anything.  I am hoping I get an appointment this week, so I am going to suit up and show up bright and early tomorrow morning.  These cases seem to be fairly simple to handle, and I am working on getting trial experience more than actually worrying about big paydays right now.  I want to get my name out and get known around the courthouse in the next couple of months.

The CPS Court seems to get done after a couple of hours, so if I’m lucky I’ll get out of CPS Court in time to sit in on the criminal arraignments at the local misdemeanor court.  This is another chance to pick up appointments and get my name known.  I made it to this last week and got to see the process.  Misdemeanors don’t pay really well, but being one of the only Spanish speaking attorneys on the appointment list should be pretty lucrative.

Wednesday – Meeting with other professionals

I am going to try to set up meetings with a couple of other professionals on Wednesday.  I have a little bit of real client work to do, but I really want to bring coffee to a couple of local professionals (I’m thinking a CPA and a Financial Planner) so to hopefully get my name out there.  Again, this is planting the seeds for the future, but I want to get my name out there so that these guys think of me for Wills & Trusts work when their clients require it.  I’m going to try to keep this kind of thing pretty local, I’d like to target clients close to my office, so I need to get in with the people in these areas who can recommend me for work that way.

Thursday – Research and writing

I don’t have anything planned for Thursday, and I am hoping that I can spend the day researching and writing.  My goal is to write one post in English and another in Spanish, and since my target audience for both is a little different I am going to have to research two different topics for those days.  The process for research and writing starts with a list of possible topics, then I’ll narrow it down to the two that interest me most and research those.  Because this brand of writing takes a little more forethought than these posts, I am guessing that writing two blog posts is going to take me most of the day.

The one thing that was drilled into me by a good friend of mine that does web design is that content is king.  The more quality information I have on my sites, the more I will show up in Google searches, and the more people will click on my site and call me.

Friday – Criminal Court and Video

Not in that order.  Criminal Court is in the afternoon, and I want to sit through another session before I get thrown into actually representing clients as a criminal attorney. I think after observing a few courtroom sessions I will be more likely to be able to actually help my clients intelligently and won’t feel like as much of an imposter doing so.

And, since I am already going to be wearing a suit, I should look at doing a video.  I’ll take some time to look at one of the topics that I discarded from Thursday and do enough research on that topic to be able to pull a video out of it.  I haven’t done video before, so I might pick something relatively simple so that I can worry more about the technical aspects of video instead of trying to get a long, substantive video made.  Nobody has time to watch a long video of some new lawyer talking about a long, in depth legal topic anyway.  I think I might try to do this on a topic that I already have a decent grasp of, like employment law, so that I can do a little ad-libbing and not rely as heavily on the script.  If I get into video, I’ll eventually have to get some better video equipment, but for now I am going to try to shoot it all with my iPad.

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A Needed Day of Rest

While it really hadn’t occurred to me until this evening when I was gettin ready to write my daily 500-words, I really did absolutely nothing today that resembles working as a new solo (although I sat down and reviewed another attorney’s revisions of a letter I wrote yesterday before writing this).  I think this is the first time since I went full-solo that I hadn’t done something related to my new business.

Sometimes, you have to take a break

It was a much needed break.  I’ve been working up to 12-hour days and hustling constantly to get up to speed on being a lawyer.   While this hustle is probably necessary, or at least it is something that I feel like I need to do, it was really nice to spend time today with my kids and wife.  We went shopping, we had a nice breakfast at church, and the wife and I even went on a little coffee date this evening.

Taking a break helps me reflect

That said, I did some reflection after realizing that if I take time off I don’t really have a lot to talk about for a blog post.  This led me to think about not having something to talk about for a blog post even on many of the days that I do work all day on my new business.  So I think starting Monday I am going to change the way I work on this blog a little bit.  I’m still going to try to post every day, but I am going to spend more time during my day researching an idea or topic for the blog to make it more coherent and less like a end of the day mental dump.

I might even spend some time working on a sort of schedule, so that on Mondays I talk about productivity tools, Tuesdays are ethics days, Wednesdays are whatever, and so on.  I’d like to do a recap of the week on Sundays, because although I am planning on writing daily blog posts, I am not sure that this is going to be a compelling read after a year of writing unless I do something to give the posts more form and structure.  I can only talk about getting on appointments lists and new marketing so many times before I, as well as any readers, get tired of the same thing recycled.

 

Don’t call it self-care

As much as I hate to sound overly spiritual or fru-fru, one of the topics I think I am going to want to talk about is “Self-Care”, although I doubt I’m going to be able to bring myself to call the topic “Self-Care” because that makes me think of Yoga Instructors and Spiritual Healers, which I don’t know if I want to associate myself with.  Nonetheless, I am aware that being a lawyer is a pretty stressful profession, and I’ve seen the horrible statistics about lawyer suicides and lawyer depression, so I think “Taking Care of Yourself” is probably something I’d like to talk about.  And, sometimes, not being a lawyer for a day is what I need to recharge my batteries and take care of myself.

And some ridiculous, ego driven fun

Finally, for something kind of fun and maybe mildly neurotic, I got a stamp of my logo made last week.  It arrived last night.  I like the idea of being able to stamp folders I give to clients and other promotional material with the logo, so I am excited to have the stamp.  I’ll get to stamping folders, et cetera, but for now I’ve been having fun stamping my kids, covers of my books, and a lot of other random stuff around the house with my logo.  I even found myself looking at the pit bull last night wondering if a logo stamp would work on her forehead.  I refrained.