Fast Texas Divorce

It’s been a while since my last update, partly because I’ve been busy, and partly because I’m debating on whether or not I’m even going to keep the blog running.  I’m just not sure that it contributes anything to my practice and since the novelty has worn off, it just isn’t fun anymore.

Also, I expected there to be an endless stream of supplies to review and photos of interesting things happening to post.  There either isn’t, or I’m not creative enough to see them.  I will say one thing… my review of Clear is dead wrong.  If you’re thinking about cancelling your cable connection to save a few bucks in order to go 4G, it isn’t worth it.  Not with a day long outage every month.

Most of the readers here are interested in the business side of everything, but ultimately, I’m not prepared to let that cat too far out of the bag.  I will say that the billboard generates clients.  Google AdWords generates hits to your website, but doesn’t seem to be as cost effective as a good bulletin location.  Good office location is key, so if you’re starting a practice either out of your home or in a highrise where no one will see you, I would suggest you think twice.  I do have clients.  They come in, I hear their case, plug in their credit card information into PayPal Virtual Terminal, and start up their case.  It’s really as simple as that.  I’m working.  I also regularly reject cases.  If it looks like more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll let the next guy handle it.

I’m not making huge money, but the business is building and I’m left with less and less downtime, which means that this blog will be gone sooner or later.  I could make it really interesting, but that would just open myself up to various liabilities.  I could keep it here and boring, but there’s no point.  I will say that there have been a couple naysayers in the comments on previous posts, and they were wrong on some things.  A – All divorces are contested.  B – A new attorney cannot compete.  That’s not to say that all this is easy.  It isn’t.  I work more hours alone in an office than I ever did in a large office surrounded by people who’s company I generally enjoyed.  And I make less money doing it.  But in 5 years, when I’m making good money and I can afford to golf on Friday afternoon instead of work, I’ll think I’ve made the right decision.  And when I discover that I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to do so, I’ll know.

Till next time, if there is one.

“When you start your own business, you’ll work twice as hard and make half as much as you expect.”  - Someone

If you’re starting a new practice, there are going to be mistakes made.  Mistakes are a learning opportunity.  What have I learned?

First, the price advertised is seldom the final price.  Don’t be afraid to ask for a discount.

When you’re first starting out, the primary concern in your head, so long as you’re anything like me, will be money.  You’ll begin looking at charts and graphs and imagining how each envelope and pen will affect your bottom line.  I’m at the beginning stages of this.

So one thing I’ve become comfortable doing, which I wasn’t 6 months ago, is demanding deals and discounts.  Sometimes, they don’t come.  Other times, they do.  And it doesn’t cost anything to ask.  You haggle over the purchase of a car or home, why not haggle over that bulletin sized billboard on the freeway?  As long as you’re paying over $1,000 per month, shop around and play vendors against each other.  They’re not new at this.  You are.  If you want to not pay full price, you’re going to need to at least try and play their game.

Second, everything will take longer than you think it should.  Plan ahead for this.

This is something that I need to work on.  I’ll admit that.  Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

I approved a business card design on 11-23-09, and expected delivery on 11-25-09.  “It takes about a day for them to arrive after approval,” they said.  New delivery date?  12-5-09.

A large backlit sign seemed to be perpetually delayed due to general mistakes and rain.  1 week late.

I ordered AT&T business lines through the internet and was told it would take a full week to get them installed.  I expected it to be more like a couple days, especially since the whole process would take about 20 minutes.  Nope.  Scheduled delivery of lines was 7 days, and I’m lucky that I called a couple days before delivery day because the online order had been lost and was never turned into an actual order for service.

Don’t procrastinate or think that the services you want to purchase will be operational instantly.  They won’t.

I’ve become more and more familiar with the County Court lately.  If you’ll remember, I posted recently regarding paying bills, and whether or not signing up for case appointments is worth the trouble.  I’ll tell you, I have signed up for misdemeanor cases in County Court here in Bexar County and so far, I’m just not sure it is.

The good part about the deal is that they assign cases fairly quickly.  1 week after signing up, I was assigned my first case.  This case involved a woman who allegedly, stole between 20 and 500 dollars worth of services.  That case wound up being dismissed, as she had paid the restitution before I had a chance to interview her.  Needless to say, I wasn’t able to bill very many hours for the case.  According to page 51 the “Plan“, I am capped at 2 billable hours at $25 dollars anyway, so this case was more or less a dud from a money making perspective.

But I did learn a few things.  I learned little things, like where the closest and cheapest parking next to the courthouse is, and where the voucher forms for fees are located in County Court #1.  I learned that going to the court house will save you much time and frustration if you’re unable to get a person, let alone questions answered, over the phone.

So when today I was assigned my second case, one that will probably not be so easily dismissed (alleged family assault with injury), I feel much better about it.  Maybe they threw me an easy case to start with so I can get a toe wet before more difficult things come my way.  More likely it was pure luck, or unluck, depending on how one sees it.  Either way, I do know that this program is valuable to not only indigent defendants, but also indigent attorneys.

If you’re an attorney in Texas struggling to make ends meet, I would urge you to visit this website.

Task Force on Indigent Defense

In it, you’ll be able to find all the information you need to sign up for court appointed cases, including needed qualifications, required equipment, and fee schedules.  Take cases; pay bills.

Been busy lately, so please pardon the sparseness of the posts.  I am keeping up with this blog.  I promise.

While in law school, it was assumed that a certain percentage of students would hang a shingle as soon as they were licensed.  Who those students were was anyone’s guess as everyone was trying to get a job with either a large firm or the state of Texas.  But a few of my personal friends would always get a little twinkle in their eyes if I brought up the possibility of going to solo right out of the gate.  We’d discuss everything from lifestyle to money, definitions of failure and success.

A common topic of argument was always the issue of malpractice insurance.  Part of the reason we argued about whether or not it was necessary, what it covered, etc… was because none of us had ever bothered to call an insurance agent to find out how much it cost.  And there were precious few resources online to guide us.  We’d have better luck estimating how much our kidneys were worth on the black market than estimating how much simple malpractice insurance would cost a new attorney right out of the gate.

But now that I actually am going to have an office, clients, and possibly a staff, insurance is something that I need to actually look at.  Looking at my past conversations about it with friends now seems silly, as a basic policy can be had for as little as $700 to $1,700 a year.  Would you believe that one of my good friends was convinced he’d either not be able to go solo like he wanted or not carry insurance because it would be prohibitively expensive?  If insurance costs $700 a year, that would make it cheaper than the utility bill for the office itself.  I simply don’t buy that malpractice insurance is too expensive to carry, especially in an age where clients are as litigious as their attorneys and a cell phone bill can be well in excess of $100 a month.

So like any good lawyers, you’re probably asking, “Yeah, but what about the policy limits?”  A basic policy covers you for $100,000 per incident, $300,000 aggregate, which means that as long as you keep your premiums current, you can have 3 horrible malpractice claims and still keep your business.  Who knows what the premiums will spike to after those claims though?  An expensive policy will cover your defense costs in the event of a grievance or malpractice claim while an inexpensive one won’t.  Either way, you’re getting a lot of insurance for not a lot of money.  Maybe attorneys simply don’t commit errors so often and to the degree we’re afraid of coming out of law school.

Even if that were true malpractice insurance is essential.  There’s no getting around it.  It’s as essential as car or homeowner’s insurance and way cheaper.  One thing to look out for, though, is that the longer your practice, the greater risk you are to the pool, which means that despite your increased experience and knowledge, your premium will increase.  Luckily, they plane out after about 5 years, or so I’m told.  A first year attorney with 10 clients less of a risk than the attorney who’s practiced, with varying degrees of success, for 3 year and carries a list of 90 clients.  That’s the logic anyway.  So to those solos and students who are afraid of the costs of malpractice insurance, I say, “Don’t worry.”  A couple clients a month should cover it.

Are there too many lawyers? Maybe.  Depends on how you define it.

Right now, if the requirement is that attorneys are taking non-attorney jobs, then yes, there are probably too many lawyers. You could do an experiment, because I saw this play out in real life a dozen times over the last few months. Go on Craigslist and put up a job posting for a paralegal position. Say that the pay is $15 per hour and that the paralegal will do basic work (answering phones, interviewing clients, etc…).  Say that you’re from a large established local firm.

Watch how many applications are e-mailed to you from licensed attorneys. It’s a sad state of affairs when attorneys are just hoping to do non-attorney jobs. Imagine a doctor doing a nurse’s job. However, the current state of things is largely the result of the overall American economy. And while some of my readers are going to practice in areas suffering from horrific unemployment in general, San Antonio, Texas is doing relatively well.

I don’t live in New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco, where a high paying job is an absolute necessity. I live in central Texas, where if I can bring home $55,000 in my first year of solo practice, I’ll be doing OK. And when the overall economy recovers I will be in a prime position to expand my practice. The iron is hot now (cheap and available office space), not when we have another bubble of some kind in 10 years, and I’ve decided to strike.

I refuse to believe that things will be bad forever. And when things turn around overall, I want to already be in the game. For those of you thinking about law school, but are worried that saddling themselves with tons of debt to work in a profession where jobs (especially good jobs) are scarce, please pay attention. You’re likely thinking that if you can get into X-school, you’ll be making Y-salary by Z-days after graduation, P-percentage of the time. You may have even gotten your information from a reputable magazine or website.

Remember this: That information is probably not accurate. For example, all forms of employment are usually included in the % employed statistic. This may include self-employment or non-attorney employment. So the graduate who is flipping burgers is just as employed as the graduate who’s pulling down monthly paychecks in excess of $10,000.  And because he’s just as employed, he’s just as eligible to win the iPod Nano my school was giving away to those who reported.

I’ve heard from some attorneys that the job market is simply too tough to enter. I’ve heard from others that it simply depends on how low a salary you’re willing to accept. Still others say that if you’ve networked sufficiently, the difficult job market simply isn’t much of a hurdle to employment. But one thing is certain. The clients are out there. I’ve heard this from every attorney I’ve asked. Some can’t pay as much as they used to. Others don’t know that your services can be valuable to them. Most simply don’t know you exist.

But there are clients out there. I just need to find them.

Welcome to my blog.  I haven’t done this in a while, so it may take a few posts to get back the hang of it.

Let me spend this first post telling you a little about myself.  I am an attorney in Texas, recently graduated and even more recently licensed.  I live in a 500 square foot apartment I’ve had for 4 years and my girlfriend both makes me dinner and watches my dog when I go out of town.  After taking the bar exam, I spent day and night scouring the land for work.  I hadn’t the courage or conviction to hang a shingle, nor did I have the grades to join the few who did in the marbled and oaked halls of Big Law.  Sure, I had interned with the Office of the Attorney General for a while; I had even clerked with them (for pay) for a few months, which apparently in most Texas cities is lone honor.  I lucked into it.

But finding a real job was a task I decided to finish as soon as possible, and in the midst of horror stories from friends about the job market both then and now, who could blame me?  I’d take the first position that offered to give me a desk and a business card with the words “Attorney at Law” under my name.  I didn’t want to be the jobless attorney who spent his days parking cars, the subject of a rumor I later heard from a classmate.  So when a large, high volume personal injury law firm offered me a job as a glorified receptionist, complete with cubicle and cards, I ignored the fact that I wouldn’t have clients.  I would stay there happily and wait for an actual attorney opportunity in the firm to open up so that I could effortlessly slide into that position.

But when position after position went to those other glorified receptionists with past relevant work experience, I eventually began to doubt the firm’s intention of even moving me away from the reception desk and into a real office.  Recent events have only served to strengthen my hunch that because I simply don’t have the past personal injury experience, and will never get it as a receptionist, the job in the firm I want simply isn’t going to be the job I have.  After 9 months of waiting, watching, and going to interviews for jobs for which I would never be a viable candidate, I decided it was time for a change.  There will be more posts on this; trust me.

But as I learned that finding a new job would be next to impossible (I interviewed someone today who graduated with me and despite his stellar GPA hasn’t landed an interview in over a year) and I was immune to the primary thing which kills new solo practices (lack of startup money and crushing student loan debts), I decided to do what I’ve always envisioned I would anyway.  I would leave the entry level job in the large law firm to strike out on my own.  I would not leave the firm immediately, but discreetly lay the foundation for a solo practice.  I will chronicle my transition from entry level receptionist in a large firm to a solo attorney.  Feel free to ride along as I build my new law firm’s website, decide if it should be an LLC or PC, find an office space, and develop a plan of attack for generating leads and doing what they don’t teach you how to do in law school, making money.  This blog will serve as a tool to increase the new firm’s web exposure.  If it is entertaining, all the better.  Welcome to my journey.