Chuck Newton

Where To Meet?

I usually leave the tech stuff to Rick Georges over at FutureLawyer.  He usually keeps me informed of everything I need to know.  He blogged about this, however.  It is a practical need of mine and, therefore, I thought I would pass it along to you.

It is Rendeznew, and it promotes itself as "the NEW way to 'meet in the middle'".

Rick Georges states that this website "may be an Internet solution without a problem", and I agree to the extent that trying to find a middle place to meet did not overly perplex anybody before this or the other such sites appeared.  But, then again, looking up phone numbers in the phone book did not overly result in difficulties before the Internet changed that.

Here is my difficulty.  The greater Houston area is huge.  I work from home in The Woodlands on the upper north side of the metro area.  I therefore do not meet with clients, referral sources or potential referral sources in my office.  (In fact, I rarely meet with my clients in person except in preparation of discovery or trial or if I have a big check to give to them, but meeting with referral sources needs a more practical solution).  When proposing to meet, my guest do not want to come all of the way up to The Woodlands, and I certainly do not want to venture a couple or few hours down to the most south part of the metro area.  So, we try to meet in the middle.  Often times, some referral source wants to introduce me to someone of interest, and then there are other lawyers in my group that want to meet.  Often all are from different parts of town.  Admittedly, finding a middle ground in which to meet is not all that difficult.  I can just call up a Google map of Houston, eyeball it and suggest some large intersection.  But, the problem is where to meet when we get to that area?

This is where Rendeznew comes in.  This FREE web application not only computes the half way point, but it suggests restaurant options.

Now, there are apparently other sites that do this, such as MeetInBetweenUs and Mezzoman, but these sites only allow for two addresses.  Rendeznew allows you to enter up to four addresses in order to find a middle ground between all of the locations.

Law School Commencement Speakers

TaxProf Blog listed the commencement speakers at 115 law schools.  I thought that was pretty interesting.  So, if Dean, Paul Caron, does not mind, I will post them here as well.

The Expungement Niche

My friend Corinne Tampas at What's Your Authority brought this niche to my attention.

That is the expungement niche.

In Texas, I believe it is called expunction, and it involves the process of all records of an arrest, any jail detention and court records being destroyed or sealed, including things like fingerprints and DNA samples, so it would appear as if the event never took place.  It allows the person to legally deny the occurrence of the arrest and the existence of the expunction order.

From what I understand, having your record expunged is trick and only applies to some limited circumstances, such as someone was arrested but never went to court, there was a no guilty finding, the grand-jury no-billed, an appeal was won, and/or charges were dropped.  I have also head that this matter comes up in terms of charges and issues related to identity theft.

Now, obviously, there are a number of attorneys that can help you with this, and a number of criminal defense attorneys that list this service in the overall menu of what they can do for their clients.  But, we are talking about limiting the focus of what an attorney does, or at least specifically isolating and narrowing what an attorney markets, to those looking to have their criminal record expunged.  It would appear to a very specific service that those people with records would looking for a lawyer that does this specifically.  It is something those in need can easily Google in other words.

In doing so, it also seems to offer opportunities in collaborating with other lawyers in different part of your state or the country.

A good example of this is RecordGone.Com by the California law firm of Higbee & Associates.  The law firm has associated lawyers not only in California, but also in Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Washington to make its marketing more effective or at least to give it a larger reach.

There are others as well.  There is Texas Fresh Start, and Fred Dahr of Texas Defense Law.  But, wheras the field of criminal defense might be crowded, what this narrower legal task manages to do is carve out that simpler, needed, recognized, identifiable and most profitable portion of a broader practice area.

Are Your Client Retentions Coincidental?

I doubt it.  Yet, most lawyers and law firm really have no idea how they get clients, or their ideas are simply wrong.  As a result, many seem to discount referral marketing.  In doing so they fail to work effectively on what is really working for them.

Here is the problem.  You get phone calls from potential clients and they do not come from a particular source.  Often times they cannot remember the source that sent them on their way to you, or maybe you do not ask.  As a result, you do not see the success in your referral marketing efforts. But honestly ask yourself, "how are these people or companies or issues finding me"?  Believe me it is not just because of the great aura you exude.

Here is how I repeatedly learned this lesson.  I use to operate a rather large bankruptcy law firm.  We represented thousands of people and companies a year.  We spent an absolute ton of money on advertising and direct marketing in order to maintain those numbers, and it appeared that the advertising was the primary source of most all of the firm's clients and cases.  But, it would never fail, very time I would show up to a creditors meeting to represent a group of clients, other attorneys, trustee's staff, and even creditors would say something like -- "Oh good, I see that you are representing Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  I sent them over to you."

The Mortgage Fraud Industry

Oh, this does effect all of us on so many levels.  It has damaged the economy, which has jeopardized all of us.  Cleaning up after it, has created legal niche opportunities.  It has made (whether good or bad) the possibility of a home office for some easier.  It has changed the primary nature of the work of most real estate lawyers.  And, the truth of the matter, is that we keep discovering is that this was not an isolated situation.  The was a concerted efforts to defraud from the top to the bottom of the industry.  It deserves to be called not the mortgage industry, but the mortgage fraud industry.  In that regard please find this related video.

Survivor Big Law

Do you watch the show Survivor?

It is part reality TV show and part game show, produced in many countries throughout the world, in which the contestants are isolated in the wilderness and are forced to complete for cash and other prizes.  The show uses a system of progressive elimination, allowing the contestants to be voted off the show and the location.  In the process of getting voted off, each losses their opportunity to partake in the future riches.  The players compete in groups or individually in contests called "challenges" consisting of endurance, problem solving, teamwork, dexterity and willpower.  Winning the challenges might extend the players stay a little longer and provide them a little something to make their lives a little easier.  But, you learn pretty quickly that the one that ends up as the "Sole Survivor", and the one that gets the money, the car, and the attention, is really the one that succeeds not as a culmination of these skills, but at scheming, exploiting, manipulating, bamboozling, betraying, deluding, scamming, victimizing, beguiling and cheating the others in the group.  The show is fun to watch, but in the long run think about what and who is what is really rewarded.

Taga

We try to cover work/life issues here and, let us face facts, there are a good number of parents of small children that have decided it is in their best interest, and that of their families, to work from home.  This gives them time to work, make a living, and be with their children throughout the day.

It is the being with the children and trying to stay physically active that is the hard part.  To do this you can purchase any number of attachments to bikes, but versatile they are not.

Introducing the Taga.  It is a stroller and a bike.  It is arrangeable.

The Taga is presently only in Europe, but it is destined for the states.  It weighs in at 44 to 64 pounds depending on the configuration.  It features an aluminum-alloy frame.  Coming soon the Taga will soon sport options for a double child seat, a car seat, shopping basket, and a wooden double-seat trailer.

Special Education Law Niche

Jennifer Laviano, a solo practice lawyer in Sherman, Connecticut, has published a blog site with the help of G2WebMedia.Com, which is a company run by preeminent law blog expert Grant Griffiths and his son Clay Griffiths.

The blog is unique in this respect.  It is not overly broad.  It is narrow in its scope.  As a practice blog it does not pretend to be too much.  Its audience is targeted.  It represents a niche area of law.  It represents a niche that Jennifer Laviano now controls on the web in the Sherman, Connecticut area.

The niche?

That of special education lawyer.

Here is how she describes what she does:  "Ms. Laviano has dedicated her law practice entirely to the representation of children and adolescents with disabilities whose families are in disagreement with their public school districts. Her representation of children with special needs encompasses the full spectrum of  advocacy under the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), from attendance at IEP Team meetings and Mediation, to zealous and experienced litigation in Due Process Hearings and Federal Court".

Do not get me wrong?  Ms. Laviano did not invent this niche.  She is not the first one to limit her practice to this niche.  If you surf the Net you will undoubtedly see a number of websites about special education and lawyers.  Some are even represent more of a niche, such as AboutAutismLaw.Com.

Why this blog is important, in my opinion, is because Ms. Laviano limits her practice to representing special education issues.  She simple does not strike out to blog about a limited part of her overall practice.  This is her practice.

More often what you see when Googling are lawyers, law firms and organizations that dedicate themselves to education law generally.  The problem (if you should define it as a problem) is that this represents not a niche, but a practice area -- and a rather large and complicated practice area.  What this blog and the others like it, and Ms. Laviano and the others like her, do is carve out from the broader practice area one smaller group of skill sets, as well as a smaller and more identifiable market, that will better serve them in the practice of law, and better serve their clients in that special education law is their concentration and their joy.

And, as far as this blog is concerned, here is something that I like.  Ms. Laviano has started a series of posts to help other neophytes, other fledglings, other rookies, other novice, or other newcomers start a special education practice.  You can read these posts by clicking here -- Part I, Part II and Part III.  The point being, it is a good niche, a respectable niche, and one that can really help those in need, and Ms. Laviano is not trying to keep it a secret or keep it to herself.  She is blogging about it as she goes along.  Keep your eye on her blog for more of these posts.

I Have To Admit, I Just Do Not Understand People Sometimes

And, what really concern me is that I look too much like Ziggy as well.

The Cooley Law School Rankings

As the college school year ends and perspective law school applicants begin to consider the LSAT and which law schools to which they wish to apply, much consideration is given to the U.S. News rankings as well as much criticism and consternation of what the rankings wrought.  This probably hit its crescendo with the 2007 article in Time magazine entitled The College Rankings Revolt.  Since then many law schools have simply whimpered off, vowing to do whatever is necessary to game the U.S. News rankings.

How bad is the U.S. News ranking system.  Well, I think The New York Times got it right in 2005 with its article The $8.78 Million Maneuver, in which it asked the question "What do the water bills at Stanford have in common with the library expenditures at the University of Illinois"?  The U.S. News rankings are a scam, and in my estimation they are costing law students millions of dollars in excess and unnecessary tuition and expenses.

Also, if it rankings that prospects want, then a comparison should be made of the Cooley Law School's rankings.  As explained by Cooley President and Dean Don LeDuc, the objection to the U.S. News and World Report rankings is that “U.S. News uses a system that lacks objectivity because it is commercial. Their rankings reflect elitist values, like exclusivity in admissions and the inherent prejudice that comes from heavy reliance on reputation, which is introduced without consideration of knowledge about the law schools among those assessing their reputations.”

I have mixed feeling about the Cooley Law School model, but they have helped a lot of students get law degrees and law licenses that might not ordinarily have access to an ABA law school, and its rankings might not be overly commercial, but it might reflect the Cooley model a little too favorably.  For example, although Cooley does not have the audacity to list itself as the number one law school in the country, it believes it is number 12.  That probably is not accurate in the estimation of most experts.  The law school in my estimation is much, much better than the treatment it gets at the hands of U.S. News, and it is not as good as it treats itself in its own ranking of the law schools.  But, it is a point of comparison.  That is what perspective law students need.

Cooley's rankings of all law schools are interesting and seem to rely on more pragmatic data that potential law students should consider.

Here are the rankings in Judging the Law Schools:

1. Harvard University
2. Georgetown University
3. New York University
4. University of Virginia
5. University of Texas
6. University of Michigan
7. Northwestern University
8. Columbia University
9. Yale Law School
10. George Washington University
11. University of Minnesota
12. Thomas M. Cooley Law School
13. Fordham University
14. University of California-Los Angeles
15. American University
16. University of Pennsylvania
17. University of California-Hastings
18. Stanford University
19. University of Maryland
20. University of California-Berkeley

Rounding out the Top 50 were:

21. Loyola Law School
22. Temple University
23. Brooklyn Law School
24. University of Wisconsin
25. Boston University
26. University of Miami
27. Duke University
28. Washington University
29. Chicago-Kent College of Law
30. University of Houston
31. University of Chicago
32. Emory University
33. University of Connecticut
34. University of Iowa
35. Suffolk University
36. Indiana University-Bloomington
37. SMU Dedman School of Law
38. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
39. Boston College
40. Ohio State University
41. University of Alabama
42. Seton Hall University
43. Vanderbilt University
44. University of North Carolina
45. Cornell Law School
46. Catholic University
47. Tulane University
48. University of Illinois
49. University of Denver
50. University of San Diego