Chuck Newton

The Benefit Of Working From Home

I work from home. I have full time since about 1999. I was a spare room tycoon before it was cool. I did the carpet commute before people admitted openly that they operated their business this way.

I speak to a lot of lawyers about the prospect of doing the same, and I am usually amazed by those, even if they are intrigued by the idea, who cannot let themselves do it. The resistance centers on a number of things, but mainly it is old "bad for business" excuse.

This attitude probably demonstrates that law schools really do not teach lawyers about business, or how to analyze business opportunities. New lawyers tend to operate on their business prejudices, impressions of what a lawyers looks and acts like, and anecdotal examples.

It is hard to understand why lawyers do not see the benefits of working from home, when the government, in-house law firms, and big business do.

Congress passed a bill requiring every agency to establish a policy under which employees will be authorized to work from home (which they still refer to as "telework") to the "maximum extent possible".

And, a new study from the Telework Research Network outlines the benefits to small and medium-sized businesses in letting their workers work from home.

Here are some highlights of the study. Employees allowed to work from home just half the time saves the company $11,000.00 per year per employee.  Also, productivity is up 27% for those employees on those work at home days.

The savings, from my experience, are substantially more for attorneys and law firms. They are even more substantial if the practice is based from home. The difference is that in business, working from home saves the company or employer money and increases its profits through productivity.  In the small firm or private practice of law it saves the lawyer money. More importantly, it allows the lawyer to survive and prosper in what can otherwise be a competitive market.

Things Law Schools Do Not Explain

Online Degree Programs recently published 15 Facts Law Schools Don't Want You To Know.  I think the article in some ways is too critical or discouraging, but they make some interesting points.  You can read the entire article on their site, but below are a few of the points they make.

1.    Books are incredibly expensive, and you might never use them again.

2.    Your first year of law school will already be laid out for you.

3.    Your grades will be curved.

4.    Law school debts could total well over $100,000.

6.    The bar exam requires you to study for months.

8.    Law school won’t teach you business skills. 

9.    Fewer new grads are able to find jobs.

Birds Of A Feather . . .

My mother use to always say that "birds of a feather flock together". She often used this saying in the pejorative.   

The saying does have to be look upon this way, however. Mainly because the statement is basically correct. And, because it is correct, it defines really the basic tenant of lawyer marketing.

Call it what you want, but like minded people, and people in particular trades, tend to crowd, organize, cluster, bunch or group together. Call them competitors, colleagues, a clique or whatever, this is to your advantage as a lawyer.

It is the tendency for people to collaborate, co-create and crowdsource their profession, passion, interest or trade. It is that tendency that makes your life easier to make yourself known and your have your legal services retained.

It is also the reason that a niche practice helps. It can help you stay focused on these groups, people, and organizations you need to frequent to become known and appreciated both personally and for the legal services you offer.

The key is to first pick the right crowds or groups. If you are a community association lawyer, for example, you will want to hang out with community association groups. If you are a probate lawyer you might wish to stand with funeral directors. If you are an appellate lawyer, you probably need to congregate with trial attorneys. You get the point.

The key to doing this properly is to not only show up at these group meetings occasionally, but become passionate about groups and to be actively involved. It is also vitally important that you stay involved. This is the way you can succeed  in your niche practice area into the long term and find profitability.

Honey Bar The Door - Big Banks Planning Another Involuntary Bailout From Main Street

I last posted about Bank Simple given the hardship that banks are causing Third Wave attorneys, solos and lawyers in general.  The point was that banks have actually sought a bailout from us, while continuing to deny us cheap tech to get around the problem.  We paid first for the banks' graft and malfeasance, and how we are forced to paid for their recovery.  For all of the hoopla over government spending, this should be the rage of the American people. The hope was that upcoming Internet banks like Banksimple.net would afford us attorneys some relief the bank. This is so because Banksimple appears to agree to live primarily off of the net interest margin, allow its customers to bank primarily off of smartphones, provide a giant free ATM network, forego overdraft fees, and allow remote deposit via your smartphone's camera with no other equipment or fees required. This bank is not operational yet. It is coming soon via the web, and I hope it lives up to the hype. You can let Banksimple know you are interested by requesting an invitation.

Now, as reported by AP, by Huffpo and other news sources, Big Banks are after us again. They plan to look to Main Street to make up for their losses. Not in the form of lending and interest spread, but in terms of, you guest it, fees.

Fees are about to increase on checking accounts, bank statements, and even fees for visiting your local branch. 

The reason is certainly the recently past financial reforms. Bank of America says, for example, it will lose $2.3 billion annually along from the new restrictions on card "swipe fees, or the charge that banks charge merchants who accept debit cards.

Bank of America says this will cause a significant reduction in revenue, which is undoubtedly true. But, Bank of America and the other banks miss the point. QUIT RIPPING THE PROSUMER OFF WITH FEES! Either fees stolen from accounts directly or through charges to merchants that are passed on.

As for the charges to visit a branch. We do not want to pay for your branch. We visit it only because of your restrictions on cheap tech. The point is that the cost of operating a branch is for the benefit of the banks and not for our benefit. The problem is that the banks want to treat their antiquated property as a profit center. We, and it seems many in the government, want then to slash overhead, obscene compensation, make cheap tech available, and start living off of the process of making loans.

It is typically argued that banks made money off making loans and it caused the real estate crises. But, that is not really the truth. This is because banks, directly and indirectly, only packaged the loans and sold, and then serviced, the loans for fees. Any loan the banks might have made were very short term. Banks helped cause the crises by not doing what they are chartered to do.

Small business, and lawyers, are suffering from this practice in two ways. Money is not available on reasonable terms, and exorbitant fees are being charged for required services.

For example, Bank of America has a started a pilot program in Georgia which charges customers $8.95 a month to get paper statements or to use a bank teller.  It plans to roll the program out next month nationally. Now, maybe that would be reasonable if Bank of America allowed its customers the banking alternative of operating virtually in a way that did not require a trip to the bank. But, when the Bank does not allow banking without effectively needing to visit a teller, and then charges a fee, that is a tax.

The Bank also plans to raise minimum balances. When I started banking there the minimum balance was $1,250.00 or something like that.  Now it is $7,500.00. The point is that they make it impossible for most of us to avoid fees.

The point is not that banks need not recoup their costs of doing business. Like all of us they need to control those costs and it does not take a genius to figure out that is not happening in reality. Then the question is how should banks recoup their costs?

The point is that banks have sought to lock us in, and then they have involuntarily extracted fees from us in a way that is just punitive.

Not everything meaningless task in life needs to be monetized.

Sometime there are arrivals of companies that revolutionize the system.  Google is a great example of this. There is Amazon. Apple for its iTunes and iPod. The government can only do so much. Besides, especially in the GOP the Big Banks have powerful allies. 

We need an Internet bank that can start the revolution in this regard.

Bank Simple And Jibun Ginko

Banking, along with health insurance, is probably the last substantive obstacle for the all out Third Wave practice of law, for the solo practitioner, the connected lawyer, those that work through collaborative effort, the shingle hangers, future lawyers or home office lawyer. In the Age of Google and Facebook, there has just been no great cloud alternative for banking.

Banks have developed a lot of bells and whistles to help wow people, and certainly online bill pay is an advantage.  But, it just seems that banks (and by this I mean financial institutions in general) have been dragged kicking and screaming into the Third Wave.  When they have instituted tech only in a restrict sense that gouge people for more fees for services that potentially save the bank much more in money.

The truth of the matter is, I believe, that banks do not design themselves for us. They tolerate us, and cater to wealthy individuals and hedge funds. We prosumers are useless to them except to extract exorbitant fees for limited services.

In defense of traditional banks, it is hard to dismantle all of the bricks and mortar they have erected over the years and of late. It is not easy to kick themselves of the habit of retaining all of those useless and underpaid employees that make too little money and have no authority, and of maintaining the systems and procedures they have develop to deprive you, to their benefit, of the money for which you have worked so hard.

Banks have survived by bulking up in the wrong direction. They get bigger, not just in terms of deposits and loans, but in terms of overhead. This seems to lead to very risky behavior both to meet this growing and gigantic problem of physical growth, and in terms of making those at the top obscenely wealthy. I am talking about wealth paid in spite of the fact of massive incompetence, mismanagement and in wrecking our economy. The point is that they have opted for girth as opposed world changing innovation, and the effect of that is to inflict damage on us poor solos and other small business people. If it has not injured us, then it has least greatly inhibited us from evolving more quickly in the way of a business model that works in this day and age.

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Why Do Not More Young Lawyers Start Their Own Law Practices ?

I hear lawyers every day complaining about the inability to find law jobs, or to find a law job they imagined for themselves, or to find a law job that pays enough money given their student loans and the costs of living. So, they flounder. By this I mean they make no money, or they work themselves to death and make little money, or practice in areas of the law that does not excite them. And, then we get to hear about all of the dissatisfaction of young lawyers in the practice of law, in their law school  education, in the economy, etc.

From one perspective anyway, it is all a bunch of hogwash. Look, some people are just not going to be pleased. But, bad economy or not, many practice areas, such as bankruptcy, collections, and child support, increase in slow times. For those areas that follow the economy down, such as real estate, what better time to prepare for the coming upturn. After all, established attorneys have a lot to lose, but for a new attorney every case is an increase in business and an improvement.

Law schools are to blame in one part. They do not prepare lawyers for this prospect. This is because doing so would affect their rankings.

There is just no evidence to support that law graduates today are less interested in having their own practice, or that the urge to venture out on one's own increases with practice experience.

There is some evidence that shows that lack of money for starting a practice is a major deterrent. It should not be. Sure it is nice to have something coming in every couple of weeks whether the lawyer performs or not. But, if a young lawyer is not earning enough now, or cannot find a job, or hates what has to be done to maintain a small amount of cashflow, then how does this argument really relate?

The truth of the matter is that it can cost almost nothing to start a new practice, apart from what a lawyer likely already has at his or her disposal. Sure, there are a lot of people out there that want to sell things that make it more expensive, but it need not be so. Additional space, staff, consultants, accountants, research tools and the like are not really needed starting out. All a lawyer really needs are clients and cases. That really does not take a lot of money as it takes a degree of tenacity and a willingness not to shy away from success.

As for the lack of experience argument, that is more daunting. Just understand that business knowledge and practice knowledge are not learned in law school. They are learned by doing. Another way of saying it is that the only way a lawyer is going to learn is to just dive into the practice and practice area and start doing. I understand that thought is not overly enjoyable, but my point is that it is not any more enjoyable working for someone else. All most law firms do anyway is to throw a young attorney into the pool and command them to swim.  It is not as if they first put them through some private course of study on swimming. Sure, there are more experienced hands around should a new attorney need them, but those hands are available whether or not the attorney is with an existing firm. In fact, a lawyer probably has more access to such knowledge and experience if not associated with one firm, and if the lawyer is just willing to ask.

Top 10 Law School Websites

Finally, a school ranking system that probably means something in this high tech, information society of ours.

Roger Skalbeck, the associate law librarian at Georgetown University Law Center did a detail analysis of each of the home pages of America's law schools and ranked the law school according to who has the best website.  You can review the criteria and the evaluation for yourself, but here are the top 10 law schools -

1.    George Mason University School of Law

2.    University of Virginia School of Law

3.    Wayne State University Law School

4.    University of Washington School of Law

5.    Harvard Law School

6.    Regent University School of Law

7.    Loyola University of Chicago School of Law

8.    University of Notre Dame Law School

9.    University of Illinois College of Law

10.    Washburn University School of Law

Nonexistent Or Terrible And Schlocky Web Presence

Attorneys and related professions often worry about competition on the web.  I am here to tell you there is none. Well, I will backtrack a little and say there are a lot of websites and non-updated blogs, but that there is very little competent web competition. The field is still wide open for you.  

I have spent some time on the Internet looking at the websites of title companies and real estate attorneys in my part of Texas, and what I have gathered is pretty interesting. Title agencies and real estate attorneys, as with most all attorneys, just have terrible websites. Their web presence, if it exist at all, stinks.

Many do not have a website set up. Of those that do, many have glitches in clicking through to the site. The links to their sites on websites of professional organizations to which they belong are dead. When you do click through, almost all are just a repository for some banal text that would not interest a rock, an apparent stock photo or two that does not represent their office, lawyers or staff, and information that is at best dated.

What is shocking to me about it is not the graphic design issues, because that is not the most important thing. It is that the one industry or practice area that appeals directly with a web-savvy referral base just does not get it. It is not that some do not get it, but that virtually (pun intended) none of them get it.

Oh, I have my pet peeves. For example, if there are three lawyers in a firm and each has been in practice for three years, and you hired a well seasoned paralegal, quit telling me that added up the firm has over 20 years of experience. You do not. That is like saying that there are six people in a room, five are homeless and one is Bill Gates, and based on that analysis there are six billionaires in the room.  And stop, please stop, with the plastic references to dependable, you work directly with an attorney, how hard you work, and all of the dumb, everyday, mundane, uninteresting, vanilla, uninspiring, humdrum, ordinary, B.S. that you let your cheap designer steal off of every other website in the world. ENOUGH!!!  Nobody cares.  It just takes a little more work and thought to consider, just for a moment, what your prospective clients want, and try to present that to them in a fresh, distinctive, and original fashion. Title companies, I do not care who your underwriters might be. Consumer lawyers, I could care less about your exaggerated yet undistinguished law school career. For goodness sake, focus on the positive things that people care about. What can you do or want to do to help me! It is a pretty easy focus. So why does most everyone fail at it so miserably.

The same is true for most of the legal profession. Sites range from gimmicky to non-existent. Of those that do exist, the sites are just plain schlocky.

If you have a desire to use legalese on your consumer basis site, just shoot yourself. And, why does it seem that the websites of attorneys that want to practice virtually are the worst? They seem to spend all of their time on graphics and no time telling readers how they can help other than you can contact them online. I actually viewed one in which nearly the entire site read something like this - "The Law Office Of John Smith (hereinafter referred to as 'Smith'). A website is not suppose to read like the definitions and explanations preceding a set of interrogatories.

My rant about what I do not like might not be helpful. I understand that taste vary. But, what is evident is that forgetting about all of those that have websites of any kind, or social media pages, there is no serious competition for a lawyer who has some patience, some diligence, and some endurance to do the Internet right.

Part of it has to be not knowing what to do. Most of it is not wanting to face up to what needs to be done. It is not a matter of money because, although this activity is time consuming, it is cheap to execute. So, it is mainly a matter of laziness?  A lack of intellectual curiosity? I do not know, but most fail at it miserably.

This is to your advantage, however, because who online is your real competition? Not many, I would say.  Lawyers are still stuck in the age of yellow pages and TV. They want to pay someone else to design a print ad or a 30 second spot that they will rarely have to change. They want to pay for it and forget about it. In this day and age, this is a waste of money. Yet, they carry this philosophy over to their websites.

There are any number of online suggestions about what a website needs. I will not repeat these here. You can find this stuff easily enough.

What lawyers forget, however, is that websites, helped by blogs, really need to be content rich. This is because good, effective marketing is all about educating your clients, potential clients, and referral sources.

Education is a big part of marketing, and a website and blog offer the best way to present yourself. But, it is more than this. It is all about creating awareness about you, your legal services, and your positioning in the legal market place. It teaches your potential clients and your referral sources what it is you do that benefits them. This is what eventually turns potential clients into actual paying clients. This is what results in referrals. This is how you feed your family and put shoes on the kids' feet.

The strategy should be pretty clear. It might take some time for your site to be discovered, but you will reach more potential clients and referral sources, on a regular basis, with a content rich site.

Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School Of Law

I do not believe you should shy away from new, even if the law school is unproven. But, there are risks. One risk is ABA accreditation.  You hope the law school is provisionally approved by the ABA before you graduate. The law school is also unproven as to bar passage. So, there is a leap of faith involved. Law school cost a lot of money. Therefore, you want the degree to mean something.

Now, I am not talking about rankings. I think that is fool-hearty stuff. If your objective is to practice law, then your objective is to get a good basic education, pass the bar in the state in which you want to practice, and get on with your real legal education -- the practice of law.

The new schools do often offer those with lower LSAT scores a real opportunity to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, of a really good opportunity. New law schools, seeking ABA accreditation, have other fish to fry. They understand the risk to those they admit. Therefore, they do not often pretend to tackle or participate the rankings game, which artificially promotes higher LSAT scores.  After all, there are graduates of colleges that demonstrate that they are good students, but they have difficulty on standardized testing such as the LSAT. That does not mean they will not prevail in law school. It does not mean they will not do well in the practice of law.

Location is also an issue. Some new law schools are located in the area of the country in which you might wish to practice. If not the same state, then the same region. Some are located in parts of the country that offer a cheaper cost of living. That is vitally important these days.

So, it is with some interest that I have looked at Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law. Named in honor of Tennessee Congressman John James Duncan, Jr the school is located in Knoxville, Tennessee.

There are somethings that greatly improve the odds of achieving with an LMU-DSOL law degree.  First, DSOL has been approved by the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners.  This means, if nothing else, you will be able to take the Tennessee bar exam upon graduation and practice in that state.

Second, the law school is actively seeking ABA approval.

Third, and related to above, LMU, with which DSOL is associated, is a well established university in the area. It also has the Debusk College of Osteopathic Medicine. So, it has experience in guiding a school through the national approval process.

Fourth, it has already seated its inaugural class.

This is what I mean by opportunity. Its median GPA was 3.05 and its median LSAT was 149. But, the main point is that the law school only had 243 applicants, it offered admission to 125 of those or 51.4%.

You might wish to give LMU-DSOL a gander if you are looking for a centrally located law school, in a beautiful setting, with a lower cost of living and a good chance of achieving ABA approval before graduation.