Chuck Newton

The Barratry Law Niche

Barratry concerns itself with the improper solicitation of clients by a lawyer for profit.

I generally support barratry laws much like I support a free market. If people are not allowed to take unfair advantage, then each lawyer has a chance to effectively compete for to represent clients. It is a matter of having a level playing field.

Do not get me wrong. I have sued the Texas Bar for improperly restricting marketing, advertising and free speech. I do not believe in a blanket prohibition.

But, barratry hurts all of us. It does not just hurt us in terms of our image as lawyers. It hurts us in terms of each of us being able to compete effectively in the marketplace. You need free speech, but you do not need ambulance chasers who seek to take advantage of people.

A case in point. My daughter's boyfriend was in an auto accident. He had a concussion and a hurt leg. His car was totaled. Luckily he is alright. He was able to settle with the insurance company of the person who hit him. This accident happened at night. The next morning, while he was suffering from the concussion, a woman from a local personal injury law firm called him on his cell phone offering to represent him, claiming the law firm would do so for a lower percentage of any recovery than other law firms might. The lady felt comfortable in calling him not because of any prior relationship with the firm, as she did not mention the name of the firm or the lawyer in the phone call, but because he had a Hispanic last name. She thought that speaking with him in Spanish could establish a familial connection such that she could come over and obtain an employment contract regardless of the law.

There are some good reasons to resent the fact that personal injury lawyers are restricted from immediately contacting injury victims while insurance adjusters, who might take equal advantage of the situation, are not. I understand the argument, but the conduct of the lawyer who contacted my daughter's boyfriend was the obvious result of a system that law firm had in place to illegally solicit Hispanics, and it was wrong.

This young man did not hire the law firm. (For the record he did not hire my law firm as I do not do that kind of legal work). I tried to get him to do something about the illegal solicitation, but he would not. He wanted to tend to his injuries.

Ever since the Supreme Court cases allowing solicitation of legal clients, the states have also been allowed to reasonably regulate the practices.

I very much approve of legal advertising and marketing because when it was not allowed so-called "ambulance chasing" abounded in the shadows of the legal practice. In other words, absent marketing the only reasonable means for clients to chose attorneys was through nefarious processes. Advertising, marketing and legal solicitation allows reasonable avenues for lawyers to get their name out, to inform the public of their rights, and properly obtain business. When you see a TV spot for a lawyer trying to inform the public about the dangers of a particular drug, or the practices of insurance companies in handling hurricane claims, for example, understand that they are the heroes. Sure they may like to represent you, but they seek to first inform you. These attorneys are much different than those that operate in the netherworld of personally pestering people they know are in the need a particular legal representation.

Lawyers who do not wish to comply with the rules for legal solicitation are guilty of barratry. It is not a practice that is limited to, as the slang of ambulance chasers would suggest, personal injury attorneys.

As pointed out by The Texas Tribune, the State of Texas, along with other states, are clamping down on those practicing barratry. They have penalized the act of barratry, but they have also added civil actions that can be taken against a lawyer who illegally solicits a client.

In 2011 Texas passed a law that allows barratry victims to sue a lawyer or case runner to void an illegally solicited contract and collect any money paid to the lawyer plus damages. A person who is solicited, but does not sign a contract, can also sue for up to $10,000. It also allows for fee-shifting.

In Texas, for example, Bill Edwards is now trying to build a niche practice based upon this law. And, lawsuits have already been filed.  Thomas J. Henry, and Dennis Bujnoch have also entered the field. Carbin & Shaw in San Antonio has produced an TV spot about the practice.

Although the laws of each state differ, these types of lawsuit are showing up in other states, such as Alabama, Michigan, and Florida to name a few.

The prospect of suing other lawyers should not be a deterrent to you should you elect to enter this field. If you are careful in what you allege, rest assured that you will be protecting the legal profession and not harming it. This is not like a legal malpractice case where a lawyer was merely negligent. In the case of barratry the lawyer is intentionally violation the law.

As always, go on the Internet and find everything you can about the subject. It could be the practice niche for you.

Texas A&M University To Acquire Texas Wesleyan University School Of Law

Texas might be getting a new public law school as Texas A&M University, one of the premiere public research universities in the State of Texas, seeks to acquire Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas.

The School of Law is not located on Texas Wesleyan University's campus. Instead, it is located separately in downtown Fort Worth. It was rumored in the past that Texas Wesleyan had tried to sell the law school to the University of North Texas, but UNT decided instead that it would open its own brand new law school in downtown Dallas, Texas. If successful, the DFW area of the state will now have two public law schools where it did not have any.

Maybe we should not hold our breaths on this one. Remember, Texas A&M tried in the past to acquire South Texas College of Law, but was blocked by The University of Houston Law Center in doing so. Like that instance, you now have Texas A&M poaching on the territory of UNT. Besides, I would think that South Texas would be a better fit for a Texas A&M law school. It is a larger school, more prestigious, closer to College Station, and A&M is already well integrated with South Texas College of Law.

Although the newly acquired law school will be called Texas A&M School of Law at Texas Wesleyan University, this is likely a misnomer that suggests some type of joint control. It is probably more like a stop gap in which the Texas Wesleyan moniker will later be dropped. Although it is called a "collaboration" it does not appear to be much of one.  As stated, "Texas A&M would acquire ownership and operational control of the law school as a going concern and all faculty and staff of the law school would be employees of Texas A&M. Texas Wesleyan University would retain ownership and control of the law school building and four city blocks of land at the downtown Fort Worth campus and would lease the facilities to Texas A&M." In other words, except for a joint MBA program and a 3 + 3 program like at South Texas College of Law, Texas Wesleyan would be relegated to really nothing more than a landlord.

This may very well be good. First, this will certainly be a boost in prestige for the law school and its graduates. Second, in my estimation, Texas Wesleyan might well have helped the law school achieve ABA accreditation, but its management and recruiting skills have been mixed. Having had three children apply to the law school, communicating and working with Texas Wesleyan has been anything but pleasant. As my children stated, it was nice to be in a position to tell Texas Wesleyan "no".

The Jurassic Law Firm

You believe the Mayans understood the future? The patron saint of any amateur futurist is Alvin Toffler.  Future Shock and The Third Wave seem old in comparison now, but as we look around us today nearly everything he predicted has come or is coming into focus.

Toffler stated: "Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn." Citing Herbert Gerjuoy, Toffler explained: "The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction — how to teach himself. Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn."

In short, you can have a law degree and still be functionally illiterate by the standards of the tech age.

Sure we have a million lawyers in this country, but in the next decade or so 400,000 will leave the practice of law through retirement, death, incapacity or changed professions. To often these lawyers recognizing this fact allow themselves to get so many generations behind in regard to tech that neither they nor their practices can survive. The problem is that what use to take a generation or better to evolve now takes just a few years. The possibility of being left in a Jurassic period is neither that hard, nor takes that long.

We all know lawyers that are stuck in the fax age, which for me began in 1986. They have computers that are so old they are incapable of handling updates. These lawyers are still tethered to the walls and are overcome by an avalanche of paper. These lawyers and law firms often pretend to update to meet the new generation of practice management, but in reality they fake it. For example, I heard of a law firm that cuts apart paper documents, tapes the pieces into new documents, makes a copy of the documents so constructed, and then scans it into their computer system. This is not learning how to learn.

It is a shame really because I always thought that a law degree was the ultimate Third Wave education. When you think about it, unlike most educational programs, what a legal education essentially does is teach students to teach themselves. A law school education is suppose to be a program that teaches its students how to learn and then relearn.

These law firms too often cling to these doomed law office technologies:

1.    Fax Machines. Fax technology might not have yet died, but it is on complete life support. Most lawyers keep the technology around, like an old eight-track tape player, for the increasingly few clients and lawyers that still rely on them. It is a cheap online add on. I get about one fax a week, if that. In the last few years even my poorest and most elderly clients can find a way to scan and email, often uploading documents directly to my cloud-based client server. What must clients and lawyers think when they receive a fax (especially a fax with handwriting) from a lawyer? I vow to remove my fax number from my pleadings in the near future and eventually bury the technology altogether.

2.    Business Cards. I know, this is not really tech, but I have to admit to you that I have not had business cards printed in about 5 years. It has not hurt my business. People find you online. After I meet people, I find them online, I email them, connect with them on social media, and I set them up for email blasts. If an immediate exchange of contact information is deemed necessary, we program each other into our cell phone then and there. When I think to refer someone, I do not go looking for a business card. I look them up online and provide that information.

3.    Landlines. I have not had one since 2007. For a while I used a virtual PBX to direct calls. Now I use Google Voice, which is free. Other than that I use Skype and my cell phone.

4.    Desktop Computers. Well, maybe not entirely dead as I just bought a new one. They are cheap and they work well in supporting multiple monitors in which to put out a serious amount of work. But, they are dead in terms of being the center of the law firm. The key now is portability and connectivity. With free apps like Microsoft's Live Mesh all of my tech is synchronized with the same information.

5.    Computer storage. Hard drives and discs continue to live only because they are now dirt cheap. But, you just feel everything moving into the cloud. No more paper or document fiefdoms in law firm or between lawyers and their clients. It promotes availability and connectivity. Its the best thing since the 7-11 store decided to stay open all night long.

I was about to list outside space or a law office to my list, but I understand that sometimes you need a place to meet clients. However, If you walk into a law firm today and they still have a receptionist for the primary purpose of answering the phone, the firm has a fax machine, they have business cards at the front desk, landlines on every desk, a network server, and/or individual computers with small or bulky monitors from which to work, you are looking at a Jurassic law.

Low LSAT Score? Strive To Be The Cream Of The Bottom Crop!

To those that struggle with low LSAT scores and feel the rejection of law schools, and maybe self-regard, I think you need not unnecessarily despair. There is hope for you toward the end of the acceptance process if you plan accordingly and take perspective.

My youngest daughter who recently suffered through the problem of a low LSAT score, has now been accepted by a South Texas College of Law, and I wanted to relate what we learned over this two year process.

Obviously, the first year we did everything wrong by holding out for an acceptance to a Houston-based law school, not effectively attempting to up the LSAT score even a little bit, and probably applying to the wrong schools overall. Also, we waited patiently, did not call, try to make contact and fully push the law schools as proactively as we might have. Believe me, the willingness or unwillingness of law school administrators to talk to their applicants about the process and how they may be able to secure a seat, and on what terms, tells a lot about a law school.

First, you need to understand that, contrary to what some law school advocates say, there is no real correlation between the LSAT and how you will perform in law school, on the bar exam, or in the practice of law. It is simply a right of passage to give law schools some way to determine who gets a limited number of seats. It is a made up exercise that in no way determines your ultimate success. Further, this made up excercise does not determine the ultimate success of those that score high on the LSAT. In short, you should always strive to do better on the LSAT because it does make the acceptance process easier, but if you do not achieve a high LSAT score it should not devalue your self-worth. Just remember that nobody but nobody every inquires as to what you scored on the LSAT, except for (1) admission personnel for law schools to which you are applying, (2) first year law students who are just curious to compare themselves to everyone else (it okay to lie to them), and (3) your children when they are applying to law school (they know when you are lying to them). The LSAT is not important to anyone but for U.S. News and the twisted minds of law school administrators who live and die for rankings.

Second, you need to understand that unlike when I went to law school in the early 1980s, when the LSAT was a factor but was not conclusive of anything, the system has now been adulterated by the U.S. News law school ranking system that places supreme importance on LSAT scores over most other factors. What is interesting in this regard is that almost all law schools report higher and higher LSAT scores among its entering glasses even though the spread has stayed about the same. With the decrease in law school applications this is simply impossible. One has to believe that law schools are leaving their ethics at the door in pursuit of rankings, but I will have to leave this up to you to prove.

If the process is, in my estimation, broken or at least a gimmick, and to a degree the disclosed upper and lower percentile scores of a law schools are not to be believed, you need to make some judgments as to how to proceed with a score that falls below the lower percentile of most schools.

So, my position has always been to ask yourself if you want to be a lawyer. If the answer is yes then avoid the rankings, and be willing to make compromises.

Third, law school applications have been on the downswing for some time.  More seats have also been created. This makes it easier to get into law school even with a lower LSAT score.

Fourth, obviously a low LSAT will not get you into some law school, but then a moderately high LSAT will not get you into some law schools, and a high LSAT score does not guarantee you a spot in the best known law schools. I would not play close attention to the upper and lower percentiles in relation to LSAT scores when determining where to apply to law school.  However, even assuming the law school has found creative ways to fib for purposes of rankings, you need to make a judgment call as to whether there is any chance for getting into a particular school before you apply.

Fifth, do not forsake the LSAT for a non-ABA approved law school unless you just have no other option. If you do, make certain you intend to practice law in the state in which the law school is approved to take the bar exam. If the law school is ABA approved, you might have to take multiple bar exams but your choices can be endless. Not so with non-ABA approved law schools. And, be leary of law schools applying for, but not yet approved, ABA accrediation. You do not want to suffer the fate of many who have attended a new law school, which then is not approved by the ABA on the first try. You might have as well gone to a law school that was not seeking ABA approval and which was cheaper. If you take a gamble on a new law school not yet approved by the ABA, I would say do not attend the first year it is open, allowing the approval process to get underway, and make your bet with public law schools or law schools associated with major universities. Law schools like Duncan might well be right, as stated in its lawsuit against the ABA on denying it accreditation, but why do you as a student want to be in the middle of such a fight.

Sixth, find a safety school to which you might apply if your other choices do not work out. After all, remember that your first goal is to be a lawyer and not to necessarily attend ABC or XYZ law school. Thomas M. Cooley Law School is always on my list. Cooley has multiple locations and options for attending. The school is ABA approved. They have a good amount of success on their graduates passing the bar exam. The law school is not cheap, but they also do not try to gouge their students. Further, Cooley, unlike any other law school, makes it simple and easy for you to calculate your free tuition aid online, not after you have been accepted, but when applying. It might not be your first choice, but it needs to be at least your last good option.  And, for that matter, it could be a better option for you regardless. There are other law schools like Cooley. Some are in better locations. Most are for-profit and their goal is to put you as far into debt as possible for the privilege of not having a better aptitude for the LSAT.

Seventh, remember to apply to multiple law schools. The more the better. I always say you do not have options until you have multiple acceptances from which to chose. You need to come up with a list of reasonable possibilities, whether they be geographic or represent other preferences. If you have a low LSAT, and you want options other than Cooley, then applying to just one law school is disappointment waiting to happen. Choice is so important because you really do not know if you can afford the cost of a legal education until after you are accepted. With the exception of Cooley, you will not know the full cost you will actually have to pay to attend the law school until you are accepted and reserve a seat. You will not know the true cost of living that has to be covered. There are a lot of factors that only become known at the end of the acceptance process. Options allow you to choose, and choice gives you options. You do not need to discount the possibility of choice simply because you have a low LSAT.

Then, after you have submitted your applications, you have to be prepared to wait it out. Let us face facts.  Because of rankings, law schools are going to swoon over and treat you like the wicked step child until they know that the higher LSAT people have turned them down. This takes awhile. Most law schools go through multiple rounds of acceptances. Most of them are not responded to by those they initially accept. The reason is simple enough. These candidates have choices because of the ground war by law schools to capture those with higher LSAT scores. Some of these applicants put down multiple deposits to see if something comes along better, and it does.

But, low and behold, come about Memorial Day most of this works itself out and law schools find that they still have seats available. Although they might want someone with a higher LSAT, they more want someone to fill the seat. Further, most of their applicant pool with higher LSAT scores has moved on and are no longer available. So then a bidding war begins on the what I like the call the cream of the bottom crop -- those with lower LSAT scores.

My daughter was ignored by all of her choices but Cooley for a year. They would not give her the time of day. But, around Memorial Day the calls and acceptance letters started coming. She went from being ignored to actually having choices. It was a much better feeling.

One suggestion I have for you is that as you wait out this strategy, make sure that you have filled out your FAFSA and have had it sent to all of the law schools to which you have applied. So, when you start getting real offers and phone calls begging you to attend, the school can make a quick decision on what money to give to you.

How About Modular BrickBox Home Office?

I hope that most home office attorneys, spare room tycoons and carpet commuters are eliminating the paper and physical files from their lives.  But, whether you need a bulk system of storage or a more decorative solution to carving out an office, you might want to consider something like BrickBox.

It is a shelf/storage solution that fits almost every purpose. Modular, it is a system designed and manufactured in Barcelona by Antxon Salvador and Roger Zanni.  It can be assemble and stack, packed or transported by simply grabbing a handle.  It comes 10.6″ x 10.6″ x 14.2″ (small) or 21.3″ x 10.6″ x 14.2″ (large).  And, it made from birch plywood.  BrickBox is searching for an American distributor, now.  And, current pricing is between $40 and $60 per box.

The video below is in both Spanish and English and it goes back and forth from the two languages.