Chuck Newton

Backyard Shipping Container Office

Okay. Okay. I am back on the virtues of backyard offices and shipping containers. The idea intrigues me for the simple thought that it might be possible for lawyers to create simple offices from which to operate their law practices, on land that they already own, such as to eliminate rent or other debt service.

I use a room in my home, that I have equipped to operate efficiently as a law office. However, some people want a degree of separation from their home, and some people have concerns about clients visiting.

According to Jetson Green, Karl Wanaselja and his wife and business partner, Cate Leger, of Berkley, California purchased one shipping container for $1,800.00 and with some effort transformed it into a workable architect's office behind their home. Their shipping container was already insulated and designed to prevent thermal bridging between the interior and exterior.

It is food for thought for those lawyers wishing to downshift and still build and maintain an outside office.

Prius Lawyers

The truth of the matter is that in this day and age I receive and place fewer telephone calls. I can communicate with clients, scheduling hearings, and argue with opposing counsel in so many more ways than in the past. Ways that do not require me to be tethered at or anywhere close to my office (which is a room in my home).

Further, as communication gets easier, wireless and more mobile we are migrating from being spare room tycoons to a no room tycoons. Or, maybe those rooms are becoming more diverse.

Case in point, one of the favorite passions of my girlfriend and I is to drive the back roads of Texas, while there are still back roads. (The state's population is exploding). But, I still need to practice law. I still need to stay connected.

You might have enjoyed the movie Lincoln Lawyer, about a criminal defense attorney who operates around Los Angeles out of his black Lincoln Town Car. My girlfriend and I now like to laugh comparing ourselves as Prius lawyers.

I have my Android smart phone. She carries an iPad. It is about all we need to maintain our practices while on the road.

We have also taken to referring to our Prius as our conference room because it seems to be where we take and make most of our calls. Google Voice forwards my incoming office calls to my cell phone, and we can answer most issues by reviewing files on her iPad. It helps that Prius has an amazing hands free phone system. The sound and clarity are wonderful, when we are not listening to our satellite radio.

Sometimes we have to pull the Prius over to look at something online and to have a more in depth discussion. It is for safety reasons, but that is okay.

As a Prius lawyers we both feel quite liberated.

Spare Room Tycoon: Business Skills for Successful Self-Employment

I do not believe anyone was more helpful to me in doing what I do than James Chan and his book, Spare Room Tycoon. It does not matter if you are a lawyer wishing to go out on your own, or any other business or profession, there is much to be learned. There is confidence to be had.

James Chan, Ph.D is an amazing person. And, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at the Library of Philadelphia he is sharing his experience for FREE. It is a price point you cannot miss if you are in around or will be visiting Philadelphia.

Make a special effort to attend.

Register by clicking HERE.

Do not miss it.

Be Willing To Take Risks My Ass!

I get so tired of tripish sayings like "you've got to take risks if you want to get ahead." Or, "you've got to throw caution to the wind". We somehow try to embarrass those that do not want to take great risk by accusing them of ignoring their dreams.

Bull hockey!

Which of the two following quotes really relate.  TR who said, "No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being ..."  Or, Ray Bradbury who compared, "Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."

Sure you can point out someone who fell into a big pile of his own badly calculated risk and came out smell like a rose. Mixing metaphors, however, just remember that 80% of the people who jump off a cliff do not live to tell about it.

Do not get me wrong, I take risks every day of my life. We all do. I have faith. Most of us do. And, we honor those who turn out to have vision. We should. But, there is a big difference between this and taking what is the metaphorical equivalent leap off the Empire State Building. Whether you relate the ground underneath the Empire State Building as pay dirt or merely concrete, the impact is going to be disastrous.

Here in my estimation is why taking more than minimal risk no longer operates well for most people in this country. First, a lack of reasonable health insurance coverage for those not employed by bigger companies. Second, the size of the non-dischargeable student loans that most of us are forced to accrue.  And third, the dismantling of all reasonable safety nets for those of us that try, such as the elimination of reasonable bankruptcy laws. Remember, 80% of all leaps of faith end in business failure. Therefore, the risk is not rewarded if you cannot escape the indentured servitude that happens later when you find yourself in the predictable 80%. It is difficult to recover. Therefore, it is discouraging to try.

Political differences aside, what gets to me most are those that hype this risk sloganeering to a " Ye tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" level. This leads to a need to take on the trappings of wealth and success to prove you are fearless.

It is all terribly misguided on the one hand, and simply terrible for the entrepreneurial culture of our country, and specifically our legal community, on the other.

There is a solution, or at least a compromise. You can take risks, but risk little. The key is to avoid the trappings of wealth. I know it might be difficult for a young or newly minted lawyer, but try and be humble.  Forget the visible trappings of success.

I suggest three steps or precautions to limit risk:

1.    You might know that area in which you might wish to practice, but you need to have a plan, whether it is ultimately correct or needs modification along the way, as to how you will find paying clients. Believe it or not, most lawyers going out on their own seem to ignore this step in lieu of planning their office, their staff, their insurance coverages, their commute, and no telling what else. You risk less if you have thought through this crucial step first.

2.    Forget about office space, staffing, up to date tech, who will answer phone lines, office furniture and all the rest. The entire purpose of working for yourself is so that you do not have to work for other people. There is very little difference in having a low paying, inflexible job and working for all of those, like landlords, who want you to sign contracts and pay them before money goes home to you and your family. There is always time to get too big for your britches, but for now when there is no guarantee of money or earnings coming in, there needs to be no guarantee of money going out for discretionary office overhead. If you have a cell phone and a computer you are in businesses. Be literal about this aspect of starting your own firm.

3.    Get your family overhead in order. If you can delay the payment of student loans, do so. Even if it turns out you can pay them currently, there is a big difference in being able to do so and being required to do so. Cut out non-essentials. You need broadband, but you might not need all several hundred cable channels. Refi your home to lower your interest rate and cut your payment. It might not be a great time to buy a new car. Consolidate your unsecured debt with a lower interest loan from a credit union. The point is that the less you need to get by, the easier it is to comfortably build a new practice. Also, most people starting out do not have three to six months of overhead in the bank, but set aside a couple of thousand dollars for true family emergencies, like a broken car.

I know that scrimping and scraping is no fun, but it is better than the alternative. It lowers the risk of failure. Besides, if you follow the three points above carefully you will not have to do so for long.

I would always rather begin from zero than below zero. I do not want to struggle just to make it to zero. Below zero is what contacts, obligations, staffing, marketing costs and too high of living expenses do to you. It makes what is otherwise risky too risky.

Food Truck / Mobile Vending Law Niche

 

It sounds like a tasty idea -- a delicious niche.

I recently came across this video interviewing Jeffrey Dermer of the law firm of Dermer and Behrendt. Among his food truck clients, he represents the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association.

He sells freedom, and how food trucks should appeal for different reasons to the left and right in this county.

Maybe the way to look at it is that, like most of us, business people who proclaim they believe in competition, free markets, and lack of government intervention in ways that inhibit the so-called "job creators" suffer from situational ethics. For example, some people who believe in immigration do not when those ethnic types or nationalities they do not appreciate try to immigrate to our country. Likewise, restaurants and food vendors believe in free markets until it is they that find themselves in competition or at a disadvantage. Then they want the government to bail them out in the form of regulation. In short, businesspeople really do not want competition, and those making their money in the markets do not want free markets. They want business or profits, but each would prefer a monopoly. I have always related to the difference between a developer and an environmentalist.  A developer is someone that wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is some that already owns a house in the woods. The same may describe the tension between restaurants and food vendors with their new food trucks counterparts. I have not met many older attorneys that do not believe there are too many lawyers. Yet, most law school students believe that there is at least a deficit of one. And, for time and eternity this has always been true.

This is especially true with the rise of the gourmet food truck. Maybe established businesses do not complain too much when a food truck goes to a construction site. But, what about when a gourmet food truck hits the city streets?

There are now gourmet food truck festivals for example. Increasingly, there are mobile food truck gatherings. There are mobile food truck bazaars.  Magazines like Businessweek are starting to list the tastiest mobile meal spots. There are websites dedicated to helping you locate food trucks. There are TV shows on food trucks. Just get online. What you will find on food trucks, and especially the new gourmet trend, is enormous. And, this does not count the other mobile vendor issues. Read all of it.

Gourmet food trucks are a trend.  Entrepreneur magazine published a short article on how to start a mobile food business. The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled Food Truck Nation. One food truck in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida partner with strikers as their official food truck. Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs is holding a conference on selling without a store that features the food truck business.

There are manufactures that sell food truck, such as Armenco.

In addition to the Southern California Association, there is the New York City Food Truck Association, DC Food Truck Association, St. Louis Food Truck Association, Wilmington Food Truck Association, Tallahassee Food Truck Association, and new associations are being established all of the time.

The point is that in investigating any new practice niche, and in obtaining client referrals, it is important that you can find the people, places, organizations, associations and entities that can help you do this.

And think you do not know enough to venture into this niche? In reality, you do not have to know anything. You start how I started my search. Find everything concerning food trucks and the the business online. Make notes. Absorb everything. Then make lists of those that you need to speak with to get affirmation and guidance. Find the agencies in your area that in any way regulate food trucks and make contact. Find food trucks online and go talk to the operators about everything they faced or now face to get in and stay in business. I will bet you this much -- laws, rules, regulations and lawyers are involved.

What seems obvious is that where you have local brick and mortar businesses in this country you will have people trying to restrict competition. So, it seems the law of mobile vending is really that simple. There are also obvious issues such as obtaining licenses, permits, inspections and the like.

Food truck law probably falls under the larger umbrella of hospitality law. But, this is were it is possible to carve out a niche. I would suppose that most food trucks and organizations cannot afford the overhead of these large hospitality law firms.

Maybe it is time you start investigating this area of law on your own. 

SmartDeco For Your Home Office

Kickstarter is the world's largest funding platform for creative projects.  It allows for the the production of some interesting products that can fill a need.  One interesting product that raised money through Kickstarter is SmartDeco furniture.

SmartDeco is an affordable, designed and professionally engineered set of furniture that is made from 100% recyclable product called Enviroboard, that folds together in minutes without the use of tools.  It comes in a flat-pack and each piece is available for about $65 or less each.  Although the white version costs a little more.

I get questions all of the time from new lawyers who (1) have very little room in an apartment or some place for large furniture, and (2) cannot spend a lot of money. This seems to fit their needs.

The truth of the matter is that in this day and age, with all of our wireless connectivity, you do not need a dedicated office. However, we often need a sort of landing pad. We need a place to hook up computers, phone and the like, and generally keep the implements of our work. You can place this is a corner of a room or in a closet without it overcoming or making your space look gaudy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How About A $1,800 Law Office? (VIDEO)

You know me. I think the amount of space that lawyers need to do their work is exaggerated. It is more ego than necessity, and it leads to a cluttered and complicated life. But, a quiet dedicated work space is good. If you do not have room in your home, then try building a space in back or close to your home. It might be a little industrial shabby chic, but throw in some windows and some planting and you are good to go.

In Berkeley, California Karl Wanaselja, along with his business partner and wife Cate Leger, created their home-office using an old refrigerated shipping container that cost just $1,800. They cut their 40' long refrigerated unit in half and placed it in a T shape in their backyard. Because it was a refrigerated container, they did not need to add any insulation. Using a reciprocating saw, the couple cut huge windows into the aluminum/stainless steel structure.

You can see for yourself.

Solo Means Solo: A Third Wave Practice Does Best With No Financing

I think sometimes that law school graduates are so use to debt that they insist they need the extension of even more debt to start a practice. To me, however, solo means solo. Just like you do not need law partners, staff, a law job, a law firm, you do not need financing, with the obligation to pay back interest and principal out of imaginary future earnings. Going solo means solo. Just you, your family and your friends.

The charts below apply to all businesses, but they offer a couple of interesting things. The first chart shows you that 47% of all businesses, which would include law firms, have no financing sources. The second chart shows that businesses that rely just on friends and family have the highest success rate.

There are two points to the no financing option. First, the access to unearned money leads most lawyers starting out to do stupid things. I say stupid when the real term might be something like impractical, senseless, arbitrary, unimportant, foolish or frivolous. In short, like the unaccountability of spending with a credit card, it is too easy to make bad or instantaneous decisions that have long term repercussions. Borrowed money is most often spent in ways that does not secure a return.

Second, the solo practice of law in this day and age only really requires a laptop or notebook computer and a cell phone. Everything else is optional. Everything else is discretionary.

Third, and just as importantly, the success of any law firm in terms of cash flow is the referrals of paying clients. That requires a good degree of marketing. Where there are numerous ways to market, this is where initial attention needs to center when starting a new practice. Money somehow affords a false sense of luxury that distracts from this goal. In this day and age marketing does not take a good deal of money. It does takes a good deal of energy, planning, diligence and tenacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live + Work + Home = Politically Incorrect?

I get some flak about my politics and the practice of living and working from my home. Fair enough. These comments come from ardent conservatives who believed, I guess, in the concept of a home office, but seemed to be disturbed with an emphasis in my blog linking the act of working from home with the green movement.

My overall argument over the years, working from The Worldwide Home Office, has been both capitalistic and green. In short, it has been about both green as in money and green as in the environment.

Here is the truth of the matter. Americans are simply wasteful in ways that do not benefit either themselves or the community as a whole. The argument I encounter often is that we have a right to be as wasteful as we want. Where that might be true, I also have a right to be as critical about it as I want. The readers of this blog are free to buy Hummers and waste natural resources, commute hours to work, and duplicate space or build a footprint on this planet as big as his or her ego will allow. I am free to explain that there is, in my humble opinion, a better way that serves each of us better, both individually and the community as a whole. Readers are entitled to their opinions, and I am entitled to mine.  Being allowed to express a difference of opinion is really the true meaning of freedom in my book.

But ultimately, the problem arises when some people see my advocacy as impinging on their free speech. These people believe it better that I not speak as it conflicts with their opinion of the World. I think I have a right to express myself and they are free to read it or not, believe it or not, or adhere to it or not.

Now, whether or not my motive for practicing law from home conflicts with someone's view of what is politically correct, my point is pretty simple. Our bedrooms are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eights of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. All of this space is both the largest waste of our personal money and resources, and it is the largest single consumer of energy.  Space consumes more energy and results in more pollution than cars, or anything else. Getting to and from our spaces is probably responsbile for a good bit of the oil and gas we use. The more we reduce our footprint, the more money we get to keep to spend as we personally see fit. As an added bonus, with a smaller footprint we are less dependent on foreign sources of energy. There is less polution. We have better air quality. We are less stressed.  We have more time. To me, all of this amounts to more freedom.

It is true that I have often viewed this policy of mcmansions in the suburbs, macdaddy offices in the city, and a gas guzzler to get between the two as destructive both economically and environmentally. I believe that reducing our footprint we can benefit us both economically and environmentally, personally and for the greater good.

I think it is okay to be as conservative as you want and still work out of your home. Do it for the personal savings and the extra time it affords you and your family. You do not want to do it for the environment? You want to use the savings to buy a bigger house and a bigger vehicle? That is up to you.

Working With Your Significant Other

I say significant other because you could work with your spouse or the person in which you are in a relationship.  Or, I guess, even another family member. And, I say working because both of you do not have to be lawyers to work together in a law firm. One can assist the other.

The question is whether or not working together is a good idea?

I am not sure I really have particular advice for you, but it has worked well for me.

My wife and I applied to law school together.  We took every law school class together.  We took the bar exam together.  We have practiced law in one form or the other together for 25 years. And, we have raised four children together.

We both work out of our home, and we share the same office space within our home.

So, let's just say that we are together most of the time.

At this stage in our lives we can operate on a type of shorthand.  We know how the work flow breaks down for childcare, housekeeping and in the workplace, not out of some grand design but out of random selection of duties that have established themselves over the years.

I know those things that irritate me about her work habits, and I am sure she can say the same thing about me.  What I can say is that we have both mellowed over the many years as we have come to realize that these irritants are not really that important in the overall scope of things.  Also, if you worked with a non-family member, I am sure you would find more irritating habits in that person you will be less likely to tolerate.

Although there are some statistics that suggest that only 5% of couples can make an all-in-one partnership work, I cannot say that I have had this problem.

Do not get me wrong.  It takes some learning, a little faith, and the realization that petty matters are not worth the fight. And, it takes this realization on the part of both parties.

Law school was the worse for us in this regard. I recall classmates romanticizing about how wonderful it must be for us to study together. After all, studying for class and exams in law school is a lonely business. But, my wife and I had drastically different study habits.  Namely, she studied and I did not.

I tend to think any torment from working together eases with time. Much like rocks that rub together, at first they are rough and jagged. Over time they both smooth out and become more polished. There is less friction.

If you are thinking of working with your significant other, I might be able to provide you a few suggestions that might help.

First, do not get stuck in gender roles. You need to be equals in the workplace and to respect each other.

Second, come to terms with your competitiveness. It is wrong to ignore the fact that we are all competitive in some way and to some extent. In the home environment in which the only goal is to tend the house and take care of the kids, you might not exhibit your competitiveness to each other and save it for the workplace. The problem is what happens when both of you are in the workplace?

Third, I would like to tell you to establish a separation between work and home. That is what the experts would tell you. But, I have come to learn that this advice is simply hogwash. If you live and work together, that is just simply impossible. When you are both sitting at your child's soccer game or track meet do not tell me that work will not come into the conversation. This does not mean that both of you do not need to get away from work and concentrate on something else from time to time. But, when my wife and I were both in Tampa recently with our daughter, from time to time we were on the phone resolving work matters and settling cases. I really tend to believe that drawing lines of demarcation in this way leads to more stress and not less.

Let others talk about the odds of survival. I am here to tell you that working and living together can be a wonderful thing.