Office news

Until I read How to prove savings from a fixed-fee arrangement,I had not considered what flat fees look like from a client's perspective. I thought clients only considered - should consider maybe - that a flat fee brings some predictability to legal fees. Maybe I am wrong about this as I find it hard convincing business clients that some services can be handled on a flat fee bases.

I am looking at overhauling the fee structure for my family law/divorce side of my practice. I have enough of the documents automated that an hourly rate is unjustified. I know what work needs to be done in what circumstances and I want to restructure my fee agreements to reflect this reality. I want to follow up this idea on the civil and business side.

Does your business rely on any of these things:

1. Your ability to write good, enforceable contracts?
2. Your ability to understand contracts from those you do business with?
3. Knowing and meeting state and federal regulations affecting your business?

If you answered "YES" to any of these questions, then ask yourself how much money you are losing doing all this by yourself? If your time can better be spent doing something else for the business, then why does your business not have a lawyer?

Okay, that explains half of the question, but a business needs a lawyer for objective advice as much as it does for the preparing of documents. That makes the whole answer as to why a business needs a lawyer.

But how is the business to afford a lawyer and the lawyer to afford providing services? My solution involves getting away from hourly billing and move to varying my costs according to the job and client. Hourly billing remains for the unique document preparation and for some defense litigation. It also means that the client understand that a little cost for prevention saves a lot when faced with litigation. I provide consultations on a monthly fee that slides from $400.00 per month for nothing more than the client being able to call me up with any questions to $1,500.00 per month where there is advice and document drafting. In between lies the variances - some will need less consistent document drafting, others will have simple documents but not very often, and others will complicated documents drafted every so often - and the fees should also vary from slightly higher monthly fee to just adding the contracts on a la carte or a reduction in the hourly fee for complicated document drafting.

With the costs known upfront, businesses get fewer surprises and can budget accordingly. Even litigation can be handled on something besides an hourly rate. Where failing to prevent legal problems - and there are a myriad of those pitfalls for any business - can mean the end of the business, the business owner needs an attorney. Lawyers need to educate their business clients how lawyers can help their businesses. Both lawyers and clients need to talk about what services they need and how to provide them.

I have a funeral to attend and will not be blogging for the rest of the week.

A post having nothing to do with business or law, but that will save you a lot of time if you read a lot of blogs or online newspapers. I wrote about new aggregators/RSS feeds before in this post. I think these things are one of the best things about using the Firefox browser - I can see the headlines of blog posts or online newspapers without going to that page. I can then decide if I want to read the whole story or go onto something more interesting. Internet Explorer also now has this capability - or so I understand. You can also download newsreaders or subscribe to an online site like Bloglines. A very useful and free way to save time.

If you look on the right of this post, I have a link for subscribing to this blog's RSS feed. It is that easy.

I changed the look of the blog a bit todayl. I have been thinking that the blog looked a bit drab and also a bit hard to read. If anyone cares to leave a comment about the looks now, I would appreciate the feedback. I would like to think that the information I am providing is helpful but I also want to make the reading of this blog a pleasant experience.

For my reader's convenience I added to the sidebar a link for subscribing to the blog's RSS feed. You can now add this blog to an RSS reader. If you are using FireFox or Internet Explorer 7 you should have a built in RSS reader. You might also see this referred to as a news aggregator or news reader. This is a really interesting and truly useful tool. You subscribe to a blog and the news reader shows you the headlines at the blog instead of having to go to that blog to see what is there. It means you can choose to read what is interesting to you instead of reading the whole blog. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on news aggregators and RSS.

Along with the RSS subscription service, there is also an e-mail subscription service on the sidebar to the left of this post and down. This means you get an a-mail letting you know when there is something new on the blog.

I do hope this make this blog more useful to you, my readers.

I fixed the e-mail subscription service. What this does is allow you to subscribe by e-mail to the blog. When I update the blog, you get an e-mail. You will find the subscription form towards the bottom of the right hand column.

I hope you find this web log useful as way to keep informed of legal issues that might affect you. Adding this e-mail subscription is meant to make the web log even more useful by sending the information to you rather than having you come to it.

Also, remember that after each article there is the means to comment on the article. I do moderate the comments to eliminate spam but that is the only censorship done to the comments. Do feel free to let me if any particular post was helpful. Or to let me know that it was dreadfully dull!

There should be no new articles posted till December 26. Yes, I will be taking a break.

For my subscribers - have a Merry Christmas! Or whatever holiday you are celebrating at this time of the year. Be good to your children, your significant others, and friends.

For those wandering in here for the first, a words of advice. If you do not see what looks to be on point, take a look at the subjects on the right hand of your screen. Your Google search may been too narrow. Anyway, feel free to browse and look around at your leisure.

I want to let my clients know that the new computer was installed on Tuesday morning and I have almost all of the customization done. However, I am still playing catch up.

The office computer went kaput two days ago. The past two days consisted of extremes: extreme frustration, extreme aggravation. Hopefully, tomorrow finds the computer running again in its mysterious ways. I hate my dependence upon computers while simultaneously I adore the advantage provided by the computer, Computer Manage information and my “job” requires me to bend, shape, and interpret information.

Now I am cut off from easily accessing the address, telephone numbers, and even names of clients, courts, contacts and opposing attorney’s. Note that adverb easily. The raw gross information remains in the files, the telephone books, the online sources, but the time to find and use that information is now so much longer, more tedious, as I write this, some of that lost and keenly desired information is being placed into my laptop.

Poor timing on my part and on the computer’s, for otherwise I would have most - maybe all this information in place and ready to use. Tomorrow fails in bringing me total repair, of my situation, I will have enough to fight my fights next week.

Computers bring joy and terror to a lazy man. Joy comes from being able to automate those simple tasks. The terror caused by knowing the amount of work required for reaching that state of seamless use of information. Avoiding the bog of paperwork can mean landing in the bog of mucking about computers.

Such is the price of computers in the practice of law. We cannot do with them nowadays but can any business? I remember the days I practiced law before my first computer and I cannot see how we handled the volume of business that we did. Perhaps the world was a bit slower as well before 1992.

I caught a profile of a Scots construction lawyer in last Sunday's Sunday Herald and I thought how lucky this lawyer was:

Her focus is not just on problem solving but on building long-term relationships with clients. She says this has led her into work on facilities management and PFI projects as her clients diversify into these fields.

Business clients here seem uninterested in anything but a one-off relationship. Yes, we may have a surplus of lawyers here but how many business people give their lawyers time to understand their businesses rather than just their kind of business?

Scotland has the same problems as Indiana - litigation costs money.

When she began to specialise in construction disputes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the trend was for litigation, some of which dragged on for years, racking up enormous legal bills and involving bitter altercations. Now the trend is to avoid court and to seek resolution of disputes through an adjudication hearing presided over by an industry expert who normally delivers a verdict within eight weeks.

The impact of high-profile cases such as those involving Trafalgar House and Eurotunnel pushed the industry towards disaffection with the process of bringing a case to court, Patterson says. "No-one wins in that process. We're in a much better place today," she adds.

Similar solutions could apply here. For years I tried to get the attention of business clients by emphasizing preventive measures. No interest. Ever. I would be quite willing to credit this to a poor presentation but I know from my stint as in-house counsel that presentation has nothing to do with the lack of response. Businesses here prefer waiting for the axe to fall. I am assuming that times have changed enough to get businesspeople to listen. It may be - or so I hope - that I learned enough to better present the utility of preventive legal measures for businesses. If nothing else, it gives a sharper point to this blog.

We still remain, however, with the mentality that it’s too easy to use an exemplar without “thinking” whether this applies “on all fours” to our current matter. Isn’t that why we went to law school: To learn how to think? It’s just too easy for the laziest amongst us to say that because it’s in print, it must be right for this matter as well.

For those who want to do their own legal work, think what it means for you. It is not enough to just grab a form but know to what do with the form. The process takes time but it is worth the effort to make sure that the documents prepared for the clients are the right ones.

I have been trying to rebuild my office systems after two crashes in the past three years. Then several things came together in the past few weeks which impacted on that long term project. So, I decided I might as well combine them into this post.

I began my experiments with office automation over thirteen years ago. I was solo practitioner dealing with Indianapolis firms and computer automation seemed to hold a key to success. I really began when I first started to use Symantec's Q & A for DOS 4.0.

Q & A no longer exists, so let me give you a brief description. Symantec bound a pretty darned good flat-file database with a okay word processor. The database and the word processor shared a macro language and one could inject the database's programming into the word processing documents. This was in addition to the usual mail merge capabilities for the word processor. The word processor could not compete with a stand alone word processor like WordPerfect 5.1 (remember, this is the time of DOS) but it was far more than adequate for preparing pleadings and writing appellate briefs. I still have yet to see a word processor and database so closely bound together, and which with the macro language could be brought even closer. Wikipedia (of course) has an entry for the software and details the history.

By the time that Symantec stopped producing Q & A, I had invested heavily in programming Q & A. I had databases for attorneys, cases, calendar, and clients. Using information contained in the databases, I could manage a case and prepare documents without a secretary easily and inexpensively. I do miss it.

While I was practicing in Indianapolis between 2000 and 2002, I became acquainted with HotDocs. HotDocs automates documents. I still use HotDocs in my practice. When I wrote above that I was reconstructing my office systems, I meant rebuilding my collection of forms that were automated with HotDocs. Which I did over several years (if one includes the forms that were converted from Q & A Write forms, that would be many, many years) and includes many, many forms. Probably nothing has hindered me more in my practice these past few years than not having the full capabilities that I had and had grown very accustomed to having.

With this background, I was very surprised to read what two eminent writers on legal technology wrote on document automation. The first came from Adams Drafting.

I understand the point: no company wants to pay a steep hourly rate for the dubious privilege of having a partner scissor-and-paste together a contract.

On the other hand, one could conclude from the quotation that drafting contracts is a rudimentary undertaking that can safely be left to associates. That brings to mind a scary vision of largely clueless associates hacking at forms of questionable quality and relevance.

The solution isn’t to have partners more involved. Instead, associates should be less involved: drafting should be commoditized.

I thought that turning documents into commodities was now a self-evident proposition. With Q & A I learned to breakdown the documents into the boilerplate and variable parts. HotDocs merely continues that process.

Then I read this from Dennis Kennedy:

Document assembly, properly employed, offers a quantum leap over increased typing speed and lets you apply the knowledge and expertise that you've developed over the years. That is the flip-side of commoditizing drafting and a very interesting place to be.

Another idea that I did not know that I was executing on my own or of its exoticness. I decided to include the statute or whatever authority supported a term in a document into the document. I use WordPerfect, so I used its Comment feature. Word and Open Office both possess a similar feature. I could also put hypertext links into the Comment instead of text.

I must declare that I got these ideas from an English and Irish practice. Over there, they have been using what they call a professional support lawyer. (For an idea of what this type of lawyer does, here is a job posting from Dublin and this agency of professional support lawyers.) I once considered leaving the private practice to pursue something along the lines of this second example; albeit closer to the Wabash than the Atlantic.

I cannot say that being automated has brought me any appreciation from my clients, but neither have I made a big deal of it. I think I have been too annoyed by the systems being not up to my standards. Instead, I have had clients unhappy with my not having a secretary and having a home office. Which lead me to some reactions to Mr. Adams and Mr. Kennedy.

I would say to Mr. Adams: partner involvement makes a good impression on the client who will never understand the same results could be had from commoditizing the documents because the attorney never educates the client since the attorney thinks the knowledgeable client will balk at paying a suitable fee.

To Mr. Kennedy, I would say that you forget one component of the office and especially the smaller office: the secretary. After returning to Anderson from Indianapolis, I was talking with a former secretary about HotDocs. I recall that the Indiana State Bar Association offered a version with some stock Indiana forms. She could not see how the investment in HotDocs would be of any benefit over Word's templates and cut and paste. It was not from a lack of intelligence on her part, and I would not say that it was due to a poor explanation on my part. It could be that the attorney she worked for had a practice limited to personal injury and criminal defense. I do think that there was more than a bit of job security in her views. I think in smaller offices (and maybe also in larger ones but they are not within my experience) secretaries make much of the software decisions and certainly most of the word processing decisions. A short-sighted view on job security may come into play.

I think another post from David Kennedy nails the self-interest in job and income preservation.

The money quote from Susskind's article:

"The top US law firms are hugely and satisfyingly profitable. Accordingly, they seem to be moved to change more by the threat of competitive disadvantage than by the promise of competitive advantage. Without hunger for change, without the worry of being left behind by the competition and, vitally, without clients clamouring for new forms of service, it will be business as usual for the US legal behemoths for many years yet. They will wring every last cent out of the increasingly unsustainable practice of hourly billing and will steer well clear of innovative IT."

The full post is here. I could not find the original Susskind article, though.

These posts and the project of rebuilding the HotDocs library were in the back of my mind and came popping up the middle of last week. I was in Indianapolis for the Trial Advocacy Skills College. The program emphasized using a trial notebook. I saw that this was a way to unify and organize the HotDocs documents. Not that it will work for all cases but only for those that are in litigation.

It also means revamping my office contracts. Those documents which can standardized with HotDocs will be charged on a flat rate basis. That leaves the hourly rate for non-standard documents and interacting with clients.

That same change in office procedure will apply even more to my transactional practice. That is drafting the contracts, non-compete agreements, non-disclosure agreements and so on.

I also think the time is past to inform clients about the benefits of using this kind of technology. It may be that some will not understand and others will not care so long as the results are to their liking. However, only by educating clients on the benefits will there be the changes advocated by Mr. Adams and Mr. Kennedy. Of course, I am also hoping that when clients understand the advantages that this will aid my practice.

I sum up the Trial Advocacy Skills College with one word: wow.

It was a long week but a satisfying one in very many ways. Unlike any other of our continuing legal education seminars, this one did not qualify as a snorefest. The constant stress made the course feel like a real jury trial. I must admit I forgot that peculiar combination of exhilaration and doubt that is a jury trial until I started the seminar.

I do see areas that can be improved and even some complete changes in organization. Anyone who wonders if the cost of the program exceeds the benefits need not have any worries - the benefits outstrip the costs.

I will be away from the office for the remainder of the week. I am attending the Trial Advocacy Skills College in Indianapolis until Friday. I will be in the office on Saturday morning from 9:00 am till noon.

I will be checking e-mail nightly.

I suspect that the posts here will be few this week.

The IndyBlog noted my article on Non-competition agreements in the medical field with its post Non-compete Agreements - The Medical Field.

The IndyBlog is a new blog for me. It digests the news from Indianapolis and the central Indiana area.

For anyone following this blog, you have my apologies. After the wife had had the flu for a week and I felt fine, I assumed she had something else. Wrong. It was nice enough to wait till I had had my birthday on the 27th. I have experienced the full range of symptoms since Thursday and I can say none were very fun. I made an attempt to read my e-mail yesterday but that was mind numbingly slow going. This morning, I feel drained but that is about all. Miserableness. That word describes the past four days. At one point, I thought about how all those people died in 1919 and I thought what a miserable way to die. Things will be slow here over the next week. Work has piled up, telephone calls need returned, and writing here must take less precedence. Please, bear with me for the next week.

I discovered today that the e-mail subscription service is not working. I have decided to switch over to FeedBlitz. I am sorry that I do not know what this will do my current subscribers on the old system. If you stop getting your e-mail updates, I suggest that you go to the blog and subscribe under the under system.

To make payment more convenient for my clients, I started accepting Mastercard and Visa credit cards on January 28, 2008.

Please check out my firm's updated web page. In addition to this blog, I also have a more traditional web page with more background information and a description of my practice. I have begun to update the Articles page with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) and more formal articles than you might find here.

My civil litigation practice focuses on business related litigation such as non-compete agreements, contracts, third party interference with contracts and business interests, trade secrets, and franchises. I generally limit my litigation practice Madison (Anderson, Elwood, Pendleton, Chesterfield), Delaware (Muncie, Yorktown, Eaton, Albany), Blackford (Hartford City), Grant (Marion, Swayzee, Gas City, Upland), Howard (Kokomo, Greentown, Russiaville), Henry (New Castle, Middletown, Mount Summit), Randolph (Winchester), Wayne (Richmond, Centerville), Hancock (Greenfield), Marion (Indianapolis), Hamilton (Noblesville, Atlanta, Carmel, Fishers), and Boone (Lebanon). Other counties require a case by case decision on my part.

My non-litigation practice includes business start ups, business succession planning (estate planning for businesses), contracts, assignments for benefit of creditors and franchises. I do not limit my non-litigation practice by county.

Take a look at Interesting Policies On Recording Time from In Search of Perfect Client Service. The time spent recordig time takes away from doing work for clients. I find that an inconvenient fact that makes hourly fees even less attractive. Which just adds to the arguments for flat fees I wrote about in A Lawyer for Your Business and How to Afford One.