Law Practice Management

It’s undeniable that corporate clients led the mass migration in law firms from WordPerfect to Word when they informed their law firms they refused to continue to convert documents back and forth. Will they now lead the way to a paperless practice?

Back in the “good old days” when fax was used as the primary method of document exchange, it didn’t matter whether clients and their law firms used the same software. But when exchange of documents shifted to an electronic exchange via email attachment, it became increasingly important to corporate clients that their law firms use the same software. Converting documents back and forth, with the attendant formatting clean-up and inevitable occasional document corruption, became too bothersome for clients. When the complaints began, smart firms listened, and converted.

Now we’re seeing a shift to a more paperless paradigm at in-house departments. A recent article in the April, 2008 issue of Inside Counsel magazine entitled “Paperless Progress” focuses on this shift. The tie-in to the “going green” objective of today’s corporate conscience, which responsible corporations are increasingly emphasizing, has particular emphasis in the legal industry, because law firms are among the heaviest paper users of any industry.

In a reader poll, Inside Counsel asked “Is Your department taking steps to move toward a paperless office?” Survey results indicate that 51% of corporate counsel are. It’s just a matter of time before law firms must actively do the same.

The first steps you will need to take? Get a decent scanner. If you’re a small firm, or looking to deploy scanners widely, take a look at the Fujitsu ScanSnap or Xerox Documate. Then you need a document / image management system. That will ensure you can put your hands on the correct document in seconds.

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According to an article in Wireless Week, anti-virus vendor McAfee issued a warning on the company’s blog that a new Windows Mobile Trojan has been detected in China. The Trojan apparently can disable the handset’s application installation security. According to McAffee, the Trojan, called WinCE/InfoJack, sends the infected device’s serial number, operating system and other information to the author of the Trojan. It also leaves the infected mobile device vulnerable by allowing silent installation of malware. The Trojan modifies the infected device’s security setting to allow unsigned applications to be installed without a warning.

The Trojan was widely distributed along with a number of legitimate installation files, including Google Maps, applications for stock trading and a collection of games. Obviously the Trojan was not the payload desired by those who downloaded software to their cell phones. It reinforces a basic security axiom — do not download unknown software and do not download known software from an unknown site.

Chinese law enforcement agencies have disabled the Web site that created the Trojan. Now if only there was a way to disable the impulse to click on the DOWNLOAD button too quickly!

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Just when you thought that those Microsoft programmers — you know, the ones all hopped up on caffeine and sugar from all those bottles of Pepsi consumed to wash down the Twinkies — couldn’t possibly top past blunders, we have the release of XP Service Pack 3. If you haven’t installed it yet, you may not want to do so without taking proper precautions. It seems that the new service pack disables support for many older file formats. Gee, they did it without warning anyone and without asking anyone. Whodda thunk?

All the information and links you need can be found in a blog post by my colleague Nerino Petro of the Wisconsin Bar Association.

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The question about whether to discount ones fees comes up frequently. It is especially significant to address for newly-minted lawyers, as well as struggling lawyers during hard economic times. And so it’s not surprising that as the economy continues to limp along, more and more attorneys are wrestling with this issue.

I have written about this issue in the past. In December, 2007 I provided two posts related to this topic: Thinking About Lowering Your Rates? Think Again! and How to Set and Raise Your Billing Rates. In October, 2007 I touched on this again in a post entitled Client Intake — Initial Consultation Fees.

I am a big fan of Allison Shields, the author of Legal Ease Blog and principal of her consulting practice Lawyer Meltdown. I find that she and I are more often than not on the same wavelength. And I have on rare occassion — not as often as I should — written her to let her know I hold her in high esteem and appreciate her work. Her most recent post entitled Real Lessons Learned About Discounting Your Fees hits the nail on the head. Thanks, Allison.

I find that lawyers generally fall at one or the other end of the spectrum. There are those who charge outrageously high fees. They get away with it because they have established a strong brand which differentiates them from their competitors, or because they have an expertise which is rare and formidable. Either way, I say good for them!!

At the other end of the spectrum are the lawyers who have the “I’m not worthy” mind-set. They do not charge anywhere near what they could, and fear the clients will find their rates excessive. They provide free consultations, discounted rates, and more often than not mark down the bills before they go out to the client, and with no indication to the client they have done so. I often hear the justification, “The client just won’t pay that.” OK, how do you know unless you send the bill? Or at least why don’t you get some bang for your discount buck by noting it on the invoice? This “instinct” is more often borne out of insecurity and/or fear than fact or some empathetic psychic connection to the client.

What’s so sad is that my clients who follow my advice and up their rates report that amazingly no valuable client is lost as a result, except for an occasional “bad pay” client who was a pain anyway. Good riddance! The same applies to the discontinuance of “unseen” discounts. I feel sorry for those I cannot help, because I know they will continue to struggle financially, and often needlessly.

Believe it or not, if you are too cheap, the clients will think you are not worth your dollars. If you don’t value yourself, why should they?

I once bought a very expensive sweater at Macy’s. I had to wait for it to go on sale because it was outrageously priced, or so I thought. A few months later I was on vacation, touring the shops on famous Rodeo Drive. To my shock, my coveted sweater was in one of the stores. I ran in to check out the price. It was priced at more than ten times what I paid. And it, too, was on sale. It solidified two thoughts in my mind. First, had it been priced at the Macy’s level, those who regularly shop on Rodeo Drive would have thought it was lacking in quality, e.g. “What’s wrong with this, that it’s so cheap?” In other words, sometimes a higher price is interpreted as meaning higher value to the client. Second, value is subjective and relative when it comes to pricing.

Just think about it the next time you are considering discounting your rate.

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This is a little off the beaten path of my blog, but it’s worth mentioning. Instead of creating landfill when you buy a new toy, you can create good will for someone laying their life on the line for our country. Admit it, you’ve either bought or thought of buying a new cell phone just because a new one is cooler than the old one. More features. . . Smaller. . . Lighter. . .Prettier color –you go girl! . . . Larger display. . . Whatever the reason, the old cell phone often becomes nothing more than poisonous landfill. Now you can do something good when you get rid of it.

I’ve donated a couple old phones to a local woman’s shelter in the past. But here’s another alternative which may be equally attractive. With so many of our country’s young people deployed overseas, keeping in touch with family and friends stateside is a difficult and expensive proposition. Now there is an organization collecting cell phones to assist our enlisted men and women with their communication needs.

Cell Phones for Soldiers hopes to turn old cell phones into more than 12 million minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas in 2007. To do so, Cell Phones for Soldiers expects to collect 15,000 cell phones each month through a network of more than 3,000 collection sites across the country.

The phones are sent to ReCellular, which pays Cell Phones for Soldiers for each donated phone – enough to provide an hour of talk time for soldiers abroad.

Cell Phones for Soldiers was founded by teenagers Robbie and Brittany Bergquist from Norwell, Mass., with $21 of their own money. Since then, the registered 501c3 non-profit organization has raised almost $1 million in donations and distributed more than 400,000 prepaid calling cards to soldiers serving overseas.

Sponsor AT&T has donated more than $500,000 worth of prepaid phone cards to Cell Phones for Soldiers and is now offering all 1,800 company-owned wireless store locations across the country as drop-off sites to help recycle used cell phones for the program, through July 2008. There are many other generous sponsors as well.

Cell Phones for Soldiers was featured on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric; highlighting a 7-year-old who’s missing his daddy and a father thousands of miles away at war. The phone call is not just a chance to catch up; its the only way to cope.

OK, so now you have a good reason to buy that new cell phone you’ve wanted, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it!

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In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft has put in a bid to buy Yahoo. I admit when I read the news I was scratching my head in disbelief. What would be the point, I pondered. But technologist and fellow blogger Ross Kodner expressed my puzzlement better than my own words ever could in his post entitled “More Money Than Sense? If I Had $44.6 Billion, I Wouldn’t Be Buying Yahoo!” If you’re ready for a good laugh, read this post for sure.

In every merger one must find synergy of some sort — meaning that one plus one must equal three or more. Ross is right in his post — what possible synergy would this marriage produce? Aside from the inflation of the stock price of Yahoo, that is. If you don’t already own stock, you’re probably too late to cash in on this outlandish deal.

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The I-9 Form has changed. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has provided a list of FAQs, along with a 48-page handbook for employers, to ease the shift to the new form. When should you begin using the form? That’s not entirely clear. You should have begun using the new I-9 forms November 7, 2007, when they were issued. However, the USCIS provided a 30 day grace period which was to start upon notice in the Federal Register from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But as of this post, the DHS hasn’t given notice. It’s believed that you currently need to complete this new version for new employees, or when you reverify current employees. The form is available here.

There are basically two areas of change. The first concerns the menu of supporting documents. Formerly, one could present one document from List A (establishing both identity and employment eligibility) or one document each from List B (identity) and List C (eligibility). It was then the employers responsibility to review the documents and certify that they appeared to be genuine and relate to the named employee. The revised List A now contains five additional documents that may be used to establish both identity and eligibility.

Another change is that employees don’t have to furnish their social security number if they don’t want to, unless the employer participates in the USCIS Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification Program (E-Verify).

The new 48 page Handbook for Employers: Instructions for Completing the Form I-9 was revised and became available on November 1, 2007.

Remember to keep your completed I-9 Forms in a separate location from employee files. Best practices dictate that you keep one binder for current employees, and one for former employees. That way if there is a surprise inspection, you do not have to pull your confidential employee files. It also makes it easier to follow up when it’s time to recertify.

I recall that when the I-9 was first introduced one had to “stretch” a bit in order to get sufficient documentation from employees. Back in the 1980’s, when the form was first introduced, many legitimate workers had insufficient identifying documentation. I remember virtually none had List A documents, and many had virtually none of the offerings on List B or C. Once I actually accepted a fishing license for the List B document. Abiding by the strict letter of the law on those forms was less important than securing the employment of a qualified legal secretary in those go-go days. And frankly, there weren’t a whole lot of illegal immigrants trying to secure work as legal secretaries. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend that lackadaisical attitude in today’s post-9/11 world.

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Tata Motors, based in Mumbai, makes cars, trucks, and buses for both the domestic market and for export, and has relationships with Italy’s Fiat and Korea’s Daewoo. They have just revealed their $2,500 Nano, which they have labeled The People’s Car. Tata’s goal is to get the Nano in the driveways of Indian citizens who otherwise couldn’t afford four-wheeled transportation.

But while the lights of the New Delhi Auto Expo were trained on Tata’s minicar, activists near Kolkata were burning the car in effigy. The Trinamool Congress, a West Bengal opposition group, torched a mockup of the Nano in protest over land rights at the factory location. They claim that farmers were ousted in order to acquire the land needed for the Tata production factory. Their leader vows that no cars will come off the assembly line until the wrong has been righted.

Let’s assume the political heat cools down and the Nano does indeed hit the market. If the Nano runs and is reliable, it probably will not be long before this auto reaches American shores. It could revolutionize driving for youth like the original Volkswagen Beetle did when I started driving. (Ok, I may have just aged myself )

Stay tuned, and start saving your pennies.

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For those unfamiliar with the Stella Awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S., they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee. You may recall the story in which, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? Well, that’s not exactly the true story. The true story, as detailed by the Oklahoma Bar Association as a service to the legal community, is that Stella was not driving, and she was in a stopped vehicle trying to add the cream and sugar to her coffee. She could not remove the lid, so held the cup between her knees to free both hands for the task. And while the smirky comment in the awards intro implies that any sane and rational person would have or should have anticipated a spill might be possible under the described circumstances, the fact is that if the coffee hadn’t been kept at a temperature so high — much higher than competitors — the 3rd degree burns would have been completely avoidable. A McDonald’s management person/expert essentially testified that they kept their coffee hotter than the industry standard to sell more coffee, they knew it was hot enough to scald but that the few burn cases were “statistically trivial.” If you take a look at the photos of Stella’s burns, you won’t conclude they are trivial in any way, shape or form. And it is doubtful it was trivial to the other 700 burn victims who had already contacted McDonalds prior to that incident.

Ok, so the new awards are out. And the first place award happens to deal with an alleged case in Oklahoma.

Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

My colleague at the Oklahoma Bar association informs me that the story about the Oklahoma RV is an absolute and complete fabrication. Nothing even remotely like this happened, no plaintiff with that name filed a law suit in the time period, and no jury heard such a case. Hmmm . . . something is fishy here, isn’t it?

My colleague goes on to point out that the one about the lawyer who insures a cigar, smokes it, recovers an insurance claim for fire damage, and then gets arrested for arson, was not a lawyer but a “cigar aficionado” when the story first circulated. He even provided the link to Snopes to prove it is just another urban legend.

One of my colleagues maintains that the Stella Awards and its ilk are a slanderous attack on the entire legal system promulgated by those who want to influence public opinion. Me? Well, I know that just because I may be paranoid, it doesn’t mean people aren’t actually out to get me! So I don’t dismiss this view out of hand. Nor do I deny that I enjoy reading about these wacky lawsuit stories. But let’s be clear. Unless you have the actual cites, they’re nothing more than amusing stories. Not facts. And you should never pass them along with the representation that they may be facts, because when they come from a lawyer or someone in the industry, laypersons assume they are real.

So be amused. That’s ok. Just don’t be hoodwinked, or guilty of building or passing along the next urban legend! Make sure you add your own caveat before hitting SEND.

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If you’re looking for a simple checklist with easy to follow instructions, this link is a real plus. My partner in The Managing Partner Development Institute, Dan Siegel, came across it by accident. Microsoft has a little gem on their site. Actually they have lots of them, but their site is just so big, it’s easier to find things by accident than by design. Their Small Business Computer Security Checklist has just 7 items, with full details linked behind each item. It’s worth a look.

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