Author: TSA Press

This is the latest article in the monthly  “An Interview With” series. In this series, I connect with people from all parts of the legal profession and at all stages of their legal career to learn who really makes up the legal community and what they are actually doing with their legal degrees. 

This month I discussed solo practice issues with estate and small business attorney Erin C. Callahan. Erin is a 2011 graduate of SMU Dedman School of Law and currently runs her own practice in League City, Texas. In this article, Erin shares incredible insight into what it is like to run your own practice and what it takes to do it successfully. 

KS: Tell us about your journey to becoming a solo practitioner and small business owner. 

EC: In law school, I planned to open my own firm. Famous last words. But then I received an offer that led me to take a 7-year detour in the insurance industry.  After seven years, I was done and I went to work for a small general practice. I was exposed to almost all areas of the law — which is ideal if you don’t know what area of law you want to practice. I fell in love with estate planning, and I realized I didn’t like family law or litigation. Therefore, I decided to hang my own shingle and do what I love and what makes me happy. 

KS: What do you love about running your own practice and being your own boss? Conversely, what are some challenges that come with being a small business owner? 

EC: Running my own law firm is terrifying and exciting all at the same time. I love being my own boss because if I want to buy new software, I buy new software. If I don’t want to work on Friday, I don’t. The freedom and flexibility are invaluable. The biggest challenges are leveling up while still doing good work and running your business. You have to become an expert in marketing, finance, bookkeeping, sales, and so much more.  It is challenging to keep all the balls in the air and projects moving forward so outsourcing is critical or you will fall behind. Another challenge is fear and mindset. Pushing yourself as a business owner is different than pushing yourself as an employee. As an employee, your development plan might include attending several conferences, meeting with a coach, or taking a new class. Your development plan as a business owner is taking on new business that you don’t have direct experience with; which can be scary. You have to stay on top of your fear and forge ahead otherwise you will be stagnant. I never experienced fear until owning a business. As Gandhi said, “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

KS: I know this question is a bit of a trap for business owners, but describe what your typical workday looks like.

EC: It’s probably easier if I describe a typical week because I block my schedule. On Tuesday and Thursday, I am out of the office and I focus on all marketing events — whether that’s speaking engagements, meeting with referral partners (I meet with about 20 a month), or attending several local networking events. I am busy from about 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 

Monday and Wednesday, I am in the office drafting in the mornings and meeting with clients in the afternoons. 

Friday is a free for all. Anything that doesn’t get done earlier in the week gets done on Friday. Usually, I am busy most of the day with drafting or meeting people. 

In addition to the law firm, I own another small business on which I spend about 15 hours a week. Generally, from 4:00 to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, I am tutoring. I work with elementary and middle school students whose parents want them to get ahead in school, need confidence-building, or are struggling in class. It is a blast! It’s different than practicing law. My kids are amazing and every day no matter how bad my day is, I have to put a smile on and be there for them. I end every day laughing and having fun with the kids. I also believe in having multiple streams of income and this business is a second stream of income for our family. 

KS: What drives your passion to practice estate planning and business law?

EC: I love estate planning and small business law because I am working with people and not companies. I feel like I am making a difference in their lives. Most people don’t have an estate plan. It’s fun working with them and helping them develop a plan that gives them peace of mind. Second, lifestyle. I don’t have a heavy caseload of litigated cases. I can work whenever or wherever I want, and there is freedom in that. Estate planning and small business law align with my natural strengths. I am empathetic and I get my energy from people. I am also futuristic according to Strengthsfinders, so I naturally have a long-range view towards the future so it’s a good fit. Lastly, I love it because you can keep things simple and do basic wills or challenge yourself intellectually with Medicaid or other highly technical areas of law within estate planning and business law. There is room to grow. 

KS: What advice do you have someone who is interested in starting their own legal practice?

EC: First and foremost, just do it! Take an hour every morning and plan out what it will look like for a few weeks. That being said, don’t stress about all the details. It doesn’t really matter what practice management software you buy.  Clio, MyCase, or Practice Panther — they all get the job done. Make decisions quickly, and don’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Hire a CPA and bookkeeper early or at least have a clear plan. Make sure you put time into your marketing plan. Most lawyers think they will open the doors and they will come. That is not true.  Lawyers are not natural salespeople, and as a law firm owner, you have to be fluent in sales. Lastly, understand that sales is different than being good with people. Know your ideal client and target market. 

KS: What, if anything, did you do in law school that you found really helpful in preparing you for solo practice? In retrospect, is there anything you wish you had done differently in law school to be better prepared? 

EC: To be candid, I don’t think anything in law school prepares you for opening your own law firm. Maybe working while in school or holding leadership positions does because you learn time management and organization skills. Other than that, take as many writing classes as you can. If your school has classes about running your own law firm or allows you to take business classes in the business school, definitely take those. Also, get as much work experience as possible, so by the end of law school you know what areas you enjoy and what areas you hate. Volunteer, work, offer to work for free — whatever it takes to get exposure to different areas of the law. 

You can learn more about Erin here.

Know someone who would be great to profile in this series? Send an email to info@vincoprep.com with “An Interview With” in the subject line.

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

— Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), imploring President Donald Trump to brush up on the document that guides the impeachment inquiry that’s been launched against him. Amash was the only non-Democrat in the House to vote in favor of an impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Like it or not, the internet is gaining access to every aspect of our lives.  You may have a smart thermostat in your house that “learns” when you are home so that the temperature in your home can be adjusted when you are away.  Your home may also have a smart doorbell (and networked home security cameras) that will track not only visitors, but can track your comings and goings as well. Certain refrigerators now have cameras inside them that can take pictures of the inside to assist you in restocking your groceries.  You may be wearing a fitness watch that is tracking not only your steps, heartbeat, and exercise, but your sleep patterns and even diet (should you opt to enter and track such information).  You get the point — more and more data is being collected about you than you may admit, but it is the potential compilation of this information and its use that is a bigger deal than you may think.

Let’s face it: Technology is growing at an exponential rate and the “internet of things” is no exception. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “Internet of Things” as “the networking capability that allows information to be sent to and received from objects and devices (such as fixtures and kitchen appliances) using the Internet.”  As I have written previously, more and more elements of this technology have their eyes, ears, and digital fingers on every part of our everyday lives.  Although the technology can add value and may, in many cases, make our lives a little easier in the process, the cost to personal privacy cannot be underestimated.

First, let’s address the most obvious point: Each of these devices is collecting data — your data.  That is, data about you that you have permitted the device to gather and use according to the privacy policy and the terms of use for the device.   For example, the FitBit Privacy Policy not only addresses what they collect about you from their wearable device, but how that information is used and shared, which may include sharing your data with third-party applications and even your employer (for employer wellness programs with which you participate).  This is indicative of most every such device that you may be using at home or on your person.  Think such third-party application sharing is not a big deal?  Think again. Facebook collects at least 98 different data points about its users, and as the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 demonstrated, such data can be used in ways not necessarily agreed to by its users.

Although troubling, at least there is a level of control afforded the user regarding what data is collected and how it is stored and used for each type of device.  The bigger issue, however, is the bigger picture presented by all of this data.  Much of this data, while collected at the device-level, is actually saved to the “cloud” — a network of computers used by the device company to store such data.  This is where things start getting dicey.  For example, take the Amazon Echo speaker.  This device incorporates a virtual assistant, Alexa, that according to Amazon is its “cloud-based voice service available on more than 100 million devices from Amazon and third-party device manufacturers [with which] you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day.”   The problem is that not only does Alexa “listen” to what you ask (and potentially what you are doing), but apparently so are thousands of Amazon employees and contractors to ostensibly improve Alexa’s speech recognition and contextual understanding — they are listening to audio clips that cover not only the mundane, but potentially criminal activity according to one CNN report.  You can opt out of such use of your recordings by Amazon; however, history has shown that this may not prevent unauthorized use (e.g., Cambridge Analytica).

This leads us to the biggest issue presented by such data in the “cloud” — the eventual analytics involving such information and compilation of all your collected data by third parties.  Think about it: A compilation of your location data from all the IoT devices that you use that can be compiled into a digital representation of you and your daily routine and needs — compiled data that would be digital gold to everyone from advertisers and insurers to hackers.  Your smartphone, combined with your smartwatch data and smart refrigerator providing a glimpse of not only how you eat, but what you eat and where you get it.  Make no mistake, this is already happening.  Unfortunately, the nature of consent in privacy policies does not generally prohibit third-party compilation of data, depriving the individual of control over their data.  Further, there is very little that the law addresses in this context in the United States.  Although the U.S. seems to be moving in the direction of the EU’s GDPR (as evidenced by California’s CCPA and other state laws following suit), the patchwork of state laws is simply not enough.

All of the foregoing leads me to reiterate the need for meaningful federal privacy legislation in the U.S.  Let’s just hope that somehow Congress and business can resolve this dilemma in a way that is a win for personal data privacy. Given the current political climate, however, there seems to be little hope of progress on that front anytime soon.  In the interim, an inadequate patchwork of state laws will be all we have to remain reactive to the ongoing march of technology.  Make no mistake, a Pandora’s Box for privacy has been opened by these technological advancements, and it simply cannot be closed again.  Let’s just hope we can keep the lid from flying off in the process.

Tom Kulik is an Intellectual Property & Information Technology Partner at the Dallas-based law firm of Scheef & Stone, LLP. In private practice for over 20 years, Tom is a sought-after technology lawyer who uses his industry experience as a former computer systems engineer to creatively counsel and help his clients navigate the complexities of law and technology in their business. News outlets reach out to Tom for his insight, and he has been quoted by national media organizations. Get in touch with Tom on Twitter (@LegalIntangibls) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/technologylawyer), or contact him directly at tom.kulik@solidcounsel.com.

Bottom line—law students feel more stressed and experience more mental health issues than ever before, whether it’s student debt or the job market, or the demands of being a law student. This is the last thing they should have to contemplate as they apply to the bar.

— Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan), chair of the New York Senate’s Judiciary Committee, in comments given after introducing legislation strike a question from the New York bar application that asks law students about their mental health. A question present on the current application to take the New York bar exam asks law students if they have “any condition or impairment” including a “mental, emotional, psychiatric, nervous, or behavioral disorder.” If the question is answered affirmatively, the applicant is then asked to explain the condition and disclose whether ongoing treatment is being received. A majority of states still ask questions about mental health on bar exam applications.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The stakes were high when a Second Request required Hire Counsel to procure staff, technology, and infrastructure in a single market, and be up and running in one week.

• They tapped their national database of 50,000 legal professionals, sourcing a candidate pool of 1,500 experienced document reviewers.
• Employed more than 300 legal professionals prepared for work on time and within budget.
• Acquired a 12,000 square foot review center, equipped with state-of-the art technology and ensured that all security measures were in place.
• Stocked the review center with supplies to make it a comfortable working environment.
• The center was open 7 days/week, 6am to midnight, for several months to accommodate the large number of document reviewers.

Efficiency is essential, as Second Requests can be costly and disruptive to your organization.

WHAT MATTERS MOST

Timeliness of Response

Hire Counsel has national scalability and flexibility to implement Second Requests anywhere, anytime. With a 96% staffing fill rate on Day 1 (vs. 64% industry average*), their team is ready when you need them.

Qualified Review Staff

Their pool of candidates have significant experience in antitrust and Second Request matters. And Project Managers are attorneys in good standing and Certified E-Discovery Specialists.

Security Measures

Security protocols ensure your matter is kept confidential. From environmental controls and visitor management to secure server connections and data system protection, their data control and security staff certifies that data is protected.

Defensible, Reliable Process

Hire Counsel’s project management, workflow, quality control, and documentation processes reduce risk and increase output of the review team while also providing a defensible process on time and on budget.

*Bullhorn 2018 North American Staffing & Recruiting Trends Report: The Industry’s Outlook for 2018.

When you need the right legal talent, in the right place, at the right time, you need Hire Counsel.

Lawyers have long been the gatekeepers of legal services, which, as licensed professionals, make sense. But with alternative legal service providers all the rage, and the Big Four accounting firms clamoring for some of Biglaw’s lunch, the winds of change are in the air. And Utah is leading the charge.

The state has announced they are beginning a program to test nonlawyer ownership of law firms. The Utah Work Group on Regulatory Reform has recommended the expansion of legal service providers as part of an access to justice initiative. Last week, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System announced a new “Unlocking Legal Regulation” project to meet those goals. As reported by Big Law Business:

“The restrictive rules that dictate how legal advice can be given, and by whom, need to change,” said IAALS manager Zachariah DeMeola in an Oct. 31 blog post. “For too long the rules have prevented the profession from taking a responsibility in this crisis.”

“This is our moment. The tipping point is here,” DeMeola wrote.

The program is not without regulation, and is designed to be a model for other states dipping their toes in the alternative legal services providers model:

Utah and IAALS officials hope the new office will be a model for a multi-state regulatory body.

IAALS will help Utah develop and test a “risk-based regulation system” based on a model the group created. IAALS’ goal is to see a system that ensures high-quality services, but doesn’t limit service providers to just lawyers.

IAALS also plans to evaluate how the new system is working over time.

There have also been working groups in Arizona and California that have pushed for nonlawyers in the legal market for the same access to justice reasons. However, push back from attorneys has prevented any further action on the matter.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Could today be the day that kicks off the 2019 Biglaw bonus season? To be frank, it’s still quite early for that, but based on your responses to our survey, it really depends (how lawyerly). While 39 percent of survey respondents thought bonuses would be announced before Thanksgiving, a nearly equal number of survey respondents thought bonuses would be announced the last week of November. Perhaps this was a bit of a trick question since Thanksgiving happens to fall during the last week of November this year. Last year, bonuses were announced just before Thanksgiving, in the second to last week of November.

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Based on past precedent, it seems much more likely that bonuses will be announced on either Monday, November 25, or Monday, December 2. Cravath tends to stick a schedule as far as these things are concerned, and in recent years, it has announced its bonus news on either the last Monday in November or the first Monday in December. Either way, Biglaw associates can soon look forward to their bank accounts being stuffed like the Thanksgiving turkeys they’ll gobble down in a few weeks.

While associates are busy counting down the hours until Bonus Day, they’re likely even busier counting up the hours they’re on track to bill in 2019 to meet their targets for bonus eligibility. In the summer of 2018, many firms announced increased billing requirements to go hand in hand with their increased salaries, and some associates continue to scramble to make up the difference. That being said, about 63 percent of survey respondents are on track to bill 2000 hours or more in 2019.

Here are the full results from our survey:

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Remember these strong numbers when bonuses begin to hit bank accounts. You may have worked your Biglaw bums off, but 72 percent of survey respondents thought that this year’s bonuses would be no different than last year’s bonuses. Keep this in mind, associates (and Biglaw management): If 2019’s year-end bonuses are the same as 2018’s year-end bonuses, total bonus compensation in 2019 will be substantially lower than in 2018, since associates at many high-end firms also received special summer bonuses in generous amounts. You may have forgotten, but we didn’t….

As a little reminder, we love covering the Biglaw bonus season, but we need your help. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”). We always keep our sources on bonus stories anonymous. There’s no need to send the memo using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. Please be sure to include the memo as proof; we like to post complete bonus memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please enter your email address in the box below. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish — including, of course, the first such announcement.

Keep your fingers crossed for happy bonus news this season!

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch 2019: Bonus Season Is Here!

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Writing Yelp reviews of Biglaw firms as though they were functioning NYC restaurants started off as a bit of a lark. But after Yelper Samuel G. got started, he couldn’t help himself and put together a few more narratives of a hapless patron stumbling into law firms thinking they’re restaurants.

Hey, it beats stumbling into firms and thinking they’re mid-grade shoe stores.

This isn’t entirely inaccurate. What law firm isn’t opting for an “eat what you kill” model? But with only 4 stars, I don’t think Samuel got the full V&E experience. The last patron who felt they made a mistake going to Vinson & Elkins walked away with $30 million.

Note that the S&C people didn’t look up from their monitors long enough to say anything meta to Samuel like the V&E folks did. That tracks.

On the other hand, how was he walking so close to other pedestrians by the S&C offices. It’s a ghost town down there.

A 5-star review! Just goes to show you the importance of a clean bathroom.

But kidding aside, this gives us an idea if any of the big NYC firms are up for it. Let’s have a cafeteria competition! If we get a critical mass of interested firms, we’ll put together a panel of judges and sample, say, your best two dishes and award the best cafeteria in Biglaw. We can work out the precise details later. Would firms be willing to put their money where their mouths are — and by that I don’t mean talk, but, you know, the food they eat.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Corporate legal departments are looking beyond the largest firms for outside counsel. The reasons for this trend are various, and include the widespread unbundling of legal work as well as the transformation of the in-house/law firm relationship, with increasing expectations of collaboration and transparency. What is indisputable is that smaller and mid-sized practices have unprecedented opportunities to compete for the most sophisticated and lucrative work. The key to seizing this opportunity is the strategic leveraging of technologies, including:

• Advanced security measures;
• The cloud;
• Advanced filetype support; and
• Automation

Join us on November 21st at 1 p.m. ET for a free webinar hosted by Jared Correia, who will be joined by Morgan Churma from Scharf Banks, and AJ Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Everlaw. Our expert panel will share insights and case studies on how your smaller firm can level the playing field with technology in today’s fiercely competitive market.