Flat fee arrangements are amazingly liberating. Most of my fellow litigators won’t take a case on a flat fee, either because they are concerned that they will grossly underestimate the time the case is going to take and end up with an effective hourly rate of $25, or simply because they think they’ll make more…
Author: Aaron Morris
All Clients Will Shop On Price if That is the Only Distinguishing Factor
I’m not here to spread doom and gloom about the legal job market, but these articles keep catching my eye. In an article from the TaxProf Blog, where Paul Caron reported on a service he described as the eBay for lawyers, with the terrible name Shpoonkle. The Shpoonkle service allows clients to post their legal problems,…
Sleazy Attorney Technique No. 8: The Phantom Settlement Offer
Yesterday’s post about flat fees made me think of a war story which just happens to illustrate Sleazy Attorney Technique no. 8. When I first started practicing I had to be hit over the head with this technique a few times before I knew what was happening. I tend to assume the best of people…
Let Me Google That For You
I just had one of those “how did I not know about this great website” moments. But first let me tell you how I’m going to use this site. Here is how the call typically goes. Caller: “I just got fired and my union isn’t doing anything about it.” Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry, we…
“Freemiums” are a Great Law Firm Marketing Tool
“Freemium” is a business model that works by offering a product or service free of charge (typically digital offerings such as eBooks) while charging a premium for advanced features, functionality, or related products and services. The word “freemium” is a portmanteau* combining the two aspects of the business model: “free” and “premium”. Thanks Wikipedia. Freemiums…
Don’t Let the Client’s Problems Create Problems for You
Being actively concerned about your clients’ problems will naturally come with the territory if you have a heart. When you are representing someone who is about to lose their home due to fraud, or lose visitation of a child through a custody battle, you can’t help but be awed by the life-altering nature of your…
Don’t Be That Attorney – What Part of “Without Cause” Don’t You Understand?
Forgive me if I periodically vent here, but I’ll use my diatribes to illustrate important points. One of my fundamental points is that the practice of law is far more enjoyable if you are on the right side of a case. You can feel great about what you are doing, knowing that you are…
Student Debt? What Student Debt?
With the downturn in the economy and the upturn in law school tuition, the perfect storm was created for a bumper crop of extremely dissatisfied law school grads, saddled with debt and finding only poor job prospects. On my Internet Defamation Blog, I wrote about the law student from Thomas M. Cooley Law School who…
Thank God I was only offboarded!
Don’t be offboarded. It has long been the case that law firms never admit to terminating lawyers for financial reasons. Many big companies, the lifeblood of large law firms, want to feel like they have a big, bad law firm working for them. If a firm doesn’t have enough business to keep its lawyers busy,…