Every time I see an article related to billable hours at large law firms, I thank the younger version of myself who had the sense to start his own firm. I remember my big firm days when, even though I worked until 8:00 pm and had an hour commute, I’d always take a file with…
Category: Practice of Law
WordPerfect Apps for iPhone and iPad
If you are a stalwart like me (stubborn and Luddite might be appropriate descriptive words as well) who hates Microsoft Word and still uses WordPerfect, you may have the occasional need to view a WordPerfect document on your iPad. I first wrote an article on the available apps for that purpose back in 2014, and…
Stick the Other Side with the Jury Fees
How to make the other side pay all the jury fees. This morning I (telephonically) attended a court hearing, and had to sit through 24 other cases before mine was finally called. Thankfully there were no motions; only case management conferences where the judge would set the trial date. Without exception, I witnessed the following…
Invent Your Own Motions
I remember when I started at my first firm out of law school, I thought that every motion had to follow some special format. Certainly different types of motions have their own requirements, and just today I saw an attorney lose a motion simply because he failed to observe a rule, but as a newbie…
What I Do Have are a Very Particular Set of Skills . . .
A client brought me a very strong defamation case, but like so many defamation clients, she wasn’t really interested in money, she just wanted the defendant to remove her defamatory posts. I sent the defendant a cease and desist letter, explaining that her posts could not be defended, and telling her that she could avoid…
Best Client Call of the Week
Due to our SEO efforts, it is not uncommon for potential clients to call us multiple times about the same case. They don’t keep notes, so they don’t have any record of who they have called. They just move to the next Google search result, and start dialing. I have no problem with that. In…
Loving the Practice of Law
God I love the practice of law. Oh, it can certainly suck at times, but there are not too many other professions that pay you for an intellectual pursuit. Being a chemical or biological researcher is probably intellectually stimulating as well, but that lacks the dueling aspect. Metaphorically, I suppose, a researcher looking for a…
Three Lessons Learned from an Afternoon of Oral Argument
I attended my first video conference oral argument in front of the Court of Appeal today. It was a bit surreal. Normally oral argument is such an austere process, with four robbed justices walking in at the assigned time and taking their seats (only three of them hear any particular case). But with Covid-19 and…
Best Client Email of the Week
I once had an attorney – an attorney! – who came to consult with me about her own personal case. She was laying out the facts to me, but the case was full of holes. I was asking the obvious questions about the glaring problems with her case, when she stood up and ended the…
Worst Judge of the Month
I’ve written here before about how you can never assume a judge knows anything about civil litigation. I’m not necessarily saying that in a pejorative sense; it may just be that the judge has only a transactional legal background, or previously worked on the criminal side. I ran into another one of those judges who…