The Practice

An Open Letter to TheLaw.net

I get that companies need to market and advertise. However, I don't get spam. I especially do not get spam when I just asked to be taken off of their list on Monday and sent a letter to their president. So, now, here is my letter to him. Maybe some public humiliation and shame will get them to stop spamming people. (Nope, it is not just me. Others have contacted me about them as well.)

Dear Mr. Whitney:

Recently, an attorney contacted me for support on how to get rid of spammers who do not follow their own policies. I felt like it was a beautiful day, the sun beat down.

In less than one minute, I could answer the question "Who are you?" Yes, I knew it was TheLaw.net. Of course, I did not know that TheLaw had its own website. I was curious if the dictionary, the antonym, and the synonym also had their own websites. Surprisingly, they do. Suddenly, the Al Gore created place for information has been overrun by various parts of language.

Using the Veg-O-Matic and Mr. Microphone, I attempted to build a local list of people who hated parts of the English language owning domains as much as me. It turns out that when sorted by Billy Mays and James Dyson, the biggest turn off was people who took these domain names and then tried to make themselves sound important.

Of course, unlike some people, you do not claim to be a "head guru," however, it is my understanding that you may be overrun by the delightful kids from down the lane. In that case, a call to Numbuh One should be sufficient to resolve your problems. In fact, I am guessing that the trouble is not with tribbles, but that the tribbles caused the trouble. At least if that were the case, you could say you were not violating CAN-SPAM, but you may still have a problem with a tasty snack that you may eat too much of and then throw up.

Hence, my suggestion would be to develop a new SMARTMarketing strategy. I would highly recommend you look into it.

Jonathan

PS Look for the pop culture references!

Spam and the practice of law

Interesting - we all know that spam can get the spammer in trouble. But, it seems like the spam gets worse - not better. And the worst spam - spam to lawyers about legal services.

Let me see if I get this right. You want me to use your service, yet you can't seem to follow a little thing like a federal law? Hmmm......that sounds like something I want.

Recently, I was contacted by two services. One was a marketing company and one a legal research company. I have been asking these folks (who shall remain nameless, but if they spam me again, its on) to remove me from their lists for at least 6 months. And what do they do? They keep spamming me. So, last week I hit my breaking point - I responded to the president of the marketing company, or as he likes to call himself the "head guy who can't figure out the law," er, "head guru." Sorry, you can see how I could get those confused. I write him a lengthy, well thought out reply that was, in my humble opinion, quite funny. No response. I then sent one to the president of the legal research company - still no response.

Why does this bother me, especially with these two companies? If you are a marketing company and you are spamming me to use your service, what does it say about your service? It clearly says you do not understand how to properly email someone and that means to me if I hire you, I face a potential liability. Thanks, but no thanks. It also says that your program is not very good. Notice that Ben Glass at Great Legal Marketing or Mark Merenda at SmartMarketing don't spam attorneys. They don't need to - their program works!

If you are a legal research company, it makes me question your ability to research. Seriously - did you miss the CAN SPAM act when you were trying to figure out how to market? If you did, your research skills may leave out other important documents, say the US Constitution. If you did find it, why are you spamming me? Do you think it does not apply to you? Lisa Solomon at Question Of Law never spams me and she can find the CAN SPAM act. I know - I asked her!

I think there may be a more basic problem. They know that most of us, especially sole practitioners, are too busy to sue them over this nonsense. So, they figure they can get away with it. Sad, but probably true. Of course, do they really get business from spamming us? I hope not. Please, when you get spammed by a service provider, do not give them your business. Maybe that will start to clean up this mess!

Milberg Weis plea deal

I guess BigLaw operates differently. A partner at Milberg Weis has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice. Interesting.

I am not sure a solo would get off so easily. I assume that David Bershad will next be disbarred. He should be. Quickly. Without hesitation. And any other partner who is convicted should be disbarred, including Bill Lerach, who has formed a new firm and is "considering retirement." Retire or not, if you break the law like this, you should lose your license to practice. It makes us all look bad!

Credit Cards: The Debate Continues

Okay, so you either take credit cards or you do not. Simple enough proposition. Either you think it helps your practice or you think it is more trouble than it is worth.

Well, the fine folks (and I mean that) at the State Bar of California have come out with an ethics opinion, 2007-172, about credit cards. Read it, digest it, and if you are in California, read this month's California Bar Journal where it is discussed in an MCLE segment.

Now, decide for yourself. (Oh, and for the record, I have no official opinion, but wanted to provide this information.)

Stop the madness!

I know I post on this every so often. I still don't get it. Why do lawyers insist on playing games in trying to resolve disputes? Why do we try to hide the ball? What is hoped to be gained?

Look, my goals are very simple in handling cases and yours should be too: resolve the case most favorably to a client at a fair price. It is that simple. So, if you have a choice of doing A, which does not move the case towards conclusion and costs the client money, or doing B, which moves the case towards conclusion at some cost to the client, go with B. You will be happier every time.

Okay, so I am idealistic. Want a dollars and sense reason to do it? Imagine your client challenges your bill at the end of the case. In California, we have mandatory fee arbitration. You go to the fee arbitration and the arbitrator says to you "Mr. Stein, why did you force your opponent to file a motion that you lost when you knew you would lose? You charged your client 2 hours for that." It doesn't matter what your answer is. You just lost credibility to the fee arbitrator and that statement may get the client to think that not only does he have a fee arbitration issue, but he may also have a malpractice case.

It doesn't matter if he actually has a malpractice case, if he thinks he does and files a claim with your insurance or files a lawsuit against you, you have to pay your deductible. Now you are out of pocket the money for the fee arbitration and your deductible.

So, before you do something, make sure that you are moving your cases towards resolution.

Oral Arguments: What not to say

I was listening to oral arguments last week in court. The judge had issued a written tentative ruling. I had read the ruling (it wasn't one of my cases) and the ruling made sense. The losing side requested oral arguments. The argument went something like this:

"Your honor, you don't cite any case or rule that supports your position. We want to know the authority for your decision."

Judge: "Counsel, you can argue your case, but you cannot get argumentative with the court. Do you have any argument about the merits of your motion?"

(I took the liberty of not citing this word for word.)

The message here: if there is a tentative ruling that you belive is wrong, argue the merits of the motion. Do not tell the judge that he/she is wrong. Judges make mistakes, but that is why we have an appeal process. Unless this is some bizarre situation, you will be in front of the judge again. Don't make enemies over one ruling that you may not like.

Thinking outside the box and marketing

There is a reason I think Ben Glass is one of the best legal marketing minds around. Just as you read about things outside of the law on this blog, Ben is the only one I know who is blogging about marketing and college hoops.

You know how you can tell this is a great post? When is the last time I linked to another blogger's blog and told you to go read the article? Last year sometime? It feels like it. This is a must read if you are serious about marketing your practice.

Great Customer Service Works

I had an interesting experience this week with customer service. I cancelled my satellite service. (It was DISH Network, whose slogan is "Better TV for all.") The short version:

I called customer service. I spent time talking to a guy who kept trying to get me to not cancel. He then told me he couldn't take my cancellation request. I then was transferred to a woman who told me her ID was, and I swear I am not making this up, "SUX." When she asked why I was cancelling, I explained it was poor customer service. She tried to get me to stay, but I kept insisting it was poor customer service. She then asked, ready for this?, if I had anyone I would like to refer to DISH. I explained to her I don't refer friends or family to a place where I receive poor service.

Last night, I got a phone call from DISH. Some guy in Texas wanted to know why I cancelled. I explained it to him and he said "Well, you shouldn't let two bad service experiences effect your decision." Needless to say, I now consider it three.

Some of you are thinking: "Has Jonathan lost it (more so than before)?" No. I had three bad experiences that stick out in my mind. That is about two too many.

How does this affect you? Your client's don't deserve any bad service. Sure, things happen. And when something goes poorly, you better get on the phone with the client and make it up to them ASAP. If a second thing goes bad, then you will probably lose the client.

Look, no one who is reading this offers some service or product so unique that you can't be replaced. As much as we want to differentiate ourselves from our competitors, there are 1,000 attorneys who can handle PI cases. There are 100 other insurance claims experts in California. There are tons of people who can set up a small business. You can be replaced.

You want to differentiate yourself? Providing excellent customer service to your clients will do that. Not everyone can provide excellent customer service. And the happy client will refer their friends and family. You can't make everyone happy in every situation, but provide your best customer service to all of your clients and good things will happen. (And happy clients don't file bar complaints!)

As for DISH, I think they should change their slogan: "DISH Network. Better TV for all, as long as you don't mind bad customer service."

Trial tip: Use a trial disclosure

I will preface this post with the following: I don't know the laws in every state and this may or may not apply to you!

In California, we have three "levels" of civil suits: small claims court, limited civil, and unlimited civil. Basically, small claims court is for disputes under $7,500 with no attorneys. Limited civil is under $25,000 and unlimited is for anything. The other difference between limited civil and unlimited is that limited civil cases have limited discovery - 35 discovery devices (total number of questions) and one deposition per party.

I file a fair number of cases as limited civil cases. Why? Well, if the case is worth less than $25,000, I can get the case to trial faster. That is one of my goals in litigating cases. I like things moving fast - the insurance companies do not.

However, before I file a limited civil case, I send my client a written letter, a few pages long, that explains the process and the cap on damages. I get them to sign off on it and send it back to me. Why? It is simply a matter of protection - I want them understanding what we are doing and why so there are no misunderstandings later!

If you have a process similar to our limited jurisdiction cases, you should consider something like this as well.

The joys of an apology

You know what - I screwed up. Not a little screw up. A big screw up. How big? It was so big that if you took all 500+ posts from this blog, printed each one out 10 times on a separate sheet of paper and stacked them up, it would still be 100 times bigger.

And on Monday, I apologized to the person I screwed up with. In front of other people. And I meant it. Every word.

It was a great thing. The attorney I apologized to accepted it and wrote me a nice note yesterday. The attorney who saw the apology, a well respected member of our bar, called me later and told me it was the right thing to do.

Take a few minutes, think about someone you may have wronged, and then consider an apology. It really does feel good.

------Jonathan