Feb 22, 2025
You can’t just start representing clients that fall into your lap without reading Jay Foonberg’s How to Start and Build a Law Practice. You really need to buy a copy. Do so ASAP. If you can’t afford to buy the book, read it at the library. It will probably be checked out, so expect a long waiting list. Don’t bother trying to find the book in a law library. Their copy was stolen and they’ve had to order another.
I’m not going to scold you but I’m going to scold you:
- You don’t meet clients at your home. Ever.
- You don’t have animals running around when you meet with clients.
- Don’t expect clients to pay for a consultation. You’re not at that stage yet.
Whether you get to that stage depends on how closely you take Foonberg’s advice.
It’s very easy for me to light up a cigarette while complaining that there’s “No Smoking” in the room. Full disclosure: when I moved my office from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami, I had an office in my home. Worse, I met with clients there. Even worse still, I met with criminal clients there. But I’m not being a hypocrite, I learned from the experience.
“I don’t have the cash for an office,” I hear you weep. I understand. Cash is always a problem.
One of the reasons I moved was to cut down on expenses. Immediately I could stop paying my landlord; the money went into my pocket. When I realized I couldn’t meet clients at my home—and my house had an extension that was set up with its own entrance, but still—it was somebody’s home, it was a residential neighborhood, etc.—I would meet clients at a coffee shop, or at their apartment, wherever.
After I no longer had an office, I once went to a client’s home to collect a fee. When I walked into his place there was an open attache case with a half-opened kilo of cocaine and a pistol on the kitchen table—but did that dissuade me? Of course not.
If you’re going to eke out a practice as a sole practitioner you have to pretend. Fake it until you make it. You need to screen your calls. That was a problem I never solved. An answering service is a step in the right direction. But not a perfect one.
You have to get a lawyer to let you use his conference room from time to time. Preferably, one that you are doing work for, like writing briefs. OK, maybe such a lawyer in New York will have his hand out. Until you’re at the point where you can afford some kind of arrangement, meet in coffee shops, in diners.
The Three Star diner in Brooklyn wouldn’t be bad, especially if they make a big fuss around you. Law libraries have conference rooms; that might be an option. Stack half-open law books on the table; let the potential client see how hard you’re working. You can’t meet in your office because you’re doing legal research but you’ll squeeze him in. While you’re at the library take some time to read the advance sheets; these days a subscription is a $30k downstroke and they say the publishing business is in trouble.
Sam Walton ran his business from a diner; so did Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series. These were eccentric characters. Marketing your own eccentricity may not be a bad hook. Don’t tell me you’re not eccentric either—you earned that moniker when you warned your client that there might be cats running around during your initial conference.
I have always envied physicians who are able to squeeze money out of a patient for an initial consultation. That opaque glass window protects the Holy of Holies until it slides open to receive a check or credit card which you better have ready otherwise you won’t be seeing the doctor today. Do you think your physician client meets with patients in his home? Of course not.
Miami’s Ira Kurzban is one of the most celebrated immigration lawyers in the country. You want to see Ira? No problem, make an appointment. You want an appointment? $500. You want to pay the day of your appointment? Guess again. If your funds don’t clear, your appointment is canceled. His kind of practice is anything but normal.
Lawyer’s at Ira’s stage of practice can get away with this, but most can not. Too many lawyers advertise “free consultation” so you are expected to give your time away too. The one exception is divorce practice, where people learned after a Sopranos episode that it costs just to meet with a divorce lawyer after Tony Soprano showed them the way.
For a lawyer, it is extraordinarily difficult to get paid for an initial conversation. A prospective client will squirm like a raver on E before turning over a dime to a lawyer for a consultation. They’ve seen billboards offering free legal services. Why don’t you offer free legal services too? Free consultation, free legal services, isn’t it all free?
My point is, a guy who has to warn a landlord about undisciplined cats roaming around isn’t going to get clients to show up at his home, never mind fork over an initial consultation fee.
Yeah, yeah, “physician heal thyself” and all, but as I puff on my cigarette and demand that you put out yours, consider my advice.
Read Foonberg.
Feb 21, 2025
Let’s say that ChatGPT isn’t very good when it comes to the law. Hallucinations are an expected hazard of its use. The lawyer knows the law, but that’s not enough. A lawyer has to know how to close a real estate transaction, zoning, emergency room medicine, mechanical engineering, fire prevention, supply chain, distribution rules for the promotion of medical devices, IVF, electrical construction load best practices, what a lineman calls a “pot,” CRISPR, decennial liability and how to read a financial statement. And over the course of a career, maybe a hundred other things. Like, that you can break a car window with a spark plug. That a 9mm shell won’t fit in a .380. That 12 points of fingerprint comparison are no longer needed–eight is enough. What a triple-neck round bottom flask is used for. Whether precursors can be used to make levo- or dextro- versions of a molecule. All the substances that share the molecular weight of C17H21NO4. That a vessel in extremis may violate transit rules to avoid an accident. None of which is taught in law school. And let’s not forget a private detective’s tradecraft, computer science and having the people skills to learn the backstory. And there’s always a backstory..ChatGPT provides the lawyer with an orientation to what was never studied. Except, of course, for the backstory.
Feb 21, 2025
- A&O Shearman
- Andersen Global
- Ashurst
- Baker Botts
- Baker McKenzie
- Bracewell
- Clifford Chance
- Clyde & Co
- Curtis
- Dentons
- DLA Piper
- Evershed Sutherland
- Freshfields/Hejailan
- Herbert Smith
- HFW
- Hogan Lovells
- Holman Fenwick
- Jones Day
- Tony Khoury
- King & Spalding
- Kirkland & Ellis
- Latham & Watkins
- Linklaters
- Mayer Brown
- Norton Rose
- PWC Legal
- Quinn Emanuel
- Reed Smith
- Simmons & Simmons
- Squire Patton Boggs
- Tamimi 1
- Vinson Elkins
- White and Case
- Hassan Mahasni
Selected Local Firms
- A&M Law Firm
- ELaw Boutique Law Firm
- Al Ghazzawi
- Ayed Harbi (Khobar)
- Hamad Mehdar
- Hani Quereshi (Jeddah)
- Eyad Reda Law Firm
- Tamimi 2
Left KSA
- Gide
- Blakes
Who’s Not Here?
- Cleary, Gottlieb
- Cravath, Swaine & Moore
- Mscfarlanes
- Milbank Tweed (Aramco jv)
- Proskauer, Rose
- Sidley, Austin
- Simpson Thacher
- SJ Berwin
- Skadden, Arps
- Slaughter & May
- Stephenson Harwood
- Sullivan Cromwell
- Travers, Smith
- Wachtel, Lipton
- Womble
- Weil, Gotshal
Jan 31, 2025
Emails today are like automobiles from say, 1915 to 1920 or so. The design hearkened back to the shape of a carriage made to be pulled by horses.
Except for the subject line, an email is still shaped like a physical letter. If the “sender” field contains your name, why add a letter-like closing? If the email is delivered to an addressee, why is there a need for a salutation? In the 12th century, salutations were long and complicated, but by the 19th they had become formulaic and meaningless–unless a variation from the norm was a specific effort to convey a special meaning.
Drop the date, salutation and closing. They are not needed. By the time automobile design reached the 30’s and 40’s, the need to mimic the design of the horse-drawn carriage was fading fast and by the 50’s was gone entirely.
Perhaps we’ll see similar innovations in the future.
Jan 30, 2025
Jan 23, 2025
Few companies—especially those surprised by litigation—have a litigation budget. They don’t realize how expensive the judicial system can be. Company execs believe that litigation is but an annoyance until their defender passes a proposed budget for a quarter million dollars across the conference table at the initial consultation.
Even a sophisticated client has never taken CivPro1 so much of what you say is gibberish. It’s like a physician presenting treatment alternatives where you haven’t even read the Wikipedia page. Maybe there’s a Reddit comment that applies to your situation, but probably not.
It is extremely difficult to budget litigation because you’re playing just one side of the board. The response to a complaint turns out to be, not an answer, but a motion attacking service, followed by a motion to dismiss. This is followed by a motion for sanctions. Only much later do you get the defendant’s answer. Then you’re served with 500 requests to admit. Not 25, nor 50 nor even one hundred. 500. Get in line to park at the courthouse.
Include a provision so that “extra costs extra.” Otherwise, your carefully planned budget will fly out the window at the first encounter with your opponent. As von Moltke noted, “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Jan 22, 2025
It is a lot easier to steal chicken if there’s no chicken to steal.
Jan 21, 2025
21 January 2025
Trump just issued an executive order stripping the security clearances of the 50 or so who signed the letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. I assume that includes (text redacted).
I don’t know what the rules are with respect to a clearance when you’ve left a granting agency. In Panama, I had a blue (Confidential) clearance. I don’t believe I ever had a red (Secret) clearance. Before Panama, I had a Top Secret clearance, but the granting agency never told me that I had been given that clearance.
In the Noriega case and one other case I was offered Top Secret clearances but I turned them down. That pissed everyone off, but that’s another story. I can’t believe I’d be bound by that uncommunicated clearance, but who knows? I did send my Hotel Arbez piece to the CIA for clearance–I didn’t want to end up like John Kiriakou.
Jan 19, 2025
Lawyers: today and every day, say the non-denominational lawyer’s prayer:
“Raise up dissension amongst thy people; let there be strife.”
Jan 17, 2025
I worked for the Panama Canal Commission during the “transition period,” from 1981 through 1985. For the first two years the Canal Zone district court was still open. I was the last lawyer admitted to the Canal Zone bar.
I did a lot of reading about Canal history during those times. The Nicaraguan route was a possibility that was seriously discussed in the early 1900’s—the French effort in Panama had failed—and the presence of Lake Nicaragua was considered a plus. To convince his colleagues to turn away from the Nicaraguan route, a congressman brought a Nicaraguan postage stamp to the floor of the House. The stamp showed an active volcano and afterwards the Congress turned its attentions more seriously to Panama.
Today Nicaragua has its own problems: Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. To quote Gerry Adams, they’re still around, you know. In Panama I worked with George Rivas, who had been the translator for William Stewart, the ABC News reporter who was shot by one of Somoza’s National Guard soldiers. George was a Jehovah’s Witness from Louisiana. In Nicaragua he met and married his wife, Cristina. She had been involved with the Sandinistas herself.
After Nicaragua, he moved back to New Orleans so Cristina could learn English. The Canal had a procurement office at 4400 Dauphine Street. George then got a job in my office in Panama and stayed after I left. It was around this time that George broke up with Cristina. Cristina took this badly.
The split was theatrical: George fell in love with a Panamanian stripper who worked at the same dive written about by William Burroughs in his novel Junkie. After shooting his wife, Burroughs headed south and spent some time in Panama before continuing on to Colombia where he experimented with ayahuasca, said to be a therapy to cure heroin addiction.
Cristina saw her husband and his new friend sitting in his car at the Balboa train station, a place where trains then appeared only twice each day. The discovery upset her. She drove into the station, accelerated and rammed her husband’s car from behind.
It is a bad idea to fight with your wife; it is a worse idea to fight with your wife when she has military training provided by a guerrilla army that successfully overthrew a government.
The Panamanian Defense Forces, then under the command of General Noriega, responded. The Zonians took Cristina’s side even though she was a newcomer and neither Panamanian nor American. Even the Witnesses had had enough and excommunicated Ted. He told me that he was confident he would someday be re-admitted to his faith and he did achieve this much later.
Cristina must have shared her military credentials earned during the war to overthrow Tacho because the Defense Forces did nothing and let her go. Eventually George divorced Cristina, resigned and moved to Miami. There he got a job in City Hall.
I was in Miami from 1985 to 2001, before I made the fateful decision to work in Saudi Arabia. There I saw George only twice. Back in the US, George married an FBI agent. I suppose it would have been awkward for us to socialize together as his new wife was working hard to put my clients in jail.
George then moved back to New Orleans, where he now works for the park district. I got his email from their web site and put him on the mailing list for my A Brief Unpleasantness pandemic newsletter from Bahrain, but I never heard from him.
From him and Cristina I learned a good deal about the war in Nicaragua. When I left Panama in 1985, the Contra war was hot. And Noriega? To quote an LA newspaper, He was our guy.