I haven’t blogged in a while for a couple of reasons. First, I was sent avbook by a recovering trial lawyer turned writer named Paul Levine called “The Deep Blue Alibi”. I was supposed to write a book review once I was finished with it. I was planning on writing the review last weekend, but I was then sent the first book in the series, “Solomon v. Lord”, and it was so good that I couldn’t stop reading it long enough to write the review of the first one!! I figure I’ll finish this one and then write the reviews in the order in which God intended. Suffice it to say, I recommend these books to criminal trial lawyers because they are funny and well, they actually have some good advice in them. I think Mr. Levine might have gone to some NACDL conferences.

Second, I was supposed to be done with my job on February 24, but I’m a nice person and they hadn’t hired anyone yet, so I offered to stay for a few extra days. These last few days have been allright. I haven’t been given a hard time about anything and I’ve even managed to have some energy to get up extra early to work on law firm related stuff. And trust that there is a crapload of law firm related stuff to do. And none of it is simple. For example, you think you can go to a bank and say hey, I want a bank account for my new law office. Nooooo. It can’t be that easy. First, you have to have two accounts, an operating account and an Escrow account. In Maryland, all fees, including those in criminal cases, need to be put into an escrow account and transferred into the operating account once they are earned. This is kind of bogus because criminal fees are usually flat fees that are hard to translate into an hourly rate. For example, how do you justify charging someone 245 dollars an hour when all you’ve done for that hour is wait to be called on the morning docket? Do you put that 245 dollars into your account as ‘earned’ even though you did nothing but stand in court? We are trying to come up with a billing system that is fair to our clients and also works in terms of keeping us out of harms way (harm being the attorney grievance committee!) Then, there is malpractice. Some people will tell you that if you do criminal work, you don’t need malpractice insurance because the remedy is an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Again, a risky proposition. But DAMNED the forms are LONG. People, I’ve already got a lot to do. Do you really need all of that information??!!

Actually, you can get a better idea of just how much goes into opening a firm if I just copy my list of things to “follow up on” verbatim. I wrote this while have a decaf yesterday morning:

Postage meter
Fed Ex?
Liability insurance
Commericial insurance
wireless telephone and telephone plans
receptionist desk (cheaper than 3K??)
telephone service
telephone system (under 4k??)
cabling of office
computers
Lexis/Fastcase?
CPA
Banking information
employee benefits (COBRA?)
worker’s comp
Parking
Printer
Website
Letterhead
Business cards
Announcements
Advertising
Website content
Furniture (file cabinets, etc)
Supplies (legal pads, staplers, etc)

And I’ve got two weeks to do it in.

And a book review or two to boot.