Solo Practice University® » Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice: Part 7 (Probate and Estate Administration)

Barry Seidel — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:22 +0000

(Read Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Parts 1- 6 if you’re new to this author)

When I returned to work, I knew I had to adjust my practice to make it a better match with my physical and mental health. I converted the per-diem business into a model where the actual court appearances were mostly delegated to other lawyers. I didn’t simply “farm them out”. I hired, trained and supervised the lawyers and my office staff very carefully. I wanted my name to be associated with quality appearances and good service, and banked on the idea that the lawyers hiring me wanted that too. I did not think they required “Barry Seidel making every appearance himself”. For the most part, this was true. If there were ever a problem or a “situation”, I took responsibility and solved the problem. If somebody really needed me personally, I would make the appearance. After all, to appear in Court on one was easy.

I also ran the back office of the per-diem business as well as possible. I hired and trained people to handle the calls and the scheduling and the billing. I took this very seriously, and I still do. I customized Quickbooks for the per-diem business. I was an early user of credit card payments for per-diem appearances. The main use for credit cards in the per-diem world is to smoke out bad payers. The way I look at it, if a firm owes me more than $500 and won’t make a credit card payment, I cut them off. This greatly improved my collections. And, though I kinda hate to say this, it sent some of my worst deadbeats to my competitors!!

Winding down the negligence cases was not exactly a labor of love. It was more like negotiating a divorce that I knew was for the best, and ultimately, rather liberating.

Ah, but what to do instead. I was healthy enough to work, I had years of general practice experience which included concentrations in some specialties. I realized that I had never totally focused on any of the specialties, but I did not consider those experiences to be in vain. They had brought me to my present place, and I knew I could still (20 years into my practice!!) decide!!!!

The field of law that kept jumping out at me was “probate and estate administration”. To be clear, this was/is not “estate planning”, which for many reasons never appealed to me. The cases I was thinking about were the ones that started out “Somebody died, and then…..” There are a lot of cases like that…..and there always will be. In fact, considering demographics, and baby boomers, it seemed like a sure fire growth field. I didn’t need any studies or surveys to confirm this, I just knew it had to be so.

It also seemed that while a lot of lawyers were already doing this kind of work, it was not for everybody, and I liked that. Some lawyers just don’t care for the subject matter, but I actually find it interesting. Some lawyers don’t like that it has its own rules, its own specialized court, and its own language. I had always found them confounding, but I always muddled my way through. I started to envision what it would be like if I became an expert in the field and really went for it.

Self-help books always encouraged visualization and goal setting. I understood this intellectually, but finally saw the value in visualizing a goal. When you really visualize, and then sit down to plan what to actually DO, it becomes much clearer, and much easier. These are the things I did….

Started taking CLE classes on probate and estate administration.
This enabled me to get Guardian-ad-Litem appointments. This generated some fees, but more importantly, got me involved in cases where top lawyers were litigating, so I really learned. It also got me known by the Surrogate and all the “players” in Surrogates Court.
I bought an inexpensive program that could generate Surrogate’s Court documents. Oh, and I learned how to use it!
I hired a part-time associate who knew how to prepare Surrogate’s Court papers really well, but didn’t care for going to Court. Since I like going to Court better than preparing papers, this was a great hire (She’s now been with me over 10 years).
When I was in Surrogate’s Court, I paid careful attention, figured out which attorneys knew their stuff, and asked a lot of questions.
I did Google searches and reviewed the websites of all the attorneys doing this kind of work, and then…….
I rolled out my own website www.queensprobate.com.

I started the website with a modest site through Findlaw. I geared the site towards giving useful information to potential clients who had the cases I would most want to do. This I loosely defined as “anything interesting and profitable in Queens Surrogates Court”. I have cases in other Counties, but all other things being equal, I prefer the home Court. Hence the name. I wrote all the copy myself. This took some time and effort, but has been well worth it. New clients seem to connect with the site, and they often tell me so.

The website made the phone ring and immediately got me involved in a LOT of Surrogates Court cases. I had quite a few cases where the Public Administrator was a party, usually as an adversary. They have very strong legal counsel, so they kicked the crap out of me a few times, but never in a way where I didn’t land on my feet. I’ll spare the war story, but at one point I stood up to them (and the Judge and a Guardian-ad-Litem), when they told me I was wrong and that my approach to a case would not work. When I turned out to be right (and it was not my client who had to pay back the missing money, but the malpractice carrier for his prior attorney), it seemed like my relationship with the entire Courthouse improved. This also improved my confidence, and made me know I was in the right field.

Over the years I kept increasing my commitment to the website. I wrote more pages for it. One day the counsel to the Queens Public Administrator told me that if someone googled “Queens Public Administrator”, my site came up ahead of theirs. This is a good thing. When someone gets served with a Citation from the Queens Public Administrator, and they do the logical thing (google it), I want them to call me, and very often they do.

Another common website scenario is a client from out of State having a New York legal situation, and calling their local attorney. These attorneys usually realize they need a New York attorney, and they too do the logical thing, they google it. I love getting calls/referrals from out of State attorneys.

I did not realize it at first, but Surrogates Court work fits my current peer and age group…..my peers tend to have these kinds of cases. I can relate to the issues arising out of death in a family and speak from first hand experience. Some might be uncomfortable with this, but I enjoy untangling complicated situations, using creativity, and negotiating resolutions. I’d even say that the cosmic karma of “finishing up the affairs” of someone’s life is quite satisfying.

It’s nice having expertise and being recognized for it. It’s nice to practice confidently. It’s nice to know a lot but learn something new every day. It’s nice to deserve to be well paid and have it actually happen.

Funny thing – very often handling an estate requires knowledge of other legal areas. My evolution has taken me through general practice, landlord/tenant, real estate, litigation, negligence, and “per-diem”. I like what I do now, but wouldn’t trade any of my prior background. It’s all part of the package, and I am grateful for it all.

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 6

Barry Seidel — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:00:45 +0000

(Read Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Parts 1- 5 if you’re new to this author)

And then it happened…

On Monday morning, March 20, 2000, on the second floor of Queens Supreme Court, I had a heart attack.

So, March 20th is my 13 year heart attack anniversary. I suppose there are people who get to keep track of their “day I won the lottery” anniversary. All things considered, when the day comes around I’m happy to celebrate it.

Basic facts first. On the subway going to Court, I was sluggish and out of breath. When I got to Court I walked from the first to the second floor, felt dizzy, staggered over to a bench and collapsed. My heart was pounding and I was sweating. Naturally I wanted to get up and go, but a court officer said to me “Listen Buddy, looks like you’re having a heart attack, stay right here, we called 911″. Until he said that, it had not occurred to me. Of course, I was also telling my associate to make sure he made the calendar call for an Order to Show Cause we were covering.

They took me to the closest hospital, Mary Immaculate, two blocks from the courthouse. There I received the heart attack protocol from 15 years prior, a clot busting drug called TPA. After two hours, a cardiologist told me the TPA wasn’t working and this was “not a good situation” so they were transferring me to Long Island Jewish, where I would have a “procedure” as soon as I got there. I then went in a fancy ambulance to LIJ, where I had an angioplasty (they thread a thing through your wrist, right into your heart and unblock the blockage) and a stent. I was awake the whole time and watched my artery get unblocked on a screen.

A heart attack is a blockage in one or more arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. During the three hours I was having a heart attack, a part of my left ventricle (pumping chamber) was damaged. After the procedure I was in the coronary intensive care unit for five days. For three days I had an external pump helping my heart, attached to the heart via a wire through the groin. (Removing this was the most unpleasant part of the ordeal…think “pulling a garden hose”). That first night I also went into heart failure, which is when your heart doesn’t beat strongly enough to pump all the blood and fluid, so it backs up into the lungs. Another bad situation, and despite all the technology available, the immediate treatment was for a nurse to help me cough out the fluid by beating me on the back as I coughed. The nurse also encouraged me to breathe deeply through extreme pain, to increase my blood oxygen. All I ever knew about the nurse was he was Nurse John. I never saw him again. All he did was save my life in the course of his night’s shift. Eventually I left the CCU and then spent another two days in the regular hospital, and then back home.

My heart attack was what doctors unscientifically call a “no risk factor” heart attack. I had no family history, was not overweight, not diabetic, and had normal cholesterol and blood pressure. Of course, STRESS is a factor, and I knew this was probably the culprit.

Stress and pressure are funny things, and I’ve come to learn a lot about both of them. I did individual and group therapy to address stress. This mostly involves thinking and talking, and listening to others (and hearing myself give them advice that I had not followed myself). I never knew how much I didn’t know, but I sure learned a lot.

Here’s where I was when I had my blessed event. I was running around the courthouse like a lunatic, being the greatest multi-tasker ever, and soaring on the success of my big marketing campaign and publicity from the Law Journal article. I wanted to bask in the glory of that, but I couldn’t, because I had 150 negligence cases weighing on me. I was never comfortable doing them anyway, but as the per diem business grew, I came to resent and even hate them. The whole situation made me very angry. This was especially true as negligence practice just kept getting harder. At that time it seemed like every insurance company was defending every case to the hilt, in an effort to break the backs of the volumes of lower level claims. Cases that used to settle were being hit with motions to dismiss. I started to fall behind on some of them, and even with that, new potential clients were calling. I was collapsing under the stress of it, but I didn’t see it.

Around that time I had also made a bad hire, a calendar clerk/secretary who I did not screen well enough (she was a girlfriend of an attorney acquaintance of mine). I did not put in the time on the screening, and I did not go with my gut. She was pretty incompetent, and I made excuses for her because I felt sorry for her and didn’t want to address the problem. It added to my anger and sense of drowning. I knew I was going to have to fire her, and it was eating at me.

Years later when people said that I had a heart attack from the stress of doing the per diem business (and I could see how it might appear that way), I knew that was not the case. In many ways the per diem business, as hectic as it was, was EASY and fun. The real stressor was the negligence cases, an area of practice that I did not enjoy, and knowing that I was not doing it well.

So, I was totally not able to work for six months, and only able to work part-time for six months after that. I had some disability insurance, which helped a little. I was able to keep the per diem business going by having my wife administer it from the office, and by increasing the appearances being made by my number one attorney case coverer, Diana Gianturco. I had been sub-contracting about a quarter of my appearances to her before the heart attack. She was willing to pick up the slack and do all of them. I never hesitated to have her do this, as she was excellent at the work and was/is completely trustworthy. She jumped in and ran the whole friggin’ thing. Yes, she made money doing it, but it kept my cash flow going, and it kept the per diem clients loyal to me.

A strange thing happened with my negligence cases too. I was kind of relieved not to have to work on them, and was certainly not going to take any new ones. Generally, not much happens when you don’t push these cases. When some defendants did push, I would ask for time due to my situation, and generally got it on consent. If I didn’t get consent I got time from the Court (I’d send Diana or another per diem to explain my circumstances). When I finally went back to the office I spent my time calling and settling the cases I could, referring some cases to colleagues, and giving back or withdrawing from the real losers. It felt pretty good to be winding down my negligence practice.

One day when I first returned to the office, I was feeling kind of weak, and I have to admit, kind of scared. Then a thought came to me, “If I were just a brain in a chair, with no physical being, would I be able to run a practice and make a living?” The more I thought about this, the more I saw it could be done. It would just take some clear-headed thinking, some honesty and self-improvement, and some time. I was thankful to have my brain and my experiences and good support, so I set out to make changes and improvements. I was pretty disabled physically, but thought that would improve. I liked the idea that in a practice controlled strictly by my brain, if I ever could participate physically, that would be a bonus.

After about a year, I made an arrangement with Diana to become partners on the per diem practice. My role would be to handle the office, the business development, and everything other than the actual court appearances. She would handle most of the appearances, unburdened by private cases and management concerns. We were Seidel & Gianturco (the King and Queen of Queens) for a few years. It worked nicely. For various reasons we didn’t keep things that way, but we both still have substantial per diem practices in Queens, we are still friends, and we still work together on some appearances.

I probably could have started making appearances at some point, but decided to only do it in select situations, and not handle volume. I kept the per diem practice though, using a model where I have employees and subcontractors, and it works.

I did want to keep a private practice too. When I looked at the different areas of practice I had done as a generalist, one really appealed to me. Probate and estate administration. Not “estate planning”, but cases in the Surrogates Court after someone has died. I gave it a lot of thought, and knew this was going to be my next phase.

Next…transitioning into probate and estate administration, which is what I have been doing for the last 10 years, and what I mostly do now.

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 5

Barry Seidel — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:00:51 +0000

(Read Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Parts 1- 4 if you’re new to this author)

In the early to mid 90’s, as my negligence caseload grew, I noticed a few things:

The fees were way better than the fees from closings, but the cash flow was sporadic.
I was spending a lot of time in court, sometimes on ministerial appearances that were time consuming, draining, and wasteful.
If I was honest with myself (and admittedly I sometimes wasn’t), I didn’t particularly care much for this type or work, or the clientele.

About half my negligence cases were in Queens. If my own convenience were a basis for venue, I’d have filed suit there on every case. However, it would practically be malpractice not to venue a plaintiff’s case in The Bronx or Brooklyn if you could, so I had plenty of cases outside of my home court. Every time I left Queens for a motion, or a scheduling conference, or a pre-trial conference, several things would happen: I would spend the entire morning, I didn’t know the local rules and customs, I didn’t know the Judges or clerks or adversaries, I didn’t know where to park or eat, and I was tired when I got back to Queens.

When I appeared in the Queens courts, I found these problems weren’t so bad, and I also noticed how much my adversaries generally hated being there. I started thinking about what I (they) would pay, not to have to do these appearances. I noticed a few lawyers who seemed to be covering appearances on behalf of other lawyers. These were mostly defense lawyers who were there on behalf of a carrier and were making some extra income. I asked around to see what they were charging, and $75 – $150 per appearance was the range. I would have gladly paid someone $75 to adjourn a motion in Brooklyn, and thought lawyers would pay someone to do that in Queens.

Another thing I noticed was that if planned right, one attorney could handle multiple appearances in the same building. All this takes is knowing the local practices, such as which Judges have a second call at what times, which Parts allow you to “check in”, etc. It also doesn’t hurt to have the Court clerks helping you (or at least not hurting you). I got out the yellow pad and did some math. It seemed possible to make $500 – $1000 per day, if I had the business. This would be 5-10 appearances at an average of $100 per appearance. Another added kicker, the “clients” for this work would be other attorneys. Everyone has their little quirks, and for ME, this was very appealing.

All I needed was a marketing plan and I’d be “in business”…..

There are a lot of ways to get per diem business. Some of the standard ways work pretty well, including networking your existing attorney contacts, word of mouth, and advertising in bar journals and legal newspapers. I did all of those, but I added one more that really worked. I did a direct mail campaign, to a targeted list. Here’s what I did: I wanted a list of plaintiff attorneys who had PCs (preliminary conferences) coming up. I figured these would be appearances where firms would be comfortable trying me out, plus I could price it right, plus I could get the later appearances (motions, depositions, pre-trial conferences). This was in about 1995, prior to e-courts or e-law. The Court system had actually just started computerizing. There was only one publicly available computer in the Courthouse. I looked in the Law Journal for cases where a “Request for PC” had just been filed. Then I sent my law student clerk to the Court computer and had him make a list of all the plaintiff attorneys with newly filed PC requests. That was our list.

I then prepared one of the greatest cover letters of all time. I mean, I drafted it and edited it, again and again and again. I showed it to some of my attorney friends and got valuable feedback. When I was satisfied with the cover letter, I composed a printed fee schedule. I priced everything at $75, but the main thing was, I listed every kind of appearance I could think of. PC’s, CC’s, EBT’s, TAP (we love acronyms in the per-diem world), motions, Inquests, Infant’s Comp hearings, etc. I threw in some rates for Civil Court too, but not landlord-tenant. The final thing I added was a special Rolodex card. This had my contact info, but most important, while my name was on the body of the card, the tab said simply “Queens Court Appearances”.

My clerk brought me lists of about 300 firms at a time. Over a six month period we sent out 1350 direct mail packages. Cover letter, fee schedule, Rolodex card. From those 1350 we got 175 law firm clients!!! This is about a 13% conversion rate, which advertising people have told me is unheard of. Well, it happened, and not only did I get 175 PC appearances, most of the firms started using me for everything they had in Queens.

I was on to something. I had to develop some systems to intake and prep and bill and collect on all the work. So I did. I had to bring in some other attorneys to help with the work, so I did. I had to figure out how to pay the helping attorneys, so I did.

Most of the per diem cases were on negligence cases, but surprisingly, I also got calls from collection firms who wanted me to make volume appearances in Civil Queens. I had my law clerk (who was a night student and looked like a grown-up) mark my cases ready in Civil and then conference with the pro-se defendants, until I arrived from Supreme to make the actual appearance.

There were many days when we covered 10, 20 even 25 cases, and I’d say the quality of our work was pretty darn good. I was always conscious of how I would want a case covered if I sent someone, and tried to cover them that way.

Things were going great guns, culminating with being featured on the front page of the New York Law Journal (December 27, 1999, but who can remember such things). A reporter followed me around the courthouse, interviewed me, and wrote a very flattering story. A photographer took my picture on the courthouse steps, with a caption “Barry Seidel, the King of Queens”.

Meanwhile, during this entire hubbub, I had an office full of negligence cases. I was trying hard to keep them all moving, and in compliance, and investigated, and litigated, and resolved to the clients’ satisfaction. It was very stressful trying to do this while I was running around being “The King of Queens”.

In hindsight, it was impossible to do the per-diem practice and be a negligence lawyer at the same time.

And then it happened..…..

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 4

Barry Seidel — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:00:18 +0000

(You can read Evolutions of a Solo Practice- Parts 1 -3 here).

Taking on Negligence Cases

I learned the basics of negligence cases when I worked part-time for Fred early in my practice. I knew enough to handle basic cases if I got a call to do that. In those days (early 80’s), you could settle most auto cases if you got the police report and medical records, sent them to the insurance company, and called to negotiate a settlement. If I got a call for something a little more involved, I could usually ask around and figure out how to do it. One thing I learned back then, which is true in most areas where you dabble but don’t specialize, is that there is often more to something than it appears.

Some of the best fees I have made were on cases I referred out. There are several reasons for this. One is that no matter what, the value of the fee will always be disproportionately high to the work you ultimately have to do as the referrer. Seems like a smart business move, getting paid disproportionately high to the work and the risk (and the stress). To any attorneys who scoff at making referrals (and receiving referral fees) I say this: You’re nuts!

In my jurisdiction* the rules specifically permit referral fees. The rules tell you how and what to do, they are not prohibitions. The overall fee must be reasonable (you can’t “add-on” for the referral), you have to maintain “co-responsibility” for the case, and the client has to be aware of the referral arrangement. Co-responsibility, however, is a very loose standard. Essentially, the other firm does all the work, while you monitor what’s going on and stay involved as needed or desired. You want to do this anyway, just to make sure they don’t stiff you. This has happened to me once in 30 years, because I didn’t monitor as carefully as I should have. I didn’t know the firm that well and they settled the case without telling me. Actually, it was worse than that – they specifically told the clients not to tell me about the settlement, knowing full well I was doing other work for the clients and was in contact with them. They made me sue them. We eventually settled, and I never referred them another case. (You never want to be known as a firm which does not honor referral fees). And, I learned to monitor more carefully.

Another thing I learned when referring out bigger cases is that high-end negligence practice is a different ballgame than lower-end negligence work. These lawyers are fully committed to their practice area. The firms invest a lot of money in their cases (expert witnesses, investigation, technology, education, etc.) and when they get big cases, they hit home runs. Lots of them also share a trait with the smaller firms who specialize in negligence work: a palpable love/lust for money. There is nothing wrong with this. Some folks have it, and……fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t.

My relationship with money is like dating. I enjoy spending time with it, I like to be around it, and I like to have fun with it. BUT I just can’t make a commitment to it, and I don’t want to marry it.

In the late 80’s, I noticed a problem with my practice. Focusing on real estate and closings allowed me to make a living. However, the prospects for the future were to go on making a living, at best. This is because making a flat fee on cases where you can’t control the time, is ultimately bad business. (Unless you are so good that you can raise the fees very high, or unless you have so much volume that you can hire paralegals to do most of the work and really push the volume.) I saw this and decided I was not ready to commit to this way of running my practice.

Real estate was good for cash flow, but I needed and wanted some jolts of bigger and better money. I decided to see about doing more negligence cases. I wasn’t thinking about a long term relationship with negligence work, and I was not wanting to be known as ‘the negligence guy’. I just wanted to make more money.

So, in the early 90’s. I made a few marketing moves to bring in some new negligence cases. These were the moves:

I placed classified ads in out of State Bar Journals. I thought of this after noticing a few out of State attorneys advertising in the New York Law Journal. At that time I had a law student working for me part-time. I asked her to write to 50 bar associations (the other 49 States plus Puerto Rico) and get their monthly bar journals and advertising rates. This was not difficult to do, even in the pre-internet era! All the bar journals had classified sections. Most of them published between 8 -12 times per year. The rates were not too expensive. I decided to try a few, just to see what happened. The first States I tried were Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas and California. I skipped New Jersey and Florida because a lot of New York attorneys were already there, and they were a little expensive. My ad was essentially “New York attorney available for referrals of personal injury cases in metropolitan NYC area.” The monthly charges on these ranged between $40 – $80 per State. I got a few calls from the ads in Connecticut, Illinois, Texas and California, but nothing that amounted to much. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, got me in the negligence game.

The Pennsylvania ad cost $42/month. There were no other New York lawyers in there when I started. The first month the ad was in, an attorney from Pittsburgh referred me a pedestrian knockdown where his client was hit in downtown Brooklyn and broke her leg. The vehicle had a $100K policy and I settled that case for $90K without filing suit. The lawyer didn’t even want a referral fee! I figured that case paid for the Pennsylvania ad for the next 877 years. I then got a call from a lawyer in Philly who was placing ads on cable TV for his negligence practice. He was also assisting other lawyers in using 800 numbers for TV ads on cable, all over the country. He said that sometimes he got calls from people in New York who had cable and were watching networks based outside New York (like TBS), where his ads were running. He would do a telephone intake and then wanted to refer the New York cases to me. At that time, 800 numbers and ads on cable were relatively new. It seemed like a no-risk offer with a lot of upside, so I agreed to receive the referrals. Some of the cases were really low-end and I rejected them….he didn’t mind. But MANY of them were pretty darn good.

I stopped running the other ads and stuck with Pennsylvania. What can I say, for $42/month it made the phone ring and kept bringing in new cases (besides the steady stream from the cable TV guy).

Another thing I did was network with some local doctors and chiropractors. I found they were very interested in working with a young personal injury attorney. All it took to get some referrals was asking, and referring new matters to them. Back then one could handle soft-tissue cases and make some money. Things evolved away from that over time, but this was a viable marketing move when I did it.
Another thing I did was to answer the “what do you do” question by saying “general practice with an emphasis on accident cases”. Unless somebody approached me who already appeared injured, in which case I would answer that I did “accident cases”. Since I had been in practice for 10 years already, and worked near where I lived (making me somewhat known in the “community”) this slight change in emphasis directly led to new business in my newly chosen field.
I also made sure to identify myself to other negligence attorneys. It may be counter-intuitive to market to “competitors”, but I never saw it that way. I was looking for certain kinds of referrals. Cases that were “too small” for their firm, but where they wanted to make a referral fee and not have the client “stolen” from them. Cases where there was a conflict of interest so an additional attorney was needed (this is usually a driver/passenger situation). Cases venued in Queens, which some lawyers at that time did not want to take. I was in the Queens Courthouse a lot, so I began to identify myself in the negligence world as “the Queens guy”. A few lawyers began to hire me to do portions of their case, if they needed something in Queens. These were mostly depositions, but sometimes appearances in the Queens courthouses. I even had some lawyers pay me to accompany their clients to insurance physicals in Queens. Maybe a little degrading, but, like most aspects of working on other lawyers negligence cases, I learned a lot.

To handle the volume of negligence cases, I became an early user of the SAGA software. At that time this was the state of the art in document production for negligence lawyers. I hired a secretary/paralegal who was an expert in using SAGA. She was expensive, but it was worth it. I was able to handle volume that I could not have managed with lesser support.

Negligence cases are great when they settle, but managing volume is a challenge. In fact, I should call it was it was for me. Big time pressure.

Next phase – Building a “per diem” practice while being a “negligence guy” (and what happens when ‘big time pressure’ builds).

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 3

Barry Seidel — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:00:44 +0000

(You can read Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t already. Remember, all events are real though the names are made up!)

Landlord-Tenant Evolves Into Real Estate/General Practice

I stayed in my first office at 299 Broadway for about two years (1982 – 1984). I did my own typing and answered my own phone. I had an answering machine where I could call in for messages from outside, using a tone producing device that you had to hold up to the phone and then hope it worked. Actually it worked pretty well. I called in often and called people back promptly. I spent a lot of time calling people from phone booths, in Court and in the street. Everybody did that. We carried change. There was always a wait for the phone booths in Court.

I did my typing on a “Selectric” typewriter. Nobody I knew had a word processor in 1982, though I started seeing them soon after. I didn’t have a fax machine either. I do remember when they started to become common, and thinking how much pressure they would add to law practice. I spent a “fortune” (about $1400) on my first fax machine, for a fax that had rolls of acetate paper, where after a few months the printed words began fading.

Early in 1984, I started thinking about moving my office to Forest Hills, Queens. This was where I grew up, and near where I lived. I found commuting to Manhattan by subway very draining. I was also attracted to the idea of developing a “neighborhood” practice. I started looking at Queens offices and found a great space in a suite on Austin Street in Forest Hills. This office had some amenities. The rent included use of a library, copy machine, fridge, and receptionist. It was hard to adjust to a receptionist who didn’t really work for me. I encountered this dilemma several times over the years, and while I was sometimes able to “make the best of it”, its not ideal.

I had a variety of cases at that point, and was proud to say I had a “general practice”. I always answered the “what do you do” question honestly, and said I was in general practice, with a focus on landlord-tenant cases. I liked Landlord-Tenant cases and Housing Court well enough, for what they were giving me…….court experience, client experience, and some income. There is an inherent tension in doing “general practice” while quasi-focusing in a particular legal field. Some of the problems are….

You can’t possibly know the law as well as the specialists.
You can’t possibly know the Judges and court personnel as well as the specialists.
You can’t have an office staff at the level of the specialists.
In a volume Court like L&T, you can’t be fee competitive.
When you have other types of cases going on, you can’t afford to get stuck in Court on one case. When that happens it is always a money losing situation.

I actually had some Landlord-Tenant cases that were interesting, exciting, and paid well. Of course, when that happened they were also anxiety filled and insomnia producing. One time my client (a Landlord) was sued for illegally evicting a Tenant. In hindsight, I realized my client had been set up by the tenant’s lawyers (who specialized in wrongful eviction cases under the then “new” wrongful eviction statute). Long story short, it appeared that my clients had insurance that might cover the claim, but the insurance carrier disclaimed (they sent me a telegram disclaimer, imagine that!). I had to bring a declaratory judgment action to get them to come in and defend (and ultimately settle) the case, but not before I had a trial and a mis-trial and a re-trial in Housing Court. When I finally got the carrier into the case, they did have to pay me for all the defending I had done. I have omitted most of the details, but thirty years later I do remember the whole affair. This is not a tribute to my memory, it is more of a tribute to how traumatic it all was. The main lesson I learned from that case was that I did not want to do landlord/tenant as my life’s work.

At that time (mid 1980’s) in New York City, there was a big development in the local housing market. Thousands of rental apartments were being converted by the building owners to “co-op” ownership. Essentially, tenants were given the opportunity to buy shares in their rental apartments, at an “insider” price. At one point, I answered a Law Journal ad for a part-time position, with a Landlord firm who were bringing “non-prime residence” cases against tenants. They were seeking to evict the tenants, so the landlord could sell their apartments at the open market price. My job would have been to gather enough evidence to either evict the tenants, or drag them into Court and try to buy out their interests at a discount. Pretty awful stuff, so I passed on the job. But it did get me thinking.

There were a lot of tenants who were suddenly going to be buying their apartments, and they would all need lawyers. There would be contracts, and bank financing, and closings, and all the stuff that usually goes with a “real estate” transaction. If you asked most lawyers what kind of case a co-op purchase was, they would say it was “real estate”. It struck me though, that most of the clients thought of this as a “landlord-tenant” situation.

I looked at my Yellow Pages ad in the Landlord-Tenant section of the Lawyer ads, and noticed that none of the ads mentioned co-op conversions. When I looked in the Real Estate section of the lawyer ads, I saw many lawyer ads for co-op conversions. So, I called my Yellow Pages rep and asked whether I could keep my ad in the L&T section, but make reference to co-op conversions. He said “Yes, and you can also have up to five words under your ad, $60 per month.” I did some math and thought “That’s $720 per year. I would need one or two clients to break even. Kinda makes sense.”

I then placed an ad in the Manhattan and Queens Yellow Pages, ($60 per month in each book, but I recall I got some kind of discount) in the Lawyer section under the sub-category Landlord-Tenant, adding these five words, “Co-ops, Condos, Contracts and Closings”.

There are few things more gratifying than having a marketing idea work. I was the only lawyer listed in the Yellow Pages this way. The phone rang every day. I took some Continuing Legal Ed to learn enough to actually do the work. On every deal I learned. As I started doing these closings I also realized that many of my friends and family (and their friends and family) were buying their apartments. This made the omnipresent young lawyer question (“What do you do”) much easier to answer. Suddenly my mantra was “General practice, with a lot of co-op and condo closings”.

Sometimes clients were taking the buy-out money and buying a house. This was especially true with my Queens clients. The first few times this happened I actually turned the work down. The main reason was I had no idea how to do a house closing. One afternoon a title company rep cold-called me in Forest Hills and asked “Who does your title work?” I replied “Nobody, I don’t do house closings because I don’t know how”. He said “Well, my boss is the owner of a title company and he is a lawyer. I’m pretty sure he would be willing to teach you how to do it, no charge, because it would be a smart business thing for us to do.”

And so, on my first ten or so house closings, Larry Litwack of Big Apple Abstract essentially told me what to do, every step of the way. When the Sellers attorney sent me a proposed contract, Larry and I went over it together, and he taught me everything a lawyer needed to know about real estate. I also soon learned that most of my adversary attorneys were pretty supportive towards a young attorney trying to learn the business. When this happened, I had two teachers on each deal. I was hungry to learn, so I learned a lot, and fast.

Over the years I have not only given hundreds of titles to Big Apple Abstract, I have also referred them attorneys as clients, some of whom became much bigger clients than I ever was. Funny how that goes.

I did a lot of real estate for quite a few years. The ads worked well, and I also made myself known to all the local real estate brokers. A few loyal brokers feeding me clients was very healthy. Real estate has always been the bread and butter of general practice. I ate pretty well doing real estate, though at some point I wanted to eat better.

Next – Evolving into plaintiff’s personal injury work.

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 2

Barry Seidel — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:00:01 +0000

You can read Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 1 here.

Everything and Anything Phase, Especially Landlord/Tenant

I passed the bar exam on the first shot, and accomplished every law student’s dream, making partner in one day. Now the firm needed an office, and furniture, and telephones, and other trivial details like paying clients. My first office was located through an ad in the Law Journal, time for space with an attorney named Richard Herman* at 299 Broadway. This was the deal: I paid $100 per month for an office, which was actually the reception area for an insurance broker. I used to point inside to the broker’s office and mention that my office was under construction ‘in there’. My space included a desk, chair, file cabinet, and use of the library, copy machine and refrigerator, down the hall in Richard’s suite. Putting my sandwich and juice in that refrigerator was a big perk.

Richard’s 6-office law suite was down the hall, with each office occupied by a different solo practitioner. Richard also had many ‘cases in progress’ to refer, and the deal was 50/50. I soon found out that ‘cases in progress’ meant cases he had signed up at various points in history and done nothing about. Those were the good ones. The bad ones were the ones he had worked on and made worse. I had a pretty good idea which cases to work on first, the ones with a chance to generate some money before too long. Also ones I had some idea how to do. Actually, some of these matters just needed a phone call or two to resolve them, like a five year old car accident property damage claim. I think the client had forgotten about it, and was thrilled when I called with news of his $1200 settlement, 1/3 to the lawyers was $400, which should have been $200 to me. But it was a little less because Richard took back his $35 in ‘disbursements’, which I felt funny taking from the client. First lesson in high finance, never underestimate small-mindedness. Richard had been in practice 40 years, probably had more money than anyone could need, but made toast in his office toaster oven, adding jelly from an unmarked jar. One day I discovered his secret jelly source, as I spotted him scooping little packets of diner jelly into his private stock.

Most of Richard’s cases were salvageable, and despite his idiosyncrasies he did help me build a client base. His clients became very loyal to me. Richard never missed them and I never felt badly about it. I also had some other business building ideas. I sent out over 500 announcements to a list of friends, acquaintances, relatives, and people my mother suggested. You’d be surprised how willing people are to hire a lawyer with no experience. Based on many years as a clientologist, I now understand the psychology of this seeming folly:

People want a lawyer who has time to give their case attention, and who is affordable (a skeptic would say ‘cheap’). I had some decent work within a few months, directly from those announcements. I got some collection cases from my friend’s Dad, a deathbed will for my cousin’s friend (which soon turned into an estate), an uncontested divorce referred by my family doctor, and a steady stream of general cases.

Every one of Richard’s suitemates had work for me, too. Some gave outright case referrals, but they mostly gave me court appearances on civil cases. Never having been to court before, this was on-the-job-training. One of the lawyers sent me to Housing Court. What a place! Hundreds of angry people doing the same mad dance hour after hour, every single day. Those are the lawyers and Judges. The clients, both landlords and tenants, didn’t dance much. They scream, at each other and at their lawyers. In Housing Court I first noticed something about the court system, and it applies to most types of courts. When there are more cases than any courthouse could possibly resolve, something must be done to finish all the cases. That something is providing both sides with an incentive to settle. In Housing Court every case gets conferenced and both sides are given options they don’t like. If both sides agree to be unhappy, but sign an agreement nevertheless, you have a stipulation of settlement (a “stip”) and the court is happy. One of the things court personnel are always yelling is “Any stips? Why don’t you just stip? C’mon, stip and you can get outta here!” If one side or the other doesn’t want to stip, something bad is likely to happen. For a landlord, his case will be adjourned week after week while his tenant lives rent-free, and when the case finally comes up for trial his papers will be technically defective and his case dismissed. “And if you don’t like it appeal, and off the record, you shoulda stipped to giving the tenant three months free in exchange for his leaving.” Tenants get hammered too. If they don’t stip as suggested they can get an immediate trial, and lose.

There seemed to be two kinds of lawyers in Housing Court, ones who didn’t seem like “regulars” and were either screaming at their clients, screaming on the phone, or doing a stumble-mumble combo. The “regulars” seemed to float above, gliding from room to room, getting their stips working in the morning like short order cooks, and winning trials all afternoon against the irregulars.

I thought the Housing Court scene had some potential, primarily because I couldn’t imagine experienced lawyers going there by choice. It seemed like a good place to boost my practice. I did a few things to get in the game. I asked all the lawyers in the suite for Housing Court appearances and referrals. I took a CLE seminar on Landlord Tenant law. I also put an ad in the Manhattan Yellow Pages. I got a $6 per month special introductory offer for a listing under “Landlord-Tenant Lawyers”. Since it was Manhattan, I was pretty sure there would be competition, but I figured I would be available and ready, and for $6 a month ($72 for the first year) how could it lose? When the book came out there were only five lawyers listed there! It is very gratifying when an advertising idea “works” and the phone rings. I was surprised that many of my calls were from landlords. You might think that all landlords have lawyers “on retainer”, which it turns out is rarely the case, or that landlords as “business-people” would not resort to the yellow pages to find a lawyer. You might be right generally, but one of the great things about New York is that even a small percentage of such a large group is still a lot of folks. Some of those early cases turned into nice fees and others weren’t so big but at least yielded crazy stories and valuable experience.

Landlord/Tenant practice brought me lots of clients, got me appearing in Court, and got me ‘lawyering’.

Next time I’ll share the evolution of my solo practice: Landlord/Tenant evolves into Real Estate and ‘General Practice’.

Written by Barry Seidel

Evolutions of a Solo Practice – Part 1

Barry Seidel — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:00:10 +0000

This post was written by Barry Seidel.

Barry Seidel opened his own practice right out of law school in 1982, after reading “How to Go Directly Into Solo Law Practice, Without Missing a Meal”. His practice has evolved over the years, currently focusing in the areas of probate and estate administration. He enjoys writing and teaching about lawyer entrepreneurship, business development and marketing. His office is in Forest Hills, NY, serving clients and fellow lawyers in the NYC metropolitan area.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Probate website | Per diem website | Blog

I am in my 30th year of solo practice, having opened my office right out of school in 1982. I am in the 5th incarnation of the practice. There was no time when I ever “stopped” doing a particular type of case and “started” a new specialty. Things evolved, and they continue to do so. I had to make many business and personal decisions along the way. Sometimes they arose out of negatives (“I don’t want to be doing “that” any more) and sometimes the decisions were more prospective (I’d like to do ‘that’…or, I think ’that’ would work)

Things I moved away from were never for naught. I learned, though sometimes not fast enough. I like to think that over time I’ve learned faster, took action sooner, and became bolder. It’s hard to know. I do know that when you want to make things better, sometimes you have to think hard, end the cycle of reaction, and make changes happen.

How and why I started as a solo right out of school

In the early 1980’s, I was in law school at The University of Texas. I’m a native New Yorker, so going to law school in Austin was not the usual path for a job back home in NYC. I suspect most law students envision themselves actual attorneys only in the abstract, if they think about it at all.

Fellow students didn’t talk about practicing law, only about getting into a good firm and some day making partner. I listened intently and spoke little. The first inkling of an employment problem came during my second year. Park Avenue and Wall Street firms recruited on campus. I interviewed with 20 firms. Each time it was like a bad blind date. I wondered if they hated me as much as I hated them. Easy question to answer, I never got a call back from the ‘name’ firms. I did get a second interview with a firm that defended accountant malpractice cases, but I don’t think there could have been enough money for me to spend my days doing that.

During my second year, I took a part time job at a small Austin law firm, Montague & Smith* (*all names fictitious, all stories are true). On my first day, Joe Montague gave me my first assignment, to help his client, Mrs. Peterson. He told me she was a 50 year old woman with cerebral palsy who he had represented on her two divorces. He said she was a decent client who paid her fees, so he wanted me to solve her present problem, some kind of insurance question. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was because he couldn’t understand her over the phone. He said to drive over to her house, straighten it out, and keep track of my time so the firm could bill her.

Mrs. Peterson spoke loud and slurred. We walked slowly to her dinette table and she showed me stacks of papers. The whole situation was a mess; two years of Blue Cross claims unsubmitted, rejected, and neglected. Claim letters and lawsuits from doctors. No recollections, wrong recollections, mis-informations. This was not a case that required any research, just plain talk, patience and persistence. I was in my element. I put in some hours and got the mess organized. I showed Joe what was going on and we determined that some of the situations were appropriate for his associates to work on. I was an instant hero at Montague & Smith, mostly because I saved anyone else from having to deal with the messiest stuff. They were paying me $10 per hour, and I saw that they billed $100 per hour for my time. I had no problem with that, and was kind of proud that I “made money for the firm”.

Still thinking I wanted Park Avenue, I left Texas after two years to attend Fordham Law as a visiting student. I got another part-time job, with a Manhattan solo practitioner named Fred Shulman.* He had all kinds of wacky cases. My first assignment there was representative of the flavor of the place: Fred’s client owned a bar, which was about to be closed by the Liquor Authority because it was allegedly a drug dealing location. Fred had brought a proceeding to stop the liquor license suspension while the case was being reviewed. My assignment was to review the transcripts and write something to convince the liquor authority to let him keep his license. The problem was, undercover agents had recorded many conversations of people asking the owner where they could find “Joe with the good blow”, and the owner had consistently directed them to his back office. I asked Fred how we could possibly overcome this, and he said we couldn’t but we had been paid to buy some time to keep them open through Christmas season. I loved working for Fred. Park Avenue firms started to lose their appeal.

Meanwhile, I was still in law school and going to awkward interviews. I got a second interview from a firm doing surety law. I didn’t even know what surety law was, which may be why I didn’t get the job. (I actually learned what it was about 5 years ago, and it probably would have been interesting). It was a tight job market then too, with no jobs at the District Attorneys office or even at legal aid.

No jobs, but no panic, just an idea gnawing at me.I want to open my own solo practice. The facts were: I had no money, few contacts, no clients, and no clue how to do this. So I sat down with the Placement Director at Fordham, and told her what I was thinking. She said, “It’s an unusual idea.” then added, “Statistically only about 3% of graduates nationally do that, and I’ve never heard of anyone in New York.” She looked down, sorry that she had disappointed me. But she hadn’t. I stood up, hesitated, and said, “You mean, people actually DO it? 3%? Are you sure?” She replied, “I don’t know, I mean I never, I’m sorry, but wait a minute” She fumbled around in her desk while she spoke “I heard about a book…..I don’t have it….I haven’t read it….but I saw an ad……here it is, it’s by a guy named Singer, take a look at this, you could probably get it at Barnes & Noble”.

There it was, an ad for “How To Go Directly Into Solo Practice, Without Missing A Meal’, by Gerald Singer. Thirty years later I remember that trip to Barnes & Noble as a trail of smoke and dust. I flew out of her office, off on another mission. The book was in the back of the store, with a bright blue cover amidst the real law books. I bought the book and started reading it on the subway. When I looked up I was five stops past my station, with my heart pounding. This guy’s plan, conceived in Los Angeles, could actually work! Not only that, it would work even better in New York. I knew it.

Although my law office officially opened a year later (the day I was admitted to practice),

I wanted to get started. That day I started a subscription to the New York Law Journal. This is a daily newspaper for New York lawyers. Besides articles about law, it also had a huge classified section, filled with ads for jobs, part-time jobs, offices, situations wanted, business opportunities, seminars, and court calendars. I started reading the Law Journal every day, and I still do. It keeps you in shape for daily practice. It should be read carefully and with feeling, like it’s the most important thing you can do for yourself. The Law Journal was a business transformer for entrepreneurial lawyers; you just had to plug in.

I then set in motion the strategies of “How to Go Directly Into Solo Law Practice….”. In a nutshell, the idea was to find a ‘time for space’ arrangement for an office, including referrals of legal work and cases. Next, introduce yourself to other lawyers in the same suite and in the building and get legal assignments and referrals. If that didn’t get you busy, knock on doors in the rest of the building. Then, send announcements to every person and entity you’ve known in your whole life. Add in your own creativity and don’t look back. You could also get on some referral panels, do a little advertising, and otherwise think like a businessperson with a valuable product to sell.

I then called Fred and asked if he’d let me work part-time once I was a lawyer. Besides the cash flow from working part-time, I knew I’d need him for advice when real clients and cases came in. He was on board from the start. I used to call him all the time. Some of my best days later on were when he started to call ME for advice.

While still in school, I saw an ad in the Law Journal for a company called “Educated & Dedicated”. I don’t remember their exact ad, but it was basically “our clients need a messenger who can figure out what to do when they get there”. The description was accurate. One of their clients was a company called “Federal Document Retrieval”, who sent me to copy files at various places in New York, mostly the Federal Courts. Their clients were big law firms all over the country. I even made a few runs to the Federal Archives in Bayonne, New Jersey. “E&D” always wanted me to call them directly, never their clients, but one day I was stuck in Bayonne and couldn’t find what their client wanted. Nobody at “E&D” knew what to do, so I called Suzanne at Federal Document Retrieval directly. We got the info straight, and she started asking me about myself, and I briefly told her my life story. She asked me to talk to her boss Doug, the owner. He got on the phone, had me re-tell my story and then asked, “How would you like to be our exclusive agent in New York?”……. and from then on I was.

Next time - Everything and Anything Phase….

Written by Barry Seidel