The Young Texas Lawyer

New York Judge Gerald Lebovits has written a fairly comprehensive article regarding how lawyers should utilize email. The article, entitled E-Mail Netiquette for Lawyers, appears in the November/December 2009 New York State Bar Association Journal. The article is a bit overly cautious when addressing how one should send emails. If you were to go through every one of these tips before you hit send each time then you would have a hard time sending more than a few emails per day. There are some decent points that this reader did not think about such as writing “no reply necessary” to save your recipient’s time and avoid an additional mail item in your inbox, however, that nugget of knowledge was buried at the end of the long drawn out article. In fact, the sheer complexity of these tips reminds of the number of steps that a golf instructor requires for a successful golf swing. Only after ignoring that golf instructor and doing what just felt right did the ball go where it was intended to. Most of the tips are common sense, but they are probably worth a quick read below:

1. Don’t write something in an email that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face
2. If email leads to confrontational messages then speak by phone
3. Don’t turn your email into a back and forth chat… pick up the phone
4. Give the author the benefit of the doubt
5. Always edit
6. Be concise
7. Front load your emails and summarize questions and answers
8. Use the subject line to its full potential
9. Format your replies for clarity
10. Don’t overuse abbreviations
11. Be careful when responding from mobile devices
12. Don’t use emoticons
13. All CAPS is ineffective
14. Exclamation points aren’t so bad
15. Avoid format hyperbole, no memo pad pictures or pink backgrounds
16. Be respectful
17. Start your emails with a concise introduction
18. Tell the recipient how they can contact you
19. Announce if you will be away from your email for long periods of time
20. Never forward without permission and assume that yours will always be forwarded
21. Don’t send SPAM
22. Limit urgent emails
23. Take the time to respond appropriately
24. Only fill in the address box once you are ready to send
25. Manage your inbox daily
26. Watch out for Reply to All
27. Use CC and BCC Properly
28. Check and explain attachments
29. Use your address book wisely
30. Set up email groups
31. Request acknowledgment of receipt
32. Rely on timestamps cautiously
33. Be careful with interoffice email
34. Don’t be afraid to write “no reply needed”

After a month long hiatus, we are back with a question that each reader has probably asked themselves at one point or another. Was it worth it? According to Karen Sloan, you should proceed with caution to law school. However, students don’t seem to be listening. Applications to law schools accredited by the ABA increased by 5% for this year’s incoming class, according to the Law School Admissions Council, and the number of people taking the LSAT this October shot up by nearly 20%, meaning admissions officials are in for a busy year. Sloan goes on to say that “would-be lawyers should take a hard look at the benefits and drawbacks of spending three years and upward of $100,000 to get a law degree” and that “law schools should provide better statistics on student debt, career prospects and earning potential, according recent graduates and law school faculty.” Both are very true, but they could be said of any graduate program. Do you think the person studying to be a chiropractor doesn’t have to worry about the same issues?

The biggest problem lies in the inflated expectations of law students themselves. Not everyone is going to come out making $160,000 a year. In fact, only 23% of the class of 2008 secured that salary, according to the National Association for Law Placement. Everything you learn in school is theory, you aren’t really worth anything until you can put that theory into practice. If your only goal is to make money then most of the time you’ll be in the hole. If your goal is to become a lawyer then not only will your degree be worth it, but it will prove itself essential. College is the place to explore and determine what you want to be when you grow up. If you haven’t figured that out by the time you graduate then take some more time and don’t just go to law school because there’s nothing else to do.

According to the National Law Journal, ABA President Carolyn Lamm said last week that the association is still trying to build support for student-loan relief for recent graduates. The National Law Journal reported in November that the ABA was lobbying the Obama administration on the issue, highlighting the plight of graduates who went into debt but have not found jobs because of the recession.

“What we can’t have is this situation of a generation of young lawyers squashed by debt,” said Lamm, a Washington, D.C., partner at White & Case.

Lamm said that she or other ABA officials have met with aides on Capitol Hill, at the U.S. Department of Education and in the White House to press their case, so far without success. “Wherever we have an opportunity, we share our views,” she said. “They’re very interested in education. They’re very interested in finding a way to help. I can’t say that we’ve found a solution yet.”

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater in Dallas said in a Dec. 4 order that billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban may seek documents and other information from the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to force the agency to pay his attorney’s fees after their insider-trading lawsuit was dismissed.

Cuban can conduct discovery over the legal-fees question to see if he can support his contentions that the SEC engaged in misconduct in investigating him and lacked a good- faith basis to sue him. “To the extent that he views it as the agency having tweaked him, he wants to tweak back,” Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC lawyer now in private practice, told Bloomberg.com of Cuban’s fee quest. “Is this likely to meet with success? No. Is that likely to stop him? No. Many who are accused by the SEC are pleased to take a dismissal and ride off into the sunset.”

Fitzwater dismissed the initial suit against Cuban on July 17, ruling the commission failed to allege he agreed to refrain from trading based on information about a private stock placement. The judge didn’t rule on the merits of the accusations by the SEC, which has appealed the dismissal.

“We’re very grateful that the judge has given us the opportunity to establish the facts that demonstrate we’re entitled to Mr. Cuban’s fees in defending this matter,” Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Cuban at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP in New York, said.

In his ruling, Fitzwater said he was “unaware of any reason to deny a party reasonable discovery when seeking attorney’s fees.” The judge set a Feb. 1 deadline for the information gathering to be completed. He said he’s not sanctioning a “fishing expedition” and quoted a court decision holding that the “inner workings of administrative decision-making processes are almost never subject to discovery.”

Google announced today that they will begin providing full text case law free of charge using their Google Scholar search engine. It is still way too early to determine if this begins to take a bite out of the profits of the sites that charge for legal research, but if anyone were to pose a threat to the big boys then who bigger than Google. According to the Official Google Blog:

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

The blog article goes on to say that Google’s goal is to “empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.” Surely lawyers will feel empowered by the potential cost savings to their legal research budgets.

No other topic is more dear to a recently admitted attorney’s heart than student loans. They are both the key to getting one’s license, but also an albatross for those forced to borrow. For those that took the initial taste from the government and went back to private lenders for more, the pain is even greater. In what appeared to be a surprise to most, the National Law Journal is reporting that the American Bar Association has started lobbying the government to let unemployed graduates convert private loans into federal ones. The change could allow them to defer repaying those loans for as long as three years.

It’s a good start, but does not go far enough. The program should extend to employed graduates as well. Essentially, allowing all law graduates to borrow from the federal government to immediately pay off any private debt, since most private loans carry no prepayment penalty, would make much more sense. Borrowers could then enjoy the deferral benefits of federal loans and only have one lender to worry about.

It makes perfect sense, would ease the burden on lenders, and would generate revenue for the federal government. The only problem with the plan is that it makes too much sense, and like most things mired bureaucracy, that might be enough to kill it.

Imagine taking a single bar exam for each of the fifty states. Imagine wanting to move from Texas to California without having to worry about sitting for another three day test. Think you’re dreaming? Well your dream might be closer to reality than you think.

By 2010 at least 10 states are going to be switching to what they are calling a Uniform Bar Exam and 22 others are preparing to adopt the test in the next few years. Recently, many jurisdictions have began admitting out-of-state attorneys by motion to state court rather than forcing them to retake the state’s bar exam. The test has been developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners and will allow freshly minted JD’s to take their bar score with them from state to state. Propents are saying that such a system will improve both the quality of exams in smaller states and open up the legal job market up nationally, rather than keeping it regional.

The scenario of going from Texas to California may not be there quite yet though. Texas, California, New York, the District of Columbia, Florida and Illinois have yet to embrace such an idea. Their argument is that such a test would miss concepts that are very important to state law. In Texas for example, Oil and Gas law is a fairly important concept of the bar exam. There are also fears that the uniform test would take control from state bars and put far too much power in the hands of the NCBE.

Such a test obviously has its pros and cons, but there might be something to allowing attorneys to move from state to state. One thing is certain, it would definitely open up the job market for attorneys in states who have been hit harder by the economic downturn, but perhaps at the cost of the job seekers in those states.

After numerous friends shared their internet dating horror stories with him, Dallas attorney Randy Block saw an opportunity.

“Somehow these impersonal computer programs have taken over, using microchips for matching,” Block said. “And I kept hearing from professionals that they did not want their photos and profiles on the internet for all the world to see.  So I decided to start something that would be personalized and private.”

In August of 2009, Block founded We Matchmake in Dallas after months of research and focus group meetings.  Block, a former litigator at Winstead, currently owns a legal recruiting firm.

“I figured that matching lawyers to law firms utilizes the same principles as We Matchmake: Honesty, Thoroughness, Professionalism, Confidentiality and Networking – all in the name of making great matches,” said Block.

We Matchmake sets itself apart by providing background checks, privately showing photos of potential dates to clients, and being very affordable.

Block hired Tina Griffin as the Director of Matchmaking. Ms. Griffin joined We Matchmake after 11 years as a Recruiting Coordinator with Jenkens & Gilchrist and Hunton & Williams. She is 37 years old and married with 4 kids.

“We have quickly gained a group of clients that is amazing,” says Griffin. “These are successful, attractive people of all ages that are busy and just need a little help.”

We Matchmake attracted hundreds to its Launch Party at the Stoneleigh Hotel in September.  Their office is located at 2911 Turtle Creek in Dallas, Texas next to The Mansion on Turtle Creek.

For more information, contact Randy Block at randyblock@wematchmake.com and 214-497-5004.

http://www.wematchmake.com/

Facebook Page

So you’ve lost your job. So you still don’t have a job offer. So you don’t have recruiters banging down your door. So what? Sometimes you have to think outside the box. An attorney’s skill set is not limited to one industry or one job.

David E. Behrend of Career Planning Services for Lawyers agrees that there are other opportunities out there for lawyers and they need to start looking at them. ”I firmly believe that almost all lawyers with their education have employment security, but not necessarily job security,” he said, “meaning that they should be able with some assistance to find capable work of a professional nature.”

Many newly licensed attorneys and those that find themselves without a job are having little luck finding a new position simply due to the fact that they are limiting their search to what they have done in the past. There comes a point in one’s career where he or she must grow up and realize that your law degree has lost some value over the last year and perhaps it may be time to start looking for a job outside your comfort zone. Don’t go apply for a job flipping hamburgers, but don’t turn your nose up at those non-attorney positions either.

We have discussed social networking in many forms here at YTL, and Above the Law has a fantastic article about social networking horror stories. Below are some excerpts and we recommend you read the full article. You generally should not say anything on these sites that you wouldn’t scream in public, but you should also protect yourself by limiting the friends you accept and making sure your privacy controls are rock solid. Also, make sure your friends know what profession you are in and that they are discrete in the pictures they upload of you and statements they make on your wall. All of this is easier said than done but, if you are going to use these types of sites then you don’t really have a choice. Also, never forget Rule #1: don’t be dumb.

• Don’t go on your blog and call your judge an “Evil, Unfair Witch.” Florida attorney Sean Conway wrote about a post about Judge Cheryl Aleman over at JAABBlog, and the First Amendment did not come to his rescue. He was reprimanded by the Florida bar and fined.

• Don’t blog about the details of your cases and clients, and refer to the robed one as “Judge Clueless.” Illinois assistant public defender Kristine A. Peshek used her blog, “The Bardd [sic] Before the Bar – Irreverant [sic] Adventures in Life, Law, and Indigent Defense,” as an outlet for 19 years of pent up resentment (excerpts here). It brought more release than she intended. When it was discovered, she was fired.

• If you’re on a jury, don’t blog about it. It can get you suspended from practicing and fired AND fined $14,000, like Frank Wilson of California.

• Don’t ask the judge to suspend your trial for a funeral, if you’re actually planning on partying all week. Especially if the judge is your Facebook friend and gets your partying status updates.Texas Judge Susan Criss will tattle on you to the American Bar Association, though she will leave your name out of it.