The New York Times reported recently that Jerry Rosenberg, perhaps the most famous “jailhouse lawyer” of our time, died Monday at age 72. A “jailhouse lawyer” in prison slang, is an inmate who advises other inmates on their legal rights.
Sometimes, the jailhouse lawyer was in fact at one time a lawyer. In other cases, the jailhouse lawyer has studied law or been through the system so many times, he or she just knows more than the rest. The jailhouse lawyer can be fairly intelligent and has virtually all the time in the world to commit to studying a legal issue. If properly educated and given adequate resources, a jailhouse lawyer might give you a real run for your money, or at least ask you questions you can’t answer right away.
The New York Times quotes Mr. Rosenberg as saying something to the effect of, “Anyone who wants to become a lawyer, should spend some time in jail.”
It’s an interesting thought, that could mean a variety of things.
Does it mean that jail is like a law school?
Or, does it mean that you aren’t really qualified to practice law until you’ve walked a mile in a prisoner’s shoes?
How literal is the comment—spend a night in jail or spend more time working with prisoners at a jail?
Why does it strike me with such curiousity?
Perhaps because I have actually toured detention centers and been so curious about what it must feel like to be caged…to know what life in there is really like…
Or perhaps I just question whether people working in the legal field and the courts can really understand what prison is like, when most have spent hardly any time in our detention facilities. I mean, it’s not exactly part of the on-the-job training, and it certainly is not a part of law school or most other formal education. I understand that some criminal justice education involves tours of prisons.
What do Mr. Rosenberg’s words mean to you?
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 3:30 pm. Add a comment
Lawyers need secretarial staff for many reasons, but lawyers in Las Vegas can add one more reason to the list: AVOIDING PAPER CUTS.
Las Vegas is a horrendously dry place. It’s oft-compared to being baked alive in a convection oven, at least when summer rolls around. This unique environment leads to dry skin. Skin so dry you can’t keep it moist, even with a generous slathering of lotion every few hours.
Lawyers work with a lot of paper. It’s the nature of the job. Reading, drafting, pushing papers around your desk like George Constanza, it just comes with the territory. Unless you’re one of those paperless firms, straining its worker bees’ compound eyes staring at computer screens all day. Your eyes strain from the effort at focusing, because a computer screen is just a flashing light and one shouldn’t stare into flashing lights for long periods of time, but I digress….
The dry skin, the large volumes of paper, the need to do things fast, it’s the trifecta for paper cuts. Paper cuts in awkward places, impossible to place a bandaid on without retarding your efficiency, leaving little blood streaks on your work, justifying the use of cliches like “my BLOOD, sweat and tears” in open court.
How can a lawyer avoid these damned papercuts in Las Vegas? That’s where secretarial staff comes in. Offload the paper to the secretary. Stuffing envelopes creases your fingers? Why, that’s perfect secretarial work.
So the next time you run into your staff, thank them. They’re your first line of defense against paper cuts. Oh, and don’t forget to add bandaids to the supply order.
You know you’ll need them.
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 3:37 pm. Add a comment
A sole practitioner or law firm has seemingly endless choices when it comes to putting up a website. If you have never had a website, the process can be intimidating. This article is designed to walk a lawyer or law firm through its options. Obviously, the goal is to survey and simplify the available information, so this article should not be treated as a comprehensive resource or relied upon as though it were advice specifically tailored to your situation.
Should I have a website?
There’s an old saw that goes something like, “If you can’t do it well, you’d be better off not doing it at all.” With respect to websites, it is sometimes better to have no internet presence than to have a presence that reflects poorly on your work. If all you can manage is a text-only plain html site bereft with banner ads (much like the ones you see on angelfire.com), you may want to reconsider even establishing a website for your business.
Your website can be your first impression. A poorly-run website can suggest to potential clients that you are sloppy, unprofessional, or worse yet—unsuccessful in your line of work. You may miss out on some potential clients by not having a website, but much like your current clients, they may be able to find you just as well by using internet directories or the telephone book.
On the other hand, you may need a website to counteract the image that other websites have created for you. Try this test: Type your name or your law firm name, in quotes, into the search engine at google.com. If you do not like the first page of results, then you may need a website to promote a more positive image of yourself and/or your firm.
Do I want a dynamic website or a static website?
This question may seem a little out of place as number “2″, but it is fundamental. Some lawyers and law firms just want a couple of pages with basic firm information like location, hours of operation, practice areas and attorney resumes. The information provided will rarely change. This is a static website.
If, on the other hand, you want a website that is frequently updated with news, publications, events, or that is interactive (chat, forums, comment areas, document access), you want a dynamic website.
Most content management software is designed for a dynamic website. A dynamic website can be expensive and time-consuming to maintain (expensive if you hire someone, need a lot of security, or need a lot of server space, time-consuming if you are doing it yourself). However, it also makes your website more of a sales tool.
If you just want a simple, static website, consider spending a lot of money on the first design and budget for redesigns annually. Also, budget quarterly for advertising the website. For a static website, appearances are everything. Search engines like content (words, that is). Static websites usually don’t have a lot of content. Your website will probably need to be advertised to ensure that it comes up high in search results.
How do I get a website?
Once you have decided to have a website dedicated to yourself or your firm, you will have to either (a) hire someone else to do your website or (b) do it yourself.
Hiring someone else
Generally, you will have a couple of services offered when hiring someone else to do a website for you. These services are as follows:
Hosting— Regardless of whether you hire someone else to do your website or do it yourself, you will need a computer to host the site. There are many services that offer to lease you space on a server (computer) for your website, and this is generally referred to as “hosting”. You may be leasing space under their domain name on their server (i.e. lawyers.com/examplelawfirm or examplelawfirm.lawyers.com) or you may be leasing space under your own domain name (i.e. examplelawfirm.com). Some hosting plans even offer “email only”, where you can have an email address on a certain domain name (i.e. example@examplelawfirm.com or example@examplelawfirm.lawyers.com). The cost of hosting has come down immensely and if you are willing to put in a little elbow grease, you can have ten websites hosted on a shared server for less than $60 per year (not including costs of registering the domain names).
Website Development— This is a service where someone actually designs the appearance and perhaps even the initial content of your website. Many people pay thousands of dollars to companies to design very simple websites for their businesses. Ironically, these websites are often designed using content management software and templates that are neither unique nor very expensive (in other words, you’re paying out the nose for labor, which may not be justifiable). If you want a website that involves a lot of unique elements or that is highly secure, consider hiring someone with a programming background rather than a graphic design background. By way of analogy, graphic designers are architects (artists) while programmers are engineers. A programmer can actually design software for you or seriously tweak the code for open-source software so that your website is truly unique. Programmers are paid pretty well, and remember, the more unique the coding, the more dependant you will be on that particular programmer going forward (for technical support and for redesigns on the website).
Maintenance— Just because you paid for server space and for the initial design, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the company will maintain the website for free. If you require changes to the website (e.g. you want to add or remove information about attorneys) or technical support, you may want to purchase maintenance services. You really need to shop around on maintenance. Depending on how busy your tech is, he or she may react to requests in as little as 24 hours or as late as a couple of months (or perhaps not at all, but that’s a more serious issue).
Doing It Yourself
Doing it yourself is easier than you might expect. However, initially, it will require a lot of patience and eagerness to learn on your part. If you have some time on your hands, and you get a real joie de vivre from saving money and learning new things, then creating a website might be right up your alley.
I cannot stress planning ahead enough when it comes to creating and maintaining your own website. List off everything that you want to see on your website. Go to other websites to get ideas. You want a calendar? List that. You want an “About me” page? List that. Don’t forget the Terms of Use and Privacy Statement that you are going to painstakingly write (or adapt from someone else’s website). You want a fancy flash landing page? Get ready to learn Adobe or its open-source (read: free) analogue.
Once you have an idea of what you want, you will need to select a content management software (CMS) that allows you to easily create a website with all the features you’ve listed. You can either purchase software or you can find software for download for free. Always try the demo before you download and install! Even if it’s free, you will invest your time in experimenting with software. The demo and the comments from other users may tell you everything you need to know, without wasting any time. Want to try a lot of software in one place? Check out this site.
Once you have a CMS picked out, start shopping for hosting. You can actually host a website on your own computer if it has uninterrupted connection to the internet and you have some backup capacity. But, let’s be realistic, that is generally cost-prohibitive.
When shopping for hosting services, you will sometimes have the option of using a shared server or using a dedicated server. A dedicated server can be very expensive, but it can also provide more reliable service and might make sense if you have a high traffic, large website (e.g. you are General Motors or Citibank).
Make sure that you hosting service has (a) very responsive technical support, (b) software that is compatible with the CMS you want to use (check the specifications/requirements for the CMS and for the hosting service, if you need PHP scripting or Ruby-On-Rails, make sure the hosting service allows that), (c) provides you with sufficient server space and traffic quotas, and (d) the price is right.
There are a million and one articles on the internet about choosing a web hosting service, but pay attention to who the author is. Look for someone who has no incentive to mislead you, someone who is not trying to sell you a service for example. “Techie” forums and tech review websites give a nice variety of opinions on the topic. Perhaps my favorite way to get the skinny on a hosting service is to type the name into google with the word “sucks” (e.g. ”example.com sucks”). The results are interesting in any event.
Once you have selected a hosting service, you’ll need to install your CMS on the server and get to work setting up your site through the CMS. If your hosting service uses cpanel, sometimes your CMS is preloaded and all you have to do is run the installation program or unpack the zip files). Read the manuals and the support forums, and most of all have fun.
Initially, you may need to select a theme, skin or template for your site. For popular CMSs, there are literally thousands of designs available for download on the internet (some for pay, some for free). A design is only as good as its code, so make sure the code (and the person designing it) is stable and reliable. If there are problems, you’ll certainly hear about them on the support forums.
As you develop the site and add content, keep your eyes peeled for good applications (which may be called widgets, plug-ins, modules, etc.). Adding in new apps keeps your site fresh and exciting.
Those are the basics. If you read this without falling asleep, you passed “Law Firm Website 101″.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 3:01 pm. 2 comments