Image [cc] San Mateo County Library

Librarians, both as individuals, and as a profession, are constantly navigating the tidal shifts of how information is consumed in the age of the Internet. Whether it is understanding ways to disintermediate resources so that the librarian is no longer a gatekeeper to that resource, but rather a promoter of getting it in the hands of the user, or finding ways to provide services regardless of space or geographic location, our world is in constant flux. Many of us look at this as an opportunity to advance ourselves and our profession rather than see it as tsunami that is burying us. Perhaps one of the best statements that I’ve read regarding this idea of riding the tide to the next wave or being sucked under by it, came from Barbara Quint in her Searcher article called ‘Concierge’ Librarian.

Although I don’t believe that Quint was directly responding to the recent Forbes article on The Best and Worst Mater’s Degrees For Jobs (which named a Masters in Library and Information Science the worst), she definitely gave us something to use to counter this article:

First, let’s shake off the blues, the depressing fantasy that we information professionals, we librarians, have failed and have no future. We’ve got to stop asking the question, “Would you send your child to library school?” followed by a mournful negative shake of the head and a deep, noisy sigh. We’ve got to stop thinking of our future as something someone else may not allow us to have. Instead, what do we want to see happen? What do we want to do with our talents and energy and experience and principled commitment? After all, it is those qualities — talent, energy, experience, principles, and commitment — that brought the world to where it is today, to the Information Age. As long as we have those qualities in us, we can make a new future both as individuals and as a profession.

In addition to this statement, I also thought about how Quint finished her article by promoting (in an anecdotal way) the idea of there shouldn’t be less librarians in the workplace, there should be more. I thought about that and adapted the idea to law firms. Imagine if each practice group had a librarian there to manage the information (both subscription and free) and to make sure everyone knew how to find it, use it, and do so in a way that saved the firm money and made them not only efficient, but also effective. That is something I think we definitively need to promote both as individuals and as a profession.

One other thing that I saw today that I thought also drove home the idea of the new future as individuals and as a profession, was my friend Jean O’Grady’s interview on Bloomberg Law discussing this very topic. This is well worth the 8 minute investment to listen to how O’Grady discusses the importance of not standing still and not holding on to old ideas that just don’t work any longer. She makes an off the cuff mention that the Library Space may come to look more like an Apple Store where people go to learn or invest in new products or ideas and then go back to their offices better prepared to answer the challenges they face.

Seeing articles and interviews like these make me feel better about riding that wave of change that is constantly rolling in on this profession.

Image [cc] SHOK-1

In the past I have talked about how law firms have become profit-margin businesses versus their old cost-plus model. And I have alluded to the fact that associates and other non-partners are the source of margins and therefore profit. So I thought I would take a crack at modeling a single associate to see what margins they might produce and then talk about threats to these margins and opportunities to regain them. I suppose I have avoided peeling things back to this layer so not to scare associates too much. I may have waited too long.

We’ll start with the basic profit equals revenue minus cost equation. For a single associate, their hours billed and paid will be the revenue. Their costs are broken down into two types: overhead and compensation.

Overhead Costs

Firms find some perverse enjoyment in arguing about overhead costs. The basic concept here is that the overhead cost for the firm is determined and then divided by the number of time keepers. This gives a cost to support each timekeeper. Overhead includes space, administrative staff (marketing, accounting, etc.), malpractice insurance and any other general expense. Lawyers love to argue about which aspects of overhead should not be applied to them. Putting those arguments aside, we’ll assume some reasonable allocation of overhead to an associate on a per year basis.

Compensation Costs

This one is easier. Take comp plus additional benefits costs, usually in the neighborhood of 30% of comp.

The Revenue Challenge

In the good ole days, an associate could easily bill 1900 hours or more per year. However, the past few years have seen the average hours billed per year per associate dropping. Add to that drop, the increasing levels of rate discounts and the general drop in realization against standard rates and you begin to see the problem. I call this the double-whammy problem.

We’ll be generous and estimate that in 2006 a fourth year associate had a 50% margin. For the moment we will hold costs constant and determine the impact of fewer hours and lower rates. If effective realized rates (standard rates minus discounts, write downs and write-offs) equal 85% of standard rates (a current industry number) and an associate’s annual hours are down 10%, then their margin has dropped from 50% to around 25%. This means their contribution to partner income has been cut in half.

If commenters feel so compelled, they can contest my assumptions about rates and hours in the market. But the bottom-line in this analysis, is that the margins on non-partners are dropping because of discounts and under-utilization of time keepers. The actual amount will vary per time keeper. For first and second year associates, these challenges are even more daunting, as they were already negative back in 2006. For seventh and eighth year associates, they may be less challenged, but they are also knocking on the partnership door, about to move to the other side of the profit table.

What Does This Mean for Associates and Firms?

The Market is setting prices. Therefore firms should focus on managing costs under these prices. Firms probably think they were doing this by laying off staff and some lawyers back in 2009/2010 and by cutting back on technology and other purchases. And for a short period of time, that approach worked. The overhead costs were reduced to maintain the margin on our hypothetical fourth year. Some of that savings was permanent; other portions were simply delayed purchases or projects. Current market stats show costs are now rising for firms at about 6%, which reflects the ‘playing catch-up’ efforts now going on with technology and other administrative needs. The real point here is that firms could maintain short-term margins by cost cutting, but they cannot cut their way to growth in the long-term.

Back to our Associate

Firms invest in people and knowledge. When an investment fails to generate returns, you need to reevaluate that investment. For most firms today the issue is our associate … multiplied. Dropping utilization of timekeepers means you have over invested in productive resources. So you either bring in more business or reduce productive capacity. Bringing in more business is problematic in a flat market. So instead of 10 associates utilized at 80%, you will want 8 associates at 100%.  And firms need to stretch this thinking across all timekeepers. At least they do if they continue to think like they did in 2006

Another Layer

Clients are asking for efficiencies from their law firms. This, on its face, would seem to indicate utilizing fewer time keeper hours, not more. I fondly refer to this as the Better – Faster – Cheaper (BFC) Challenge. For a firm this means they want to better manage the costs around this associate while maximizing the revenue they produce.

My Answer

I suggest firms need to shift their thinking on investment. They do invest in people, but it should no longer be an investment focused on their time. So instead of hiring more associates with the dream it will produce the respective revenue and profit streams, firms need to invest in new approaches. Ideally, looking at our original revenue equation above, a firm will want to invest in driving up the revenue side of it. Imagine an associate who ‘bills’ 1700 hours but generates revenue at a 2500 hour level. How can this happen? That is the investment challenge for firms today, clearly in line with our BFC challenge and the cries of our clients. Firms need to invest in new delivery models and technology that empowers our associate to deliver that higher level of value to the clients.

In this world we may want to come up with a better term than “overhead.” Think of a fighter pilot flying an F-16 jet in to action. I doubt he or she considers the design team and ground crew as “overhead.” Law firms would do well to view money spent on technology, marketing, etc as another type of investment in their businesses. Just because something is not a ‘direct revenue generating time keeper,’ does not mean it is not vital in generating profit for the business.

Associates – I apologize for not bringing this to your attention sooner.

Law firms – The answer to your challenge is clear. Redefine how you invest in your business. Focus on what your clients want. Embrace new (and improved) ways of meeting your clients’ needs. Profits will follow.

Toby and I had a great lunch today where we discussed everything from the current state of the music touring business to what will happen when Mayor Mike goes back to his day job of running Bloomberg. One of the topics along the way to the Bloomberg end of things was if Reed Elsevier spun off LexisNexis, who would be the absolute strangest buyer we could think of that could actually invigorate the product and turn the legal research and publishing industry on its ear. The topic was an offshoot of Jason Wilson’s post from yesterday on Should Reed Elsevier sell Lexis-Nexis? and from Robert McKay’s The End of Legal Publishing on Wednesday. This is simply a hypothetical, we have no knowledge of anything going on behind the scenes at Lexis, so don’t read too much into it.

Here are some of the ideas that popped into our heads (with some of the reasoning… or lack-thereof… behind it.

  • Bloomberg Law — mostly because it looks like they are making a run at Lexis’ market share. Why not just plunk down the coin now and skip the battle altogether?
  • Associated Press — A news organization owning a legal information provider isn’t new… maybe they can succeed where others have failed?
  • An E-Discovery Vendor — with all the advances in e-discovery tools, what could a Recommind do with all the content housed in those databases?
  • Google — For a company that would like to index all the world’s information, this would be one piece of the pie they’ve only taken little bites of. Why not eat the whole thing?
  • Amazon — this is a company that has built a well run distribution service. Is this something that could be run in their cloud based services?
  • Apple — Not that we think that Apple wants this, but I could really see them selling caselaw for 99¢, or you could pay $9.99 for the entire volume
  • Microsoft — Somehow I’m envisioning a repeat of Encarta
  • IBM — Actually, I liked this idea (probably because I came up with it.) I would love to see IBM put a “Big Data Guru” like Jeff Jonas on a project to take all the data that LexisNexis has, and put it into one giant pot, stir it up, and start finding relationships in previously unrelated data. 
  • Yahoo! — Pretty much the same reasons as Google, but Yahoo! needs something to make it more competitive and profitable. 
I’m sure we named off a few more companies, but that’s all I can remember now that my burger is kicking in and I’m a ready for an afternoon nap.
Any other suggestions for where a hypothetical LexisNexis sale should go??
Apparently in the world of typography, Comic Sans has become the “Nickelback” of fonts. In other words, you can play with it all you want in the privacy of your own home, but you never, ever, let other people know you actually like it, let alone that you use it in a professional environment. Poor Comic Sans just can’t get any love from anyone these days, yet, just like Nickelback, it seems to always be out there and somehow finds its way on every computer owned by man. Of course, we all say that’s because “our kids like it.”

Typography for Lawyers author, Matthew Butterick calls Comic Sans, the “king of the goofy fonts.” It’s even received the attention of George Takei who tweeted an image of a sign from a Fortune 500 Company that felt Comic Sans was too lowly a font to use.

When the scientists at CERN research center announce their findings of the so-called “God Particle,” most of the world started wondering about how this would change the laws of physics and our understanding of the Universe itself. However, CERN’s use of Comic Sans in its presentation cause a chain reaction of disgust within the Internet, that you would have thought called into question whether a Scientist that used Comic Sans could be believed to be competent enough to really find the Higgs Boson particle at all.

Just how hated is Comic Sans? My search this morning on news articles that mentioned “Higgs Boson” AND “Comic Sans” returned 4800+ potential articles on the topic. 
Taking something as important as finding the building blocks of the universe and using Comic Sans to present your findings to the world is like adding an acid to a base and watching the reaction explode. 
Just to prove my point on this chemistry experiment, I did another search on “Nickelback” AND “Comic Sans” and surprisingly only came back with two results. Apparently, both must be very base and simply cancel each other out…. Regardless of the lack of reaction, I highly suggest that if you have something important to say, don’t include either Nickelback or Comic Sans in your statement.

I enjoy checking out new music apps for my mobile devices, and this week I came across one that really appealed to me in a number of ways. TuneIn Radio is an app that works on iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry, and even Palm devices, and offers over 60,000 over the air and Internet radio stations to choose from. If you are traveling this Summer, or if you’re like me and ride a bus to and from work each day, this is a nice little app to keep you tuned into your favorite radio station, without having to bring your boombox with you on the bus and distract the other riders with your constant adjustment of the antenna. The app is available for free (ad supported) and for 99¢ for the premium (no ads, plus recording feature.) Here are a few things that I like about the app:

Local Listing of Radio Stations:
One of the things that I like the most that TuneIn Radio does is the fact that it actually lists out all of the local radio stations. Even if I never actually used the application to listen to these stations, this feature alone is great. I’ve been in Houston for 10 years now, and I really couldn’t identify more than a handful of radio stations. Now, I can quickly pull up all of the local stations (including HD and Local Internet-Based stations) and what type of music/talk is played on each. TuneIn Radio uses your geo location, so when you travel around the country or world, it gives you a list of the local stations so you can plug in the ones you want and listen through your device, or if you’re old-fashion, you can program them in on your rental car’s radio.

Car Mode Feature:
We all know it’s not good to text and drive… the same concept applies to finding music on your mobile device and driving. To keep your distractions down to a minimum, TuneIn Radio offers a “Car Mode” with a simple interface and big buttons on the screen. You can quickly go through your Preset stations or Recents in order to keep you tuned into the music you like. There’s also a Recommended button for when you want to expand your horizons based on what you are currently listening to. The Car Mode also lists the artist and song title in big print at the top so you can quickly see what’s playing.

Search Options:
If there is a particular band you like, or a genre, you can search search for these using TuneIn Radio’s search box. You can search by station call letters, city name, song titles, artists, even by talk show title (e.g., “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.) I’m a big fan of Punk Pop music, so I typed that in and found a number of stations that play this type of music.

What’s Playing:
I love closing my eyes and picking new radio stations to listen to. However, I also like being able to know what band and song is playing when I run across something that pleases my ear. TuneIn Radio has a nice clear picture of the band playing and the title of the song. If they have the album cover in their database, it also shows up. You can also email, Tweet or send the name of the music to Facebook as well as go to iTunes or Google Play to purchase the music that you like. I haven’t played with the “pro” version (because I’m cheap), but it has a record function that allows you to record the stream to your device. The Pro version also allows you to access to higher quality streams (probably best to be on WiFi if you do that, though.)

Other Options:
Some of the other features that TuneIn Radio offers ranges from seeing a complete list of songs that you’ve played (really cool), choose the quality of stream (pro version only), use it as a clock, and also set an alarm on the clock (haven’t used that yet, but it might come in handy when I’m traveling.)

Although I’ve talked about TuneIn Radio’s mobile applications, you can also stream it on other devices like Roku, GoogleTV and others Television streaming players, as well as just going to their website and streaming music through your PC’s browser.

As I’m writing this, I’m seriously thinking of plunking down the 99¢ to upgrade to the pro version. I’ll resist as long as I can, but I’m feeling my curiosity trying to talk my cheapness into giving in.

Even if you don’t get the pro version,  TuneIn Radio is definitely worth at look and a download. Go check it out and let me know what you think.


I don’t like meetings. I feel like meetings often fail to accomplish much beyond getting project team members into the same room once a week. We talk about the work we did the previous week, and we talk about the work we hope to do during the next week, but there are better ways to communicate that information.  I was thinking about this recently and became convinced there must be a better way to structure projects.

Just as Robert’s Rules of Order are intended to facilitate debate and deliberation among a large group of participants, Ryan’s Rules for Projects are intended to keep team projects moving quickly and  efficiently, and to give them the greatest chance for success.

Rule #1 – No more than 5 team members on any given project.

Too often we load up team members on projects in the mistaken belief that having more people involved will allow the team easy access to more information and allow more work to get done faster.  It doesn’t work that way.  Think about it in terms of team sports. (Sports Metaphors: The last refuge of lazy writers.) In team sports, the speed of the action is negatively correlated to the size of the team.  American football can move quickly in short bursts, but the 11 players have to huddle, regroup, choose a new plan and start over in a new spot after every play.  The most surprising event in football is when a team actually marches down the field quickly to score.  European football or Soccer, also 11 players per team, is only slightly better.  They don’t stop play every few seconds, but let’s face it, 90 minutes of play and you’re lucky if either team was able to score at all. Baseball, with 9 players (my personal favorite), has been described as “long periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”  Contrast hockey (6), basketball (5), and tennis (2) and you begin to see a pattern emerge.  Smaller teams can communicate easier, move more quickly, reorganize, and change priorities on the fly, while larger teams lumber on slowly toward a goal.

Rule #2 – Team members devote 20% of working time to this one project.

Ideally you should have 4 team members who are able to devote at least 20 percent of their working time to the project.  The fifth member should be an interested senior manager who keeps an eye on the progress of the team, but only gets involved in the event that the team has a 50/50 split on a decision and needs a tie breaker.  The 20 percent minimum ensures that no person is on more than a few projects at once, leaving the rest of their time available for miscellaneous working activities, like the rest of their job.

A smaller team devoting the same total number of man-hours to a project, will always outperform a larger team.

Rule #3 – Team members must collaborate regularly.

Collaboration time differs from “meeting time”, in so far as it is time spent actually working together on a project.  Two or more team members may schedule time to collaborate, or they may spontaneously meet up, or call each other.  They may have a goal for their collaboration time, or a particular problem they wish to tackle, but they should never have an agenda of multiple items to be covered during a particular period.  Collaboration is directed, focused work, but it should be spontaneous, and never managed. During collaboration time, team members may work closely together on the same problem, or they may choose to tackle different problems in silence, together.  Being in proximity and thinking about the same project at the same time gives rise to serendipitous discoveries, and creative solutions, but it also ensures that team members stay focused on the project rather than being pulled away by other concerns.

Rule #4 – Meetings should be “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Okay, I’ll admit it, meetings are sometimes a necessary evil.  However, meetings should not be opportunities for the project team to communicate with each other, they are opportunities for the team to communicate with their fifth member, or with other senior management.  The team may call a meeting to get direction or a clarification of goals from management, to report progress, or to present new solutions and confirm they are on the right path.  Management may call a meeting to check in on the project, or to establish new goals or directives.   Meetings should be short, typically 15 minutes, and never more than 30.  They should be ad hoc, called only when necessary.  With fewer members devoting more time to the project, and meetings of shorter duration, ad hoc meetings should become fairly easy to schedule.  If you insist on holding regular meetings, they should be held at predetermined intervals along the project timeline, or when particular project milestones are achieved.

Why nasty and brutish? 

I really like the Hobbes quote, but it’s also relevant. While office interactions should always be professional and genial, good people can, and often do, disagree, especially in the midst of collaboration.  Disagreement can be very healthy and creative. In my experience, many people hold back in meetings, afraid to express opinions for fear of looking foolish or damaging another team member’s pride. Whether we enter meetings as C-level officers, plebeian peons, or something in between, we need to leave our egos, our job titles, and our inhibitions at the door.  For 15 minutes the meeting should be a free flow of brutally honest ideas and opinions. At the end of the meeting, managers give directions, team members return to their project, and, like Vegas, what happened in the meeting, stays in the meeting.

Rule #5 – Fail small, fail quickly, and fail often.

Back in February, I wrote an post titled “In Praise of Failure” where this final rule was the punchline.  As I said in that post, “Quick failures… are merely steps on the way to success.”   Part of the reason we continue with  pointless meetings, accomplishing little, is because even though they bring us no closer to success, they also move us no closer to failure.  Meetings, as we currently practice them, are the equivalent of treading water.  We’re not going anywhere, but we’re not drowning either, and that’s considered good enough.

Projects are inherently collaborative.  Collaboration is always messy.  Messy often leads to failure.  Failure with a little self-awareness gives rise to learning.  Learning creates new knowledge.  New knowledge is fed back into the project, and the process begins again.  Occasionally, “messy” takes a sharp left turn and leads to success, but only after several iterations of the process, and therefore, several failures.  Sadly, we are more afraid of failing, than we are driven to succeed, and we should be most afraid of standing still.

I have never had an opportunity to practice Ryan’s Rules for Projects.  I have attempted to implement some of the rules into existing projects and I’ve been overruled or outvoted each time.  Maybe these rules are a recipe for failure, or maybe they’re keys to success, but if you’re tired of treading water, you could do a lot worse than trying it my way.

UPDATE: 
Jeffrey Brandt at PinHawk suggests a few more rules and I wholeheartedly agree.  My list was never intended to be definitive or comprehensive.  If you have further suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Brandt’s Addenda:  

Rule #6 – All team meetings must have an agenda. (ed. meetings not collaboration time)
Rule #7 – All projects must have a written definition of success.
Rule #8 – All projects must have links to one (or more) strategic business initiatives.

Stupid Greg has the irritating habit of making me think. Recently he asked if I thought there might be an ‘Enron’ incident on the horizon of the legal market. We were discussing the rise of the non-law firm. I was blabbering on about how non-law firms continue to take market share, when Greg posited the question about whether that would lead to an Enron-like fraud and deception incident, since regulatory eyes are apparently not watching non-law firms (yet).

Based in part on a recent article, I said I didn’t think so. Of course, making statements makes me think about defending them.

So here was my thought process:

LPOs and others encroaching on the law firm market are very vested in quality. They realize that for them to take market share they have to present credible alternatives to law firms. So quality is an over-riding theme for them. If clients are going to take risks with a non-law firm (LPO or otherwise) they will want reasonable assurances that the level of service will be ‘good enough.’

My thinking is that this drive for quality reduces the risk of an Enron-like fraud event. Instead, I think the risk for clients comes in another dimension of quality. Many lawyers, especially those at BigLaw, like to pontificate about how clients will suffer the consequences of moving down market for services. My thought on risk is similar but different to this critique. I don’t think LPOs or even 2nd and 3rd tier firms will have lower quality. Instead, I think they will not appreciate the bounds of their knowledge.

By this I mean they will not appreciate when they have moved past their level of expertise. It’s not that they don’t care or are not focused on quality; it will be a circumstance when they do not realize a decision made was beyond their level of expertise. They will have filed a motion on an issue that would be reasonable in the average situation, but fails in a more complex one. And they will miss a key issue that won’t materialize in to a problem until a few months down the road. Then the client will be forced to move up-market and hire a 1st tier firm to fix the problem.

So instead of fraud, I think the problems that will arise will be knowledge boundary crossing situations. And these will become significant problems for clients, since no one will actually know when they occur.

Bottom-line: Enron = No. Major Screw-ups = Likely. And these screw-ups may be very problematic, especially when non-law firms are involved. The non-law firms will not have traditional malpractice insurance, but the law firms involved will. So law suits may have an apple / pineapple challenge for how they determine negligence and failure of ethical duty.

There’s an opportunity in there somewhere …  🙂

Image [cc] NiceBastard

As a librarian, I have been asked to stop people from “Red Flagging” the office newspaper (taking it in the bathroom) — Slate’s Dear Prudence does a nice job covering this issue in today’s post. I love that Prudie suggests that the person not take drastic measures to solve the situation:

I hope your plan is not to put a Post-It on the paper with the warning: “Marie was reading this while relieving herself. The EPA has been alerted and a removal team will arrive shortly.”

There is a running joke among librarians that the most asked reference question is “Can you tell me where the bathrooms are located?” What many of us leave out is that the person asking the question has today’s newspaper tucked neatly under his arm. In fact, we usually have to deal with someone that comes back a couple hours later and plops the sports section down on the reference desk and says, “here, I found this in stall number three.” (and you thought the life of a librarian was glamorous.)

So, I thought I would ask what would you do if you saw someone ‘red flag’ the newspaper (or, what you expect the librarian to do when you tell them that Partner ‘X’ just red-flagged today’s New York Times):

  • Pretend that you never saw them do it
  • Place a Post-It Note above the newspaper stand identifying the culprit by name and which section he took
  • Don’t worry about it, because since you have an iPad, you don’t read newspapers anymore
  • Immediately yell “PUT DOWN THE NEWSPAPER AND JUST WALK AWAY!!”
  • Buy your own personal copy of the newspaper from now on
Note: You might notice that I keep using the male pronoun… according to my female librarian friends, this is completely a male problem… although someone did mention that it may just be because women are much better at concealing the newspaper when they enter and leave the restroom. 

[NOTE: I asked my colleague, Jonathan Owens, to write a guest post to discuss the eBook he wrote on Calculating Court Deadlines and some of the questions he addresses within the firm regarding court dockets. His eBook is available for download on the iPad, Kindle and Nook devices.]

In my many years of working as a docketing professional for a large law firm, I have been asked the following questions more times than I could count.


1) How are the additional days afforded for service added?

While the question seems straightforward, the answer has many layers. Depending on your jurisdiction, the days could be added to the period and counted directly from the trigger date (i.e., 30 days plus 3 calendar days for service would be 33 days from the trigger date – fairly simple). Other jurisdictions, Federal Court included, you would count your initial period as directed in the rules and then add any additional days for service. This type of calculation is a major point of confusion as many initial periods would land on a weekend and then move to the next court date. So, we’d have to move to the next court date before adding the additional days for service (i.e., 30 days from trigger date might land on a Saturday; we would move to next court and then add 3 calendar days – this would essentially give us 35 days to respond).

2) How do you know when we can add the additional days for service?

The additional days for service are only allowed when the rule, statute or court order specifically state “from service” in the calculation. Sounds simple enough, but not necessarily. I’ve seen many an order that states something along the lines of “plaintiff shall have 10 days to file an amended complaint.” The order was filed and entered on the docket which may have included service upon the plaintiff by ECF. Most jurisdictions allow the additional days for service by ECF, so one might assume the 3 days could be afforded in this case. While the order in this example is vague in what date is triggering the 10 day period, the mention of “from service” is definitely not included. Unless that word “service” is in the rule, I would never be comfortable adding those additional days.

3) How do you know which way to move for a deadline landing on a weekend or holiday?

All jurisdictions will address how to move if a date lands on a weekend or holiday. The problem lies in the ones that don’t specifically state what to do if you are counting backwards from a trigger event. Those that do not usually state “if a due date lands on a weekend or holiday, move to the next court date.” It’s not uncommon to have an attorney or paralegal interpret the next court date to be the ensuing Monday (or Tuesday if that Monday happened to be a holiday). While that interpretation of the rule is not without merit, I personally recommend to continue moving backwards to the Friday before (or Thursday if that Friday happened to be a holiday).

After being asked these questions over and over again (the same questions I had posed myself when I began my career docketing), I found the lack of resources available which addressed these legal issues frustrating. So I thought if I can’t find the resources I need, I would try and make them myself. The result was my self-published Court Deadline Calculation guide “Calculating Court Deadlines: How to Apply the Rules for Computation of Time”. Included in this is an overview of how to apply the rules and then a comprehensive overview for each jurisdiction. I’m hopeful the end result will be a useful tool for those unfamiliar with the process entirely (the initial overview chapters should be an excellent introduction to calculating deadlines) and those very familiar with calculating deadlines (the comprehensive state-by-state overview allows quick access to the calculation rules).

An example of Florida’s overview chapter is below:

[keys to civil and appellate rules with link to main court page and civil rule authority sited]
[appellate rule authority sited and example calculation]
The eBook is currently available for purchase on the iPad, Kindle and Nook.


Last Wednesday, my wife and I were on day 3 of a 4 day Vermont cheese and maple syrup tour.  It was about noon on the hottest day of the year and we were driving down Route 35, about 30 miles from anywhere you’ve ever heard of, when I took a sharp corner and quickly swerved to avoid a piece of debris in middle of the road.  It looked like a rope or a piece of rubber, but the thud as I rolled over it made clear that my initial assessment was off. Then the tire pressure light on the dashboard lit up.

I popped the trunk, saw that there was a spare, but no jack or tire iron, then pulled out my phone and realized I had no signal.  A flat tire, 3 miles from nowhere, no jack, no tire iron, and no cell signal in the heat of the day on the hottest day of the year.  We flagged down a passing car and got a ride into Grafton where we hoped to find a cell signal.

I was grouchy, hot, frustrated, trying to remember if I had ever actually changed a tire and what the steps were, wondering if we were going to make it to the next bed and breakfast, whether we should call ahead, how much it was going to cost me to cancel, wondering how we could keep any cheese we buy from melting, I really wasn’t thinking clearly at that point.  I pulled out my phone and started up my Zipcar app.

We live in New York City, and as people with more sense than money, we don’t own a car.  Zipcar is a car sharing service that allows us to reserve local cars for use on an hourly or daily basis.  Their app allows us to make reservations, and report damage to the car, but the best feature by far is the big orange button in the upper right corner that simply says “Call Zipcar”.

I hit the button and got Debbie on the line.  I stammered incoherently, “Flat tire…Outside Grafton…No Jack…Help, please.” “I’m so sorry about that”, she said cheerfully, “let’s see what we can do?”  I gave her the details of where we were, where the car was, and where we were staying that night.  “OK, stay near the cell tower, I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
A few minutes later she called back with news that someone would pick us up in Grafton, drive us to our car and change our tire. She found a tire place near the B&B we were staying that night and called ahead to make sure they had a tire that fit.
It all happened just as she said, and when we got to the garage in Manchester, they had a new tire ready and waiting for us.  In the room at the B&B, I snapped a picture of my tire receipt, emailed it to Debbie, and within a few minutes had confirmation that my credit card on file with Zipcar had been reimbursed the cost of the tire.  It had been an adventure, but relatively painless considering the situation we were in just a few short hours before. 
This got me thinking, as many things do, about law firms.  My situation on the side of the road in middle of nowhere Vermont is not unlike the situation many clients are in before they call their attorney.  No one calls their attorney just to check in and say that everything is going well.  You call on the hottest day of the year, when your metaphorical car is in a ditch with a flat and you’re missing a jack and a tire iron.  You call when you need help, often when you are not thinking straight and when you need someone else with the knowledge, resources, and capacity to do the thinking for you. You could argue that the answer to one of my earlier posts, is that we are selling the knowledge, resources, and capacity to do your legal thinking for you.
But there is one big, glaring difference between Zipcar and the legal industry.  The person solving my problem is a customer service rep, but my relationship is with the car service, not with the rep. If I hit the big orange button and Debbie is unavailable, or busy helping someone else, then I’ll get another qualified person, with access to the exact same tools and resources that Debbie has, to ensure that I get out of my jam as quickly and painlessly as possible.  After my flat tire experience, I’m a Zipcar believer and I am truly grateful to Debbie for all she did, but should she choose to move on to Hertz, or Avis, I will probably continue to work with Zipcar. They created a loyal client in me by making every aspect of my terrible experience as easy and painless as possible, from the app with the big orange button, to arranging all of my roadside and garage service needs, to reimbursing me for my out of pocket expense with nothing more than a cell phone photo emailed to customer service.  Debbie was absolutely integral to my positive experience, but it was the tools, resources, and relationships provided by Zipcar that allowed Debbie to so efficiently solve my problem.  Why should law firms be any different?

This will get me in trouble, but attorneys are the most expensive client service representatives ever.  That is not in any way intended to diminish their importance.  Good client service reps are absolutely necessary, but not nearly sufficient to provide a good client experience.  The greatest lawyer in the world without the right tools, resources, and relationships is still going to be a very good lawyer, but will not likely provide an optimal experience to their clients.  The tools, resources, and many of the relationships that attorneys use on behalf of their clients are provided by the firm and yet, GC’s have been known to say things like “We hire the lawyer, not the law firm.” That mindset has made the modern BigLaw firm little more than shared office space for “partners” always on the lookout for another firm that will promise them a larger cut of profits. 

To create an optimal client experience, the primary client relationship needs to be with the service provider, and the service provider in this case is the firm not the attorney. As I said in my previous article linked above, I think we are selling “access to the collective knowledge and expertise of the firm”. Otherwise, there is no benefit for the client in hiring a BigLaw attorney. They are paying a premium for the prestige of the names on the letterhead, but getting the efforts of a solo or, more likely, a couple of young associates in return.

How can we begin to change the client/firm relationship?  We’ll all have to work together.  First, Attorneys need to stop the merry-go-round of lateral defections in pursuit of a few more points, and to put some of that energy into making their current firm a more effective and pleasant place to work.  Secondly, firms need to provide tools and resources to clients that actively build relationships at the firm level and they need to develop a culture within the firm that facilitates sharing of resources and knowledge between attorneys rather than simply sharing infrastructure. Finally, clients need to demand a relationship at the firm level, and then they need to have the courage of their convictions to stick with any firm that gives them that relationship, even if “their attorney” jumps ship.  

I’m not suggesting this would be easy or even possible, but if we could strengthen the relationships between clients and firms, and change the underlying culture of our firms to share resources like any other functional service provider does, then we too could give our client’s a big orange button that says “Call Firm” to be pressed when the client is in trouble and needs someone else to do their legal thinking for them and get them back “on the road” as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Debbie was a terrific representative for Zipcar, but I wonder how my experience would have differed had I hired the customer service rep, instead of the car rental service.