There was an interesting piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune today about mega-law-firm Dorsey Whitney being fired by the State of Minnesota as the state’s bond attorneys.
I will be the first to admit that I don’t anything about bond law so I am not going to start pointing fingers for sloppy work or anything like that. From all accounts (in the newspaper piece) it sounds like Dorsey Whitney did a good job on Minnesota’s bond law issues. The firm had apparently represented the state for decades with minimal interruption.
Start-up law firms likely don’t have these kinds of problems. You know, the problem of losing a million-dollars-a-year-cash-cow-client. What I will say is that some heads are probably rolling at the Dorsey Whitney.
Losing clients is a part of life. I’ve lost a few. However, most of them were clients I was happy to see go. Like many solo attorneys, my practice is much more nickel-and-dime. I don’t have to worry too much about large clients with large demands.
However, I will say this: I ALWAYS want to have the state as a client. They may not always pay in a timely fashion due to beuracracy and red tape to go through, but they always pay. Did I say always? Minnesota even went through a state shutdown recently and probably didn’t pay a lot of legal bills. But, guess what, the state was only shut down for a month or so. My clients tend to shutdown for anywhere from one month late to one year late on their legal bill.
So, losing the State of Minnesota as a client is a huge deal for any law firm – big law or solo. I wrote a piece about public defender contracts a while back. I know that I poo-pooed the State of Iowa’s ability to pay their public defender contracts, but hey, those lawyers at least had a client who owed them a payment.
I often did work for the State of Indiana on adoptions that were sponsored by the state. The legal bill was always smaller, but I brought in a nice $1,500.00 check from the state for every state-sponsored adoption I did. I loved having the state as a client because I knew I was going to get paid. It sometimes took a while, but the check always came in.
In conclusion, I hope we can learn a lesson in what not to do from Dorsey Whitney and their loss of the bond law work for the State of Minnesota.