Month: October 2011

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If You Want to Do It, Just Do It

I’ve been wanting to post for several days now and I just can’t seem to get one out.  I’m too busy working on my website, which I plan to talk about in detail because I made a bunch of mistakes that somebody can learn from.  Anyway, I’m posting now.

When I think about starting a law firm – and I think about it all day, every day – a comment by Steve Pennaz keeps coming back to me.  Who is Steve Pennaz?  Clearly you don’t fish.  Pennaz is the head of the North American Fishing Club.  That is not important.  What is important is a comment he made in a recent fishing show about his early salad days when he was a little guy and the world was a big, big place.

I wanted to share his comment.  I’m paraphrasing, but here goes:  during the show, Pennaz was asked about getting started in the fishing business.  He talked about how he wanted to be a fishing guru and head-honcho of the fishing industry soon after college or something.

To that end, he shared that, while he was still college, he went to a fishing seminar at which Babe Winkelman was the keynote speaker.  (Oh, you don’t know who Babe Winkelman is either?).  Pennaz shared that he went up to Babe Winkelman and asked:  “How did you start your own fishing show?”  To which, Winkelman replied:  “What do you mean ‘how’, I just did it.”

Whether or not you like fishing or embroidery, the message in that statement is clear.  If you want to do something, just do it and don’t look back.  That’s my new moto:  “I just did it.”

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Starting a Law Firm Update, Various Odds & Ends

I apologize for not posting for a while.  Still here, just a little busy.  Blogging for legal business can be a real task master.  Think twice before getting into this whole blogging game.  You had better like to write.

So, my wife and I took an overdue trip to Paris and Luxembourg a couple weeks ago.  We skipped a real honeymoon because I didn’t want to make the partners at my old law firm upset that I was taking vacation during my first year as an associate.  Now that I’m no longer at the firm, I guess I can take vacation.  I’ll say this:  I’ve gained a little perspective about what I want out of life since my first year of marriage and my first year as an associate attorney.  Marriage is much more important.  Is it any wonder that I am starting a law firm?

Anyway, I’m back and still trying to blog.  As I’ve posted, I’m still working on getting licensed in Minnesota.  This obviously creates a dilemma as far as writing many practice-related blog posts.  To be honest, I feel a little out of the game.  I am not hustling like I used to and I miss it.  But, there are many, many things to get done before officially hanging out my own shingle.  I’ll talk about that stuff instead.

In the main, I am concerned with two main things:  (1) office space and (2) my website.  Both of these things relate to my effort to focus a bit more and get my law firm start-up business plan in better shape.   I am going through my old business plan and re-thinking things now that I have relocated to Minneapolis from Indiana.  I have had an opportunity to scope out the market and competition a little better.  Naturally, that changes the plan a little.

I’ll post more on this stuff tomorrow, but I wanted to get a post out to say sorry and I’ll try and to better.   In the meantime, I’d appreciate any comments on my new website:  flanderslawfirm.com.

I’m still working on the website and I know that the picture of me is terrible.  I’ll get one up just as soon as somebody takes a professional looking picture of me that I like.  Also, if anybody goes to my website, would you mind leaving a comment here on exactly how long it took you to get there?  As in:  how long did it take to load?

Thanks.

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Admission In Absentia

In my seemingly never-ending-quest to become licensed in the state I actually want to practice and start a law firm in, I moved one step closer today.  I appeared before Judge Mark of the Goodhue County District Court, State of Minnesota and swore my oath and pledge for admittance before the North Dakota Bar.  Doing this means I am one step closer to being licensed in Minnesota.  Thank God.

The irony of the whole thing is that I just appeared before a Minnesota judge so he could swear me into the North Dakota Bar when I would prefer to be admitted to the Minnesota Bar but must wait to be admitted by motion, instead.  I know, it is way too complicated and basically makes my life more difficult.

As any of the readers of this blog may know, I am licensed in Indiana and have just obtained licensure in North Dakota.  My ultimate goal is licensure in Minnesota and to do so, I have to request to be admitted by motion.  It’s a lot of work.

But enough about me.  I realize that people want to read blogs for at least some semblance of substance besides a personal diary.  To that end, I am going to include – right now – a breakdown of the necessities to be admitted “in absentia”.  Doing a quick Google search, I was only able to find this explanation for admission in absentia before the Supreme Court of Georgia.

The basic gist for admission in absentia appears to be this:

  1. You must either pass the bar exam or be admitted by motion;
  2. An oath or pledge must be administered to you by a Judge or judicial officer of a court of record in any state;
  3. You must sign the affirmation and the Judge must sign some form of attestation;
  4. The forms must be returned to the jurisdiction where you want to be licensed.

There is often a fee and possibly some other paperwork, but that mostly sums it up.  I talked with several attorneys in Minnesota who told me that they have gone through this process before.  When I began searching for Minnesota judges to admit me “in absentia” to the North Dakota Bar, I received a fair number of response which can fairly summarized as “no, we don’t do that”. Many of the judges or their staffs had questions about whether they had jurisdiction to even administer the oath.  Naturally, this was very frustrating.  I hope you have better luck than I.  However, I called around to quite a few different judges and found a couple who were willing to take time out of their busy schedules to administer the oath.  I made an appointment with their law clerk, and the rest is now history.

If you are trying to be admitted to a different jurisdiction in absentia, I hope this post helps you.  Basically, I suggest contacting the Supreme Court of the bar to which you want to be admitted.  Ask them what their admission in absentia policy is.  Then, you hopefully know a local judge who will be nice enough to help you.  I did and now I only have one step left to conquer:  admission by motion before the Minnesota Bar.

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John Maynard Keynes and Spending to Start a Law Firm

Author John Cassidy, in the October 10, 2011 issue of the New Yorker magazine (which happens to be the annual “money” issue), wrote a though-provoking article on John Maynard Keynes and his economic philosophy as it relates to the current world-wide financial recession.  Much of the article, titled “The Demand Doctor“, posits (as far as I can tell) that Keynes was right in his argument that government spending creates demand and thereby boosts the economy out of recession.

As I’ve posted, I’m worried about how to start a law firm in this economy and the uncertain risks of being an entrepreneur.  I remember learning about Mr. Keynes as an undergraduate, but my level of knowledge is foggy at best.  I have noticed, however, that his name and ideas show up in my intellectual reading pursuits in an eerily frequent fashion.

This makes me wonder:  Is Keynes simply a easy target for writers and economic neophytes?  Or, is he truly a revolutionary though-leader whose theories should be continuously revisited?  These are question I do have easy answers to. Perhaps more important is what can Mr. Keynes and his economic philosophy can teach me about being an astute capitalist who aims to start a law firm in an economy that is at a historic low.

Keynes argues that the government must spend and possibly cut taxes so that people like you and me will, in turn, spend.  The spending then boosts the economy, creates jobs, encourages lending, etc, etc.  Mr. Cassidy, quoting author Sylvia Nasar, summarizes the Keynsian position well:

What made the General Theory so radical was Keynes’s proof that it was possible for a free market economy to settle into states in which workers and machines remained idle for prolonged periods of time . . .  The only way to revive business confidence and get the private sector spending again was by cutting taxes and letting business and individuals keep more of their income so they could spend it.  Or, better yet, having the government spend more money directly , since that would guarantee that 100 percent of it would be spent rather than saved.  If the private sector couldn’t or wouldn’t spend, the government would have to do it.  For Keynes, the government had to be prepared to act as the spender of last resort, just as the central bank acted as the lender of last resort.

Keynes argued that (at a basic level) a large entity (the government) needs to spend in order to help the national economy grow – or at least not stagnate.  I find this basic premise interesting because my first instinct is to cut my spending and save, save, save when things start getting rough financially.  Apparently, as the author writes, former President Harry Truman had a similar reaction to Keynes’s ideas, stating that:

“Nobody can ever convince me that Government can spend a dollar that it’s not got,” he told Leon Keyserling, a Keynsian economist who chaired his Council of Economic Advisers.  “I’m just a country boy.”

In many ways, I echo President Truman’s sentiment.  I’m also somewhat of a country boy.  How can I justify spending more of my family’s hard earned money on investing in an entrepreneurial venture like starting a law firm?  Would it not be wiser to simply look for and obtain a job doing some form of legal work and thereby garner a steady salary?  Clearly, if the only goal is to make money and provide for my family, then starting a law firm is not a wise decision in the short-term.

The New Yorker piece also discusses the myriad of objections that Mr. Keynes’s ideas have received since he first published his seminal work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” in 1936.  Many of the objection boil down to a fundamental disagreement that government cannot spend dollars when the government does not have dollars to spend.

With this understanding firmly in my mind about Keynes’s thought on stimulating a national economy, I believe that I can make a connection with starting and building a law firm.  In my mind, this sort of thought process is a akin to return-on-investment (ROI).  I have noticed that many law firm guru’s and other lawyers marketing blogs have discussed the importance of ROI.  I am not going to try to discuss the minutia of ROI as it relates to specific instances of law firm marketing.  My point here is only to share the excellent article by Mr. Cassidy in the New Yorker and to posit that starting a law firm (or any business for that matter) is akin to using Keynsian economic philosophy to stimulate the economy.

I also realize that starting a law firm is more individualistic  – it benefits me and my family but not the national or world as a whole.  Perhaps my leanings should be more socialist and less capitalist.  I don’t think so.  In addition to his academic career, he was also a privileged capitalist.  Mr. Cassidy quotes Keynes:

If I am going to pursue sectional interest at all, I shall pursue my own . . . [t]he Class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

I identify with Keynes’s sentiment.  Starting a law firm and being  capitalist in a down economy is not necessarily a bad idea or a strictly individualistic endevour.  The world needs spending and it needs entrepreneurs right now.  Whether or not you agree with Keynses’s economic philosophy, it is hard to argue with that fact.

I don’t mean to say that the journey will be easy or frought with risk.  It is and it will be.  Failure is also a reality.  But, I also believe in the maxim that nothing ventured is nothing gained.  As Mr. Cassidy concludes in his article:

It calls not merely for the management of risk but for something politically and intellectually far more demanding:  the acknowledgement of uncertainty.