Evolutions of a Law Practice by Barry Seidel

Author:Barry Seidel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I also created a special Rolodex card. Back then every lawyer, but more importantly every calendar clerk and secretary, used a rolodex. My rolodex card had my contact info, but more importantly, while my name and contact info were on the body of the card, the tab said simply “Queens Court Appearances.” I wanted them to file my card in their rolodex under “Queens.” See Appendix D.

I priced the PC’s at $75 and other court appearances at $100. I included my cover letter, price list, and rolodex card in all my mailings. During a six-month period I sent the mailing to 1350 law firms. These were all firms who had just filed for a PC in Queens County. Those mailings yielded 175 new law firm clients for Queens Court appearances! I was on to something.

Many of the lawyers told me my letter came at just the right time. Some told me that Queens was a tough courthouse, so they were happy to know about and use my service. After doing a PC for them, most of the firms started using me for later appearances on the same case and on all their other Queens cases. Many told their lawyer friends, who then used me too.

The mailing got me very busy with court appearances. I had to develop systems to efficiently intake and prep and bill and collect on all the work. Now, I’m no tech genius. Felicia (my wife) is not a tech genius (or a lawyer) either but was way more tech savvy than me. We discussed the workflow for court appearances: managing the intake of assignments, setting up each assignment for court, reporting the results, tracking outsourced appearances, billing, and collecting. We (she) then customized Quickbooks (a widely used accounting software) for the court appearance business.

In Quickbooks lingo, the law firms are my “customers” and the cases I cover are the “jobs.” When setting up for court I use the “estimates” feature in Quickbooks. We called this a “pre-bill” and used it as the cover sheet for the assignment and whatever papers the lawyers sent me.

I decided to print the pre-bills on pink paper so I could quickly locate them in Court. This helped keep things organized while handling a high volume of appearances. We referred to the pre-bills as “pink sheets” and the job set-up as “pinking it up.” The pink sheets were great for marketing because lawyers in Court noticed the pink sheets and asked me about it. Whenever they asked, I told them what I was doing and gave them a rolodex card.

In our system, when an appearance is done, we convert the estimate into a report and invoice (a standard Quickbooks function) and send it (back then I mailed, later we mostly emailed) to the law firm client. The invoices then post to a Quickbooks ledger for each attorney/customer, so I can follow up on payments. We also made drop-down menus with all the different types of appearances and all the judges. We streamlined the set-up and reporting and billing as much as possible.

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