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HCCLA 2018 Award Winners

March 16, 2018 Leave a Comment

The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association wishes to congratulate this year’s outstanding award recipients in the following categories: Lifetime Achievement, Lawyer of the Year, Torch of Liberty, Unsung Hero, and Mentor of the Year.  Each will be honored at the 48th HCCLA Annual Banquet during our awards presentations on May 10, 2018 at the Houston Ballroom at Bayou Place, 500 Texas Avenue, Houston, 77002. Please join us in celebrating their achievements. Make your reservations!


For more information:
HCCLA.org/banquet

Filed Under: celebrations, press release Tagged With: annual awards, banquet, civil rights corps, connie williams, damon parrish, Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, hccla, patrick mccann, Robert Fickman, sam adamo, scott pawgan, skip cornelius, susman godfrey llp, texas fair defense project

Want vs. Need in Solo IT Set-Up

June 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

by Patrick F. McCann

I am a luddite, defined as a person who opposes technology. I am not opposed to all things, just mostly to the need to obsess over the latest gadget or app [such as a “Fitbit” for instance; do you really need a wrist band to tell you that you are getting fat and lazy? That is what spouses and sarcastic friends are for! The zombie apps come to mind, although they are at least funny.] I liked the wheel, for example. It seemed a good idea, like baked bread, and dogs. So, I believe I am uniquely suited to help you young smarty-pants phone toting new lawyers the difference between what you need, and what you want when it comes to starting up your IT suite. Here goes!

Let me start with an example – you want a BMW M3 series. You need a good reliable car, or a bus pass. See the difference?

For a young solo starting out, who wants to work within the incredibly debt-plagued, shoe-string, ramen-eating existence you all appear to inhabit, here is what you want vs. what you need in your home-office to help you get started:

  1. You want an Ipad with Skype. You need a PC laptop or desktop with a decent monitor, and bundled with MS Office.
  1. You want a multi-function scanner-printer-fax machine that will communicate with the International Space Station and make espresso. You need a good laser jet printer like an HP1022, one that functions reliably and flawlessly and does not cost so much for toner, and an e-fax account that goes to your email.
  1. You want the IPhone 6. You need a good reliable phone that can give you some of the more useful apps like One Note, Dragon Dictation, or Fast Case.
  1. You want cloud storage. You need a good portable hard-drive with a huge amount of storage for backing up your inevitable lost data or laptop failure.
  1. You want a sophisticated online management solution for your practice, like Clio or Abacus. You need Outlook, which by the way comes with MS Office. It has contacts for your client info, task manager for keeping you on top of your deadlines and projects, journal and notes for detailed online memos or tracking your billing activities, a calendar function that frankly, despite all the hype, no one has actually beaten, and a mail management system that, while it is a bit of a pain, can do some pretty cool things in terms of helping organize your research and make your day flow smoothly.
  1. You want Westlaw. You need to learn to use the free search engine provided by the State Bar or Google Scholar advanced search, or, god forbid, use the free county law library or the one at the local law school down the street, and make time to go there.

Total cost for what you want – 4k. For what you need? About $700.00. Want vs. Need.

Everyone clear now?

Filed Under: Defender, practice pointers Tagged With: computer, law office, patrick mccann, practice pointer, technology

Practice Pointer: Can You Afford an Assistant?

June 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

By Patrick F. McCann

How many of you have spent an entire Saturday trying to reorganize files, whether electronic or paper?  So, an eight-hour Saturday, even at an appointed hourly rate of say one hundred dollars per hour, is eight hundred dollars lost to you.  That buys a nice hunting rifle, a new suit or outfit, a plane ticket and one night hotel stay to Vegas; well, you get the idea.  As another, how many times have you spent two or three hours driving, parking, sitting in an elevator, then waiting in the line at a clerk’s office, whether to copy an item from a file or to file something?  At a very reasonable attorney’s rate of one hundred fifty dollars an hour, that is three to four hundred dollars you will not see again.

So, the questions becomes, …what is your time worth? Do the math.  One hour of your time at 150.00 per hour pays for the eight hour shift of a fifteen dollar an hour assistant, plus parking, with enough to buy coffee for the two of you [figuring those fancy latte thingies in a large size]. Isn’t a free Saturday worth that?   Two hours of billable time per week pays for another shift.  Thus two or three hours of your time means you can afford a part time assistant, who will more than earn their pay if you help them to do so.  

Here are some of the things a new assistant can do which require minimal or no training – copies, organizing files, filing [once they know where and to whom the filings go] of pleadings, motions, mailings, getting stamps and office supplies, dropping off items to other attorneys/clients. With some care and training, [and every hour spent training a new person is an hour that reaps gold] a good reliable assistant can gradually learn to update your calendar, answer the phones, contact clients and courts on your behalf when you are late or in another county, take payments from clients, help you prepare and file vouchers on appointed cases, etc.

Alternatives to a full or part time assistant

There are many ways to use some of the essential services that an assistant performs without actually getting an assistant. Let us start with a quick list.

Dictation services and apps – If you are a smartphone addict, get Dragon dictation, and learn how easy and efficient it is to create an email, a text, or notes by talking into your smartphone while driving or walking or standing around having a smoke. Siri has some of this function on the iPhone, but it is frankly not as fast. There are also secretarial services that will type up letters and correspondence by dictation on tape or via MP3 file. There is a service called Speak-Write which does this specifically for lawyers, and they have both software for taking MP3 files from a digital recorder or your computer, AND they will let you call in to dictate a motion over the phone. Simple, affordable, and no messy employee problems.

Organizing and filing – If one has a general practice, and is comfortable working from home, efiling makes good sense, and will be mandatory for civil matters in Texas in 2014.  This saves one a great deal of time and effort, and should be embraced as a way to avoid that nasty rush hour traffic. It is mandatory for federal criminal filings, and will likely become easier and possibly mandatory for state criminal filings and appellate filings at some point, though we are not there yet.  Likewise there are office organizing services and secretarial services that will go to your office and create, then maintain, a simple filing system and help organize your files such that your workspace becomes amazingly efficient. They can be hired on an “as-needed” basis, and it still makes the same sense economically to pay them sixteen bucks an hour to do this while you are billing four hours of productive motion crafting on a case at 150.00 per hour.

Free help – Last, there are some ways to get some assistance on the true “cheap”, and they are called interns. Most law schools and para legal programs in the area have such willing serfs, er…people… available for either academic credit or real world experience necessary to get them paying jobs [eventually].

I hope this has proved useful and at least stimulated some thoughts on how your practice can grow with just a little help. Many hands make the load lighter.

Good luck! Paddy

 

 

Filed Under: Defender, practice pointers Tagged With: assistant, criminal defense, hccla, lawyers, learning from masters, patrick mccann, practice, practice pointer

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