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Ojo Rojo

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Everything posted by Ojo Rojo

  1. Oh, I know. I probably shouldn't have responded. You are exactly right about the marketing direction. That's what all of the marketing consultants I've dealt with have told me. That's the conventional wisdom of the legal marketing gurus in print. That's what friends and peers have told me. I haven't taken that step because when you aren't getting enough quality work, it's counterintuitive to cast a narrower net. Also, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing the identity of our firm given the specialties of the individual lawyers in it. It's not a natural fit of practice areas, I'm afraid. That may not matter, though it would be easier to market a firm with a single specialized practice area than marketing a small group of individual lawyers, each with their own specialties.
  2. I've considered it and consulted with people inside and outside of my firm and I don't think that's it. I've led this firm through some serious adversity since being thrust into this role, which at the time involved putting out a flaming pile of dogshit. Shortly after I got us through crisis mode, one of our major rainmaking partners died in a tragic accident, so not only did I have to recover the business from that blow, I also tried to take care of his family as much as I could. It's been a very tough road, but we're still here.
  3. Yeah, but exhibits are usually already named in sequence: Ex. A, Ex. B, Ex. 1, Ex. 2, etc. (I know this is getting old, so I'll stop soon.)
  4. I can see that, but if you do need to see the order something was filed, just go to the clerk's website and look at the docket. Plus, the names of filed documents will be different. "Motion" followed by "Response" followed by "Reply," etc. It should only really be a problem if you have a document with the exact same name, which would be fairly rare with court filings. How often are documents with the exact same name filed on the same day or in succession? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
  5. Yeah, this is a good point too and has happened to me. My control for this is that I number each version in the name of the file. That way, even if the date changes I can still see the order of the different versions. I very rarely have to recreate or show the chronology of changes or the dates of changes to a file. If I did, there would still be a way to do that in MS Office by using version history. You can even restore a prior version with the original date.
  6. Okay, sure.
  7. I care if it's something I'm working on too or will need to refer to later. I'm talking about files that are saved to a server and everyone has access to them. Files saved to your own drive are a different story - don't care about those. It wouldn't be as bad if they didn't put the date in the beginning of the name. If it's a sorting issue, you can always sort by date without having the date in the name of the file.
  8. Never.
  9. Do it every day. Putting the date in the name doesn't help you when you have multiple revisions on the same day. Plus, windows automatically includes the time of the last revision, in addition to the date. So you can list by date and the earliest versions will show up in order based on time and date. What I do is, if it's my revision then I'll put a parenthetical with my initials (BMF) and Rev. X. Each successive revision of mine will be X+1. Works for me. And when they ask for my latest version, I tell them, "It's the one with BMF on it."
  10. New tradition, you say?
  11. Something could be pointless without being redundant.
  12. When people save files with the date in the name. Totally pointless, redundant and confusing.
  13. No. Drafting leases and related documents between mineral owners and oil companies.
  14. Ain't that the goddamned truth. If I could fire my C clients I think I'd be the happiest person alive.
  15. Yeah, this has been a problem for us for a long time. Lack of a clear identity makes marketing tough. We do have core areas - commercial litigation, corporate, IP and family law. Those core areas themselves are all over the place. The roster of lawyers we have, which I mostly inherited when I took over as managing partner, has dictated the firm's practice areas. If I could start from scratch, I would be a boutique that just did one thing and I know what that one thing would be. The problem is that I/we have never had enough work in our core practice areas to leave all of the ancillary work behind. Have a business owner client who wants to do a name change for their kid? Sure, I'll do that - I need the billable work. That has led to forays into all kinds of weird shit, which is stressful in an of itself, because you have to get into an area you don't know, with itinerant risks, and you have to reinvent the wheel every time with forms, etc.
  16. If they supported his quads I might give them a pass...
  17. Not a fan of Breg's black cleats.
  18. Close to home for me. We recently moved my office to a new building. I park in the oversized section of the garage. I noticed that EVERY truck in there backs into their parking spots. It boggled my mind because usually you'll see one or two weirdos in a parking lot do that, but EVERYONE? Well, I finally figured out why. I pull head in to my spot like a regular got-damned American. When I back out I don't have enough room to turn so that I can pull out because of the proximity of the other large vehicles behind me. So I have to do all kinds of creative shit to even back out of my space and go. Backed in vehicles can just pull out and go because the front wheels turn and the back wheels do not. So here it's actually kind of a necessary thing.
  19. Damn, I'm white. I thought the wave thing was just the way some people's hair grew. I had no idea it was a style or deliberate.
  20. That's what I know him for too, but I guess my exposure to him was longer ago when he wasn't so blatantly targeting a conservative audience. In the past he would make fun of vegans and shit like that. Seems like more recently he just goes after anything "left." So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I didn't know what he was doing lately.
  21. JP Sears is a neocon douchebag? That's disappointing.
  22. We are a small, full-service firm. Our core practice areas are corporate and transactional, litigation, trial and appeals, intellectual property (prosecution and litigation), real estate, family law, probate and estate planning. We have practiced some in bankruptcy court - creditor claims, some trustee representation, litigation of claims in bankruptcy court. We've done some oil and gas. Some labor and employment. Some administrative law. In the past, we tried (maybe not hard enough and maybe not doing the right things) to market ourselves as outside general counsel. Basically, as the go-to legal resource for companies too small to hire inside counsel. That's what we'd probably like to do if we could pick a single practice area or niche. Not sure if it's tenable. I've been encouraged to choose a single practice area, boutique-style, or industry and focus on that exclusively. I could never quite make that jump because it would be leaving behind some existing work and clients and making ourselves smaller focused just seemed like it was going to cause us to miss some opportunities. At this point, I'm tired of working for low-grade clients on low-grade matters. What ends up happening far too often is that the client gets part way into their matter and starts running out of money. Then you are trying to get creative with billing, most likely taking a big haircut, while still trying to deliver quality legal work and positive outcomes for the client. I'm just getting tired of doing everything cut rate or not getting paid altogether and feeling like I'm forced to take flyers all the time on questionable work just to keep the lights on.
  23. I'm a 15 year lawyer and also manage my small firm. I'm dissatisfied with the current client base and need to make some changes. I get bombarded all the time with SEO and online marketing ads, calls and emails. I've invested in SEO, but it hasn't really worked. We've done some networking groups (BNI, mixers for local COCs, etc.) but those are roomfuls of sellers in my experience. What do y'all do for client generation that has been successful?
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