Practice Management

I actually found myself in the last couple of weeks trying to encourage an attorney to "thumb it to me".  It is the process or encouraging someone to send you a SMS on their cell phone, with their thumb being the key finger used in texting the message.

I had been trying to get a settlement offer out of attorney, who is never in his standard office, in time to act on it before some court required deadline hit.  I was told that he would have to get back to me when he made it back to his office and could send me an email.  I thought that is nonsense.  All he had to do was type it out with his thumbs.

I found two things interesting about this traditional lawyer.  The first was that he is never in his highrise office.  He runs around the State of Texas to court, to depositions, to mediations, and hardly ever represents clients that come to his office.  In short, he represents national lenders and in-house legal departments, who have debtor/creditor issues.  He is not in the retail practice of law, but he feels compelled to maintain a traditional office with the receptionist, who over uses her voicemail, a paralegal who can never be reached but for her voicemail, and the lawyer that must always return my calls on his cell phone because he is never in the office to accept them call when made.  Of course, it is his choice, but you have to wonder why the overhead and the office is even necessary, except to waste money.  He should just move himself and his staff home, give his staff a raise and pocket more money from the money saved.  But, again, that is not my choice to make for him.

The second thing is the failure to realize the resources you have in front of you and to use them effectively.  You do not need a laptop in front of you to send an offer.  He uses a blackberry for goodness sake.  Otherwise, he and I speak on cell phones together all of the time.  Just texted it to me.  That constitutes a writing.  But, there are a group of us that have effectively been unleashed from our desks, and the wired world, that now find themselves hampered internally because we do not have a notebook computer up and running and connected to broadband.  That should not be a reason for slowing us down.

So, if you cannot email it, just thumb it.

Besides, we know how easy it is.  On Saturday Rick Georges of Futurelawyer was thmbing me messages, while on vacation with his family in Orlando, trying to save me from eternal damnation due to my liberal tendencies.  If thumbing is good enough to save someone's soul, it should be good enough to send someone a settlement offer.