Practice Management

Well, maybe tag hag is not the right term.  That is a person who is obsessed with brand name clothing, but I think it gets the point across.  Certainly there are lawyers that concern themselves with wearing the right suit, the right shoes, the right shirt, and the right tie.  They cannot buy what they need at a discount store, but my analogy is broader than this.  As the next season rolls around, they go out and spend thousands on new stuff, and then think the salvation army really needs the crap they discard.

You have to be concerned with lawyers and law firms that are obsessed with the need to be in the brand name building, with brand name furnishings, to have graduates from the brand named law schools, that have the brand named legal staffs, that drive brand named cars, live in brand named communities, and operate in the old world environment of need for an office staffed and equipped like firms 20 or 30 years ago.

Should it matter to you as a client in this legal services environment?  I think it should.  First, what we are talking about is high cost overhead for no better reason than the tag hags are prideful.  Second, that overhead and old world charm is going to passed on to you as the client.

I see these lawyers drive up to Court every day.  Tag hags are fun to watch.  I do not ridicule in public.  It is my own private amusement.  The expensive uniform just back from the cleaners (extra starch in the shirts, please), the perfect car, just arriving from the big office, with the big staff.  More often than not their clients lose.  They lose not on the merits of the case, but the costs of stay in eventually gets to great to justify under any business-based decision.

These are probably lawyers that have wine at home they never touch.  It is too valuable to drink and they are too attached to the wine to ever sell it.

I am not saying you need to be a hobo, but I tend to think one of the problems with too many law schools and too many Big Law firms is that they create a culture where lawyers learn to be tag hag and where that culture prevails.