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A newly admitted lawyer to the Massachusetts Bar, there are several options after receiving his license to practice law. You can opt for a junior position with a large firm and research for the next five years, they may relate to work in a small company and the entire work of the senior lawyers do not want to be with, they can hang their own shingle. This article is from the perspective of the later, ie, a Law School graduate with an entrepreneurial spirit, a little cash on hand, and the Desiring to start his own practice.
Forget the fact that the marketing and customer is the most difficult aspect of the new venture. Remember that the new attorney must be an area of practice for which a practitioner can not in all areas of the law. Once the client walks in the door and the lawyer wants to settle the case, the flood-gates of the paperwork is opened.
The first document a new lawyer must draft a fee agreement. There are several Internet sites are offering this type of mission, as well as other legal forms, but the legal documents are very general in nature and probably not meet the Massachusetts general laws. However, a brief look at each lawyer of the week, a number of software companies, the Word documents created specifically for Massachusetts, or whatever your practice.
Next, the whole process of filing a complaint or answer, if a court is involved, preparing HUD statements if real estate is the issue at hand and so on. A new Massachusetts Probate Attorney, recently said: "I did not know where to start, before I had the direction of my document generation software and my online search tools." She went on to state that "but for the generation of software, I would have to consult for hours the Massachusetts Practice Series and other books."
Once a case has been filed, the actual attack of paper and forms on the fan - DISCOVERY. There are interrogatories, request for production of documents, requests for medical records, requests for police reports, subpoenas for depositions, etc. There are applications for summery verdict, motions to compel, and so many more. A new lawyer who never drafted these documents has virtually no where but to the form books for hours and hours of research unbillable time.
The biggest problem for new lawyers is they do not learn how to try cases in law school. Rather, they are equipped to argue an appeal before the United States Supreme Court, then they are with a simple contest, or personal injury matter. The essence is to provide a new proxy in order to be effective, they can be either one of these up to date, form generating software packages which have a mentor luck or, their dreams and hopes for two or three years , while working for a small practice. In the case of young probate lawyer, she decided to purchase the software, and was lucky that one of the leading real estate and probate attorneys in the state as a mentor. However, not all new lawyers are so happy, and if you spend 30 hours per week, to explore what forms are needed, procedures to follow, you will hardly find time to actually represent your clients, let alone work, the statutory rules can be justified as billable hours.
The core of all these is that it is advisable to have in the technology available today, if you have a new lawyer, and indeed, even if you are an experienced lawyer, this technology allows you to stay current with all changes in legislation and procedures for state courts in your document library.
The following article was written by Michael Goldstein, Esq. Who writes select articles about technology for turbo-law, a Massachusetts legal software application.
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