Husband. Father. Occasional bagpipe player. Craft beer drinker and proud wearer of the bow tie (though it must have been casual Friday when this photo was taken). This is Minnesota consumer rights attorney Chris Wheaton. Wheaton represents people under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. He sues debt collectors who abuse and harass people who owe debt. In this interview, Wheaton tells us why he became a lawyer, describes a day-in-the-life in consumer rights practice, and gives some advice on starting a solo/small law firm.
Take note: If you’d like to be interviewed as part of this “day-in-the-life” series, hit us up in the comments. We’re looking for lawyers with interesting practices and interesting perspectives.
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To quote the American Bar Association:
Judges are in an excellent position to observe misconduct by lawyers and to identify it as such.
That’s exactly what federal judge Otis Wright did in his order last week, in which he not only ordered thousands in attorney fees against Prenda Law and its associates, but put everyone from federal law enforcement to state disciplinary authorities on notice. As for Joseph Rakofsky, it was the Internet: 1, Rakofsky: -2, wrote Jordan Rushie, in describing how Rakofsky failed to succeed in his numerous defamation claims.
But why no sanctions against Rakofsky? Judge Shlomo Hagler’s order grants defendants’ motion to dismiss, but goes no further. Why did Rakofsky seem to get away scot free, while Prenda got nailed to the wall?
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Sam’s manifesto on why your blog sucks is worth the read. I thought I’d take the micro-approach and tackle one comparatively tiny thing: headlines.
What is a headline?
A headline is the title of your post. The best headlines, generally speaking, are short and descriptive. The worst are cute or clever and objectively fail to match the post’s content, like a bait-and-switch. I’ve written good headlines. I’ve written bad ones. Just like anything else, writing a “good” headline depends on your overall level of skill and what you want to accomplish.
But one thing’s for sure: the best headlines provoke an emotional response from the reader. Do new lawyers really get rich and famous by blogging, as the headline of this post says? No, generally not. But I bet you’re curious.
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Update: April 30, 2013
Warning: This is a “long, boring, and not even funny” rant about snark. You win some, you lose some. Maybe I’ll follow up at a later date with something else about snark. Probably I won’t. Read at your own peril.
…
Of all the law blogs in this world, there’s only one ingredient found in the best of them—the kind of blawg that elevates lawyers and the legal profession the way we all want it to be elevated—that is, the ingredient of snark. (Did you see what I did there? Italic emphasis on the word “snark” really made it pop.) When it comes to snark, no one does it better than lawyers.
As a young lawyer who considers himself primarily a writer—an occasional lawyer when I’m not writing marketing copy or blogging, to be precise—I eat lots of snark. Sometimes I serve it up myself. But mostly I eat it. Snark, in my opinion (if I may voice my opinion on this matter), is what makes superstars out of blawgs. If you’re thinking of getting into the snark game yourself, use caution. You might be a lawyer, which makes you predisposed, but that doesn’t mean you can pull it off.
Here’s what it takes to inject snark into your blawg.
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Randall’s how to succeed in law school is a nice broad post on exactly that, and you should read it.
But here’s my personal take on law school success. It’s the law school do-over, written as a kind of internal monologue, and most of it is framed in the negative: no, stop, and don’t. It’s not for all law students, but it’s what I would do if I had a law school do-over, and if you’re headed to law school or working your way through now, remember this:
Being a law student does not make you a Jedi.
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I find myself using the very same term—“unsophisticated”—when describing my former client, a term I criticize below. But I use it not because my client lacked intelligence. It’s because I know she would’ve been railroaded if she’d showed up to the deposition alone.
But I was there for her.
And drilled into me during the experience was this: all I had to do was show up. That was it. Just show up, and most of the work of representing my client effectively was already done.
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A Facebook acquaintance recently shared an article about social media. I know: You’re sick of reading about social media. But before you hit the back button, trust me. You might want to follow the writer’s advice. It goes against the grain. Shauna Niequist wants you to stop instagramming your perfect life.
Her article begins with this:
I keep having the same conversation over and over. It starts like this: ‘I gave up Facebook for Lent, and I realized I’m a lot happier without it.’ Or like this, ‘Pinterest makes me hate my house.’ Or like this: ‘I stopped following a friend on Instagram, and now that I don’t see nonstop snapshots of her perfect life, I like her better.’
Here’s the problem: Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram and all the other social media dreck exacerbates the pitch-black divide between what I thought my life would be like after law school, and how it has turned out so far. I’m simply not as big-time as I thought I would be as a law student.
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Hugh Hefner is an ageless source of broad interest — and not just because he stuffed his magazine and his life full of naked women. His success has nothing to do with naked women. Well, it has a lot to do with naked women, but not quite as much as you might think.
There’s a reason Hefner is a cultural icon and a regular subject of features in magazines like Esquire, which just published an article by Chris Jones about Hefner’s “perfect life.” (Apart from the fact that he’s an 86-year-old man who recently married a woman in her twenties.)
From Jones’s article, here are three lessons for lawyers, from newbies to veterans, inspired by the secret of Hefner’s perfect life.
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What do I charge for my services?
That’s the question many lawyers ask, especially those who run a solo practice.
You could argue it’s a non-issue, that the market sets the rates, it’s out of your hands, etc. That’s true, to a certain extent. The market (and the law) does set boundaries. If you want to keep your license to practice, you can’t set your rates unreasonably high. If you want to stay in business, you can’t set them too low.
But ignore all that for now.
Here’s why you should price yourself out of the market.
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You can bring the “less is more” mentality to your solo practice every day. It’s a cliche, I know, but you’ve got to ask yourself whether having your own wing on the top floor with 15 associates under you is worth the headache and the risk.
Businesses (including law firms) obsessed by growth are their own worst enemy.
I read somewhere that economists no longer speak in terms other than “growth,” that our society’s obsession with growth has led them to characterize periods of recession as “negative growth.”
There’s another way to be successful: Don’t grow. Be proud of your solo practice. Because when your primary focus becomes growth, you no longer care about the things that really matter.
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