Supreme Court Raises Appellate Filing Fees

The Alabama Supreme Court entered an order yesterday (August 25th) raising filing fees in all three appellate courts as follows:

Direct appeal – $200
Rule 5 permission to appeal – $150
Petition for cert, civil and criminal – $150
Rule 21 extraordinary writ – $150

The new filing fees go into effect on October 1st.  As this is being written [...]

How Good Lawyers Survive Bad Times

The final version of a new book just landed on my desk this morning. How Good Lawyers Survive Bad Times by Sharon Nelson, Jim Calloway and Ross Kodner is a must-read for any lawyer who has seen his or her business decline during the recession or, even worse, lost a job. But more [...]

When You Go To Heaven Redux

A few days ago I linked to Courtney Kenneday’s post on what happens when a solo practitioner or small firm lawyer unexpectedly dies or becomes disabled without a plan. What I failed to include in my post is that there is a resource from the ABA General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division to [...]

More Recession Survival Tips

Speaking of Law Practice Magazine, the July/August issue is centered on the idea of Managing Change and contains, among many intresting pieces, a great short article with 15 Recession-Response Tips for Solo & Small Firm Lawyers by Linda Oligschlager, Membership Services Director for the Missouri Bar.  Her tips contain practical ideas you can put to [...]

Some Tips on Getting Paid

Bad economic times tend to be compared to the proverbial rainy day, but when business gets slow I’m reminded more of the old expression to “make hay while the sun shines.” When things are slow around the office you have the perfect opportunity to patch up that leaky roof and generally put things in [...]

When You Go to Heaven…

…will your practice go to Hell? That’s the question that my friend Courtney Kennaday with the South Carolina Bar asks in a recent post complete with pictures of what can happen when a solo practitioner dies without a plan in place to handle unexpected death or disability. The post links to an article [...]

Where the Work Is

While we haven’t experienced the number of lawyer lawoffs that other areas of the country with much bigger firms have (see: LawShucks Layoff Tracker), as the recession drags on, more and more solo and small firm lawyers are seeing a reduction in the number of clients who are calling and matters or transactions they are [...]