Family Lawyer Magazine

67 Pages·2013·13.82 MB·English

by  Divorce Marketing Guide

FAMILY LAWYER
SPECIAL EDITION WINTER 2014 MAGAZINE
Mercedes-Benz
Family Law?
Working with
High-Profile Clients

Control Your
Firm’s Finances

When “Friends”
Complicate Trial
National Conference
on Divorce

Succeed with Your
Financial Expert
The Perils of
Pretexting
Becoming a
Better Negotiator
Protect Clients’
Digital Assets
Table of wContenwts | Pwrofess.ioFnal Laistinmgs ilyLawyerMagazine.com | 1
Settlement
2 | Table of Contents | Professional Listings
Table of Contents
LEGAL MATTERS
10 When “Friends” Complicate Trials by John Browning
12 How to Succeed with Your Financial Expert in Court by Tracy Coenen
14 The Perils of Pretexting by Marshall Waller
16 Servicemember’s Civil Relief Act by Karen Robbins
FINANCIAL MATTERS
23 Common QDRO Pitfalls by Mark Altschuler
25 Irrational Financial Decisions by Justin Reckers and Robert Simon
27 Discovering Hidden Income by Kim Onisko and JB Rizzo
30 A Look at QDROS and Liability Issues by Timothy Voit
32 Standard of Value by Shannon Pratt and Alina Niculita
PRACTICE MANAGEMENT /
DEVELOPMENT
6 When High-Profile Clients Come Knocking by David Sarif
8 Controlling Your Firm’s Finances by Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis
34 Children Held Hostage by Stanley Clawar
40 Mercedes-Benz Family Law Division? by Dan Couvrette
CONTINUING EDUCATION
19 The National Conference on Divorce
39 Becoming a Better Negotiator by Gregg Herman
TECHNOLOGY
21 Protect Your Clients’ Digital Assets by Nicholas Himonidis
54 The Future of Law: Focus on Mobility by Chad Burton
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
57 A Kerala Vacation: The Perfect Therapeutic Destination by Mel Borins
PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES
DIRECTORY
60 Listing of Family Lawyers and Related Professionals and Services
Table of Contents | Professional Listings www.familylawyermagazine.com | 3
Letter From the Publisher
Challenging Your Thinking
CEO/Publisher
Dan CouvreƩ e, 866.803.6667 Ext. 124
One Article at a Time
Table of Contents | Professional Listings | 5
Client Relations
By David G. Sarif, Family Lawyer
When High-Profi le Clients Come Knocking
Cases involving high-profile individuals may involve unique challenges, complexities and potential
pitfalls that attorneys must be aware of in order to ensure proper representation, a positive result, and
a happy client.
Identifying High-Profile Clients Identifying and recognizing potential meeting someone famous and if so,
clients as high-profile is a critical, yet whether you can keep it under con-
Before getting into the potential pros an often overlooked step of proper and trol.
and cons of representing a high-profile effective representation. For if an at- 3. Whether you can properly handle
client, it is prudent to define who ex- torney fails to identify a client as high the media and press that will likely
actly qualifies as a “high-profile” cli- profile, he or she could make a critical follow the case.
ent. For most people, the first thing mistake that could severely compro- 4. Whether you can deal with the inter-
that comes to mind when they think mise either the privacy of the client, or mediaries throughout the process
of a high-profile person is a celebrity, even circumvent a favorable outcome that often run high-profile clients’
such as a movie star, television actor, in the case. lives such as other attorneys, agents,
singer, or professional athlete. How- financial advisors, business manag-
ever, there are also plenty of non- A few issues for attorneys to consider ers, significant others, and/or mar-
famous yet “high-profile” clients who when deciding whether or not to un- keting specialists.
may also require special or unique dertake such representation include:
treatment, such as successful business 1. Whether you are in business to meet Further, although high-profile cli-
owners, executives, community lead- famous people or to make money. ents often have a higher ability to pay
ers, public officials, and politicians. 2. Whether you are intimidated by than the majority of people, some will
6 | www.familylawyermagazine.com/article-category/client-relations Table of Contents | Professional Listings
nonetheless expect either free or dis- documents in your presence, not their
counted services, citing the publicity agent. Remember, it is alright to reject
and attention they bring by virtue of Ultimately, you must or fire a client who is unwilling to coop-
them being your client (i.e. some will erate with such simple requests. Ulti-
feel that you “owe” them for choos- ask yourself whether you mately, you must ask yourself whether
ing your firm). In the end, only you can you are willing to risk your reputation
decide whether the publicity that the are willing to risk your simply to allow a high-profile client to
high-profile client brings with them is bend the rules.
worth it, and whether the high stakes reputation simply to
and expectations involved are overly Like with all cases and clients, acknowl-
burdensome or exciting, challenging, allow a high-profile client edging and preparing for potential
and rewarding. challenges and complexities ahead
to bend the rules. of time will help ensure a positive ex-
High-Profile Representation perience for both the client and the
Strategies attorney alike. While these are all man-
ageable challenges that should not
If you ultimately determine that you (i.e. text messages) can leak out at any necessarily prevent you from accepting
want to undertake representation of a time and cause irreparable damage to the representation, they are issues that
high-profile client, there are certain nu- both their image and to the case. you must be willing to deal with from
ances and strategic decisions that must the outset.
be considered apart from the normal Recognizing High-Profile
scope of representation. As an initial Challenges David G. Sarif is an As-
matter, you must understand who in sociate at Kessler & Solo-
your client’s personal life will and will Other challenges attorneys are likely minay, LLC. Mr. Sarif has
not be most helpful to your represen- to face in representing high-profile cli- been honored as a Geor-
tation. For example, people like the cli- ents include potentially intense media gia Super Lawyers Rising
ent’s mother or father will usually be scrutiny of your client and the case, po- Star in multiple years, and
very helpful, given that generally there tentially high-maintenance clients with has represented numer-
is a much lower probability they have an overinflated sense of self-worth, ous high-profile entertainers, musicians,
their own agenda. On the other hand, competition from other attorneys will- and professional athletes. He devotes
groupies and entourage members are ing to tell the client whatever they 100% of his practice to family law. www.
not likely to provide much, if any, help want to hear just to get their business ksfamilylaw.com
at all, given that they are typically only (including second guessing your work
around for their own interests rather in the media), and defending your cli-
More Related Articles
than the client’s. ent from disparaging internet gossip.
Further, you must recognize that there Courtroom Tips From the Top
There are several strategic decisions are many different personality types We asked five renowned lawyers
to address early in the representation and it is very possible that you will have from the Faculty of the Houston
whenever possible. Understandably, to deal with some extremes, either Family Trial Institute to share some
high-profile clients are often concerned with the client or their representatives. of their insights on courtroom skills
about their information, especially fi- Also, keep in mind that their family and and strategies.
nancial information, being leaked to representatives are often there to pro- www.familylawyermagazine.com/
the media or made available for public tect and shield them from the outside articles/courtroom-tips-from-the-
scrutiny. Accordingly, depending on the world (including their attorneys), which top
individual circumstances of the case, a makes it more difficult to deliver advice
confidentiality order is often appropri- that the client needs to hear since they An Interview with Stephen
ate, and obtaining one by agreement are so accustomed to being in control Kolodny: Lawyer to the Stars
with the other side is ideal. Also, to fur- of any given situation. By Dan Couvrette
ther assist your client in realizing his or Stephen Kolodny discusses how to
her goals, engage proper experts, such Another difficulty presents itself in situ- properly prepare for trial and deal
as financial and custody experts, as ations where the client does not want with high net worth divorce cases.
early as possible. Furthermore, be sure to be involved in the case. This issue www.familylawyermagazine.com/
to remind the client that everything could be either positive or negative, but articles/an-interview-with-stephen-
they put on social media is public, and regardless, the fact remains that the cli- kolodny-lawyer-to-the-stars
that anything they say in digital form ent must be the one to sign off on all
Table of Contents | Professional Listings www.familylawyermagazine.com/article-category/client-relations | 7
Managing Your Firm
“If I was good at math I would have become a doctor,” joked one
of the attorneys we began working with recently, in response to
Gain Control of Your a question regarding how he managed his firm’s finances. Like so
many of the attorneys we work with he was a highly skilled legal
practitioner, but his practice management skills were weak. In
Firm’s Finances with his case, he had flirted with financial disaster often enough to
finally seek help.
a Financial Dashboard Fortunately, he had a part-time bookkeeper on board who want-
ed to assist. Unfortunately, she was making the situation worse
By Mark Powers & Shawn McNalis, by flooding him with too much information. On a monthly basis
she’d deliver a stack of reports to his office. Overwhelmed by all
Practice Advisors
of the detail, he’d glance at the pile and tell himself he’d look
through it all when he had the time. But in fact, only when a fi-
nancial crisis loomed would he give his bookkeeper the opportu-
nity to discuss corrective actions. He managed his firm’s finances
in a highly reactive manner, never able to properly predict cash
flow. Operating this way left him feeling out of control and he was
motivated to change.
We recommended he take a systematic and proactive approach
so he could have the information he needed, but in a more di-
gestible form. We instructed his bookkeeper to keep running his
monthly reports, but then to summarize the key financial data and
put it into what we call a financial “Dashboard,” which displays
the firm's key financial information similar to the way the gauges
in the console of a car display speed, battery charge, and fuel.
By prominently displaying your key financial indicators, the finan-
cial Dashboard serves the same purpose and allows you to either
keep moving forward at your current course and speed, or stop
to make important adjustments.
The Advantage of Using a Dashboard
The form is basically a bottom-line summary of several different
reports which provides a snapshot of a firm’s financial status. It
gathers the most essential data from your profit and loss state-
ment, your hourly billing report, your expense report, your ac-
count receivables report and your financial operations report.
Added to this are your monthly marketing statistics as it’s impor-
tant to see the trends developing in this area as well. Marketing
activities drive business in the door, which serves as fuel to the
firm. If the number of activities starts to decrease in the market-
ing categories, it will negatively impact the firm’s finances down
the road.
Here’s a brief overview of the sections of the Dashboard:
1. The Revenue Section: Divided into two areas, shows the fees
and costs that were billed for the month, along with costs
and interest payments that were collected for the month.
2. The Monthly Billing Section (for hourly billing practices):
This section lists the total hours billed for the month by each
timekeeper.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 49
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Reaching “Generation Ex”
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• Covering legal, financial, emotional, and children-
related isues
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Divorce Magazine and divorce professionals
Published 2 times a year
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California, New York/New Jersey and Ontario
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Feature your practice and expertise here
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your profile advertisement, articles and FAQs
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• Featuring expert advice from local family lawyers
and divorce professionals
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children’s issues
Highly targeted audience
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• They are in need of your service right now
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866.803.6667 x 124
Ethics
When
“Friends”
Complicate
Trials
When does a judge’s use of social media
violate canons of judicial ethics?
By John Browning, Trial Lawyer
ost lawyers — and many clients Most of the states to address this sub- Judges Should Proceed
— have heard the old saying “A ject, along with the ABA Formal Opin- with Caution
Mgood lawyer knows the law; a ion 462, have given a cautious “thumbs
great lawyer knows the judge.” But in up” to judges wishing to venture onto In Lacy v. Lacy, a 2013 custody case
this digital age, in which over 72% of sites like Facebook and Twitter. While from Georgia, a father appealed three
all adult Americans have at least one they remind judges that existing can- different trial court orders (from three
social networking profile and sites like ons of judicial conduct will still apply in different judges). Regarding one of the
Facebook boast more than 1.12 billion cyberspace, these opinions simultane- orders in this contentious case, Mr. Lacy
users worldwide, what are the conse- ously acknowledge that being a judge’s argued that the trial judge should have
quences when a lawyer or even a party “friend” on Facebook doesn’t indicate recused himself sua sponte on grounds
happens to be Facebook “friends” with that one has a special relationship and of bias toward Mrs. Lacy. As support
a judge? position of influence with that judge. for his argument, Mr. Lacy produced
a copy of a comment on his Facebook
Recent Challenges An exception to this pragmatic ap- page — allegedly made by the mother
proach is Florida, whose Supreme weeks after the hearing in question —
The family law arena has been the Court Judicial Ethics Advisory Commit- in which she boasted “Judge Parrot and
scene of recent challenges to judi- tee takes a much more draconian view my dad had a meeting the week before
cial impartiality based on Facebook of judges and social networking. Not our case and guess what, you lost your
“friendship,” even when the online only does Florida not permit judges to kids.” But the appellate court was not
relationship is an attenuated one. At have Facebook “friends,” an attorney’s persuaded that such an accusation held
least ten states — New York, California, “friend” status with a judge is automat- any merit, holding that “the mother’s
Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Okla- ic grounds for that judge’s disqualifica- reference on Facebook to a meeting is
homa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, tion. See, for example, Domville v. State not evidence that the judge obtained
and Tennessee — have issued judicial of Florida, a 2012 Florida appellate information relevant to the case from
ethics advisory opinions providing guid- case that rationalized that because an extra-judicial source, much less that
ance on judges’ social media activity. In “judges do not have the unfettered he based his ruling on any such exter-
addition, in February 2013, the ABA social freedom of teenagers,” maintain- nal information.” It’s also worth noting
Standing Committee on Ethics and Pro- ing “the appearance of impartiality re- that this same case was so rife with
fessional Responsibility came out with quires the avoidance of entanglements disparaging comments being made by
Formal Opinion 462 on “Judges’ Use of and relationships that compromise that
Electronic Social Networking Media.” appearance.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 45
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