On Ethical Issues Raised by “Letter Lawyers”

Jamison KoehlerLaw Marketing/Networking, Professional Responsibility/Ethics

  Mark Bennett refers to them as “letter lawyers”; they are the lawyers who, with the hopes of securing new clients, send out advertising materials to the people whose names and addresses have been listed on public arrest records. A friend of ours was charged recently with a misdemeanor traffic offense and received over 20 letters in the mail.  She …

When Your Business Card Is More Memorable Than You Are

Jamison KoehlerHumor, Law Marketing/Networking

I am pretty good with faces and with names.  I have always been impressed — almost flattered — by people who remembered my name after a single meeting, and at one point early in my career, I decided to make a more concerted effort to learn people’s names upon meeting them and to commit those names to memory. The problem, …

Jefferson Memorial

More on Joseph Rakofsky: The Story Keeps Getting Worse

Jamison KoehlerCurrent Events, Law Marketing/Networking, Law Practice, Professional Responsibility/Ethics

“We really didn’t check him out.  He said he was this and could do that.  We thought he was telling the truth.” — Henrietta Watson, grandmother of defendant Dontrell Deaner The blogosphere has been abuzz the past week with the story of Joseph Rakofsky, a 33-year-old lawyer two years out of law school who took on a murder case in …

On Norm Pattis and “The Happysphere”

Jamison KoehlerCriminal Law Bloggers, Law Marketing/Networking

  Norm Pattis was in town this weekend, and Mirriam Seddiq and I joined him last night for dinner at Oyamel restaurant.  Seddiq’s brother works as the head bartender there, and he made sure we were treated like royalty. Pattis and Seddiq were in the bar area waiting for our table when I arrived.  Pattis commented on how much smaller …

American flag

Six Months Into A Solo Criminal Law Practice

Jamison KoehlerLaw Marketing/Networking, Law Practice

Mark Bennett and Brian Tannebaum both announced last week that they have been practicing criminal law for 15 years.  While I have nowhere close to this level of experience, I recently celebrated an anniversary of my own. As of this past month, it has been six months since I opened my D.C. law office and one month since I began …

U.S. Capitol building

Starting Your Own Law Practice is a Leap of Faith

Jamison KoehlerLaw Marketing/Networking, Law Practice

In another lifetime, I wrote short stories. Five or six of these stories eventually found their way into obscure literary journals, with one or two still floating around somewhere on the Internet.  The largest circulation of any of the journals that published me was probably two or three thousand readers at the most.  With the exception of one story for …

On Free Consultations

Jamison KoehlerLaw Marketing/Networking

In an entry today called “Don’t Blame Clients For What Lawyers Do,” Scott Greenfield writes of the “huge rift” within the legal profession “between those desperately seeking business and those desperately seeking to provide clients with excellent representation.”  As an example of the lawyers on the “seeking business” side of the divide, he cites lawyers who offer free consultations to …

D.C. skyline

The Voice of a Law Office

Jamison KoehlerLaw Marketing/Networking, Law Practice

A couple of weeks ago, I changed the message on my office voice mail.  My 19-year-old daughter had done the original recording, but, after listening to it back, we both agreed that her voice sounded too girlish. So, instead, I asked my former sister-in-law if she could do it. I thought my sister-in-law’s British accent would sound classy. I also …