The Dreams of a Solo

Delete a post once, shame on me...

I am writing this post to vent a bit since I have somehow managed to completely erase three nearly completed posts in the last three weeks prior to either saving or publishing.  I accept full responsibility for the vanishing acts, but I have a good reason besides the typical "I hit the wrong button" defense.  While I was over at Blogger the Compose feature was configured to auto save my posts while I was writing them.  That allowed me to get away with an occasional mind numbing erroneous keystroke or mouse click.  Now that I am on the Typepad platform I haven't determined how or even if it is possible to configure the Compose feature in the same manner.  As any frustrated and resourceful blogger would do I ran a couple of Google searches in hopes of finding a solution to this problem.  At the present time I have not decided how to fix this other than to just be more careful during the writing process, but I did find an interesting post on The Official Everything Typepad blog title Post to your blog from Word 2007.  My initial thought was that it would be worthwhile to take this for a test drive.  Then reality set in because I realized that I run Word 2004 on my MacBook Pro and that feature does not appear to be available.  Needless to say I will continue to look elsewhere for a viable solution.  In the interim I will just have to be more careful in how I go about composing my new posts. 

Was U.S. Currency Larger at Some Point in History?

I really have no idea why I decided to spend the last half hour looking up the physical size of U.S. currency, other than recently watched two movies depicting the late 19th century and the currency looked larger than what we use today.  In case any of you have ever thought about this or things of this nature, I thought I would share my findings.

I was surprised to find that before 1928 U.S. paper currency was in fact larger than our medium of exchange today. The size of the large-sized note was approximately 7.4218 × 3.125 inches or 189 × 79 mm.  Whereas the size of the current small-sized note is approximately 6.14 × 2.61 inches or 156 × 66 mm.  I suppose that it is a good thing from an environmental or the tree's perspective that we have smaller currency today, but I'm not convinced that was the motivating factor at the time of the change in the 1920s. 

Whatever the reason may be I'm happy that I have answered this long-standing and important question in all of our minds.  In case my brand of humor was not evident in the preceding line I wanted to emphasize that I am quite sure that very few if any of you were pondering this question either now or at any point in your life.  So basically I am writing this post to justify the time I spent looking this stuff up.  You never know it might be the answer to a trivia question some day.

 

 

Solo Law Firm: Early Stage Difficulities

It has officially been a month since my law firm has been in business and things have gone very well to this point.  But as they say, "Not everything came up roses."  So I thought that I would share some of the difficulties and issues that I have experienced in my first month of solo law practice.  Most of these items were expected considering the fact that I made the transition with no ongoing matters and no official clients.

The first difficulty relates to cash flow and this is relevant for all fresh-of-the-box start up businesses.   There is a lag between being retained and getting paid.  That is just a fact of life.  This is especially the case in my estate planning practice where I am paid upon completion and execution of the documents.  This is not to say that I do not require a retainer.  It just means that I do not draw down the retainer or otherwise cash the check until the plan is completed.  The estate planning process typically takes a couple weeks to a month depending on everyone's schedules.  With that in mind, the clients that have retained me so far are not likely to provide positive cash flow until this month.  As I said before, this slight lag was expected and it will not be a lasting issue.  It is just worth mentioning and considering when completing a business plan.

The second difficulty relates to the administrative tasks around the office.  By design, I am pretty much a one man shop.  I do have a shared receptionist and a share paralegal for the witnessing of documents and what not.  But the day to day functions of my law firm, including copying, scanning, mailing, scheduling, etc. fall on my shoulders.  Again, this was expected and thankfully I enjoy doing all of that stuff.  It is mentioned as a difficulty because it is something a bit different than the way I practiced before and it takes a little getting used to.

The third and last difficulty I wanted to mention is finding time to update this blog.  With the launch of my firm I started a website/blog for my law firm and a estate planning/tax/elder law related blog.  On top of that I have managed to attract a number of clients through referrals in addition to the clients that followed me.  So here I sit with a decent sized client/case load, three blogs, two golf leagues and the best weather of the Summer so far, and I have to find the time to squeeze it all together.  No problem.  Time management is the name of the game.  If you look at it all together it can be too much, but if you take it all in stride it is definitely doable.

As each day passes I am happier and happier about my decision to go solo.  I will gladly take these few difficulties I mentioned above in exchange for the many positives I have experienced on a daily basis.  I am already getting to the point where I ask myself why it took me so long to see the light.   Either way I am very glad that I did and that I took the leap into solo practice.

Tall People Just Have It Better

This is off the beaten trail for this blog but I had to write a quick post after watching tonight's Nightline on ABC.  I watched a piece regarding the height of people around the world.  If you have not seen this and you are slight of stature as I am (5 foot 7), then I think you will get a kick out of this story.  It turns out the tallest nation in the world is the Netherlands at an average height of 6'1".  Denmark is second at 6'0".  The U.S. lags behind, according to the story, at 5'10".  The portion of the story that I do not find as amusing, mostly because I believe it to be true, is the assertion that a country's height is representative of that country's overall health.  The fact is the U.S. has not been the tallest country for 50 or so years.  During that time we as a society have progressively gotten less and less healthy.  Obesity, lacking exercise and lacking nutrition are the norm here.  I am not pleased to say it but the truth is that our waist lines have grown will our inseams have decreased.  I do not think that I can blame my vertical deficiencies on diet and exercise trends.  The tallest member of my immediate family is a couple inches taller than me.  My mom and dad are 5'4" and 5'6" respectively and neither would be remotely considered obese.  Taking that a step farther, my grandmothers are both very short in comparison to the averages and they are getting shorter by the day.  But both of them are very healthy and active at 87 and 88 years old.  My grandfathers are both deceased, but again neither were taller than 5'8".  But then again my entire family roots can be traced back to German ancestry, so I do not have the benefit of the tall Dutch, Danish or Scandinavian genetics.  I guess this story helps explain why it is weird hanging out with my best friend, last name Johnson, since he's filled with the Scandinavian genes that led to his 6'5" frame.   If you are scoring at home that is a full 10 inches taller than me.  But what can you do?  Well one thing for sure, shop from either the kids or the clearance section since no one else can squeeze into a small or a 38 short suit coat or those 8.5 medium golf spikes.  I guess there will just be more for me and rest of the vertically challenged that bring down the U.S. national height average.  A part of me feels bad about this, but since I am so small it is not a large enough part to cause any concern.