Recently in Guest Posts Category

Guest post by Jennifer K. Halford, Esq.

A flat fee divorce package that includes a weekend stay at a luxury hotel, completed papers, and a television appearance - is this the practice of law or reality television?

Apparently it's both.

The idea was created by Dutch entrepreneur, Jim Halfens, who has been selling his Divorce Hotel package to soon-to-be divorcees in the Netherlands. And now he wants to sell it in the U.S.

Want to avoid being found in contempt? Don't advise your clients to reclaim their property after it has been foreclosed on.

But that's just what Michael T. Pines of Ventura County did, and then some. Pines has now been ordered to pay $2,000 in fines and over $34,000 in legal fees. He was fortunate enough to avoid incarceration. The matter began after an investment company bought the home at auction and had to fight Pines clients who retook possession of the foreclosed home in Simi Valley.

Can toothpaste cause you to test positive for alcohol?

Anthony Galluccio, a former Massachusetts state senator, tested positive for alcohol three days after being sentenced to six months of home confinement for leaving the scene of an accident. The judge revoked Galluccio's probation for violating a no-alcohol provision of his sentence. Galluccio says that the only explanation he can think of is that toothpaste was the culprit.

That's because the toothpaste he was using contained sorbitol, an artificial sweetener used in toothpaste that contains sugar alcohol. So did the court buy that argument?

Guest post by Jennifer K. Wendell, Esq.

The internet has been around long enough that attorneys have had time to adapt to how it can make their business more efficient and profitable, how they can use it to market to those they may not have reached before, and how they can even use it as a creative and informative outlet to compliment their legal services.

Yet, with the development of legal websites and blogs, a potential client now has the ability to find legal information on just about any issue within seconds, not to mention a plethora of fill-in-the-blank legal documents he or she can purchase online for a lesser fee than most attorneys charge. The result, especially in this economy, is that many attorneys still struggle with how they can convince potential and even existing clients to value their legal services.

So then, when a client knows that legal information can be obtained for free on the internet and that he or she can buy a fill-in-the-blank document online for a fraction of your hourly rate, how do you convince your client that your expertise is needed?