BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Damon Chetson (page 2 of 4)

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

January 14, 2011

Hiring a new employee. When your personal and business lives coincide.

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

I’ve written here before about my experiences with web marketing. In general, it’s been a resounding success. But getting 90 to 95 percent of my clients from the web puts a lot of my eggs in one basket. Sure, it’s a pretty diverse basket – the various search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, the various legal-reference websites, Facebook, YouTube – are unlikely all to collapse at once.

But I’d like to be diversified. Fortunately the past year means I can add an employee. I’ve thought about the kind of employee: an attorney to handle additional case load? a legal assistant who can do basic administrative work and keep my Quickbooks?

Ultimately, I needed to think about what I’d ideally want. I’d ideally want someone who can be great on the phone. So much of being hired depends on the front-line person who can answer the phone in a welcoming manner, sort calls and provide basic information, and – this is key – identify the callers who need to speak to the lawyer. A great front-line person is precious. A lousy front-line person can actively drive away potential clients.

I also wanted someone who can appear in court alongside me, deal with paralegal issues, and handle filings. That paralegal work – keeping calendars, making sure clients show up for court dates, dealing with other lawyers’ and prosecutors’ requests and inquiries – is time consuming, but crucial.

Ideally, though, I wanted someone who could help me grow the business. Someone who could help me reach beyond the web. Someone who could help me grow my local referral network. Someone who could think about new avenues for expansion (adding new practice areas? how about consulting with other lawyers or professionals about how to grow their businesses? how about hosting seminars gear toward recent grads or lawyers about how to take advantage of the web and social networking?)

To find that person would be something special. But I was lucky enough to do so.

My wife – who is currently a senior consultant with a multinational corporation – has Read more

October 17, 2010

Rule of Law and All That: The Foreclosure Mess

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Suffice to say, I take a different view of the current foreclosure – robo-signer – problem now confronting the mortgage industry. Where Greg calls the banks’ fraud upon the court “procedural laxities,” I say the banks are committing, wait for it, “frauds upon the court.”

Greg does a neat rhetorical trick, by shifting the focus from property rights to some kind of tort-based argument where the homeowner has to prove harm. Don’t be fooled. Property rights are not about harm. They are about who can prove superior title. And if banks bring fraudulent documents into court to assert that they own properties, they should be punished. In North Carolina, we call this Obtaining Property by False Pretenses, a Class H felony, punishable by up to 30 months in prison.

Where Greg says your home was foreclosed because you stopped paying it, I say your home was foreclosed because someone who could not prove an ownership interest in the home came along and committed a fraud by falsely asserting they could, thereby depriving you of your superior property rights in the home.

Where’s the “rule of law” I hear so much? Where are these sacred and inviolable property rights I hear about?

There’s been a lot of handwringing about consumers who should’ve known better when they were taking equity out of homes in 2005 and 2006. And about buyers who were mortgaging too much to buy those $400,000 homes on $50,000/year incomes. And about how, even though shady originators and greedy banks were selling these pipedreams, it was the buyer/consumer who should’ve known better because, after all, the buyer/consumer signed on the dotted line.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. In other words, cubicle dwelling robosigners (who I believe are not the real criminals, but merely patsies), were… ummm… not reading what they were signing.

Caveat emptor, and all that.

Yes, the timing is suspect because we’re in election season. This problem has been around for years. I first learned about it in detail last year, which means I Read more

September 5, 2010

Your Right to Say Nothing

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

I’m going to give everyone a little unsolicited information. It’s a free gift from me to you, partly paying you all back for all the great advice I receive on Bloodhound Blog.

Call it educational. Let’s just say I’m in a patriotic mood. Labor Day and all that. And when I get into a patriotic mood, I start thinking about all those rights that Americans have that they routinely throw away as if the Founders never existed.

If you are ever in a position where police officers are talking to you about your conduct, whether it be speeding, drunk driving, or something more serious, always be polite, but never speak to the police without an attorney present. You would be shocked at how, by showing restraint, you can dramatically improve your chances for a better outcome in your case.

You could be stopped on the side of a road and a police officer asks you if you know how fast you were driving. Instead of saying “I know I was speeding,” how about you just say, “Thank you, Officer, I appreciate your job.” And when the police officer asks, “How fast were you driving?” Maybe a good response might be: “I really appreciate the job you do, but I’d prefer not to answer any questions.”

Most police officers will respect you, and most police officers would do the same in your position. The ones who don’t respect you for asserting your rights weren’t going to let you off with a warning anyway.

I don’t handle traffic tickets, but I do handle everything from a DWI up to violent crimes. And – I know this is going to shock you – some defendants are innocent. Still more are innocent of the crime for which they’ve been charged. And still more would be found not guilty, but for statements they made to police.

It’s not your job as an individual to give to the government all the evidence it needs to convict you of a crime. And given that in the United States we’re all guilty of Read more

September 4, 2010

I can do better than this

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

A year ago last week I had just passed the bar. Today: some 90 clients later with some excellent results for those clients, and some excellent results for me not only in building a law practice, but in learning what I need to represent my clients effectively.

I started last year with a WordPress, a domain, and a dream. My wife was freaking out: you need to go “network”, by which she meant go to mixer-type bar events to meet other lawyers. I’m not the “networking” type.

I spent later September and all of October and much of November building out my website, and figuring out how to get it to the top of Google. I took to heart some of the concepts here – you should get people to your website, and get them to stick on your website by writing decent content.

That website, as I’ve written elsewhere, has produced more than 90 percent of my businesses. In a way, that worries me to be so heavily dependent on the web. In another way, it doesn’t given that the web isn’t going anywhere and other lawyers aren’t really cognizant of how important it is from a retail law perspective.

So atop (or close to atop) Google I sit, dominating keywords like criminal lawyer raleigh and raleigh criminal lawyer and on and on.

I’ve done it by brute force. Creating content and creating links to that content. I’m limited in what I can do in terms of soliciting – meaning, I’m not allowed to “solicit” – but I’m not limited in what I can do to try to build up my reputation online.

But now I want to make it better. I want the right people – people in need of a lawyer – to be compelled to call me. I also want the website to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, so that people who have questions, but don’t want to hire a lawyer, can find their answers without picking up the phone.

I need new ideas on what to Read more

July 27, 2010

Get them [not] to sign on the line that is dotted…

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Here are a few questions.

We all know that there are clients who will cost us – either in the short or long runs – more than they’re worth in terms of value to us. What steps do you take to account for potentially needy/troublesome clients? Do you factor that into a price you charge? Do you refuse to take them? Do you take them on a contingency basis, meaning that they must do XYZ before you will be hired by them?

I’ve recently turned away several clients who I knew could pay me, but who I suspected would be too much trouble in the long run. I think one of the benefits of running your own business is that you get to decide who you want to interact with.

I’m trying to develop a graceful way to reject clients, since I don’t want to damage my reputation. And the sometimes the kind of people I reject are the kind of people who, if they had a mind to do it, could damage my reputation.

June 16, 2010

Wayward Politician Generates Website Visits

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

You may have heard that Bob Etheridge, a politician from North Carolina, hugged, embraced, cuddled, shared a tender moment, or assaulted two men who were asking him some questions on video about his support for Barack Obama’s agenda as he walked down the street in DC.

Apparently, one of the major sites – www.newsbusters.org – that posted the video, also posted a link to my, dare I say, helpful discussion on North Carolina assault law (which was sort of odd since Etheridge, if he violated a law, violated DC’s assault laws).

This generated something like 6,000 visits yesterday, which is more than twice what I get in a month. But, as far as I can tell, no business from those visits.

All this reminds me that website visits are only very loosely correlated with business: visits don’t pay the bills. But, I suspect, they will help the website move marginally up the Google ladder.

Which is to also say: having comprehensive, well-written content can pay off in ways that I didn’t imagine when writing it, which is that I become the go-to source when a politician manhandles a constituent.

May 31, 2010

A Month With the iPad

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

I got the iPad – 64gig 3G enabled – about a month ago. Unfortunately – or fortunately given how busy I’ve been – I haven’t had enough time to truly explore the possibilities.

Here’s my set-up. My MacBook laptop has been retired to serve as my home computer. I got an iMac (1 TB, 4 gigs of RAM) two weeks ago to serve as my desktop computer. And I have the iPad for the in-between use. The iPad serves as a light-weight mobile computing device.

Why this set-up? First, I needed to get something that could support Windows since all of the major bankruptcy software runs on Windows. (This software is maddeningly bad and looks like it hasn’t been updated in functionality since 2002.)

My MacBook had only 2 gig of ram, which would not adequately support a virtual machine. So I’m running Fusion’s VMWare on the iMac, which is awesome. With Mac’s Spaces, I can put Windows XP into a different window, and press Command-1 or Command-2 to move from Mac OS to Windows XP.

Second, the MacBook is actually not a very light computer, and not a very durable piece of hardware. The less I have to move it around, the less opportunity for it breaking or falling out of my bag.

The iPad is, of course, very light as a mobile computing device, and, in its case, seemingly durable, though I haven’t put it through a rigorous test. I’ve dropped it twice, and no scratches or defects have emerged.

Since typing on the virtual iPad keyboard is fine for limited tasks, but not fine for writing a document, I got Apple’s smallest, lightest bluetooth keyboard. The pairing works quite well. I’m typing this post on the iPad at the same speed I’d work on a post if I were at a laptop or desktop computer.

What is the iPad really good at?

Reading and presenting documents and other information. With Apple’s MobileMe ($99/year) system, I’m able to sync all of my documents on all three devices. Read more

May 21, 2010

The Guy With the Website

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Since October 2009 – roughly 8 months ago – my website – www.chetson.com – has brought in just over $200,000 in business. Quite a lot of this business I’ve referred out. But in referring it out, I’ve made clear to the receiving lawyers that I’d like to learn from them, would approach them with questions from time to time, have them review briefs etc. I try not to be presumptuous or demanding. Right now I’m in the business of learning the law and building a reputation as a smart, helpful, and good criminal lawyer.

This has worked out well, to the extent that by the time the year’s over I’ll probably have had at least two jury trials. I’ve gotten to interact with some of the top lawyers in town. One guy – a fantastic lawyer – has taken to calling me, half-jokingly, a “cash cow” and whenever I show up at his door, unless he’s with a client, he’s happy to help. I’ve gotten a ton more experience than I ever could had I simply been an associate in a law firm. By operating as my own law firm, and by bringing things to the table, I’ve been able to present myself more as a “peer” with lawyers whom I respect.

To be honest, I could make a decent living by just doing the web work for other lawyers, but my goal has always been to become a great lawyer, and so this doesn’t interest me much.

Here’s how I’ve done it: focusing relentlessly on clear and cogent content, taking advantage of all the tools that Google – Google Local/Place, Google AdWords (for a time), Google Analytics to measure, and Google Webmaster – has to offer to promote my business, by building links to the website, and by offering a good service that people are happy to write reviews about following the conclusion of their cases.

By trading on things I already know – how to build a promote a website that will bring in business – I’ve been able to make headway quickly in learning Read more

May 4, 2010

iPad Arrives

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

My 64 gig WiFi and 3G iPad arrived on Friday. I had it delivered to another office where I knew someone could sign for it. When I opened the package in the lobby, the lawyer – an ex-Marine with 25 years of trial experience – looked at it and asked, “what’s that?”

He was unconvinced that it had any value, and I didn’t take the time to explain it to him.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon, where the two of us were sitting for nearly two hours waiting for our case to be called. He asked me whether I knew the potential sentence for a class of crime. I said I didn’t, but quickly showed opened the sentencing chart I had loaded onto the iPad.

Then he got interested, so I showed him how all my clients files are synched onto the device, how I have started to create a presentation for potential DWI clients that I can show to them when I sit down with them in their homes for the initial consultation, and how I am currently putting together a Probation Violation presentation together replete with video of the family from another state pleading for leniency.

That got him interested. Obviously this only scratches the surface of what can be done, but his next questions were: How much is it, will it work with Windows, and could I help him set his up?

Aside from downloading some Apps and putting client flies and certain legal documents on the device, I’ve been too busy to play with it. Will give it a review later.

April 11, 2010

9,999,999 iPads left to sell…

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Well, I couldn’t help myself. I bought the iPad – the to-be-shipped-in-late-April, 3G & WiFi, 64 gig model.

I see significant work applications – for instance, keeping all client files available for court, creating eBooks of NC criminal code so I don’t need to lug around books, and, I hope, doing document signing on the fly.

I have not used DocuSign yet since, until now, I’ve been doing criminal law which doesn’t have a lot of documents that need to be signed, and, what’s more, they usually are signed in court.

But I’m starting to do bankruptcy and civil litigation work related to debt defense, and for that I think I’ll either subscribe to DocuSign or some similar service. DocuSign claims their service works with the iPad, although they haven’t created an App for that. As Greg mentioned, they need to Get On That.

I’ll post a review once I get the iPad in late April or early May.

UPDATE: I’ve been searching for a good list of productivity apps for professionals. I stumbled across this article in Forbes Woman which I found pretty irritating. Why? Second app listed is “Big Oven,” an app to help people find recipes so if you “[e]ver find yourself roaming grocery store aisles with little or no clue what to make for dinner.” Are you kidding me? Is this the second most important app for working professionals? No: it’s just obnoxious sexism.

March 24, 2010

Cultivate your garden

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

There’s a lot of caterwauling these days. I used to be a libertarian, and still have many friends who hew to that line of thinking. In recent days, my Facebook page has been awash in complaints and claims that the country has turned a corner, that the best years are behind us, and on and on. I had to chuckle.

This is all nonsense. First, it’s a narrative awash in nostalgia for a period when, presumably, peoples’ individual liberty was more or less respected, when the free market more or less reigned, and when the government was small and limited.

Let’s be clear. This country has never had a truly limited government, and if you think so, you should tell it to the victims of chattel slavery, to the men conscripted into armies to fight wars, to those who lived in the Jim Crow south, to those interned at places like Manzanar.

And before you start on about how universal health care is a diabolical plot to destroy your liberties, please take a moment to think about the hundreds of thousands of human souls confined to American prisons for the crime of selling, transporting, or using what politicians have defined as “controlled substances.”

Or the couple hundred thousand held in detention this very day because the U.S. government says they crossed a political border to earn a better living for them and theirs.

There are a lot of injustices in the world. Universal health care, however corrupt and ultimately ill-fated a project that may be, falls pretty far down my list of crimes. Your mileage may vary.

I got out of libertarian politics because, it seemed, a lot of it was built around a commitment to protect a set of institutions that privileged a certain middle class, bourgeois status. Libertarians would go on and on about the horrors of the capital gains tax, or the injustice of Social Security, or stupid regulatory rules.

But while many of them would give lip service to the idea of ending deep injustices – like the war on drugs – so few Read more

March 16, 2010

I hate my theme…

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

In some ways, my stengths – I love to tinker with eletronics, am Internet savvy, know a little about marketing – are my weaknesses: I like to do things myself, or at least like to fully understand exactly what someone working for me is doing so that I could take it over if need be.

Witness my web performance. I’m doing pretty well right now, with top rankings on Google etc. I’ve done that largely because the competition is so miserable. But what I really want to do is lay waste to the competition: to succeed in ways that don’t depend on them being incompetent.

I also want to convert every single visitor into a client. I want to build all the important relationships as well as can be done on the web, and close the deal on the phone.

I feel the press of time for two reasons. I’m in my mid-30s, and have certain financial and personal goals that require me to figure this all out… soon! and then keep moving on and figuring other things out!

Second, I think the legal profession is going to be awash in smart, hungry lawyers who had planned to take a firm job, but now find that firms are imploding around them. These people are going to eat my lunch if I don’t catch it first.

Anyhow, onto the mundane. I sort of like the overall look of my Raleigh criminal lawyer website. But I suspect that just cause it looks slick, doesn’t mean it’s getting the selling job done.

With my Raleigh bankruptcy practice, I’m sort of am heading in a Thesis/Headway direction, with a more robust, less graphically designed theme, that, by all accounts, better for SEO and flexibility reasons.

In addition, I suspect that that flexibility will allow me to do a better job of pulling in visitors, 77 percent of them bounce on the first page.

Thoughts?

March 9, 2010

In defense of home loan cramdown!

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Al’s got a post up about the latest effort to get us out the housing mess. The feds are rolling out HAFA, set to take effect April 5, which will solve all of our problems! by giving financial incentives! for borrowers, servicers, and investors!

In exchange, creditors must release borrowers from any deficiency liability on the 1st mortgage, must protect the Realtors fees, and must comply with standardized processes meant to speed up the short sale process.

Here’s my take, and I’m saying this as someone who is not at all trying to line my pocket because I’m a fledgling Raleigh bankruptcy lawyer. Honest!

This should’ve been run through the Bankruptcy process. Certain other debts can be crammed down in the Chapter 13 consumer bankruptcy process, meaning that the total amount owed on the loan can’t exceed the market value at the time of the bankruptcy. For people under water, this would’ve basically meant that the loan amount would’ve been adjusted down to the value of the house at the time they went through bankruptcy.

That would’ve brought mortgages in line with the way other kinds of secured debts are treated in the Bankruptcy Code, and it would’ve permitted an individualized look at each case (by bankruptcy lawyers, trustees, and judges) in a process that works reasonably well.

As it is, whole new administrations have been set up to handle these jury-rigged and ultimately flawed approaches to fixing a problem will require a little more than $1,500 to the borrower, $1,000 to the servicer, and $1,000 to the investor (HAFA guidelines) to fix.

February 26, 2010

Bleg: What kind of Direct Mail letter works best?

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Short bleg to all you BHBers out there. When I was in non-profit fundraising, one of the cardinal rules was that long letters – 12 to 18 page letters – perform better than short fundraising letters.

But I wonder whether the same principle holds true for direct mail letters where you’re selling a service. I send out direct mail letters for my law practice to people who’ve recently been arrested for various alleged offenses. Wonder if I should be sending out longer letters. Right now my letter is two pages…

Any thoughts?

February 25, 2010

Various thoughts on small business tools

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

1. Google Voice

I know there’s been some sporadic discussion here about Google Voice: whether it’s useful/wise to use as a business phone number, and about the quality of its transcriptions.

I’ve been very pleased with it in terms of the call routing functionality, and the integration with my Droid and Google Contacts.

The transcriptions, true, are sometimes hit or miss. Lately they’ve been more “hits”. I practice in Raleigh, NC, with its share of both southern and other accents. Yes, certain voicemails turn out to be gibberish when transcribed. Frankly, I don’t know that I’d be much better if I were personally transcribing the voicemail myself, let alone leaving it to the warm embrace of Google’s computer systems!

But here are four of the most recent voicemails I’ve gotten, unedited except for the removal of certain identifying information:

Voicemail 1: My name is [name]. My number is [accurate!]. Once I have a question regarding a limited driving privilege. If you can give me a call back. I’d appreciate it. Thank you.

Voicemail 2: Hey, This Is [name]. I’ll talk to my probation officer and he wants me to give you the number is that you can call him as name is [name]. His number is [accurate!] thanks bye.

Voicemail 3: Hi Damon, Damon, this is [NAME] I was just calling to get a confirmation that you had indeed received my [BADLY TRANSCRIBED NAME OF A FORM] from my insurance agent. If you could please return my call. At [NAME]. Thank you.

Obviously the names are not even transcribed properly, but the rest of it is pretty good. These are short voicemails. Longer voicemails where the subject matter is more complicated tend to be less accurate. But usually Google is able to accurately transcribe the name of the offense/crime the person is calling about. This is a big help in my line of work when you’re sitting in court and wondering whether you need to run out to return the call! A speeding ticket can probably wait. A drug trafficking case… that requires an immediately reply.

2. 1-800 numbers and Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

Media Contacts