The Real Facts About Housing
During the previous primary election, I had a chance to review to opinions regarding housing discrimination by the Democratic candidates. As I read the remarks about discrimination, I remembered my teenage sabbatical days where I noticed that there was a mixed population in the degraded low-income areas. These memories inspired me to speak out about what I have realized about such discrimination over the years. At the time of my sabbatical, I had assumed the housing situation was nondiscriminatory based on race or ethnicity, although I felt there was a level of purposeful impoverishment that I could not explain. However, looking at the big picture beyond the zone of poverty, I can explain why the impoverishment of those zones might be based on race, as well as a reaction to certain life choices that should be protected based on the inability to control them, and according to the process of law created to protect them. This post attempts to explain the full concept. Distribution of People Before going into a deep conversation on the topic, you must first understand that impoverished areas are usually racially mixed. There is no apparent discrimination about what race, gender, age, or sexual orientation should be admitted into the various zones of poverty within the United States. These populations are usually full of a mixed demographic where the residents either transgress the boundaries of their homes to create a supportive union of friendship between each other that allows them to cope, or else they hate each other and do whatever they can to intrude upon each other’s peaceful space in attempts to eliminate each other from the scene. I know this beyond the teenage sabbatical and by living in some of these areas due to the reaction by my family just for taking the sabbatical. They do not help at all. There is also a third reaction among residents in these areas, where they tend to join in unison for doing things that may be against the law. Those not engaging in these activities to conform with the rest of the residential constituents get purged in whatever means possible in protection of those isolated illegal monopolies. Even if that purging is not directly violent, for example causing repeated damage to vehicles so the tenant can never get to work to be able to pay the rent, or making deals with community management to have their own agent become the one to cover pest control such that the target resident moves over lack of proper pest control, or consistently causing violent infractions around the resident so that s/he will move out of fear - the purging still takes on an indirect violent a nature. Regardless, the demographic ends up looking equal. Competitive Securities Monopolies Let us take a moment to delve into the basics of the illegal monopolies. The residents in these zones cannot be fully to blame. I have witnessed the transition plan myself. It is practically an army. The new landlord drives up in a big truck and its fancy, expensive, and it represents power to those without money. This is the first time this landlord has tried investing in real estate as a security gig for her company. She's holding a posture that increases the authority of the truck due to what she's been taught at the meeting where long time investors have introduced her to the psychology of keeping her security against tenants willing to stay there. Another company really wanted that security because it held a great collateral for some other agenda the company wanted, so they begin to break into the authority of the apartment zone immediately - bringing in a similar truck but holding a friendship stature with the residents there. This truck offers stuff through the window, like candy, small job tasks, contracts, and then it upsells the service after building trust. In the meanwhile, other members of the competitor’s business come on foot to develop that one on one relationship. All while the new landlord is neglectful of the area because the building is just a security, and they do not know what it means to fully maintain it. Here's what this army evolves into - the candy becomes drugs, the small tasks become illegal errands trading or moving money and weapons around, and the contracts become all kinds of fake gun licenses, alcohol licenses, other forms of fraud administered by the desperate people that think they are helping but unaware of what they are doing, and sometimes the work contracts are legitimate so that it goes on record to keep the business from getting investigated. Sometimes the people on foot become solicitors and ask the girls to do things like lifting their shirts outside for money. These are from the business owners that invest in "easy money" businesses to serve as more securitization for their main company. The solicitors are recruiters for trafficking businesses that get the girls stuck in a low-income loop of dancing at bars and making videos, etc, where they think the income is big. This is a huge problem! Real or Unreal? What does this have to do with whether the demographics are real or not? Immersive, they seem not. However, lets delve into it another way. Say this is one of those areas where the population is equal. Now compare the population percentage to the demographic populations in the whole metro area. It is not representative, making it not equal. What does this have to do with people zoning? First, the people living there cannot see beyond the immediate equal distribution and they will defend it as equal to get in good with the big owner. Second, a lot of people without income or without much income also have reduced credit and can only live where they get permitted to live. This means, they must be approved. Although the law says equal opportunity, if the area looks like an equal demographic the gatekeepers can say no to whoever they want for whatever reason they want. These gatekeepers can also manipulate the required deposits or various other barrier to entry fees - like app fees, background checks, administrative fees, etc. I've had a landlord once that approved everything, provided a great no deposit incentive, and then she tried to get me with "We don't keep the utilities on for you to move in, we will reject the entire lease if they are not on prior to move in." I say it was an honest try because many lease agreements come with the provision that if you use the utilities that are already on there will be so and so a fee added to the price of the utility each month until the utility is fully in your name. Different property owners/managers handle the issue in various ways. Some even provide a package where you do not have to ever turn it on in your name if you choose to pay through them instead. Others do not put it on in the dwelling unit after preparing the unit for the tenant, so the tenant has a choice of whether to have utilities. All of this makes it such that the property decision makers are not saying no but the people just cannot afford to enter into the agreement, even in the low-income facility. Property Owners In this regard, property owners have a say in which they can partially predetermine where the families end up. Keep in mind, these landlords are sometimes honestly in it to help. However, they all end up needing to convene to keep up with the secrets of the trade. I am familiar with such consortia; I've actually attended a few because with my creds I can attend anywhere with almost automatic trust. They cannot help but to communicate with each other about "That particular resident" with some details and eyes raised, etc. If any of them know who I am then they are up in my business knowing I am attempting to get these high degrees, so I am probably at that mindset, right? No worry, I will agree. That is just one such incident, they have several ways of rewording and attempting to hide what they are saying. It does not even take a degree to get real estate, broker, or CMA licensed, in Florida at least, and they think everyone else has a problem understanding hidden concepts. It is a real conundrum, if these investors want to talk in secret, they need to learn how. Just saying. Responsible Credit Let me get into the credit issue and money issue. I was lucky enough to live in an area where they don't just discriminate based on race, but they also attempt to hide it with religious themes such that non-race issues that violate the religious "rules" become subject to the discriminate behavior. I am unable to look at things from the perspective of a closed mind victim because I was brought up on listening, observing, and advocating. In this respect, I have learned a good deal about the money and credit issue. It is not always in the hands of the person building up the portfolio, and I will get into why in the next paragraph. The point that a person begins to engage in credit and securities, this is where a person becomes a slave to it. Credit is just that, a concept to travel around and be used as an excuse and manipulated by anyone who knows they have an ability to effect it. It is the same thing as stocks, or gambling. It is not as secure and solid as people think. I had a friend once that knew the concept, but he should have gone into that uneducated investors pool to teach them a few things. He used to keep his paychecks in a safe and told me that it is important not to keep your income in that bank because then the government will find out about it and then they do more than just tax you. He was a W2 worker, mind you, so he was not admitting to fraud. He was admitting to some concept that he had a fog about but did not really know the full concept to speak intelligently about it. He called himself an anarchist. Privacy in the Law Here's why credit is such a game. People's lives are not kept as secret as privacy laws want to protrude. First, there is the questionnaire at the beginning of employment. Most people are willing to fill it out because they don't want to look like a protester, or else there may be some benefit to them if they do, or a protection to their employment that the employer will believe they cannot compete with. Then there is the W2 form, where the exemptions or claims that lower the amount of pay taken from the paycheck tells the employer if the employee is a married person, single person, head of household, bearer of children, etc. This is the same as the welfare forms that are "required" because the state or nation has agendas related to those forms that also require mention of marital status, previous monetary status, and family or household size with number of dependents. Do not disclude the I9 form, this is where the employer gets to find out if you’re a legal alien, where from, or if you’re a green card resident, etc. If anything is posted on social media about family or children or relationships, this is all collectible by employers, and other parties. There are many ways to collect that data. There are also many ways to manipulate the work atmosphere and/or the psychology of the employee such that the employee can believe they are doing right or wrong, regardless of how the employee really is doing. At Your Mercy This is just the beginning of how a person's credit can be held in that hands of an employer, as well as any constituents that the employer belongs to - such as associations, religious organizations, vengeful acquaintances, etc. Once a person invests in even $300 of credit, it becomes at the hands of all these influences. Why? Because they give and take away. And employment laws and the unemployment insurance all have loopholes, excuses, and ways around justifying a release of employment as wrongful. At the same time, the only way to keep good credit is to pay it off. Waiting until it falls off the credit record these days is no longer a thing, securities get transferred around and each time a new company buys the security it becomes a new mark on the credit. In most instances, this takes a dedicated, honest attorney practice to get the bad credit marks removed. Many times, an attorney cannot remove the bad marks either. They must be dedicated enough to find the right statute, the right case law, or to set the new case law to get it removed. Many of these so-called credit relief attorneys are just bill collectors themselves, with the offering of good credit in return. They do not work for the debt holders; they just make it look like it. It is an advanced form of negotiation. The benefit for the debt holder is a consolidated payment that is much less than having all that debt separate with small monthly payments that only pay interest. The debt attorney's get interest stopped and allow the credit to move, however they also hold up the credit and put the debt holder at the mercy of hedge funds if they get into an emergency where they need it. Emergency Funds Let us get into the topic of hedge funds. For a business that is needing, a hedge fund might be an OK way to go, if the deal is solid with a creditable client. For the regular citizen working on their credit and getting into a bind, the hedge funds work so quickly and with such a high rate of return when they are not repaid quickly that they are impossible to keep. Instead they become paycheck advances that accrue a fee on the paycheck each time. These funders need that loyal customer so they up the amount and the debt holder get dependent on it with the way they budget their money, so it continues to happen. That is, until the debt holder cannot pay that back either, then they are left with no options. If the person is in a situation where the hedge fund is needed, usually they are already at the mercy of some prick that wants an agenda for them to get out of the situation. In this regard, the situation that they are in might get worse once the hedge fund has been transferred to avoid the debt holder from being able to pay it back. There are several reasons. The first of the two main reasons is that these emergency situations are usually over some agenda and people with agendas don’t like getting that agenda interfered with. Second, hedge funds are usually created by people who are trying to create a legitimate credit business and they need to hedge at first to get that started, before they can also be secured to provide legitimate credit to people. Some will own securities that they do not want to get rid of, like an expensive car or an apartment complex, etc. Outcompeting the inception of the fund requires interception to prove the fund is not strong enough to compete in the regular securities offering market. In other words, the people living in impoverished neighborhoods are getting moved around and then dropped into these zones because they are just property to advance other agendas. It’s why people are calling it modern day slavery. Once they are deemed with a demographic that others want to discriminate against, that is it. It takes a contradictory agenda to pull them out - like neglectful slum lords that do not know what they are doing but need the tenants to stay as they start at the beginning of their investment career. Then it begins again, these people must be strong enough to think through it, even though they do not have strong peer support or mentoring. It is a never-ending cycle. Will it Ever End? There are prerogatives that can honestly be done to put control back in the hands of these people, but they must know about them, and investors also need to engage in them. I put both excuses of being educated about such prerogatives and investors engaging in them into one sentence, although they represent many things that are separate, together, and in between. There are developments, credit plans, courses, relief, nonbiased interference, and the list goes on and on. However, that is a risky game! It generates equality, and it is not anything that is required. Honestly, this is an area where politicians, investors, big corporations, people with a real say, need to come together and give America what it's supposed to stand for, and allow everyone the engage in what it takes to have real equality. That is why I study how to do the nonprofit amid the profit, and will die working towards creating that dream, and if it's created, I'll still work towards it. What will you do?
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One of the items that is most often brought up during talks about ethics among legal professionals is the repeated talk about what cannot be disclosed during the ongoing administration of a case, and the handling of a case after disposition. Even hidden within conversations about things that are not barred for disclosure is the topic about why there still is a duty not to disclose. However, there is generally very little talk about what SHOULD, under all circumstances, be disclosed. This post attempts to address a few of those items that require disclosure. These items include, but are not limited to:
The Client Communication Plan The first on the list is the client communication plan. Although there is no ruling requiring it, you'll find that the satisfaction that the customers have towards the firm will be largely increased, as well as their willingness to cooperate, when the client gets to help create the plan prior to beginning the procedures in the case. When clients know ahead of time when their attorney will be communicating with them, when staff will require that the client communicate with the firm, and that their legal team is willing to adjust the plan according to those needs, it leaves little room for complaining about it afterward. Let’s delve a little into the ethicality of a predetermined communication plan. First, aside from a conflict by the courts for time slots available for booking procedures what is the biggest thing that creates a conflict to due diligence? Many times, it is the customers. This isn’t because the customers are not willing to cooperate, because they've given up, or because they've found another attorney - it's usually because they do not know their attorney is trying to communicate. Lack of Communication Examples This has been witnessed many times in the past, where the customer held up the process because they have gone about their time not realizing the firm is attempting to gain their cooperation to move forward with the case, otherwise they would have cooperated. Then the customer will call a week later wanting to know the status of their case then at that time they have to be told that their case has experienced conflicts to the legal time frames for filing things, causing more fees in the form of extensions. Then the customer gets upset because no one told them. There was a case once where the associate assigned to close out the file ended up having to schedule multiple times a day to show up at the client’s house because all other firms of communication were not working. It was a simple procedure needing to have the client sign the authorization forms to be able to release the settlement check from the trust account in order to pay the client. However, the client has no idea that communication was supposed to happen, so it delayed the case closure for at least a month. This is highly unethical since the settlement check is supposed to be processing through the bank while the authorization is signed so that the check can be cut immediately after, following ethical and procedural requirements for the time it should take for clients to get their money once a case has settled. Case Progression In that regard, another set of disclosures relates to the progression of a case. Many attorneys cover the separate steps in the case when they go over the scope at the initial signing of the contract. A lot of times the original scope is entirely obscure. This overview of the case plan lists the name of the individual processes and the associated price, but they do not talk about the client's necessary actions during each separate part of the scope, nor what each relevant task does for the case, unless the client asks. First, the client needs to know in detail what each step does to affect the outcome of their case, and any actions that can be taken during those steps to help increase the chances of winning and winning big. They also need to know about time limits, including what the regular time limits are for each step in the process, especially according to due diligence requirements, as well as any steps needed so that the time is not held up. Further, they need to be able to leave the signup meeting with a deliverable that gives them a reminder of the timeline of tasks the client will be involved with assisting to completion - such as signing authorizations, etc. During this time, the attorney needs to go over with the client any details of the case that might create a risk for the client as far as any settlement amounts are concerned. It is unethical to allow the client to sign on to the case with an unrealistic set of expectations about the outcome. In the end, a differential outcome from the client's expectations may hinder any future relationship with that client, or the client’s friends and family. Settlement Offers Aside from communications and process disclosures, attorneys also have an ethical obligation to report all settlement offers made. This may seem like a contrary statement since the highest settlement is usually the goal of the attorney and the client. However, clients may have various reasons for accepting a settlement offer. For instance, some may have rent due or upcoming car payments for the vehicles not effected in a settlement, prior medical bills that are keeping them from getting treatment in this instance. There are several reasons why a client might need their money at a time when it may require accepting a lower settlement amount. They may also have pre-existing plans to go back home, to another state, or move across the nation, they may be visiting from another country and must leave earlier than when a higher settlement amount might dispose based on their visa, etc. A lot of times earlier settlements are much smaller, and the attorney does not want to have to disclose those offers to their clients when they know the client will be able to earn more from the case. However, there is an ethical obligation to disclose each settlement amount offered, including the timelines for settlement. IT is up to the client what amount to accept and when. Compromised Trust Another, less desired disclosure happens when a trust account becomes compromised. In the world of cybersecurity and high technology, it's becoming an increasingly wide black-market business to hack into accounts and leak money and/or information from them. Even if money is not stolen from the account, the compromise cannot be fully confirmed, or a ransomware threat has not been fully confirmed, the attorney will still need to inform the client of the situation. This is scary because the client might decide to go elsewhere as soon as they find out that their funds have been exposed to a threat. Attorneys are required to maintain insurance in case of such an occurrence, but any compensation from such claim depends on how much the insurance can cover once an occurrence is confirmed. Such insurance won’t necessarily hold a client during a compromise. Other Compromises Other compromises include expenditures that become larger than what was estimated in the scope of services (unless the attorney is willing to pay for those expenses from their own account without penalizing the client), and any extra fees endured from the courts that were not expected in the scope - such as fees for extensions, objections, or to cure misconduct. Even fees from late payments to suppliers must be disclosed to the client if the client's settlement amount may be effected by them. A final compromise is when the firm goes into bankruptcy. The trust account should remain separate at that time, and rarely will any court allow for debtors to touch the trust since it belongs to the clients, however, the client should still be notified in case somehow the court does approve for the trust account to be accessed. All these possible compromises should always immediately be disclosed to the client under all occasions. Data Handling Under a similar frame, anytime there is a compromise to the electronic data handling systems - files, accounts, correspondences, trial courts systems and efiling systems, all clients should be made aware of the compromise. It should be disclosed to them the type of files that could at all be compromised, and how accessed. There should be notice that the compromise could cause a release of information about the client that may fall into the category of privilege of privacy between the attorney and the client. Even if the compromise is not confirmed, and even if it is highly unlikely that any private data was shared in the compromise, all clients should still be made aware of the fact that some of that data COULD be compromised. In this regard, it should also be disclosed to clients any steps that are being taken to cure the compromise and any time frames that the firm is aware of in dealing with the compromise. Sometimes the situation may be that the client’s data was purged, and not compromised at all, the attorney still has a duty to disclose this occurrence. Information is required to be kept for a certain amount of time, even at the closure of a case. Further, if the case is still open, the attorney may need to re-gather than information in order to continue with the case. Finally, clients are allowed rights to access any information maintained in files at the firm, and when the information is compromised or purged, this also compromises the clients access to it. It is imperative that the client know. Other Data Handling Issues Aside from data handling compromises, there are some other data handling disclosures that need to be made. For instance, if the company experiences a merger, the acquired/acquiring company may have access to the client’s data, and usually does. Furthermore, many companies use external firms to assist with handling data. This may be a cloud service for records software, a company that handles legal research and records management via software that also codes the software for reporting, a full fledged data handling company that gathers records, holds records, and disseminates records reports to the firms, and companies that maintain data for the company under legal timelines. Since such an organization will have access to client privileged data, the client needs to be made aware of this company and to what extent they have access to the data. Finally, the client needs to know how the firm handles the client’s data internally. This includes timelines, if it is all electronic or if there are hard copies kept, the chain of command for the data, and how the firm will use the data, including all possible uses of that data. Conflict of Interest Another disclosure that should be made immediately is when there is an allowable conflict of interest with another client of the firm or one of its attorneys. If it IS an allowable conflict of interest, most courts will require a signed consent form from both parties involved in the conflict for the case to move forward. Furthermore, even when a client is the one that referred a friend or family member, it is important to disclose to the client that such a person is also a client of the firm. The reason is that both parties may have information regarding the other that the firm may not already have and all parties need to be aware that when they are providing information they may be divulging facts that are not already privileged to the firm about someone who members of the firm are familiar with. In this example, both parties should still be required to sign permission for representation by the firm as a no conflict claim. Finally, when one client is a medical provider or employer of another, the same occurrence happens as if the situation involves friends or family members. There may be information retained by one party that has not been made aware to the firm that could affect the case of the other party, requiring that all parties be aware and sign consent for their cases to move forward with that firm. Interest on Trust Currently there is no rule regarding this, but there is some controversy regarding the need to disclose what law firms are doing with the interest earned on trust accounts. The conversation goes that clients should be made aware that there is interest building on such an account in case the client wants to collect the interest from it. Some attorneys may argue that the interest is to cover the fidelity fund, which will serve as insurance in case of the occurrence of malpractice. Many attorneys say that malpractice should not happen, and therefore the attorney should have to pay for any occurrence of malpractice out of their own pockets. Other attorneys argue that if there is no insurance to cover such an occurrence for the trust account, the trust account might be compromised, harming the clients. Still others mention that such funds would not have earned interest had it not gone into the attorneys hands and the attorney decided to build interest upon it through the choice of accounts; and the counter argument to that is that the client was the one that chose that attorney, based on an expectation of full disclosure of those types of decisions and such client may have built interest themselves, there is no prior knowledge of if they would or would not have. Since many effected people are currently in the process of demanding rulings about it, it is best to leave it at the idea that some clients might not know their accounts are earning interest. Clients have the need to have all handling of their trust account disclosed to them, beyond just interest. In this regard, the lack of disclosure also keeps them from deciding for themselves if they can collect that interest or not. Closing While this list of items is extensive as to what SHOULD be disclosed to clients, it is not meant to be exhausting. There are many other items that should be disclosed. This post is meant to start interest in the conversation regarding the way disclosure is also ethical in some instances of disclosure. It is not a bad word, just a contingent reference. I recently took a course in funding commercial litigation. The funding of litigation cases is as much of a finance issue as it is an ethical consideration. This is because funding normally happens prior to the disposition of a case. However, at the time of funding the status of the case at disposition is an unknown. Therefore, it becomes an ethical issue regarding how much to have funded, how much of that funding to spend prior to disposition in order to run the firm, and whether to use the single case method, portfolio method, or corporate method to determine funding amounts. The good news is that analytics allows a predictive platform for generating a more accurate estimate of how much the case will settle for, the cost to settle, and how much could be immediately paid back to the funding company upon disposition. Analytics can even predict an average time it will take from the initial intake of a case to the final disposition.
This last predictive inference is an easy metric but could be complicated to achieve. What it entails is the ability to enlist good tracking software into working mode at the law firm. It also requires that employees be well trained in how to use case tracking software. Further, the software needs to be coded accurately with the right kind of time sequence to properly chart full case timelines. This means being able to predict the time from intake to disposition for a case that settles prior to litigation as well as for a case that settles after reaching litigation. Further, to track litigation cases that dispose before a court hearing verses after trial, and how many go from trial to appeals, including that timeline. Also, the tracking of how long it takes from the time a case settles to the time that the law firm can recover expenses and cut the settlement check to the client. Each step in the process needs an individual timeline, plus there needs to be an overall timeline that tracks the entire processing of the case; i.e. how long for this step verses how that for the entire case, what portion of the entire case active time does this step take in the process. This will help predict the beginning to end statistic based on the case type, which will be discussed below. The tracking software used should be able to decipher case types by area of law, typical opponent company or type, features of the individual case, such as injury type, impact level, length of marriage, proper history, e.t.c, and amount of assets or insurances involved. There are many sub factors that can be tracked as a coding inference or as an extra effort during data extraction, but this blog is only spaced to suggest main points. The individual features, focal opponents, and case type should be cross referenced with time to disposition, as well as case status at disposition to accurately predict the timeline for each case. Accurate cross comparison will help to more accurately predict hours the case will settle and can be cross compared to the case status of pre-lit, lit, meditation, trial or appeals, etc. These features can also be cross compared to assets/ insurance amounts accrued prior to starting a case to more accurately predict settlement amounts. Remember this will be a full assessment of previous case type, features, timelines, and assets against previous settlement amounts. Usually being able to produce a chart of historical case statistics after generating a confidentiality agreement will help the funding company determine the true merit of case predictions. Once predictions are complete and accurate, there are two other steps that could increase the ability to fund - benchmarking and continuous improvement if processes. Benchmarking entails a look at the regular time span per case type for the entire market that the law firm works in. This could be a comparison of the immediate region or it could span to state courts, federal courts, or a cross comparison of multiple regions. The most basic benchmarking study entails time from filling to disposition with settled pretrial, during trial, or within a higher court. However, there are ways to drive data about individual case features, opposing party of specifics, settlement amounts, and client demographics. I have heard of comparing legal practice tactics with opposing party practices to decipher what characteristics make an opposing party more likely to settle out of court. Also, predictions can be skewed based upon the opposing counsel statistics. Once benchmarking displays a vulnerability, law forms can use analytics to find new practices within their organization to strengthen the weakness. Displaying evidence of these two tasks will increase the freechances of getting approved for funding, and at greater amounts. During my youth and teenage years I was able to move into the home of my older sister, who lived with guardians due to her special needs, my parents busy schedule, and enabling her to overcome her disabilities for a promising future. My Aunt, who was my sister's guardian, attended a lot of advocacy groups related to Connie's special needs. I always had the option of sitting home working on art hobbies, practicing dance, creating wonderful mass production poetry, watching TV, doing homework, OR not sitting at home and attending the meetings with her. I chose the meetings. It was fun learning about the issues with these special needs individuals and working my spatial magic to dream up solutions for them, and getting involved with the legislation/advocacy aspect.
One thing these groups always brought up was the parent excuse syndrome. Many think this syndrome is excuse not to take care of the child victim of special needs. This is usually not the case. The syndrome regards everything else in life besides the child, and an extra level of protection encasing the child. The parents use the need to care for the child to let go of everything else in their lives, and they do this while controlling every aspect of the child's life. It's as if attempting to turn the child into a robot where the parent becomes the remote control. Essentially, this is denial of the child's situation. It is also detrimental to the child learning self advocacy; a skill that is common among special needs children that go on to college, graduate, and live a successful post college life. In doing some research into the topic, and speaking to a friend who is an expert in the education arena after working so many years in the field, and consulting with my own sister who took the special education route in college with a master in it, moving on to attempt a Ph.D. in art therapy, which she realizes as a method for teaching self advocacy and self expression, until her cancer got her from years of meds and environmental exposure to natural gas butane, I quickly learned that self advocacy is a key skills, and interaction with expressive capabilities is the way to build that skill. My friend in the field for years helped me develop an activity that adheres to all levels in the attached pdf explaining how special needs children develop. Social Inclusion PDF To teach and reinforce self advocacy with initiating skills. Bring him or her to a club meeting, political party meeting, office party, office grand opening, MSABC meeting, something with a lot of people attending.
Social Inclusion pdf How to Advance a Law Firm from Contingency Pricing to a Flat Fee Structure
Many law firms work under a contingency fee, meaning that clients pay at the end of the case based on either an hourly rate, or a percentage of the settlement price. While there are a few benefits to this -> Lawyers are more likely to want higher settlements so that the attorney fee will be higher for the firm, there are a lot more benefits to the clients if the fee structure is set as a Flat Fee. This is because the fees are more predictable, allowing customers to imagine a budget for them, and it allows the firm to create a pricing sheet that potential new clients can look through to decide what services they are looking for from the firm. There is a large set-back to switching from contingency fees to flat fees. First, the firm will need to be on top of which of services they provide usually are not flexible, the regular costs of handling a case for a client, and to be able to understand the flow of the budget from year to year in order to set prices that will benefit rather than harm the firm. The good news is that there are several ways this can be accomplished. The first thing that will need to be accomplished is to split the different tasks normally included in a package, and split it into separate, billable tasks. For instance, the law firm can split court events into each separate event for pricing per event. Various legal drafts can be split by the regular time it takes to complete the draft from the research aspect to the final version, then generate a price based on the “warehouse price” which is the cost of the draft (billable hours and any resources used, such as a portion of the legal research site fee, or a portion of the software fee, the materials used to print any documents not remaining in electronic portion, etc) plus 1 – the decimal point value of the percentage the firm would like to make above the cost of the draft times the cost. There is also the power of attorney form, and any notary services. Any and all services that can be individualized somehow, should be. Many times, a firm is not sure how much they will want to make above the warehouse price. This is fine. The firm will need to delve into their financial data over the last 3-5 years to find a consistent pattern in case types, as well as services offered per case. Hopefully a firm will have some sort of financial tracking service in place, such as Quickbooks or any other money management software, and they can track settlements and fees derives from the settlements. They can also track expenses running into the trust accounts to find out client costs. Many times, these costs can be categorized to derive further services for individualization. Further, firms can delve into operating expenses and categorized these to find trends and case percentages that will allow the firm to add a percentage to a base price to discover its overall warehouse cost. To be completely accurate, one could also track billable hours per case and per case task to derive a billable hour quotient to each task given a flat fee. Once clear patterns are derived from the financial information, price calculations can be established. Once all fees are established, the firm can create a price sheet, giving them the option to generate a scope for each case. The law firm who is switching their services from contingency to flat fee will generate a price list and then affix it to a storefront on their website. Many firms will allow clients to go through this list to drop services into a cart. An advantage to this is that the firm can begin to create templates, checklists, and packages that clients can use if they prefer to go pro-bono instead of full on legal handling of their case. Law firms can still benefit by aiding those pro-bono clients will a very minimally priced guideline for handling their own case. Further, this is where the firm will add auxiliary services pricing and change pricing when the client beginning the lawyering of their case and decides to add a service, or otherwise make a change to the original scope/package. Finally, the firm can still offer the contingency structure for clients who prefer it. In order to include those services on a more predictable basis for clients, they will need to add an interactive scale, or some may use a calculator. For this, find the most likely settlement amounts to a case, then allow the clients to use a slider to navigate to their expected settlement amount where the fee will display (if there’s a pre-lit / lit pricing difference, they can both be listed and labeled as is). For the calculator version, the website will ask the potential settlement amount then do calculations to display the fee amount(s) once inputted. Make sure that clients are aware of what is not included and provide a list of extra services with their charges when the client signs up for either fee structure. This will make the process more predictable, and may increase the number of clients willing to sign on with the firm. |
AuthorDr. Bonnie enjoys publishing poetry, fiction, social media and non-fiction. She has created numerous technical documents and research dissertations. Bonnie has also assisted in the writing of movie scripts that have gone into production. ArchivesCategories |