Practice News

What started at a New Year's Day party on Jan. 1, 1976 has become an institution--the list of banished words for the coming year from Lake Superior State University. You may find the list and background here. (Hat tip to Ray Ward of the (new) legal writer.)

By Peter LaSorsa LexisNexis unveiled a new legal research platform created exclusively for solos called remarkably, Lexis Advance for Solos.  You can access it at: http://www.lexisnexis.com/newlexis/advance Advance is offered at the flat-rate subscription price of $175 a month and a second lawyer is an additional $140 a month.  You cannot add a third as this program is only for one and two person law firms.  Also included under this price is access by your paralegal at no cost.  For zero dollars a month ISBA members get free access to Fastcase.  Let’s look at the features you get with Advance and you can determine on your own if you believe the extra $175 a month (you have to sign a 1-year subscription so the commitment is for $2100 a year) has value to you. The main features of Advance include primary law from all 50 states and U.S. territories, including all federal and state case law available on traditional LexisNexis, all LexisNexis headnotes and case summaries, and all available statutes and constitutions.

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. Our firm is meeting later this month to discuss year end bonuses and raises for our staff personnel. Due to the economy we did not give raises and bonuses last year. While we have been holding our own with the present economy we have been trying to watch our overhead very closely. However, we want to be fair to our staff and we don't want to lose key employees to our competitors. We are a five attorney firm and have four staff members that have been with us for many years. Do you have any ideas for us? A. Your situation sounds quite familiar. Many law firms deferred raises and bonuses last year and are wondering what to do this year. Here is what we are seeing:

• Many firms that deferred raises and bonuses last year are doing something this year - raises, bonuses or both.
• Typically raises are in the 3% range.
• More firms are examining ways to hold the line on base salary and shift a larger component of compensation into variable pay based upon performance based bonuses.

We are recommending to many of our clients that they use 2010 raises and bonuses to launch new performance base systems for 2011.

The Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) Program, through which the FDIC provides unlimited deposit insurance coverage of client funds in IOLTA accounts at participating financial institutions is set to end on Dec. 31, 2010. The Illinois State Bar Association supports continuing unlimited coverage of IOLTA accounts for the following reasons:

• IOLTA accounts provide revenue for the states at no cost to clients. Lawyers often handle money that belongs to clients; however, the amount of money held for a single client is often quite small or held for only a short period of time, and cannot therefore earn interest for the client.  IOLTA accounts allow lawyers handling client funds that cannot earn net income for the client to place these funds in a single, pooled, interest-bearing trust account.  Banks in turn forward the interest earned on these accounts to the state IOLTA program, which uses the money to fund a variety of charitable causes.

• IOLTA programs provide funding critical to maintaining and improving access to the justice system in communities across the United States. IOLTA dollars go to support civil legal assistance for the poor, efforts to improve the administration of justice by our courts, initiatives to educate the public about legal issues, and scholarships and clinical instruction for law students.  All states benefit from IOLTA, and 41 states require lawyers to place client funds unable to earn interest for the client into an IOLTA account.
• IOLTA accounts need full FDIC coverage to protect client funds.