free research

One more way I fake having a real office ... free Westlaw access at the New York City Bar in midtown. Sure, that means commuting into Manhattan when I don't really need to, but today I have a hearing anyway, so here I am. I pay my yearly membership dues, and that gets me unlimited westlaw access (and many other research tools) in the library of the New York City Bar, and gives me limited westlaw access from home (forms, which are pretty useful!). Westlaw subscriptions cost a lot more than the $244/year I will spend in City Bar dues, and of course I am also granted free or cheap CLEs several times a month. Pretty good deal! WHO NEEDS LAW FIRMS? Not I.

Today I am covering an appearance for another attorney, a guy whose parents were my clients at my old firm. Networking, people. That's what it's all about. If you are starting your own business of any sort, the first step is to call everyone you know, and tell them you are already in business. Fake it till you make it.

OK, back to researching ...

My Fake Law Office

So, I am a real lawyer, and I am doing real legal work, but I am doing it in a fake office. Well, it's a real office, I guess, inasmuch as I have a desk and a computer, but it also happens to be adjacent to my washer and dryer, and next door to my baby's room. But it functions just as well as any office I have ever worked in, and here is why:

I have Evernote, a combination iphone app and computer website that helps me keep track of files and documents.

I have eFax, a virtual fax machine that lets me receive faxes at a true (fake) fax number, and sends them to my email.

I have JotNot, an iPhone app that allows me to photograph documents and then magically turns them into scans, and, in combination with Evernote and eFax, lets me fax them to my recipients.

I have Vonage, which allowed me to keep my home phone number (as I discussed below), and which then sends voicemails to my email address. Since I receive emails on my iPhone and am able to play audio files, I can listen to my home voicemail even when I am away from my "office."

I have Flat Rate shipping from the US Postal Service. I ordered boxes of various sizes (for free), and I can print my own labels and schedule pickups at my home. I don't even need to be home when the pickup happens -- I can leave the package outside my door and the mailman will take it.

I have a PayPal account, and can accept payment from my clients online. The only drawback to this is that unless I get a premium PayPal account, I do lose a small percentage of my fee to PayPal processing.

I have EasyBiller, an iPhone app that helps me record all of my billable hours. It sorts the time by client and by matter, and emails me reports in a wonderful, easy to read spreadsheet.

So, that is how I run my real (fake (real)) law practice from my "office." Gotta love technology. If I ever get too busy, I may employ the services of GetFriday.com, so I can have a telephone receptionist and personal assistant (and even light paralegal work).

Of course I do not see clients in my "office." My whole practice is based on making Estate Planning convenient for my clients -- when they are ready to deal with their wills, I come to their home, meet with them where it is easy for them, and I go back to my "office" to do my work ... and then execute the wills in their homes. They think I am the most flexible, accommodating lawyer ever. Nah ... just too cheap to rent my own conference room!

gadgets and whatnot

So, among other news since I last blogged a million years ago (not counting last week): I quit my job in April. Everyone congratulated me on my "decision to stay home with the baby." Well, thanks, but I never really made that decision. I decided to quit that particular job. I did look around for other jobs before I quit, and I didn't find anything, and I decided I didn't really need to find the next rung on the ladder before I let go of that one. With a lot of support and encouragement from my husband and wisdom from my parents, I let the job go and did not know what was next.

I decided I would do a little bit of work on my own in the neighborhood. I told everyone I knew that I was starting my own practice, even though the truth was I had NO IDEA if I really wanted to start my own practice. Suddenly, I was pretty busy! I actually have real, live clients who are paying me in real, live money. Pretty cool.

I kept daycare twice a week, and Baby still enjoys going there when I have client appointments, court dates, or other things to do. It has worked out well. Of course, it's not free, and even though my little nascent firm is doing ok, I am not consistently making more than the cost of childcare, and we are of course behind where we were when we were both working full-time. So, that has led to some creative belt-tightening. Here is what we do:

CHEAP FOOD

Though I am not much of an environmentalist, I did find some inspiration in an online publication called The Daily Green. In a blog post about foods that cost less than a dollar a pound, the site dishes out some pretty excellent advice. So, we eat a lot of chicken legs and thighs, lentils, beans, bananas, cabbage, beets, potatoes, eggs, and rice. And you know what? We are happy and healthy. Also, I do not miss boring, flavorless chicken breasts one bit.

CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT

We cut cable! This was a pretty exciting step, and it wasn't painful at all. First, we realized that our wii, which we already owned thanks to Santa Claus a few years ago, can receive streaming netflix and deliver it to our tv. So, for $9.99 / month we signed up for Netflix, and now have unlimited access to streaming movies on our wii, or computer, our iphones, and our (new) iPad. It is amazing. We can also receive one DVD at a time via mail, but we rarely bother.

We got an iPad. I will not pretend that this was a budget-conscious purchase, but we can watch almost all primetime ABC shows on it, which is pretty neat, and we can also watch iTunes on it. And, with a $30 cable, we can connect it to our TV and watch iTunes on our tv. We do this for Mad Men, which is one of the few shows we love that we cannot watch on wii/Netflix or Hulu. The season pass to Mad Men on iTunes was $30. Anyway, the iPad is amazing, and I will gush about it more in a later post.

I also bought a digital antenna for $20 and can receive HDTV via free digital broadcast. Most of the channels come in pretty well. And, don't tell the cable company, but since we are still internet subscribers, the cable that comes into our house still gives us the first 13 channels for free. Not in HD, but clear enough to watch the Giants preseason game yesterday (unfortunately the Giants play just as poorly on free tv).

CHEAP COMMUNICATIONS

We got Vonage and cut our telephone service that we had been subscribing to through the cable company. We pay $15 / month now for 200 minutes of outgoing calls and unlimited incoming calls. We also get call waiting, caller ID, and voicemail, and the voicemail gets emailed to me as a wav file, so I can listen right on my iPhone if I am out or on my computer (or iPad) if I am home. Pretty cool. And, we were able to keep our phone number.

Our "triple play" through the cable company used to cost $189 / month. After getting rid of TV service and phone service, we now pay $41 for internet service, plus $15 for Vonage and $10 for Netflix. Pretty cool.

We also use Skype all the time, to talk to my parents, my in-laws, and friends around the country. They get to see the baby, and the baby gets to see them. This is essential at 10am when the baby gets fussy and bored, and my mom sings Itsy Bitsy Spider to her via Skype.

And, just now, I enabled the calling feature in gmail. I can call any phone in the country for free from my computer. Zero dollars. Awesome. I am looking forward to using this a lot.

.... I think that is it for our major adjustments lately. But we are having fun!

xoxo,

Your faithful blogger

Back, with a request

Ok folks, I am blogging again after more than a year. Is this thing on? Can anybody hear me?

Just to bring you up to speed ... in the 13 months since I last posted, we had a baby girl named Noodle (not really), who has red hair and is adorable. She is now 10.5 months old and almost walking. She knows a few words and has a very silly sense of humor. She is a good napper and a pretty good sleeper, God bless her.

We are still in the same apartment -- it will be three years next month! Since Noodle's arrival, it has gotten kind of full and cluttered. I was really loving our apartment until I made friends with a mom two doors down living in an apartment identical to ours, but much better decorated. Suddenly I feel like all of our stuff, especially our furniture, is too big, and the whole place looks like an old lady lived here for 50 years and died, leaving a huge pile of junk. I need help! I am humbly posting pictures of my living room from four different angles. Please ignore the huge mess in the dining room and kitchen -- I had to move some clutter out so that you can see what is going on in the living room. I do not have much of a budget for new furniture, so we need to work with what we have, and I am open to rearranging it. Also, the long chaise piece on the couch can be moved to any other couch cushion or the arm chair.

Thank you, and please be nice!

We're Stuff-Free!

Well, not really. But we're getting there.

Hubbyhubs and I are fans of two gurus ... Dave Ramsey and David Allen. Dave Ramsey advocates being debt-free, and we're working on that (we just have some stubborn student loans). When you are truly debt-free, you get to call Dave Ramsey's radio show and yell "WE'RE DEBT-FREE!" We are looking forward to that. David Allen shares methods for getting rid of all the "stuff" in your life -- emails cluttering your in-box, to-do lists stashed in every pocket, and that nagging feeling of not quite being in control of all of the tasks you have to take care of. Both men share the philosophy that if you would only take the time to plan, and to grow up, the results will be worth it. So, along those lines, we've been working on getting rid of "stuff" in our apartment. We also need to make room for baby.

In order to more promptly rid ourselves of stuff, we've been using freecycle. I'm a huge fan. So far, we've unloaded my bike (which was later stolen from the new owner. bastards), my desk, my desktop computer (sans hard drive), the speakers from my computer, a huge stack of towels, a slipcover for a couch I no longer own, and a light fixture we bought, decided not to use, and didn't return in time. Yesterday, we finally got rid of the shelves that had been in the guest room forever. Feels good to be getting rid of our stuff! So, now we just need a radio show that we can call to say, "WE'RE STUFF-FREE!"

some things are not hereditary

I will never understand how my grandmother, God rest her soul, endured her first three pregnancies. Her first she carried while a million miles from home, 20 yrs old, a newlywed in a strange country (the Philippines). The entirety of her second she carried while a prisoner of war, in an internment camp, while chasing her toddler. The third pregnancy began in the camp (while chasing both children), survived a starvation period wherein she was making bread out of laundry starch, journeyed home, and concluded in New York. Knowing her, she never breathed a word of complaint to her husband, and never faltered in keeping up her energy or her smile, even while she vomited a very expensive turkey dinner upon hearing that other prisoners had killed and eaten a cat for Christmas.

I'm having trouble getting through ten-hour days at my desk in my air-conditioned office, writing motions, making phone calls, and talking to old ladies. Clearly I'm not made from the same stuff she was.

I swear I love my job ...

I really do. But I'm having one of those days. Boss is freaking out about something that has been discussed and settled fourteen times ... clients are needing even more hand-holding than usual. The days are slipping by and the work is piling up, and I'm freaking out about getting everything wrapped up in the next ten weeks. Doesn't help that the baby kept me up kicking all night last night ... and when she wasn't kicking, I was getting the worst cramps in my calves, which also woke me up. I am tired of being pregnant and I still have a ways to go. I want a drink, and my mommy. And a day off.