...after a shower and blow dry riding I-4 home from work yesterday
Down the stairs in the back of my apartment building, into the woods.
Feed: Zen Habits
Posted on: Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:13 PM
Author: Leo
Subject: 8 Frugal Tips for Legal Matters
“The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I recently was asked some questions from readers about legal matters, especially when it comes to trying to deal with legal matters while living on a budget. As these things are a bit beyond my level of expertise, I turned to a friend, Andrew Flusche , a lawyer in Virginia who has done some excellent work for me in some of my online ventures. In addition to being a good lawyer, he’s a great guy, and someone I trust, and intelligent to boot.
I asked him for some frugal tips for people dealing with legal matters, and what follows are some of his suggestions and thoughts, in his words.
1. Do you need a lawyer?
Before you do anything, ask yourself this question: Is a lawyer necessary? The best way to save money on legal expenses might be to keep lawyers out of the equation. This definitely isn’t right for every legal matter, but it could be right for yours.
If there is very little money at stake, hiring a lawyer may not be cost effective. You might be better off trying to resolve the matter yourself. Sometimes a polite phone call or letter can go a long way.
Even if the issue is significant, helping yourself might be an option. A variety of good do-it-yourself legal handbooks exist, such as those by Nolo Press . Your local library will probably have similar books ready to check out.
2. Go to small claims court.
Small claims court exists for a reason. It helps people have their day in court to resolve small disputes. The precise rules and requirements vary by jurisdiction, but it can be a cheap option to litigate a monetary claim.
You can generally pursue amounts up to a few thousand dollars in small claims court. The filing fees are usually a small amount. You typically do not hire a lawyer in these cases; you pursue the case on your own.
3. Buy unbundled services.
Perhaps you need a lawyer for part of a matter, but you can handle some things on your own. Unbundled legal services could be the frugal solution. This innovation breaks down legal services into discrete parts, letting clients purchase only what they need.
Under this model, you could hire an attorney to just give advice on a certain situation. Or you could hire someone to review contracts for you.
Unbundled services can be a win-win deal for clients and lawyers. The client gets exactly the needed services and only has to pay a minimum amount. And the lawyer can work on discrete matters for a variety of interesting clients.
4. Educate yourself.
Regardless of the legal option you choose, you need to educate yourself. Even if you hire an attorney for all your legal needs, you should make sure you understand what’s going on.
One simple thing you can learn is legal terminology. Your attorney should be able to speak to you in plain English, but there are still legal terms involved. If you take the time to find definitions for things, you save your attorney’s time in explaining them to you. In most arrangements, saving time for your attorney saves you money.
5. Provide all the details.
After you have decided to hire a lawyer, you have to communicate with him. To help your lawyer work as efficiently (and cheaply) as possibly, get all your details together. If you’re prepared to answer the lawyer’s questions, you can make the most of any meetings you have.
In today’s computer age, it’s easy to keep records and documents handy. You could just create a Google Doc of information about your case. When something happens or a memory resurfaces, make a note of it. You could share this Doc with your attorney through Google or just email it to him.
6. Group your questions.
If your attorney is billing by the hour, you want to minimize the time he has to spend on your matter. Most attorneys bill in six-minute increments, so even a quick phone call to your attorney will cost 1/10th of an hour (possibly $25).
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t contact your attorney. But you should be efficient in that contact.
Don’t call your attorney five times during the day. Make a list of things you’d like to talk about and call once. The same applies to email.
7. Ask for alternative billing.
Lawyers don’t have to bill by the hour all the time. In fact, many lawyers are using different billing methods precisely to lower the cost of legal services. If you want to lower your attorney’s fees, ask about alternate billing arrangements.
Contingency fees are a popular method of billing in cases like personal injuries. You pay your attorney a percentage of the amount you recover.
Attorneys use flat rate billing when the amount and nature of work is predictable. If you have a routine traffic court matter, a flat rate might make your cost easy to foresee. Flat rates can also help you get a simple will drafted and signed.
8. Stay focused on the goal.
A wise business attorney told me that the client is truly in trouble when they’re fighting “for the principle of the matter.” If you’re fighting for prinicples, your costs will likely skyrocket. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stand up for your beliefs, but sometimes fighting in the legal arena can be a bad business decision.
The same rationale applies to people who want to harass people through the courts. An unscrupulous attorney might help you, but it will likely be expensive. Do you think an attorney who will simply harass your adversary will turn around and bill you fairly?
Always keep your focus on the end goal, and make sure your attorney knows that goal as well. Ask yourself how certain decisions might affect reaching that goal. If you get off course, talk it over with your attorney and get back on track. You’ll save money in the end.
Andrew Flusche runs his own private law practice in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He helps with Virginia legal matters, including trademarks, copyrights, litigation, and probate.
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Of all the abandoned, obsolete technologies we've discarded over the years, the one most deserving of a second chance is the noble telegraph. Think about it -- when we're at our computers everyday, visiting our favorite wicker porn sites, what are we already doing? That's right: clicking. Clicking away on our mice, slowly tapping out messages to the Ether. I guarantee you, somewhere out there is a vast, diffuse machine intelligence that's listening in, slowly deciphering our subconscious dots-and-dashes message, transmitted quite without our knowledge through our everyday Internet usage. And at some point, it will have collected enough clicks to make sense of that message, and respond with a disgusted 'That's nasty', and shut itself down forever.
Do you see how powerful the telegraph is? If it can cause a barely-cognizant hardware-constrained cloud of virtual neurons to kill itself in horrified, existential anomie, surely it can revitalize our modern way of life! How, you say? I'm glad you asked, you mouth-breathing mendicant!
Imagine the following scenario: it's late. You're lonely. You have no lover that doesn't run on batteries, and those Flipper reruns don't come on until 3 AM. You crave a direct connection with another human being, someone with whom you can share your innermost goulash recipes. Someone with whom you can be truly intimate. Looking around your cell, your fevered gaze alights upon your telegraph device, coiled and smug within its mahogany-and-cheese berth.
Trembling, your hand reaches toward it, fingers already pre-tapping, anxiously awaiting that tactile, subdermal feedback. You don your headphones, heartrate jumping at the mere hiss of the static issuing forth. You begin to code your message: dot-dash... dot-dot-dot... dot-dash-dot-dot... dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dot.
Suddenly, you're in the thick of it! Messages crowd in, staccato sweet nothings filling your headspace like the drilling of overly-amorous woodpeckers! Drum roll missives of lust peppering your eardrums with the emotional force of a thousand tiny jackhammers of love! Engorged with excitement... EWW... you hurriedly attach and activate the Press-Your-Sensitive™ Teledildonics NubbinNotch ("Now with telegraph support!") and continue your perversely promiscuous pressings.
With each dot and dash of your partner's message delivered as a jolt of current to your sex toy, and calibrated to be sensitive enough to register pressure, the harder you tap, the stronger the impulses. As you race closer to the eventual conclusion, your frenzied pounding begins to set up a powerful feedback loop, like shouting into a series of megaphones, both of you crying out for release, hands feverishly slamming into the receiver until finally the final spasm hits, both hands clenched tightly around the telegraph machine, blissed and mindless...
...until you electrocute yourself on an exposed wire. But UNTIL then! Transformative! Revolutionary! Apocalyptic! Superfluous! Yes, gentle sentients, the telegraph must return! If not for yourselves, then think of the children! Do you really want them to grow up in a society where debased adult sexmongers aren't regularly destroyed by their own fiendish devices? Look deep into your hearts; you already know the answer: dash-dot... dash-dash-dash.
I wanna be free... just me... oh baby...
EWW
-- "Easy", Faith No More
New Aria stories will be posted at:
Sasha stared at the ceiling. “Aria is the oldest of us, even older than you Pixie.”
Aria’s face burned as she stuttered out a retort, but it tapered off quickly as her mind churned. After everything she had learned, was this so unlikely? She leaned back, relaxing her body and let her mind race off into the past. No longer could she ignore her lack of aging, her freakish strength, and her strange memories.
Just this past night the same dream had come again. Cycles of light and dark, an endless stream of white jacketed men and women coming in and out of her little room.
Pain. Pleasure. Fear. Ecstacy. All of these things she experienced in her dream, but as she lay there looking at the ceiling with her friends watching with concerned faces, she knew now with certainty that it wasn’t a dream. It was her reality, her past.
“It seems so obvious now.” She said as she turned to face Sasha. “It feels true, but how could I not have known before, it doesn’t seem possible?”
“Conditioning.” He said simply. “You were made genetically, but your memories were conditioned in to you over time. It would make sense that they would fade over time as well. What is surprising is how long they have lasted.”
Pixie flew over and landed on Aria’s shoulder. “We’re sisters!” She exclaimed, giving her a pint sized hug.
“What will you do now.” Asked Keesha, uncertainty plain in her eyes.
“I don’t know.” Aria said, rolling over to face her. “I really don’t know.”
They stood outside the front door of the building, exchanging long hugs and kisses. Pixie shed a little tear as she hovered in front of Sasha and kissed his nose. “Goodbye.” Aria said simply as she turned and left. Long goodbyes were too hard, and this one had a feel of finality about it. Quickly she fell into her usual brisk stride, Pixie sitting on her shoulder and waving back to their friends.
Keesha waved back to Pixie, her heart aching to think she might never see them again. Sasha took her by the arm, leading her back inside and up to their apartment. He led her to the bedroom, slowly undressing her as she stood mute and sad. His mouth found her thick dark nipple, taking it between his lips and caressing it with his tongue. As he sucked his fingers found her sex, fingers dipping between damp lips to feel the warm slipperyness of her most private place.
He guided her to the bed, laying her down gently as she closed her eyes and lay limp and open to him. Slowly his mouth drifted down her body, hundreds of little kisses covering her perfect dark skin. As he reached her soft fleshy mound his kisses turned to the little nibbles that he knew drove her wild. Soon her hand was in his hair, guiding his attentions down between her legs. Eagerly he extended his tongue in long licks along her dark lips. As she began to respond, back arching and hips pushing against him, he darted his tongue into her warm pink slit, tasting her sweet juices as he pressed in.
She moaned and threw back her head as his tongue explored, her fingers moving down to pinch her large clit. Matching her rhythm he licked her to climax, her throaty wail signalling her release as much as the wild bucking of her hips. Gently he cleaned her with his tongue, leaving her skin glistening with his saliva. As he lay down beside her, she rolled into his arms and cried herself to sleep.
His mind was too busy to let him rest. What would Aria find? If she found the truth, what would she do? The implications were staggering. Now all they could do was hope.
After they passed through the city Aria continued on for a mile or more before she stopped at the side of the cracked and uneven road. With no trace of self consciousness she stripped nude, folding up her loose travellers clothes and putting them aside. She donned her usual armor, feeling the comfort of it as she strapped it down. Her swords across her back, she packed up her bag and hiked it up onto her shoulder.
“Come Pixie.” She called out to her unseen friend. Pixie emerged from a bush, her lips pink with the juice of the berries she had found. As she landed on Aria’s shoulder she asked. “Will it be far?”
“Well if you hadn’t slept through us planning, you’d know.”
Pixie pouted. “But I was tired.”
Smiling impishly at Pixie she said. “I will be about a year.”
“What!!” Pixie jumped up into the air. “That’s like forever!”
“I”m teasing you girl, we figure it will be about four weeks if we don’t have trouble along the way.”
Somewhat mollified, Pixie landed back on her shoulder and began to sing a quiet song to herself. Aria kept her thoughts to herself. She felt different.
She had a purpose.
Here's where we separate the strong-stomached from the squeamish. I give you: Bohemian Rhapsody, a capella. One of the lyrics is wrong, but damned if I was going to re-record that.
History will judge me.
It’s been a long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. But how much better? What has kept it from being better before this? Have you been unable to do everything you wanted to, due to scheduling restraints, personality conflicts, or plain old fear? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I can tell you that a lot of people fail to accomplish their goals because they’re afraid. Not just of failure, but also of success.
Neil Gaiman once published a Sandman short story called ‘Fear of Falling’ for a collection of DC Vertigo preview comics. The story concerned itself with one man’s recurring nightmares, linked to his pulling out of a stage play he had written and was producing. He had become cripplingly afraid of being unable to perform to the expectations of the audience, even though the show had yet to begin. He likened it to nightmares in which he would climb to a great height, fall, and try to wake up before he hit the ground, which he was certain would kill him. This fear is common. Stage fright, just like Writer’s block, can take many forms. It’s natural and normal to worry over reactions to anything you create, but the most important thing to remember is just to get your creation out there in the world, without regard to how it may be received.
How often has worry over not having something worthwhile to say kept you from writing? How many times have you shrunk from trying something new because you were frightened of looking foolish? How much time do you spend regretting that which you’ve not done? And here I’m not just talking about creation – I’m talking about taking that trip you’ve been meaning to take, asking for that raise, or telling someone how you really feel. At the end of your life, will you be able to total up your successes and your failures and find that you’ve got more to regret than to be proud of?
At the end of ‘Fear of Falling’, our protagonist, having returned to helm the show, tells a friend what he’s come to realize: “Sometimes you fall. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” This is my New Year’s reminder to you. Take everything you’re afraid will happen, and throw it all away. Don’t even give it a second thought. Put into the world what you want to experience. If you don’t, it will never happen. If you don’t release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will kill you. If you release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will save you. Sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
Come on and we'll sing, like we were free
Push the pedal down watch the world around fly by us
Come on and we'll try, one last time
I'm off the floor one more time to find you
And here we go there's nothing left to choose
And here we go there's nothing left to lose
-- "Nothing Left to Lose", Mat Kearney
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- 01:01 [Daily Adventures] Daily Twitter Feed tinyurl.com/34679w #
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- 17:58 @pistachio Yeah, frozen peas weren't too bad, actually. LOL #
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- 18:03 @susanreynolds I don't have the luxury of a nice bosom at the moment. ;-) #
- 18:05 @susanreynolds ..and if one was avaialble, I wouldn't be using it to stuff frozen peas in, but that's more than you need to know. ;-) #
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- 18:17 @JohanYugen www.100factsabout.com, slash, your first name, slash, your last name #
- 18:25 snurl.com/1w1zy #
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"Geek&qu.. tinyurl.com/248qto # - 20:39 <-- iGeek. #
- 20:51 @cspenn Uh, yeah ... DENIALLLL! #
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- 21:31 @bentrem Beta 2 was installed long before 3; it didn't crash in Tiger. It did in Leopard. #
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- 21:43 @jonray If they screwed it up, why are YOU paying for it? #
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