Woodworth & Frisella

Most of today has been spent keeping my fingers crossed that our million dollar baby can finally be put in the “settled” column. The deal is now done.

We’ve been working on a million dollar collection case for over two years now. While two years is a nanosecond in most litigation, it’s about twice the amount of time it takes for your typical commercial collection case to get to trial.

We’ve been to trial once and to judgment twice on this case. We’ve seized the debtor’s bank account, watched him renege on our agreement twice, and seen him teeter on the brink of bankruptcy for many many months.

Today the deal is done. Our piece was a cog in a much bigger solution, very ably crafted by a third party who I will happily promote when I get his permission.

But for now we can put this baby to bed! It’s a nice way to start the weekend.

I’ve been scanning the blogosphere for business and legal blogs. I’ve been a blogger for a long time, although my interests tend to lean toward the political. Since I’ve decided to get serious about my business blog, I’ve been looking at what others are doing in that regard.

There is a lot of good stuff out there. This one caught my interest this morning. You really have to love a guy who calls himself “The Greatest American Lawyer”.

I was particularly interested in this entry on billing.

I’m of the camp that thinks lawyer hourly billing is for the birds. My own practice, (initially in Plaintiff’s complex litigation and now in Plaintiff’s commercial collections), has never been a billing practice. I’ve always operated on a contingent fee basis.

The problem with billing is you cannot always justify the amount of work you have to do to solve the problem. Time is always an issue, and those seven minute segments add up quickly. With a contingent fee agreement you do precisely what is needed to solve the problem. The goal is always to maximize recovery, in the shortest amount of time. That arrangement allows us to do our best work on every case, regardless of value, without looking at the clock and making decisions based on time spent. That’s a win/win situation for the client.

Now that Amy is back from maternity leave we have started a large push on marketing, which is not this lawyer’s strong suit, but more and more necessary if we want to define our product differently in the marketplace.

Our product is different. We sell collection efforts and specialize in software companies. Although we work with some great collection agencies, we find the best results happen when a lawyer collects the debt from day one, bypassing non-lawyer collection efforts. The truth of the matter is, most business people will take a lawyer’s call, while they won’t always take a collector’s call. And most business people will put our debts on the top of the pile, or try and work out a solution with us because they understand we have the authority to make the deal and will take it to the next level if they don’t.

The reason we target software companies is because we understand their contracts, their business, and their products. Most software companies thrive on a fast pace and so do we. Time is always of the essence when you are collecting money.

Last week I attended FastPitch in Burlington. I found it impressive. It’s a take-off on the 5 minute dating service. Each person talks to the other participants, one-on-one for 5 minutes. You tell them what you are selling and they tell you what they are selling. The format was good, the people earnest and talented and the time went by quickly. I would do it again.

Today I found this site. As of this writing, I can’t get enough of it.