So I’m partnering up and one of the conditions my soon to be partner placed on our union was for me to stop blogging, and I don’t hold that against him. When I started this blog, I was doing my best to survive life as a toiletlawyer. I used the blog to cope with my struggles, and hopefully entertain some people along the way. Further, because I was working for a soulless personal injury firm, I didn’t mind over-sharing facts about the firm and the cases I worked on. Now that I’m in business for myself, it’s probably time to move on.

The site isn’t dying though, Subtle Dig has told me that they plan to save my old posts under a moniker I will choose shortly, and bring in a new writer. At my request, they are going to hold off their search for a few weeks and allow me some time to find a successor. So here goes, I’m looking for someone who:

1) Works for a personal injury firm or insurance defense firm.

2) Has a few hours each week to put together an interesting post. Current bloggers are more than welcome.

3) Isn’t going to turn this into a hate-filled, anti-law blog.

I know Subtle Dig is going to alter the website soon, so you will be able to give your input there. They are great people to work with and did a pretty great job bringing in readers and revenue. Since my first post, toiletlaw.com has received over 14,000 visitors and I’ve made just over $50.* It boiled down to slightly more than minimum wage, which I think is pretty impressive for a personal blog with virtually no advertising. Send an email to blog@toiletlaw.com if you are interested.

With that out of the way, I guess it’s time to head out. I truly enjoyed the emails and other feedback the readers gave, hopefully I will be talking to you all for years to come. Thanks for everything.

* Sorry about the seemingly strange math, that includes removing the taxes for this year at the monster independent contractor rate. I was also unaware that minimum wage had increased. To clarify, I spent about 18 hours on the blog and made $109 pre-tax.

Office

Initially, I imagined leasing a small executive suite in or near downtown. I wanted a reception area, an office, and some extra space for what I was going to call the “mailroom” – a place for filing, copying, faxing, postage, etc. I was hoping to find 500-750 square feet for $1000-1400 a month. There were a number of offices that would have worked too – but nobody would budge off their 5 year term requirement. As arrogant as it sounds, I want to the option to grow in 2 or 3 years.

Then I got a call from an old undergraduate buddy. He’s graduated from the University of Texas law school in 2007 and practiced in Philadelphia biglaw until he was laid off in February. He opened his own shop afterward. A mutual friend informed him that I was about to open my own shop.

Long story short, he has extra space and offered me one of his two spare offices at a very reasonable rate ($475 a month, utilities included). He also offered to bring me in as a true partner for a tiny buy-in ($1000 and I have to outfit my office out of my pocket).

To partner or not

My potential partner was very honest about his income and cash-flow. After paying the firm’s bills, he’s averaged about $2500 take-home each month, which seems pretty great given the age of the firm. His primary work has been entity formation, though he’s done some estate/tax planning as well.

If I come in, we would both forgo a draw for the first 2 months while I build our personal injury practice. I would also be lead on any probate case should one come up. My potential partner has never stood before a judge in court.

So the positives:

• a decent cash flow already in place,
• entity formation and estate planning forms developed,
• great office space and a trained receptionist/secretary,
• I get to build and guide our personal injury practice from the ground up.

And the negatives:

• I’m lead counsel and I’ve never really tried a case,
• I find probate work terribly boring,
• I have a partner.

Just looking at that list, it seems like I should partner up. If you guys see anything I missed, please let me know. I told him I would let him know by October 1.

$74,523.38

My final check – with all taxes removed. I wish I could tell you that the firm was sad to see me go, or that they even noticed. I’m going solo; this blog is going to take a bit of a turn.

Interesting details to come.

Like most people in my idiotic generation, the first thing I did after my breakup was change my facebook relationship status to ‘Single’. A few hours after the change, I received a how-you-doin’ message from a former high-school love interest. Well, at least I was interested. She was a Freshman and I was a Senior – I think the age gap prevented her from taking my advances seriously – at least that’s what I told myself at the time.

The girl, Naomi, is now a Senior at Penn and the daughter of an old family friend. My dad actually dated her mom (the family friend) when they were teenagers, and though there is absolutely no chance Naomi is my half-sister, simply having to consider the possibility adds some weirdness to the situation.

Anyways, after a few facebook emails, we scheduled a meetup. We were meeting for dinner and drinks, but it wasn’t entirely clear that the event was of a romantic nature, that is until she showed up in a cocktail dress. I felt pretty stupid in my jeans and tshirt.

The date went well. She is almost assuredly more intelligent than me but she still deferred to me regularly during the night – which was neat. I told her about the big case and my thoughts on opening my own firm. She’s planning to get her Master’s and/or PhD at one of the local universities. We both share a dislike foir the real world and jokingly made plans to run off to the Caribbean once we pay off our student loans.

I got a frustrating kiss on the cheek at the end of the date but by the time I got back to my place I had a facebook message saying, “I SHOULD HAVE REALLY KISSED YOU, NEXT TIME?”

And Val, if you read this, die.

An unrelenting cough recently forced my grandmother to have a chest x-ray, a procedure revealed the physician’s worst fears – fully metastasized cancer. One of her first acts upon the discovery of this illness was to call her attorney grandson (that would be me) and ask for a will. After a few conversations, I drafted a living trust that should preserve both my grandmother’s assets and her post-life wishes.

Though the experience was necessarily tear-inducing, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy the work. I enjoyed my Wills and Trusts class in law school but I’ve never seriously considered doing probate work as a career. I’ve begun to toy around with the idea of opening my own probate shop once I get my commission for the big case.

A few of you have emailed in asking what happens if I get fired or quit before the conclusion of the case. Every attorney at the firm has a clause in their contract that provides for a very slightly reduced commission on any case that remains with the firm. I know of one jr. attorney that attempted to take his cases with him to another personal injury firm but the last time I spoke with him, he told me that it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Another recurring email involves whether or not I could have taken the case to another firm. Unfortunately, the answer is undoubtedly yes – and I’ve spent more than a few nights thinking about “what could have been.” In the heat of the moment I never even considered it. I have little doubt that another firm would have let me keep 10-20% of the case simply for the referral.

All of that said, things are going well at work. There was a moment last week where it seemed like the big case was going to settle ($5M+), but the insurance company backed out less than 24 hours before the scheduled paper-signing meeting. The firm is confident that the insurance company is simply posturing and the settlement is only a few months away.

The client (father + husband) in the big case has been in the office with some frequency, which is actually pretty difficult to deal with as he is still deep in his mourning. He seems to have been truly in love with his family and as terrible as it sounds, this is something I use to reassure myself anytime I start to doubt the recent breakup with Val. I’m confident that, if Val was to die tomorrow, I would be completely over it pretty quickly.

This post is pretty scattered, and for that I apologize. I have a two more topical posts planned for this week – one about the girl I went out with over the weekend, and the other about an associate at the firm. Check back soon.

Things I have been able to do since losing the girlfriend:

• Eat at Hooters. Wing snobs get all pissy whenever I say that Hooters has my favorite wings, but I love those little deep-fried sauce-covered bastards. My ex got so pissy and insecure when I ventured over there that I had completely removed Hooters from my rotation.

• Watch porn. The ex was a bit of a prude in this department. I used to ‘take care of myself’ in the shower while I thought about random sexy things. Now my imagination has taken a vacation…

• Randomly go to a bar. The ex had grown to expect my arrival 30-50 minutes after I was off and would get lonely and insecure if i was more than a handful of minutes late. Now, if the mood strikes, I grab a beer or two after work. Say what you will about bar-folk, the crowd at my nearby bar is collegial and fun. I’ve even had some success at the nightly dart tournaments (first prize being a $50 tab).

• Let my bedroom get messy. Who really minds a few days worth of dry cleaning sitting on the floor? The ex was insane about having a perfectly clean bedroom before going to bed. Drove me mad.

• Waste time. I don’t mean going to the bar or anything similar – I mean lying around on a Saturday morning watching Nickelodeon. The ‘big’ thing I did this Saturday was spend three hours ‘pwning some noobs’ at Team Fortress 2. (I also ordered a large pizza.)

• Not have to constantly worry about someone else’s feelings. I hated having to deal with my ex’s hurt feelings whenever I would do something like “sound angry” or watch one of ‘our’ tv shows without her.

I don’t mean this post to sound as though I had no feelings for Val. We had a great run and a ton of fun. I won’t say that any guy would be lucky to have her as she is/was a royal pain in the ass. I would lay great odds that she is going to find some successful, minuscule guy that doesn’t mind her being a rancid, self-absorbed bitch and marry him.

7:00 AM

There was no occasion to be celebrated on the day yet Val woke me up with eggs and toast. I can’t even describe how awesome it made me feel. In fact it made me feel so great, I found the ring I have been storing in my closet for the past few months, and I proposed. She said yes, we made love, shared the last few pieces of bacon, and I headed to work.

9:00 AM

I don’t know what made me think that it would be a good idea to go to work. My mind was on my pending nuptials and not on signing up clients. The more I worked, the larger the knot in my stomach grew.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love Val, it was that I didn’t want to love Val. Less than five hours after I proposed, I was ready to break it off.

12:00 PM

I ate lunch alone (though I’m still hanging out with the douchebags). I felt incredibly stupid for proposing. In search of vindication, I stole an idea from my favorite Boy Meets World episode and made a [mental] pro/con list.

Too mean? I think it all stems from the first pro/con. In high school, I never understood the ‘love’ but not ‘like’ thing but I guess it’s just something that happens when you spend a ton of time with someone. I have lots of feelings for Val (love?), but I’m growing to dislike her. Those idiosyncrasies that seemed cute in the beginning are now irritating. Spending time with her is a chore.

4:00 PM

I said I had an optometrist appointment and left early. I rushed back to the apartment, hoping to find Val and discuss the situation. Fortunately, as I hadn’t really prepared for the talk, she wasn’t at home. I spent the next four hours crafting my un-proposal.

8:00 PM

I was wasting time on the internet when she walked in. She had been over at her parents’ showing them the ring (sigh). We talked for about an hour, it wasn’t hard convincing her that I was a loser and she deserved better, she gave me back the ring. I nearly stopped her as she walked out of the door but didn’t.

So I’m single again. It doesn’t feel as great as I thought it would.

As I stated in my “normal day” post, I often eat lunch alone. It was my chance to get away from the office, read the paper; just get away for a bit and recharge. Recently though, I’ve somehow fallen in with this insufferable group of “cool kids” who insist on eating lunch together every day.

My involvement with the group began rather innocently, one of the guys asked me if I had eaten at a newly opened restaurant near the office, which I hadn’t so I joined them. Now I find myself regularly eating $20-$30 lunches – and I’m not sure how to break it off with the group.

I actually don’t dislike any of the guys individually but once together it’s “I just bought this” or “I blew this much money at the club.” And look, I love stuff as much as the next guy – I even love talking about stuff, but these guys don’t even care about the stuff they bought – only that they spent money on it.

And if I have to hear another one of these guys introduce us to the waitress as – “Oh hi, we are lawyers, our office is nearby” – I’m going to off myself. Not to hate on another SubtleDig blogger but imagine a table full of Lifeat160 guys (except for the sake of accuracy, it’s more like Lifeat60).* It’s dreadful.

So I’ve been thinking about the proper “break-up” strategy. I want to stop going out to lunch, but still maintain some kind of friendship with a few of the guys. This week, I’m going to attempt to organize smaller groups (3-4 people) to go to cheaper restaurants (fast food, subway, etc). If I fail at this, I’m going to start playing the “I’m broke” card, which will be tough given that I might be the top earner of the group (meaning that we are all pretty much broke). I don’t know why I’m concerned about offending any of these guys…

* I actually like the Lifeat160 blog quite a bit.

My firm is pretty good about allowing the use of vacation days without prior notification, so when Val told me that her family had an empty timeshare going unused on Bald Head Island, I began packing immediately. Though I’m running a bit light in the cash department, given my recent successes and the free lodgings, I could not pass it up.

Despite everyone at the firm having July 3 off, the firm counted it against me in tabulating the vacation days I used for the trip. I was gone from July 1 to July 10. I’m officially out of vacation days.

The home was enormous. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, huge kitchen + dining room combination, attached golf-cart garage (with golf-cart included) – simply incredible. Apparently Val’s parents shelled out almost 100 grand to use the property one month a year. Seems overpriced to me, but I’m not complaining.

Romantically, the vacation had it’s ups-and-downs. July 4th was wonderful – we watched a golf-cart parade, ordered takeout Italian and watched fireworks on the beach with a bottle of champagne. The next day, though, I wanted to lay on the beach with an icechest, but Val wanted to go into the little town area and shop – a major fight ensued. Fortunately, the close quarters pushed us to a relatively quick resolution. Some days, I convince myself that I need to put a ring on Val’s finger and grow up, yet others I shut her out completely. I’m still concerned that we are one fight away from ending the relationship. The vacation ended on a relationship high note though – with a photo of us kissing on the pier appearing in the Bald Head Island newsletter.

Waking for work today was very, very difficult – and since I didn’t get on the road until 8:00, traffic was miserable. Then, as I’m grabbing my bag from the trunk of my car, some jackass opens his car door right into the fender above my front left tire. The dent was immediately apparent.

The jackass stepped out of his car and was, of course, one of my supervisors. He insincerely says, “Oh sorry about that, how was your vacation?” Extremely pissed off, I was able to get through the conversation without screaming. I’m not sure if I’m going to get it fixed or not, I like my car but I’m not hyper-anal about it.

Check back soon for a more substantive post on the big case (and maybe a full writeup on the vacation).

Blogging as an attorney might be more of a pain than it is worth, particularly in the manner I have chosen. The last post brought far more attention to my blog than I anticipated and I’m not sure how I feel about it. A few of you were kind enough to email your comments to my blog address (blog@toiletlaw.com) and most of the emails featured similar questions / themes.

1) Your aren’t using your JD much at all. Don’t you want to something more “legal”?

Yes. I would love to have a more balanced job, but I’m not convinced that I want to bill 10 hours a day. I enjoy client interaction too much to leave it behind completely.

2) Have you told Val – what’s up with you guys?

I told her. We are still on the rocks.

3) Are you a fake blogger sent from the TTT law schools to con would-be law students into paying through the nose for legal education?

No.

4) But what about the case you just signed up, aren’t your rich now?

No. I get 4.2% of the firm’s 35% – meaning, I get 1.4% of the total settlement. This will be by-far my largest commission and I am very fortunate to land the case, but this isn’t some huge “time-to-retire” windfall. First, I’m going to lose numerous days working the case when I could be signing up clients. I prefer this work, but I will make less on other cases. Second, there is a good chance that this case takes 12-18 months. I won’t be receiving a bonus until late 2010 at the earliest. Third, taxes. The bonus is going to be severely neutered by taxes.

If I collect in 2010, there is a decent chance that I make more than my biglaw counterparts, but only by a few thousand.

5) But you said you were going to quit at the end of the case, how will you support yourself?

If my bonus is large enough, I want to give running my own firm a real chance. I haven’t really thought it out but the money will go a long way to financial freedom.