This last Wednesday was my first day at my new office! That might seem an odd time to start, but let me offer a brief explanation. If I work the first business day of a month, then my health insurance continues throughout the month. As such, it was worth it to work Monday, making that my last day. I took Tuesday off and then went to my new office on Wednesday.
I'm working with some excellent lawyers who are just as depraved/cynical/warped as I am. That is the good news. There are a couple of bits of bad news, for me anyway. First, ACS screwed up my phone number order so my phone will not be activated for another week and a half or so. That's rather irritating because I had placed the order a couple of weeks ago. The second downside is that I'm stuck in a small office for the next couple of months. The firm is getting ready to remodel and the space that I will be occupying is now the library. It's going to take roughly another month before the remodel starts and then the remodel will take about a month.
All in all, though, those are small potatoes. I'm already getting private clients and I have taken a couple of clients with me. In Alaska, the Office of Public Advocacy, being the alternate defender agency, handles both staff attorneys and contracts with private lawyers. So, I can still take OPA cases.
However, despite oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel (most of Alaska's state revenue comes from oil taxes, so the higher the oil price, the more money the state makes) and giving this state a surplus of around $1 billion or so, the legislature really does not want to fund OPA or the Public Defender Agency. Imagine that! So, OPA is under pressure to keep as much work in house as possible despite the effect that this may have upon the quality of indigent representation.
The very nice thing about starting my own office is that I get all sorts of new stuff. I've limited expenses in every way possible but one: I bought a really cool computer system. I got a new MacBook Pro (I've been a long time Mac fan) with the new 30" screen. Words do not really describe how large it is. Seeing it in the store does not really give one a reasonable expectation of how large it will be in your office. I was debating not getting it, but on the whole, I'm glad that I did. I literally can have three full size windows up at the same time, making it very easy to switch between them. I also finally got an iPod. I suppose I don't technically need it, but I figure now I can download legal podcasts and thus deduct it. If you do not have one, I really cannot recommend one highly enough.
I will say that there are a million details that just seem to suck up my time like a sponge. I feel like a turtle in a sea of peanut butter. Some of it is just working out procedures for the first time. It's also matters like the phone, things that are just taking more time than they should. Getting a new client database, for example, is taking a bit of time, not to mention learning how to use it. It used to be that I would get a fax of charging documents that I would review so I knew the client's name and the charges. I would hand those to my assistant and ask her to open a file. Magically, the file would be opened. Well, there's a lot more work to get everything done than you might think. And when you're in private practice, there's an extra layer in that you have to deal with the whole billing/contract/fee issue. To some degree, that's sort of the point.
I'm hoping to be able to blog from my office, but I'm encountering a little bit of an issue with ecto and there are also a lot of other things that I am having to do right now. I figure it will take a few weeks or so to get things roughly in order. In the meantime, eery day is an adventure. I'll keep you posted on how things work out.