The General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section
of the State Bar of Texas
This section devotes its energies primarily to the interests of lawyers who practice as solos and in small firms. We have been active for more than 40 years. Our section publishes a Digest and co-sponsers an annual institute for general practitioners as well as other CLE programs. Our section has played a leadership role in several State Bar initiatives. Members of our Council are active on State Bar Committees, the Starting Practices Task Force, and the State Bar Board of Directors. We are active and serious advocates of policies important to small firms, and we report on issues important to all lawyers.
We show up. Join us.
Go to this page, follow the instructions and links and sign up online. Or
download this form from the State Bar and send it in.
The General
Practice Digest
Our 31st year to cover the essentials of 16 areas of law.
Document
Bank
Give some help; get some help.
Issues
Policies and politics that affect the small firm.
Calendar
Important dates for the section and the Bar.
Council
Members of the Section Council are listed here. Please contact us and let us know your
concerns.
Contacts
e-mail the Chair
e-mail the Webmaster
A Texas Supreme Court Order started a Task Force on Uniform Forms last March. This resulted from an initiative started by the Access to Justice Commission. The Task Force was to evaluate practice areas and "best practices," develop an implementation plan and draft forms for use by pro se (not just indigent) litigants. While the Order says the Task Force is supposed to "represent" lawyers, judges, clerks and librarians, the "Stakeholders" in the process are defined to be the "Texas Access to Justice Commission, the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, and legal services providers" -- not lawyers.
According to a Family Law Section announcement, development of forms is only part of a seven-point plan developed by the Commission, which will have broad impact on the practice of law. The plan was supposedly published in July 2011; a copy is here.
Meantime, the Family Law Section has voiced its strong opposition to the activities of the Commission in connection with the Forms Project and the Commission's and Task Force's lack of responsiveness to the Family Law Section and other elements of the Bar. A December 27 notice from the Family Law Section Chair is reproduced here. The letter from the Family Law Section Chair to Bob Black of January 2 is here. This letter proposes and long, long overdue review of the Commission's budget by the Bar.
Speaking of the Commission, please note that your Bar Board, which pays the budget of the Commission with your bar dues, has elected to give $1,750,000 more of your money to the Commission over five years to pay the student loans of lawyers who go to work for Legal Aid. That $350,000 per year is up from only $60,000 only five years ago.
If you are a member you you may read it online or download a copy. Click the link above or to the right and go to the sign-in page.
... your client got the unjust end of an arbitration and the contract provided for judicial review of the award. After the US Supreme Court's ruling you cannot modify an award under the Federal Arbitration Act, is your client's case dead? Maybe not.
... your client buys a condo at foreclosure and is sued by the homeowners association for delinquent dues of the prior owner?
... your client gets debt collector calls on her cell phone for the prior owner of that cell number? Can she get damages?
The answers are in the Digest.
For more tips remember to go to our Practice Tips page.
Distribution of our Digest went online in 2005. Since that time we have notified our members of a new publication by email to Section members. We have not had a spam complaint about this until this year. This year a handful of our members have registered spam complaints with their ISP's on account of our notice about the new Digest being ready. Please tell our webmaster before you complain to your ISP, if you do not want notices from us. We'll be glad to take you off the notice list. If you register a spam complaint before you tell the webmaster you jeopordize the right of the other members of the Section to receive notice and you will be removed from the website database.
We have implemented a document bank. If you have a pleading, brief, form or checklist that you would like to share with the other members of the GPSolo Section, post it here.
Need a guide on managing your trust account. You'll find one here.
If you want to restrict public access to your private information, you need to notify the State Bar. The Government Code Section 552.1176 allows us restrict public access to such information as home address, home telephone number, electronic email address, social security number, and date of birth, but you have to notify the Bar. The easy way is to click on this link to the My Bar Page on the State Bar website, enter your bar card and password, click to update your profile, go to the bottom of the page and you will see "Public Access to Your Personal Information" where there is a check box.
Second
Guessing the
Referendum
As
you know, the Texas Supreme
Court authorized a referendum on its desire to change the Rules on
Professional Conduct, and, as you also know, the changes were
dramatically defeated. Wallace Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court has
now made the following statement on that dramatic defeat:
| The Court is grateful to the many lawyers who contributed their time and wisdom to proposing revisions to the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct. The current rules are outdated, and must be amended to account for changes in the practice and in the law that have occurred since the bar last adopted comprehensive revisions 21 years ago. We intend to ask the Bar’s Board of Directors to make prompt recommendations about a timeline for future proceedings relating to the rules. In the meantime, the Court will consider what action, if any, may be necessary to carry out its responsibility to maintain standards of professional conduct that protect our justice system and the people it serves. |
You can find the posting here. To help you remember the issues, we have left the red-lined version of the proposed changes online here. An assessment of the failure of referendum by a former Chair of this section can be found here.