Services Provided

Overview

As a busy attorney family law attorney, have you ever wished you had someone to perform high-level research and writing on your behalf -- a person whose abilities and loyalty were unquestioned? Perhaps you have also admitted to yourself that research and writing are not your strong points, and that you need to find someone to assist you in those areas so that you can concentrate on the areas of your practice in which you excel. In other words, have you ever longed for your own "Man Friday?"

Sure, you have hired paralegals, brought in associates, or even formed doomed partnerships with the hope that such surrogates would relieve the research/writing load, but what was the usual result:

You submitted the surrogate's product, only to find that the opposing side carved it up like a holiday turkey; or
You were so worried about the competence of the surrogate that you ended up having to eat five or six billable hours to check all of the research yourself, then do more research, and thereafter rewrite the entire document yourself; or
You found that surrogate could not write "the King's English," thereby forcing you to put in a couple of unbillable editing hours; or
You spent thousands of dollars of overhead and innumerable hours of your own time to develop and train a promising associate only to have her leave for "greener pastures" just when she was becoming proficient.

Now you can engage "Your Man Friday" to obviate such worries and problems. In addition, you will avoid burdensome overhead by "outsourcing" your research and writing needs.

Your Man Friday provides services in the area of Family Law, including appeals and writs. The services fall into three categories: research, writing, and expert forensic work / litigation support.

Research

Today, anyone can do rudimentary "legal research." Convicts routinely file pleadings drafted from the prison library; law students fulfill research assignments with ease by using the school library and computer programs; busy law firms rely on "form book"solutions and eroding "in-house" databases to produce their increasingly outdated and predictable work product.

Your Man Friday provides research that is far deeper and exhaustive. We never take the word of any "authority" or "pundit" on an issue that we have not recently surveyed (final 48 hour review for all case citations; 60 day review for all other authorities).

We take the "bull dog" approach on all research projects. Beyond providing all the traditional research services, our goal is to find "hidden treasures" that will aid your cause, or "uncharted mines" that blow unanticipated holes in your case.

We utilize powerful research tools, including online computer access to the entire statutory and case law of the United States (federal & state), various proprietary "vertical" research programs, and 30 years of legal experience (see, "Additional Information" on this site for resume). Often, Your Man Friday will also spend a few hours on your behalf in the Alameda County Law Library, if the circumstances warrant such a foray.

Writing

Your Man Friday is versed in writing of all kinds. He has written professionally for Matthew Bender, and has written several software manuals that have been published with successful legal software programs. He taught legal writing for law students at San Francisco Law School for many years, and has written hundreds of legal documents in connection with his own legal career, including lengthy appellate briefs, lengthy writs, points and authorities, many trial briefs, various motions, contractual documentation, and settlement documentation.

Your Man Friday will tackle most writing projects on your behalf. Some examples are:

Research memoranda: These memoranda are the bridges between the research assignment and any formal writing assignment. After completing your research project, we can provide a detailed memorandum that sets out the pros and cons of your client's position, likelihood of success or failure, and risk/benefit analysis. This document is very valuable in working with your client to determine the ultimate course of the client's case.
Motions with Points and Authorities
Trial Briefs, and other trial-related pleadings
Appellate Briefs and Writs
Settlement Conference Statements
In addition, we offer editing services for "final tweaking" of something you have written, to insure that it makes sense to the reader and is grammatically correct. This service is often overlooked by sole practitioners or small firms, who need an objective assessment of their work product before they "let the bird fly."

Expert forensic work / Litigation support

I have qualified as an expert witness in several counties in family law cases involving complicated "Moore/Marsden calculations and complex tracings relating to separate property confirmation or reimbursement claims. On behalf of attorneys who employ me, I prepare the calculations or tracings, supplying supporting legal Points and Authorities when warranted. To see sample calculations go to the Documents and Data section of this Web Site.

I have also been appointed as the Court's expert pursuant to Evidence Code § 730 to perform calculations and render opinions relating to these subjects.

In addition, the attorneys who employ me have discovered another area for my services that I had not envisioned originally: high-level document review and analysis in discovery. In large cases with complex issues, neither an inexperienced attorney nor a paralegal can examine voluminous documents and understand how the documents may or may not be related to each issue; or, they may completely overlook that "smoking gun" that the other side is wont to bury among seemingly innocuous documents. Several of these attorneys have commented to me that until they hired me, "I just had to do this myself because I could not trust anyone else to do it."