Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Amazon's $10.00 mobile payment solution

If you are setting up a solo law office or other small business. You should check out a new Amazon program for mobile payments. For $10.00 Amazon will sell you a card reader for your smart phone. You get the $10.00 back as a rebate on your first $10.00 in service charges; then Amazon charges a 1.75% service charge, which is more than competitive. Right now I am paying $9.99/month for service on a mobile card reader from First Data that I never use. I'm going to ditch that thing ASAP and go Amazon. Imagine, going Amazon and going commando at the same time. TMI?

Wednesday, April 16, 2014


WHAT I LEARNED IN MY FIRST TWO MONTHS OF PRIVATE PRACTICE



Hi Gang, Did you miss me. (I have no idea why Blogger is ignoring my paragraphs. I'll clean it up when I get the chance, or maybe our friendly webmaster can do it.)



I haven't written in the blog for a couple months. As many of you AFSCME 3357 members are aware, I was one of the January layoffs from UAW Legal Services Plan as part of its winding down of operations. Not to be ungrateful for 16 years of employment, but I welcomed the chance to do something different, and I set off to re-enter the world of private law practice. In doing so, I am retreading ground that I trod twenty-three years ago, when I began my first law practice. Let me tell you, it is really weird, being a generation older and restarting a law practice from scratch. Since many of you AFSCME 3357 members are either taking the same path or will in the near future, I thought I'd pass on lessons that I learned, things that went right and things that went not so right. In our private area, I've put up a rough draft to help you get going. I hope to clean it up, make it more generally applicable and put it up for public viewing so anyone starting a solo law practice will find it useful. The catch is that I'm pretty busy so, I may not get to it; or if I get to it it might be after you need the info, so I'm going ahead and throwing out my rough info on the private site. If you want something better, come back and check to see if I updated it. It's after 11:00 PM now, so this is the best that I can give you for the moment.

You can visit my new law firm's website at www.hoferlawindy.com

Saturday, February 15, 2014

My comments on the union vote at the Volkswagen Plant in Tennessee:

The workers in the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted on whether to establish a UAW-affiliated work council. The vote came in at 626 for and 712 against the union. This was an important vote for the UAW, because the majority of vehicles assembled in North America now come from "transplant" (non-union) factories. This was a rare occasion for the UAW to have a union vote at a plant where they were not fighting the manufacturer. In losing the vote, the UAW has to seriously re-evaluate its product.

Obviously, I'm pro-union, but looking at this as objectively as possible, the UAW really screwed up here. One of the key points that they tell you when you are learning to sell is that you have to "meet the customers' objections." In this case, the UAW didn't do that. The workers in Chattanooga told the UAW that they didn't like what had happened to the auto industry in Detroit. They thought it related to work rules put into place by the UAW. The UAW could have easily met that objective by putting work rules squarely in the hands of the local work council. The workers told the UAW that they didn't like dues going to liberal politicians. The Union could have left political donations to the discretion of the local work council. By botching its single best chance at organizing a southern auto plant, the UAW, not only demonstrated a tin ear to the workers' objections, it forfeited its single best chance to prove the naysayers wrong. I don't know what the UAW is going to do from here, but I think maybe they need to lower their dues and reorganize internally. It probably means there will be a headcount reduction within the UAW. What do you think?