Attorney Barry Smith offers this checklist to help you decide whether or not your should fire your attorney:

1. Have you had a problem or experienced any of the following?
   • Attorney non-responsiveness - failure to return your phone calls or answer your letters.
   • The attorney takes too long to handle each aspect of the case - unexplained delays.
   • The attorney is always making excuses for why things are not done on time.
   • The attorney has inadequate support staff to handle cases.
   • The attorney does not keep you apprised of the status of the case, and when you call to find out the status the attorney has no idea what's going on.
   • Do you sense the attorney and your firm are not working together as a team?

    

2. Beware of the attorney who is willing to accept the assignment of the case even though the attorney is not experienced in this type of matter; one's good intentions could end up costing you significantly.

    

3. Beware of the attorney who is willing to discount his legal bill each time you make an inquiry; the bill should be accurate. This may be a sign the attorney knows you are being overcharged.

    

4. Beware of the attorney who says he can handle matters in any court anywhere in the state; in small law firms, this is usually a sign that the attorney contracts out work to local attorneys who you do not know and have no relationship with, thus reducing the incentive to provide quality legal services.

    

5. Beware of the attorney who exceeds the budget without your authorization and the only excuse provided is that "the work was necessary." The fact that the work may have been necessary is not a justification for failure to obtain your approval.

    

6. Beware of the attorney who continues hearings, unable to take a default on the due date, misses court imposed deadlines and/or cannot act immediately on your behalf; this may mean the attorney cannot handle the volume of work.

    

7. Beware of the attorney who charges attorney's time for secretarial, clerical and paralegal work.

    

8. Beware of the attorney with whom other creditor have had unfavorable experiences.

    

9. Beware of the attorney who charges you for research on legal issues involving a subject matter an experienced attorney in his field should already know. Did the attorney over-sell himself? It is cheaper in the long run to hire an experienced attorney.

    

10. Beware of the attorney who charges for the supervision of junior attorneys at each phase of a legal matter; you should pay for legal services not for a junior attorney's education.

     

11. Beware of the attorneys who charge you to correct their mistakes. Oftentimes a court hearing is continued because the attorney filed incomplete or incorrectly prepared documentation, pleadings, forms, etc. Also, the attorney causes additional work because of a failure to meet court imposed deadlines, or he continues matters because he cannot be in two places at once.

Barry A. Smith, Esq., Buchalter Nemer, Los Angeles, CA, 213-891-0700, bsmith@ buchalter.com

Even if your company prides itself on excellence in the areas of receiving orders, shipping, and invoicing, anything less than 100% accuracy can lead to problems. Anytime ordering, shipping, or billing errors exist, customers usually express their displeasure by taking deductions and/or paying invoices beyond terms.

"The results of just about everyone's mistakes in a company end up in the accounts receivable department," says Richard Taylor - who (at the time of this article) was director of credit and collections for The DonnaKaren Company (Carlstadt, New Jersey). 

One of his former employers, for example, was a manufacturing firm that shipped approximately 500,000 orders a year with fewer than 3,000 errors. This was approximately a 99.4% accuracy rate. "However, the bulk of the work we had to contend with in the accounts receivable department was related to these exceptions, and they significantly affected our cash flow." explains Taylor. Here are four of the most common problems that can land in the credit department:

• The wrong products are shipped. This can result from customers ordering the wrong products, inside sales or customer service keying in the wrong product numbers, warehousing picking the wrong products, etc."If you ship the wrong product, for whatever reason, you end up having to make another shipment, and that can eat into your profit," states Taylor.
• The wrong quantities are shipped. This can happen for the same reasons listed above. If invoices and shipments are not 100% perfect, many customers automatically take deductions. These deductions can cover the cost of items that were never received, the cost of shipping back incorrect items, the administrative cost of trying to resolve the errors, etc. "In other words, customers often issue charges to cover their cost of handling errors," explains Taylor.
• Prices do not match on the original order and the invoice. Some possibilities: Sales quoted the wrong price to the customer. The customer incorrectly hears the price. Pricing changes have not been updated in the company records that are used for invoices. "If, on a written purchase order, a customer lists a lower price than you bill him, courts have traditionally ruled that the customer is responsible for only the price on the purchase order," Taylor says. "As such, incorrect pricing or shipping against a purchase order with incorrect prices can also eat into your profits."
• Customers demand you follow special instructions. "As these demands increase, the potential for errors also increases," reports Taylor. "For example, some routing guides are so detailed that they describe a particular place on a particular corner of a package where a written description of every piece in the package must be placed," he states. It's also quite common for customers' systems to "kick out" exception" invoices and place them in a separate pile for later review. Result: Payments can be delayed for months.