Terra Extraneus

There seems to be some fear that many eligible taxpayers will not receive their tax rebates because they did not file a 2007 tax return. An old friend sent around an email indicating that some of the people that might not have filed a 2007 return could include disabled Social Security beneficiaries and disabled or retired veterans otherwise receiving benefits, as well as others. Thus, it is time to check in with these folks and make sure they get their money by filing a return.

Please access these links for special filing instructions and a sample Form 1040A (.pdf) that highlights the simple, specific sections of the return to fill out.

Of course, the tax rebate probably would not be needed if Americans financed their federal government with sales tax receipts rather than income taxes. But, that is a topic for another day.

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The Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act of 2007 imposed penalties on tax preparers if the tax return understates the taxes due to the government and the tax preparer knew or should have known. Most tax preparers will wisely avoid this problem by asking for less documentation from the client to avoid the “knew or should have known problem” and rely more on the representations made by clients. Thus, the government will actually reduce the accuracy of returns by blinding tax return preparers. This is a typical example of legislative over reaction.

But, some CPAs will panic and demand from their clients voluminous proofs, and no doubt, become defacto auditors for the government.

To avoid this problem, will CPAs need a duty of zeal to their clients ingrained into them through their ethics code as has been drilled into lawyers through theirs? In the meantime, taxpayers will have to determine who their non-attorney tax return preparer or tax advisor actually represents, them or the government?

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The sword play among law firm marketing pundits and bloggers of late pretty well proves the point: law firm marketing did not grow as a profession and the concept of law firm marketing, much less governing principles, have never emerged. Larry Bodine’s blog on law firm marketing and the startling candor of Betiayn Tursi in her magazine summarized the state of things.

However, the reason few law firms “get it” when it comes to marketing, in addition to the fact that trying to organize a law firm owned by more than one lawyer is like herding cats, is because the concept of “marketing” is all but illegal among lawyers, much less not a subject of educational course work.

If law firms are ever to going to “get it,” it will only be because they finally figure out that it is the “brand” and the “brand recognition,” first and foremost, that lays the foundation for “marketing” as most lawyers understand it and accept it. Because “solicitation” is generally illegal for lawyers, the idea of “branding” and promoting the brand is often obscured. Even if you never solicit a client, make the law firm identifiable, brand it, and make the brand well known, and solicitation either becomes unnecessary or easy (and legal).

Most law firm employees that are titled as some sort of marketing professional can only be effective if they can help the firm create a brand and successfully promote it. Most law firms stumble on this through charity sponsorships. Not the ones in which the forty largest law firms in town are also named sponsors, but the ones which they sponsor exclusively, especially those charity events promoted by an existing client or officer of a client. It starts off with a few golf or T-shirts. The next year the charity event rolls around, it involves a few radio spots. The third year it includes a local but sophisticated newspaper and electronic media campaign in which the law firm becomes one of the spokesmen for the event or the charity. And after that, it takes on a life of its own.

While other marketing plans and efforts continue, such a corner stone leading to community recognition is the first step that makes everything else work. Also, it is the most fun and leads most law firms to meet the most new people in the shortest amount of time.

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UPDATE****3/26*** The Court withdrew its order on a 5-4 vote to restudy the internet access issue. Hopefully, the Court will retain the new rule requiring exercise of care when putting individual identification information in public pleadings. But, internet access to court files should be retained.
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The Oklahoma Supreme Court, though not unanimously, hurled the Oklahoma Court system backwards with such force the court system is now back in 1982. Pleadings are no longer available on line from the Oklahoma court system’s internet presence, the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network.

This action was imposed unilaterally by our highest and usually most sensible Court for the stated reason that it would protect privacy. Forgetting for the moment that the other way the Court addressed it, by passing a rule limiting personal and financial information disclosure, was the only effective way to address it, the Court’s fear of gadgetry was both humorous and sad.

Pleadings are public records that can be viewed at any Court Clerk’s office, so the court did not remove them from the public sphere, but just made them harder and more expensive to review, because now it takes a trip to the courthouse to view and copy the pleadings. The Court just reduced the convenience of review by eliminating the instant review possible on line. Because court dockets and court cases can still be searched on line, the pleadings can still be easily identified, as can the parties to law suits. Exact identification of parties might be harder, but that only is true until one makes the trip to the courthouse to review the pleadings.

Of course, only 80% of Oklahoma’s court system was ever on line, not all 77 counties were on line, and only in one or two counties could every pleading be accessed, although some access was available to pleadings in all the counties that made up the 80%. Nevertheless, our Court system seemed quite modern and efficient because of this access.

The great contradiction, and the humor, in our high court’s pull back from the 21st century, is that the unstated and underlying premise has to be that Oklahoma state court pleadings are somehow more valuable and more dangerous than federal court pleadings. Every federal court pleading in the United States, much less in the federal courts sitting in Oklahoma, unless under court ordered seal, can be downloaded for eight cents a page on the Pacer system.

The great sadness resulting from Oklahoma’s action is that because of the Court’s failure to reconcile the virtually complete access to federal pleadings with Oklahoma’s sudden phobia about access, the Oklahoma action seems to be reactionary and parochial.

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