Progress at Whiting Law PC

We've had some majorly frustrating times lately with the software we are trying out for James' law practice. Today we even considered switching to a different kind, even though it would be about twice as expensive, and even though I've already spent LOTS of hours entering all of James' public defender & private clients & files into the software. We've been on the phone the past couple days with one of the salesmen from the program and we hope that now we have it working properly. I need to figure out how to use the accounting software. I enjoy using Quicken for my home accounts, but I am quickly learning that a business' accounting is much different than a home's accounting. I am wishing I'd majored in Accounting instead of Social Work now. That would come in very handy right now! But I will figure it out. I am determined to. And I have a dad who's a CPA so I imagine I'll be calling him a lot (I already have been as we've been getting everything set up with the business).

We've been busy doing many things to get things started. We met with the lady who is making the signs for the outside of the building & painting the name on our office door. We purchased a domain, whitinglaw.com (I think) but still need to set up email addresses. We set up our trust & business checking accounts. We are fully furnished now thanks to James' parents and also the credit union moving & selling us lots of their furniture for relatively good prices, and an attorney here in town that gave us some file cabinets & my desk. James wanted a large table with chairs around it to meet with clients and we were able to find one there. We also got a coat rack & lamp for the waiting room. We both have our computers and love them. We have an all-in-one printer that can scan legal-sized documents and that is also a fax machine. Right now our phones are acting up so James is trying to fix them. We have James' cell phone set up and working, thank goodness, and we have all the office supplies that we need right now including legal-sized folders & labels in different colors so we can organize by file type. We have things mostly set up for taxes but I think there are still a couple forms left to fill out & I need to learn how to do all of the withholdings, etc.

I am nervous about all the annual fees that we're paying right now because I don't want Christmas to be tight every year, but James keeps reminding me that after we finally get things set up we will actually start making money. He has finished a few cases that we can bill on as soon as we figure out the accounting system. He keeps telling people that he has as much work as he can handle, but really that's because we spend all of his & my free time trying to get things to work, like this program we've been using. The trial period ends in 9 days so we need to decide very quickly if we want to purchase it or not.

We still need to look into insurance (both malpractice and renter's insurance), set up our email addresses, order business cards, set up our letterhead, purchase software, and get our accounting software set up and all of our business expenses entered into it (and there's probably more that I'm not thinking about right now), but I finally feel like we are near to getting caught up. I've been going to the office each afternoon and I feel like the time goes by very quickly. Lizzie usually naps the whole time I'm there. How many attorneys are lucky enough to have a travel crib in their office? :) We're really lucky that she is adaptable enough to sleep at the office. Rebecca calls James' office "the office with snacks at it" because I keep goldfish crackers & fruit snacks hidden in my desk. She didn't have school the past couple afternoons so she's been coming with me to the office. She sings pretty loud, but so far nobody has complained.

I think James really enjoys his job. He is more busy with public defender cases than he had wanted to be, but he is getting his cases taken care of and still having some time left for private work (when we're not hastling with software!). It is a good thing and we are happy & excited about the future.