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Vol. 71, No. 4, April
1998
Book Reviews
This Month's Featured Selections
 Marketing Success
Stories: Personal Interviews With 66 Rainmakers
By Hollis Hatfield Weishar (Chicago, IL: ABA Law Practice Management
Section, 1997). Soft. 272 pgs. Retail: $89.95.
Reviewed by Charles Labanowsky
Sales people, in any line of business, tell us that marketing is
learned and not taught. We can all think of many attorneys who seem to have
a native instinct for rainmaking, those who are naturally and almost genetically
inclined to attracting new clients, and maintaining their existing client
base.
In Marketing Success Stories author Hollis Hatfield Weishar has
collected epilogues from 66 lawyers from around the country, from small
firms to large firms. Weishar is a marketing consultant who began in 1986
in Kansas City, Mo., as a consultant to a 65-member architectural firm,
having since consulted with some of the larger accounting and legal firms
in Missouri, Arizona and New Mexico. She now consults with a 120-lawyer
regional New England law firm in Boston.
The author suggests that marketing of legal services is not a "cookbook
activity" whereby one merely follows a recipe written by someone else,
but it is a set of activities that "uniquely reflects the individual
lawyer." Each of the success stories in the book follows that description,
as each is told by one who has successfully practiced a given set of activities
or techniques during his or her legal career. One author presents a detailed
checklist of daily and weekly marketing activities, suggesting that "enjoying
what you do is probably the best marketing tool anyone could ever present
to a client." While one author lists his 10 commandments of client
service, several others espouse philosophies of client treatment that have
made them successful over the years.
Many of the concepts, such as networking, innovation, building relationships,
and community visibility are obvious to most of us practicing the law; other
activities and techniques in Weishar's book are more subtle, effortlessly
performed by the more successful and experienced lawyers. For lawyers just
starting out in practice or recently assigned the responsibility of recruiting
new clients, this book is especially useful as it lays out a menu of various
marketing techniques and describes their use in great detail.
The book is divided into five sections: Building Relationships, Developing
a Marketing Program, Niche Marketing, Client Service, and Referrals. Although
the book can be read straight through like a good novel, no story is more
than a few pages long, so it can be read like a book of poetry or inspirational
text. It also can be retained as a future reference book for those who are
continuing to grow their practices and those who are looking to enhance
their attorney-client relationships.
Charles Labanowsky, Marquette 1975, practices primarily
in business law, estate planning, intellectual property and international
law with Labanowsky & Associates S.C., Kenosha.
 The Verdict of History
on Sacco and Vanzetti
By Frank M. D'Alessandro (New York, NY: Jay Street Publishers,
1997). Soft. 425 pgs. Retail: $15.95.
Reviewed by Mark A. Erlandson
The Sacco-Vanzetti robbery and murder trial that resulted in the
execution of two Italian immigrants was a cause celebré in the 1920s.
In terms of public notoriety and the alleged exposure of a flawed legal
system, it can be seen as a harbinger of the O.J. Simpson and New York au
pair trials. Also involving contemporary themes of anti-immigrant prejudice
and Timothy McVeigh-like radicalism, the case would seem ripe for fascinating
analysis and reflection. Unfortunately, you won't get that in Dr. Frank
D'Alessandro's The Verdict of History on Sacco and Vanzetti.
First, the author could not decide whether the book was to be an entertaining
narrative or a scholarly work. Ultimately, it is neither. D'Alessandro
never humanizes the doomed men and their story nor does he present a rational,
spirited defense of their innocence.
The book could hardly be considered a definitive reference work. It contains
no footnotes nor bibliography. Quotes typically are given without attribution,
and the photographs have no captions. Thus, a critical reader will be utterly
unconvinced of the book's argument that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.
Another criticism is the book's readability. Perhaps every grammatical
mistake possible is made in each chapter, including inconsistent tense,
sentence fragments, inconsistent use of quotation marks, and typographical
errors. Not only do these distract the reader but ultimately they contribute
to destroy any credibility D'Alessandro may have remaining.
In fact, parts of the book are almost bizarre, as when the author gives
a rather paranoid response to other books that have concluded the Italian
immigrants to be guilty; or where he writes, "Being a wop has never
been easy and some things will never change." It is obvious that the
Sacco-Vanzetti case has become a crusade for D'Alessandro. Unfortunately,
personal crusades can make for poor scholarship and even worse reading.
Mark A. Erlandson, Marquette 1987, is a sole practitioner
in Milwaukee.
Reverse Mortgages: A Lawyer's Guide to Housing
& Income Alternatives
Edited by David A. Bridewell & Charles Nauts (Chicago, IL: ABA
Senior Lawyers Division, 1997). Soft. 291 pgs. Retail: $79.95.
Reviewed by Michael P. Ash
Twenty-one percent of America's population will be 65 or older
by the year 2030, up from 13 percent in the year 2000. That demographic
trend has created large growth sectors in real estate, heath care, and related
fields. It also provides a myriad of opportunities for lawyers advising
an aging population.
One issue facing our aging population is lifestyle choice as people age,
and paying for it. Much of that population's wealth is tied up in their
homes. Given people's desire to stay in their homes as long as possible,
transferring wealth from the home (an "illiquid, nonincome producing
asset") to liquid assets allowing seniors to stay in their homes and
enjoy a fulfilling lifestyle is critical - hatching the nest egg they
worked so hard to build.
Reverse Mortgages: A Lawyer's Guide to Housing and Income Alternatives
provides an excellent overview of legal and financial issues for lawyers
to consider when advising clients. Reverse Mortgages compiles materials
from a variety of sources and its authors represent a variety of disciplines.
Part I examines various forms of reverse mortgages, their pros and cons,
and discusses financial examples, stressing the lawyer's role as a
counselor. Reverse mortgages also are compared to sale-leasebacks, trusts,
and other mechanisms that allow an owner to stay in the home. Part I contains
checklists and appendices including forms, handbooks, and financial models.
Part II focuses on reviewing congregate care facilities. Starting with
a practical checklist of things to look for in evaluating nursing homes,
it moves on to sample documents, model acts, and consumer guides.
Although Reverse Mortgages may not answer all questions (particularly
answers specific to Wisconsin), it functions well as a guide to "senior-housing
issues for lawyers, their senior clients, and the savings bank, insurance
companies, and other financial institutions."
Michael P. Ash, U.W. 1981, practices with the Wisconsin
Housing & Economic Development Authority.
 Eckhardt's Workbook for Wisconsin Estate Planners
By Mark J. Bradley, George A. Dionisopoulos, Thomas J. Drought, John
C. Frank, Mary M. Hogue, John A. Kussmaul, Richard J. Langer, Judith G.
McMullen, Sally C. Merrell, Randy S. Nelson, J. Lewis Perlson, Carl J. Rasmussen,
Linda Roberson, Robert Conrad Severson, and Paul J. Tilleman (Madison, WI:
State Bar CLE Books, 1997). 735+ pgs. Retail: $185. Includes forms on disk.
To order, call (608) 257-3838, or order
online.
Reviewed by Richard Berkley
I am not a "specialist" in estate planning. Consequently, I
was particularly impressed by the thoroughness of the 1997 edition of
the Eckhardt's Workbook for
Wisconsin Estate Planners. Although it is difficult to design
a practical aid that is useful to all levels of experience, the Workbook
seems to have achieved that goal. The key is the Workbook's
organization. The first two chapters provide a basic introduction to estate
planning issues and a guided step-by-step tour through the many stages
of the estate planning representation. The nine other chapters of the
Workbook focus on covering in-depth estate planning issues and
on presenting the relevant case law or statutory citations.
Besides its chapter organization, the Workbook has four specific
well-planned features that assist the user. The table of contents provides
a quick and accurate method of finding a specific subject and its sub-issues.
The comprehensive and compact index is organized by subject. The table of
cases, statutes, rules, and regulations at the end of the book provides
another quick access to a specific issue. Finally, there are several checklists
throughout the book that assist browsing within a particular topic area.
A final useful aspect of the Workbook's organization is the
plethora of included sample forms. These samples, generally, explain graphically
how careful drafting can transform issues highlighted in the text into final
documents. This process is simplified by three useful features. First, in
a manner common to forms books, the text provides alternative language appropriate
to several different iterations of the fact pattern that a client may present.
Second, the forms are annotated in a way that highlights how they may be
adapted to fit a given client's unique circumstances. Third, the Workbook
comes with a handy forms disk that includes, in WordPerfect or ASCII text
format, all the forms presented in the book.
The forms disk is easily installed from within Windows or from the DOS
prompt. It installs the forms into a directory entitled "estplan,"
which practitioners may place anywhere upon their computers' hard disk.
The online forms have DOS-style filenames that replicate the positioning
of the forms within the Workbook. For example, "09_116.frm"
is the "Opt Out Marital Property Agreement" form located in section
9.116 of the Workbook. The online forms also include fill-in-the-blank
areas that are underlined, as are the optional and alternative provisions
(these are underlined in the book).
In conclusion, there is no reason why trust and estate lawyers could
not handle their practice without buying this book. On the other hand, this
book and its accompanying forms disk will greatly simplify the process of
serving one's clients and of getting the law right. For a sole practitioner
just starting in an estate planning practice, I think this book would pay
for itself very quickly.
Richard Berkley, U.W. 1997, also has an M.A. in Public
History from N.Y.U.
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