Our New Jersey disability lawyers can assist you with questions you have regarding your claim, no matter what insurance company is administering your case. Use the contact form located on our website to tell us about your claim and we will respond within 24 hours. Or, you may call us to give us the information over the telephone. Our sensitive, caring staff is eager to provide assistance. Disability lawyer Bonny Rafel handles ERISA(group)long term disability and individual disability insurance cases filed throughout the country. She is nationally recognized by her peers for her outstanding knowledge and experience in this specialty of law. Her high demand as a lecturer demonstrates her talent, see Articles and Engagements Section for some of her appearances and papers published on disability issues.

Protecting Your Practice & Clients When Faced With Death or Disability
Bonny G. Rafel, LLC

    As attorneys, our time is consumed with providing advice to others as to how to manage their personal or professional crises.  We are paid to listen, analyze and strategize.  Much of our effort is focused on solving the problems of others. But what happens when we develop a health problem of our own?  What planning have we done so that our practice is not affected?  For most of us, I expect the answer is “not much”.  One doesn’t plan a disability or a lengthy illness and our time is spent working on our cases, and seeking ways to build up our practice with new work.  Have you ever thought about how to protect your practice, your legal right to the proceeds of cases that you have worked on, while protecting your client’s interests when faced with disability? When illness strikes, the last thing you want to think about is what is going to happen to your practice. But, take it from me, that is the first thing that should come to  mind. With a little thoughtful planning as described below, you can take a leave of absence, rest assured that you have taken easy steps to facilitate the smooth continuation of your practice while you focus on your health issues.
I.    Consider who would make appearances for you on pending cases.  If you are in a large law firm, this should be no problem; but in a small or solo practice, determine which of your peers who works in your specialty practice, would be willing to step into your practice, either temporarily or, if need be, to facilitate the transferal of your practice as described below. Set up an agreement of understanding with that attorney.  Draft a letter to your clients whose cases would need coverage by this attorney to alert them that in your short absence, this counsel will handle the work. There is no need to send this letter unless you become unable to return to work.
II.    How are your receivables set up?
1.    For hourly fee clients, do you have a spreadsheet so that you can track what clients have not paid their bills? It literally pays to have some system, even an excel spreadsheet listing the status of pending bills for fees earned so that your staff can step in to follow up on this in your absence.  Obviously, while you are not generating new income, old receivables should be a priority.  If you are paid on an hourly basis, it would be a good idea to be sure that your billings all go out before your absence. 

2.    For contingency fee clients, see that all releases have been exchanged and do not need further input from you while you are recuperating.

3.    What about collectables that have remained due for 6 months or more? Can they wait for your return before being acted upon? Either send a last letter to these clients giving them 10 days to pay up, or turn the cases over to a collection agency promptly so that in your absence these overdue bills do not become more stale. The last thing you will want to work on upon your return to the office following an absence is old bills.  Move old collectibles into assets.

III.     Who will run your practice if you need to be on an extended leave? Who will take over your files and manage them? What will you pay for this service? One way to have another attorney run your practice in your absence, unless they are from your own firm of course, is to have them appointed with Power of Attorney.  For example, the following arrangement was set up, because the practice was oriented to include monthly collections of benefits due. We needed to obtain competent counsel to manage the practice and step in the shoes of the attorney temporarily on leave. We planned to alert the clients to the temporary arrangement with other counsel to gain their consent.  Then we set up a system whereby the Covering attorney would continue to monitor the files and collect the entire fee due per month, and keep 50%  of the amounts due. In this way, the covering attorney would be compensated for services rendered and the clients were comforted that their file was being managed temporarily by experienced counsel.
IV. You should have performance reviews of staff and potential bonuses or salary increases drafted before hand so that everyone has peace of mind.
V. Execute the necessary papers with the Bank for who will sign the trust and costs checks in your absence.
VI. What will your office inform your clients about your absence? If you do not want the clients to become alarmed that you are not there, have some response worked out with staff ahead of time so that you are not surprised.
VII.    Get a good tape recorder, particularly a digital one and test it before you go on disability. Be sure it works. While you are recuperating, your staff can e-mail or drop off letters for your review and you can dictate letters to them and e-mail the dictation to your office to prepare letters!
VIII.     Don’t forget to have a Will and Advanced Directive in place.
VIX.    In the event that your illness completely incapacitates you, you should have in place, an agreement with a peer to oversee your practice.
    Here are portions of a draft Power of Attorney we recently issued:

I, ATTORNEY, owner of LAW FIRM, hereby appoint COVERING ATTORNEY, Esq., of with the Power of Attorney to exercise the powers set forth below. This Power of Attorney will become effective only in the event that I am medically incapacitated such that I cannot continue to manage my own law practice, or I die.  I grant all legal rights to COVERING ATTORNEY to achieve the following.

1)  To review all of my presently pending cases, with the assistance of the staff of ATTORNEY.

2)  For all pending cases for which the LAW FIRM is providing monitoring services and collecting a monthly flat fee, the COVERING ATTORNEY may 1) provide the monitoring services for which the COVERING ATTORNEY will receive 50% of the monthly fees collected; or 2) transfer any of these cases to competent counsel with the client’s approval and negotiate a reasonable fee with that counsel for the continued handling of these matters until all of the legal fees for services rendered in accordance with the legal fee agreement are satisfied.  The balance of the legal fee remaining after the new counsel is paid will be used to pay a reasonable fee to COVERING ATTORNEY for her services attendant to this process and then the rest will be paid to ATTORNEY or my estate upon my death.

3)  COVERING ATTORNEY may transfer any pending active cases to competent counsel or handle them herself.  ATTORNEY will pay a reasonable fee to such counsel taking over the handling of these cases. The balance of all legal fees earned will be paid to ATTORNEY or my estate upon my death.

4)  To pay an appropriate severance to each of the employees of ATTORNEY if the office is closed, according to their length of service to the firm.

     In conclusion, each of us should remain healthy but plan for unexpected absences from the office.