Showing Up Is Big Part of Their Success
In some jobs, showing up is a small part of the task. In lawyer Peter Wodinsky’s case, showing up is the job itself.
Wodinsky makes court appearances. That’s it. Nothing else.
When attorneys from other firms can’t be two places at once or don’t want to be bothered seeking a postponement in a case, they hire firms such as Wodinsky’s. With as little as an hour’s notice, so-called appearance counsels parachute into courtrooms up and down the state.
One recent morning, juggling a stack of legal papers and a full briefcase, Wodinsky handled nine cases at $100 a pop in Los Angeles Superior Court. Total court time: 1 hour, 49 minutes.
In the highly specialized world of law, a handful of firms are filling this emerging niche, one that requires little more than independent contractors, fax machines, cell phones, pagers and e-mail.
No posh Century City rents. No armies of paralegals and clerks. No plush corner offices. No politicking over who’s going to make partner.
Wodinsky’s firm, if truth be told, operates out of Lawndale. Yes, it’s the firm that put the law in Lawndale. OK, maybe it’s not the place best known for its law firms, but the lawyers who work for Hoffman & Pomerantz rarely come to the office anyway. They’re in court.
“We couldn’t really do this 20 years ago,” said Gary Hoffman, who founded the firm seven years ago. “Communication has come so far, it’s gotten easier and better. With e-mail and overnight mail . . . we’ve taken an old-fashioned business and made a new business.”
To attract clients and lawyers, the firm has a catchy Web address: https://www.weappear.com. It also advertises in local law journals. Hoffman & Pomerantz has a stable of lawyers from Eureka to Escondido and recruits all the time.
The firm charges its clients a flat fee, which does not include parking or mileage. For that, the attorneys are on their own.
Perhaps that’s why Wodinsky has a special relationship with the parking lot guys near the Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles. And perhaps that’s why Hoffman lawyers know the best--and most economical, to put it politely--lunch joints near every courtroom in the county.
Call it the home court advantage.
“It helps to develop relationships,” Wodinsky said, smiling, during a break in his schedule. “We do it in the courthouse, too. It helps to know which courts work fast, which ones I can tell where I’ll be and they’ll call me if my case comes up.”
After all, even the fill-ins sometimes have to be in two courtrooms at the same time.
Some of those busy attorneys who hire Hoffman & Pomerantz say the firm’s lawyers are competent, quick and efficient. It’s a service, they say, they don’t know how they lived without.
“It’s a very narrow niche,” said Michael Osinsky, managing director of Miller & Associates, a criminal defense firm in Santa Monica. “Typically what they do isn’t particularly complicated. The most complicated [aspect] is the logistics involved.”
On a recent day, Wodinsky settled an eviction case, was granted a postponement of a pretrial hearing and gave status updates on a few others. He spent most of the morning hunched over the attorney’s table in front of Superior Court Commissioner David A. Stephens.
“Wodinsky here for the bank, Your Honor.”
“Wodinsky here for Countrywide, Your Honor.”
“Wodinsky here for the plaintiffs, Your Honor.”
And on and on it goes.
Wodinsky, single and 46, graduated from Southwestern University School of Law. He began in private practice, looking ahead to a career of ladder climbing. What he really enjoyed, however, were the court appearances, but those were becoming few and far between.
“Like any good lawyer, I handled all kinds of cases, worked a lot of late nights, dealt with clients calling,” Wodinsky said. “ . . . After I got involved with this, I saw there was one advantage: I wasn’t losing sleep over it. I’ll spend time with a case and then it’s over. I’m done.”
In Compton, Long Beach, San Jose, Sacramento, Modesto and Santa Cruz, to name just a few of the cities, Hoffman & Pomerantz lawyers appeared on behalf of other counsel in 48 cases in one day.
By most accounts, business is booming.
“Things are getting busier and busier,” said Leon Najman of Lawyers on Call, a Tustin firm similar to Hoffman’s. “Courts are trying to push cases through within a year. It puts a big load on the law firms. That’s where we fit in.”
But as with most substitutes, it’s not always an easy ride.
Some Northern California judges look less kindly on appearance counsel. And some judges in Kern County will demand that the attorney of record appear and report to the court why they couldn’t attend their own hearings.
Los Angeles judges don’t seem to have trouble with appearance lawyers.
Still, these lawyers want some respect. So a group of them are forming their own organization: the California Appearance Attorneys Bar Assn.
“The idea,” Wodinsky says, “is to professionalize what we’re doing. . . . Without us, the system would fall apart.”
Perhaps not.
But as we all know, appearances are just as important as reality.
