The Oklahoma Bar Journal September 2022

Working through all of this in advance with your officemates may take some time, but planning can avoid potential problems and potential liability. Many years ago, Oklahoma City attorney Jim Slayton and I taught a CLE on office sharing and published an article as well. Jim noted that some of the most important attributes for mak ing this arrangement work are common courtesy and cleaning up after yourself when you use common areas. Some things do not change. Mr. Calloway is OBA Management Assistance Program director. Need a quick answer to a tech problem or help solving a management dilemma? Contact them at 405-416-7008, 800-522-8060 or jimc@okbar.org. It’s a free member benefit.

Jim noted that some of the most important attributes for making this arrangement work are common courtesy and cleaning up after yourself when you use common areas. Some things do not change.

compensated. And, of course, the worst-case scenario would be check ing on the trust account to find that it was substantially overdrawn, and an overdraft notice had been sent to the OBA Office of General Counsel even though you hadn’t used the trust account for months. COMPUTER NETWORK One may need to hire a com puter expert to set up your net work properly so each lawyer only has access to their own files. This is not a particularly difficult task for a trained individual to set up. But the cloud is likely the best option for client file information in any event. Either your practice management software or a ser vice like Microsoft OneDrive can organize and store all your client information, including scanned copies of all documents filed with the court. And just like owning your own phone number, your cloud-based information storage is yours exclusively, as long as you keep paying the subscription fees. CONCLUSION I hope this rather detailed piece will not deter you from sharing offices with another lawyer or firm if that is in your best interest.

been referred to Lawyer A by a long-time client. But that is far bet ter than dealing with an enraged client who didn’t notice both their attorney and opposing counsel shared the same address. Most solo and small firm practices with employees are well served to use a payroll service. But if you are sharing an employee and paying a portion of the employee’s salary, you can be per sonally responsible should some one else fail to make the employee tax deposits with the authorities. The reports from the payroll ser vice can make that simple. Trust account management under office sharing scenarios is simple. Each individual law yer should have their own trust account. There is no good argu ment to handle it any other way First of all, it is simpler to manage a single-lawyer trust account. Even assuming it would ethically be permissible to have a multi-lawyer trust account, it would take someone with very strong accounting skills to properly man age it. That person would have to be PAYROLL TRUST ACCOUNT

ENDNOTE

1. “Avoiding ‘Hello L’office’ and Other Law Firm Telephone Tips” https://bit.ly/3bTJsc9 ( OBJ November 2021)

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THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL