Fall 2009 - Atlanta - Divorce Lawyer - Family Law - Atlanta Georgia

Question: So as you’re standing there watching thisunfold, what did you know you had done right?John: Well, honestly, those thoughts just don’t come intoyour head when you’re watching the building burn. Inretrospect, here’s what we did right: 1) we back up theserver everyday and we take these back up tapes out ofthe building and store them off-site every night. So, I knewthat we would be able to recover everything that we hadproduced in cases for our clients. 2) we synchronize ourBlackberrys to our server everyday and we store all of ourclients’ contact information and opposing counsels’ onour Blackberrys, so I knew that we would be able to get intouch with our clients immediately.Tricia: I think the third thing that we did right was wehad renter’s insurance. We had carried a policy for yearswithout ever really thinking about it. The premium wasminimal and we had thought about cancelling it before, butjust kept paying it. It has paid and will pay for everything –the move, the furnishings, the professional cleaning of all ofthe items in the office – and with a very small deductible.Question: In retrospect, then, what did youdo wrong?John: I don’t think there’s a whole lot morethat we would have done differently, orthat we will do differently in the future.Probably the only thing is that we shouldscan more original documents in and storethem on the server. Had everything goneup in flames, we would have been able tosave only what we produce, not pleadingsor motions from opposing lawyers, ororders, or anything like that. So, we willprobably scan more of these in, but youhave to decide how much is too much.We can’t scan in every document that weget for discovery, for example, becauseit’s too much. They make fire-proof filecabinets, but no one is going to go out andbuy those, because they’re prohibitivelyexpensive. We’d been in practice for 30years and hadn’t had a fire. There aresome things that just aren’t practical toplan for.Tricia: I suppose now I question whether it’sa good idea to be right next to a bar, with allthat it brings with it.John: Well, the flip side to that is that is was wonderful tobe next to the Georgia Theater when bands would comein, set up and do sound checks. I would get to listen togreat music in my office for nothing. It was part of thecharm and character.Question: So after you see that your building is not going toburn down, what do you do?Tricia: By about noon that day, we knew our first prioritywas to reassure everyone that works for and with us that wewould be okay and that we would continue on. So, we gotsome note pads and pens and all of us sat at The Nationalfor lunch and planned how we would move forward.John: And around 3 p.m. I managed to convince someoneto let me in the office for a few seconds. I grabbed theserver and got the chance to look around. I saw there wasno fire or water damage, so I felt like we’d be okay. The firstpeople we called after I got in were Terri and Amber, whowork for us, to tell them we were going to be okay.Tricia: We had so many generous offers of space andeventually settled on space in the building where ReginaQuick and Roy Finch are. One good thing we learnedis that AT&T is able to forward your telephone numberto any phone you choose, without you actually havingto physically forward the calls from the phone itself. So,within very little time, we had the telephone ringing to ourcell phones.Question: What has the process been like since?John: I describe it this way, it’s like going camping becauseyou have no routine and you can’t find all of the things youneed and you have at home, it’s just so hard to get anythingdone. Luckily, we were pretty well caught up before thefire, so it’s enabled us to only have to play catch up sincethe fire.The perspective is this – early that morning while I wasstanding outside watching the fire, I remembered that Ihad a mediation scheduled at my office that day. I calledmy client, told her what was going on and told her sheneeded to call her husband and have her husband call hislawyer to tell him about the fire and that we couldn’t dothe mediation. She was very concerned about us during thecall and understood. A little while later she called back andasked if we could do the mediation somewhere else thatday. So, while the owner of the Georgia Theater was worriedabout his building and business and I was worried aboutmy law practice, my client was worried about her divorce.I wanted to interview John and Tricia for the lessonslearned from this disaster, believing we all need to bereminded about things like off-site server back-ups,appropriate insurance coverage and the benefit of keepingclient contact information on Blackberrys and the to scanmore original documents. The central lesson, though, isthat while it doesn’t seem fair that things like this happento wonderful people like John and Tricia, it may also be thatthey are the only two that could manage it with the humor,grace and courage necessary to survive it. FLRPaul Oeland graduated from the Universityof Georgia School of Law in 1998 and theprimary focus of his practice is family law.His main office is in Conyers and there is asatellite office in Midtown Atlanta.The Family Law Review 21Fall 2009