With a school year about to launch, I hope you are clear on how you can get legal advice when you need it. More and more districts are hiring in-house counsel.  If your district has a lawyer on staff, you should be clear about what matters the district’s lawyer handles, and who is authorized to contact the lawyer.

Whether your district has in-house counsel or not, there are times when the district will want to contact an outside law firm.  At our firm, we offer a very low cost program that we call our “retainer program.”  Districts can participate in this with an annual fee of $1000. The primary benefit of this is that district personnel are then authorized to contact the lawyers in our firm at no cost, as long as the issue is one that we can deal with in a phone call. We get lots of calls about personnel matters, student discipline, special education, business transactions, the Open Meetings Act, the Public Information Act.   We get a lot of calls from administrators who are 95% sure of what the law requires, but feel more comfortable when an experienced school lawyer confirms that. We get a lot of calls that are generated when there is an internal disagreement in the district about what the law requires.

If your district has a retainer agreement with our firm, you just need to know who the superintendent has authorized to make a phone call.  We take calls from anyone designated by the superintendent.

If your district does not have a retainer agreement with our firm….why not?  It’s $1000 for A YEAR!  We have six offices and over 55 lawyers with mucho school law experience.  Moreover, we are friendly and easy to work with.  We like school administrators!  That’s a deal you can’t beat with a bed slat.

So let me hear from you if you want more information about our retainer program. We’re pretty proud of it, as it is one of the primary ways in which we can help the people who help the kids.

DAWG BONE: LAWYERS AT YOUR SERVICE!