New Law Offices of Matthew C. Mani

I never thought that my first blog would come in conjunction with my law practice website.  Fitting, I suppose, as I have taken steps toward living the life that I truly want to live.  I guess that I should start by telling anyone who takes the time to read this about myself.  I can move on to the ideas, opinions and wordsmithing later.
My family moved to Marin when I was a year old, settling into a house in Novato where my parents still live.  I went to school here until college, which I spent at UC Davis, and then law school in San Francisco.  I then moved back to Marin.  With the exception of a two-year stint in the East Bay doing medical malpractice defense, I have been here ever since.
My legal experience has been as diverse and broad as I could possibly imagine.  I spent two years doing general legal work, meaning that I handled cases ranging from criminal defense to family law to personal injury to business litigation to real estate litigation…you get the point.  I then joined a firm in Danville specializing in medical malpractice defense, where I worked for two years before joining Freitas, McCarthy, MacMahon & Keating in 2000.  I moved back to Marin, settling down in San Rafael with my family.
At Freitas, I initially worked on insurance defense cases, with criminal defense and family law matters as a sort of side gig.  The firm decided to move away from that area a few years after I arrived, as the insurance companies became more and more difficult to work with.  My practice broadened again.  I handled cases as limited aspeople bringing or opposing a Temporary Restraining Order to ones as large as a Civil Rights case stemming from the arrrest and pepper spraying of a husband and wife in San Francisco.  I represented people who were in car accidents, people who had been wronged by business partners and employees, people who were going through divorces, people who had been accused of crimes.  The common thread running through all of them was the fact that at the very start of each case, there was a person who had something happen to them, something that was beyond their ability to handle on their own, and which required their searching for a lawyer.  Calling me was their last resort.
I understand that.  I get that people only call a lawyer when they have no other option.  We deal with significant problems, and work in a world that the average person can’t fully understand.  The formality, the rules, the methodical way that cases progress.  It is something like Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole, except that Alice was in control of her own travel, and she wasn’t paying hundreds of dollars an hour for her particular journey.
Anyway, some years ago, I started thinking about running my own practice.  I like to practice law my way, in my own fashion, and bill for the things that matter.  I found the concept of running a meter for every moment spent reading an e-mail, or answering a brief call, or thinking about a case, more than a bit frustrating and contrary to my own particular beliefs.  I am not commenting on the Freitas firm here, I have nothing but respect and good feelings toward the firm and its lawyers.  I am more talking about firms in general.  On my own, I can make whatever decisions I like concerning billing practices.  Further, I can take the cases that I want to take, represent the clients I want to represent, and decline any case I don’t want, because I am the one making all decisions.  And here I am.
What are my operating criteria, my work guidelines?  Well, I will listen to my clients.  I will hold their wishes paramount.  I will communicate with my clients.  I will aggressively represent them and their interests.  I will bill conscientiously, meaning that I will remember that I am charging a lot for my time, and that I must take that into account whenever the meter is running.  I don’t bill for little things, a brief call, for example, unless the client abuses this situation.  
My goal is to have return business, referral business, word-of-mouth business, for people to know that when they hire me, they will get great representation, counsel and value.