Contact us online, call us at 1-833-827-3535, or text us with questions about your parking lot accident case. We can ensure that you are taking all the necessary steps toward getting the compensation you deserve.

Negretti & Associates has thrived as a remote law firm since its founding 2012. In this recent interview with Litify, Jonathan Negretti offers his perspective on starting and managing a remote law firm.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the United States, many law firms were abruptly forced to shutter their doors and ask their staffs to work from home. For a lot of law firms that still utilized paper files or the occasional typewriter, this posed challenges. For more forward-thinking and tech-savvy law firms, this was less of an adjustment.

For Negretti & Associates, years before COVID-19 became a factor, we sought to establish ourselves as a premier remote law firm. Operating within a virtual environment was one of the core tenets of our success. Yet, growing to three offices in three different states while maintaining a virtual environment was not easy.

Our team works remotely on a daily basis. Rather than wasting time commuting, we are answering emails and making early morning phone calls. We can be available and responsive when others are not. Working with a remote team has compelled our firm to continually refine our communication process, to ensure that clients are represented effectively.

From time to time, I am asked for pointers on how law firms can build and maintain a remote work environment. If you are patient and follow these five tips for managing a remote law firm, you’ll find that it’s actually possible for your firm to thrive in a virtual environment.

Tip 1: Get the right people, then get out of their way

To have a healthy work environment, it is essential to have the right people in place. But once you’ve done that, you have to get out of their way. Don’t micromanage!

Even though your employees are working remotely, you must trust that they are still working toward a common goal. That common goal must become the bedrock of your environment.

One mistake that I see people making is that they think that because everyone is working from home, that they don’t — or can’t — have office drama. That’s simply not true. The drama may be greatly reduced, but it still be there. If you have the wrong people on the bus — people who I commonly refer to as “toxic” — they will disrupt your company culture.

People also think that for their employees to work from home, employees must inherently be self-starters. This is true to an extent. Yet, more importantly, you must manage people with a mindset that emphasizes flexibility. People want to work when they can be most productive. Sometimes people are most productive early in the morning, others are more productive late at night.

We are not clock-watchers at Negretti & Associates. We focus on the service that we provide to our clients, rather than making sure every employee is sitting at their virtual desks at 9 a.m.

Lastly, we allow people to opt-out. We tell every new employee that working from home can be tough. Working remotely may not be for them. We understand this, and will accept one’s decision to leave. We don’t try to force square pegs into round holes!

“You must manage people with a mindset that emphasizes flexibility. People want to work when they can be most productive. Sometimes people are most productive early in the morning, others are more productive late at night,” observes Negretti.

Tip 2: Develop good systems

To allow your employees to get the resources that they need and do their jobs effectively, you must have systems in place.

At Negretti & Associates, we invested heavily in technology to make sure that our lawyers and support staff have access to everything that they need. If you are employed at Negretti & Associates today, you literally can work with a laptop and smartphone — from anywhere in the world. This is because we have a CRM platform called Litify, which is like an all-in-one program for our employees to use.

With Litify, you can do everything from review medical records to text clients directly from the software system. Additionally, when we get snail mail, it’s all scanned in and uploaded to Litify. Employees can browse the mail received on that given day or go directly to the client file to review the specific piece of mail that corresponds to the client’s case.

We also use a firm calendar system that syncs with Litify to keep track of client calls, internal and external meetings, as well as vacation time and upcoming deadlines.

Tip 3: Meet clients face-to-face through your computer

The idea of working remotely is a beautiful thing. However, meeting clients face-to-face may seem tricky.

Before COVID-19, I would have said it’s very challenging to get your employees to embrace a software platform like GoToMeeting, Zoom or WebEx. Post COVID-19, everyone seems comfortable with this software. Families are meeting with each other online now more than ever before. Doctors are meeting patients virtually. Companies are utilizing this software for happy hours and lunch meetings.

This software is a great way to meet your clients face-to-face without leaving the comforts of your home office. Clients seem to prefer the ease of meeting their attorney online, rather than having to drive to an office across town. It is a win-win for everybody and allows for more efficiency in scheduling and hosting client meetings.

Tip 4: Schedule social interactions with your staff

I don’t think I realized the importance of social interaction between employees until more recently — after the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect. Although some people love working in solitude, even the most introverted people can feel a little claustrophobic or a bit disconnected while working from home on a regular basis.

To fend off feelings of isolation, we typically have a weekly staff call on GoToMeeting, so that we can turn on our cameras and see each other. We supplement these with firm-wide happy hours and video breakout sessions.

Tip 5: Be ready and willing to adapt and evolve when necessary

Working virtually requires that you adapt to ever-changing market conditions, as well as evolve and allow for new sources of productivity.

Being a smaller law firm has given us the advantage of being able to change course on a dime. But we accommodate change in a balanced way. We don’t institute change without careful consideration, and we also don’t get stuck in “paralysis through analysis.”

If we decide that we can do something better and it helps our clients, then we incorporate it. If we find an easier path for our clients, then we will adapt to incorporate these changes.

Nothing is off limits at our firm. We don’t have the mentality that “this is how we’ve always done it,” or “that tradition can’t be messed with.”

Alan Arkin was quoted as saying that “either you’re growing or you’re decaying; there’s no middle ground. If you are standing still, you’re decaying.” We don’t stand still at Negretti & Associates!

An electric scooter accident of any kind can be damaging both physically and financially — especially if your injury is significant. You may find yourself feeling very overwhelmed and unprepared to deal with the complexity of your case.

Even a highly experienced injury attorney will admit that scooter injury cases are unlike any other type of accident cases. They have many moving parts:

• Cities’ scooter usage laws are constantly evolving.
• The fine print found in scooter companies’ user agreements can be thousands of words long and difficult to decipher.
• And, as medical bills pile up, it can be critically important to carefully examine medical coverage available in auto and homeowner’s insurance policies.

If you’ve sustained a Lime scooter injury, it’s best to find a lawyer with experience in Lime scooter injury lawsuits — such as an attorney at Negretti & Associates. Our attorneys know electric scooter laws, and we can review your case to determine liability and calculate how you can recover damages related to your accident.

To help guide you in your claim process, we offer these answers to commonly asked questions about Lime scooter injury lawsuits.

If you have other questions or would like a free case evaluation, get in touch with a Lime scooter attorney at Negretti & Associates now. Contact us online, contact us online, call us at 1-833-827-3535, or send us a text. We can ensure that you are taking all the necessary steps towards getting the compensation you deserve.

Are electric scooters safe? To find an answer, we might want to remove electric from the question for a moment, and ask whether scooters, in general, are safe.

Let’s face it: scooters have always been at least a little dangerous. Even in the early days of folding Razor scooters — at the turn of the millennium, long before the motorized scooters of today — kids experienced severe injuries, shocking parents and paramedics alike with broken elbows and knocked-out teeth.

But once scooters became electrified, the potential for danger reached a new level. If riders struggled to control their scooters at 5 miles per hour, the risk for injuries only multiplied when speeds reached 15 miles per hour.

The past few years has seen one scooter company after another elbowing their way into cities and towns around the world. Featuring fun, single-syllable names, like Bird, Lime, Spin, and Jump, these companies just showed up on sidewalks unannounced, without asking municipalities for permission.

It’s now commonplace to see scooters lined up outside of bars and entertainment districts, promising the freedom to see and do more, and hop from one bar to the next. Scooters and alcohol have become intertwined. The result is a Molotov cocktail, leaving riders shaken and stirred.

Many Things Can Go Wrong

The problem with making scooters available in entertainment-oriented areas, where there are a lot of bars and restaurants, is that these are the places where people shouldn’t be riding them! Many things can go wrong. Aside from alcohol use, contributing factors for a scooter accident include:

• Nighttime conditions, where streets and sidewalks do not have adequate lighting to operate a scooter safely.
• Scooters being stationed in areas that are not equipped to display, or “stage,” scooters.
• Scooters’ small wheels can easily get caught in sidewalk cracks, potholes, and concrete curbs.
• Scooters can malfunction. Brake failure has been widely reported.
• Scooter rides terminating at geofenced areas — boundaries that scooters cannot surpass. It’s possible to ride up to a boundary at 15 miles an hour, and feel like you are hitting an invisible wall. The scooter dies, but momentum forces you to keep your balance, to stay upright.

Added to this, new riders often have a simple lack of appreciation for the sheer power that scooters have. They can accelerate very quickly!

Clearly, there are a host of different things that could cause someone to fall from a scooter and get injured, without ever coming into contact with anyone else — or anything else, such as an oncoming car.

Watch Negretti & Associates’ Jonathan Negretti on AZTV 7’s Daily Mix show, discussing scooter accident liability, and how the fine print found in scooter companies’ terms-of-service agreements can impact riders.

A Failure to Warn

It can be argued that there is a disconnect between how scooter companies portray the use of their scooters and how consumers actually ride them.

To illustrate, imagine being with a group of friends on a weekend night out. You encounter a few scooters in a row, and your friends would like to go for a ride. However, you aren’t yet a customer of that scooter brand. To unlock and ride one of these scooters, you have to sign up first.

So, you download the company’s app. On the app, you may see only a quick tutorial about how to ride a scooter. Rider training is minimal. You then encounter a user agreement, where you’re asked to consent to all kinds of provisions and stipulations — thousands of words, which may take half an hour to read. Will you read the user agreement word for word? Probably not. After all, you want to get on your scooter and ride along with your friends! So, you click “I Agree.”

And off you go. Good luck.

How are scooter companies allowed to expect people to read the user agreements in full, so that they thoroughly understand the risks that they are taking? Do riders realize that, by clicking on “I Agree” as the user agreement appears in the app, they are forfeiting their right to file a lawsuit against the company, if something tragic were to happen during their ride?

This scooter crash test video demonstrates the severity of head impacts that can result from a scooter-and-car crash. As they say, Don’t be a dummy!

Negretti & Associates was recently hired by a client whose husband was in Los Angeles, at a bachelor party. He was riding a scooter with his friends, and tragically, he fell off the scooter and died, due to his injuries. The argument that we’re pursuing is what we call in the product liability world “a failure to warn.” There is a lack of proper education regarding these scooters and the app itself.

Is it right to allow anyone age 18 or older to instantly sign up for a scooter and ride through our streets — with very little oversight or education?

Would it not be wise to regulate electric scooters like motorcycles? To be able obtain a motorcycle license, a rider must pass a certified motorcycle safety course, which involves written and riding evaluations.

Without proper education on how to ride a motorcycle, it would be very dangerous to jump on a motorcycle and go tearing down the street. Yet, that’s what we are seeing with electric scooters.

Municipalities Are Finally Pushing Back

Fortunately, cities are starting to regulate scooter usage, tightening rules on where scooters can be staged. Some municipalities have banned scooters outright, arguing that they are looking out for the safety of their citizens. Citing stricter regulations, Lime has ceased operations in Arizona entirely. Yet, this may have more to do with Lime’s internal financial difficulties, as a company.

At the same time, we are witnessing larger-scale and more productive conversations about scooter safety. For example, Scottsdale, Arizona recently completed a year-long study, inviting public comment. City officials really tried to understand whether scooters are good fit for the city, and what kinds of regulations should be put in place. We will see more of these studies as more scooter brands enter the marketplace.

Cities are still trying to get a grasp of how to manage scooters. Each city seems to have its own set of rules, from loose oversight to complete prohibition. A patchwork of laws is the result.

A Need for Public Education on the Dangers of Scooters

The severity of injuries that people are experiencing in scooter accidents is staggering and frightening. People are suffering horrific injuries — ones that can affect people for the rest of their lives.

Practically every scooter-related call that we receive at Negretti & Associates involves a broken bone. No one is calling us with minor injuries from falling off their scooters.

In January 2019, The Arizona Republic published a story talking about the number of scooter accident cases that happen in Tempe, Arizona — around Arizona State University — where scooters are very popular. The article referenced how a member of a nearby hospital’s ER staff created a “days without injury” sign regarding scooter accidents. The sign read zero. It had been zero days without injury for approximately 100 consecutive days.

Ultimately, the problem is that scooter companies are putting their scooters out there, and essentially telling their users “good luck.” Anyone over the age of 18 is given free rein to ride them. No license or permit is required.

If people were educated on how to properly ride scooters — especially how to remain vigilant and agile, to anticipate accidents and avoid injury — and be required by law to wear helmets, there would be far fewer scooter accidents.

We have warnings on cigarettes. We have seen TV commercials that show how people can be harmed by smoking over time. For scooters, we don’t have a commensurate video or public awareness campaign that publicizes the injuries that people have. If more people could see those injuries, more of us would think twice about riding scooters, and possibly not ride them altogether.

Electric scooter accident claims can be complex. That’s why it’s important to hire experienced electric scooter accident lawyers, like the team at Negretti & Associates. Contact us online, call us at 1-833-827-3535, or text us with questions about your accident claim. We can ensure that you are taking all the necessary steps towards getting the compensation you deserve.