Asked and AnsweredBy John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMCQ. I am the managing partner of a 14 attorney estate planning firm in Lexington, Kentucky. We took a hard hit in 2008 during the recession and have just been recovering over the last couple of years. Business is up, but profits are still flat. We have not raised our hourly billing rates for several years for fear that we will not be competitive and will lose out on business. However, we believe that we must increase our billing rates and are concerned. What are your thoughts?A. I would bet you are leaving money on the table and you should in fact increase your billing rates. I often find law firms are more concerned about their rates than their clients are. You must remain competitive for the value package (including your experience, expertise, and reputation) that you are delivering. This does not mean being the cheapest estate planning firm in town. Some of my most successful estate planning firms are those charging the highest fees.Here are a few thoughts:

New regulations that take effect on October 3 will significantly alter common residential real estate closings and the practice of real estate attorneys. At a recent ISBA CLE seminar, Ralph Schumann, president of the Illinois Real Estate Lawyers Association (IRELA), referred to the coming changes as a "dramatic sea change" and notes that there "hasn't been anything this big in the past 40 years."The changes are being implemented by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the 2008 mortgage meltdown. They take the form of a program that is commonly referred to as TRID, an acronym for TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure. The new rules will apply to transactions involving mortgage loan applications submitted on or after October 3, 2015. Find out more in the September Illinois Bar Journal.

The Illinois State Bar Association’s Lawyer Finder Service provides referrals to local lawyers Mondays through Fridays. The Service makes referrals in a number of areas of law. For the month of August 2015, there were 794 calls and 806 areas of law. ISBA helped people in need of legal services find lawyers in the following areas:Here are the results for August 2015:806 phone referrals made by Lawyer Finder staffMost requested areas of law: Personal Injury (154), Family (140), Criminal Law (78), Real Estate (77), Employment Law (65), Civil Disputes (54) and Estate/Probate Law (37).20,026 visits to IllinoisLawyerFinder.com (17,703 unique visitors)Want to be part of the ISBA Lawyer Finder Service? Call (800) 252-8908 and ask for the Legal Department, or visit www.illinoislawyerfinder.comClients should call (800) 922-8757.

In a continued effort to expand our legal network and better serve the ISBA, President Umberto S. Davi was sworn-in by Chief Justice Patience Drake Roggensack of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and admitted to the Wisconsin Bar on a Motion made by State Bar of Wisconsin President Ralph Cagle. The ceremony took place on Friday, August 28, 2015, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is located in the Capitol Building, in Madison, Wisconsin. Pictured are (from left) Jan Davi, President Davi, Justice Roggensack, Wisconsin Bar Past President Michelle Behnke, President Cagle and Marie Sarantakis.