Month: March 2026

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Life Happens, Again

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Life Happens. It discussed my then-pending surgery and how I had to take care of some documents before undergoing general anesthesia. You should read it.

Spoiler alert: I came through it all very well.

But, life continues. In my case, not terribly long ago, life happened again: last summer, my then-fiancé decided to end our relationship and move away. It was very sad, of course, but I wish him well and happy.

We’d been together for 10 years. Understandably, our lives had become very entwined. The breakup, of course, meant disentangling our lives, our finances, etc. Bluntly put: it has been a chore, even without having to go through the actual divorce process. That’s life. You can’t avoid bad things happening, no matter how you prep. But, you can prepare for some of those eventualities.

Besides the obvious splitting stuff (like divvying up the housewares) in the case of a breakup, when there is an end of a long relationship, whether by breakup or death of a partner, there is also a lot of paperwork to be done. For example, if you have your (now former) partner as a beneficiary on insurance or as a POD (payable on death) on financial accounts, you’ll need to change that. Was that person your emergency medical contact? You’ll need to get someone else. If you cohabitated, is your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance through you or your ex? What about ownership of the house or car(s)? Get that fixed. You’ll also need to take that person off your listed drivers on your auto insurance.

And then there is the other stuff, like I talked about in the original Life Happens: medical power of attorney, will, trust docs…all of these will need to be updated.

No one wants to think about their relationships ending, but they all do (breakup or death). If you have contingency plans in place, that can be helpful. For some things, you can add secondary beneficiaries or emergency contacts, for example. For others, maybe make a list of all the things you’d need to change should something unexpected happen. If you are married, you can get a post-nup that clearly explains who gets what in the case of a breakup. If you live together, you can get an agreement that does similarly. Sure, not very romantic, but it can make a hard part of life much easier.

Oh, and if you are in business together, you really need to have an agreement on how any split or death will affect that business. Do that now, please. Dealing with a business is an extra level of pain in the butt in a breakup or death.

No matter what, though, dealing with losing someone from your life is a chore. If you need help, there are plenty of pros like me or other lawyers, CPAs, insurance professionals, and therapists to help. Get the help.

I will say that taking care of all the paperwork can be a good distraction from the sadness of an ending, though. Any ending is tough, regardless of the circumstances. Forcing yourself to take care of the practical bits around it can give you a sense of grounding–that you will be okay.

And, no matter how you may feel at the time, you will.

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Undercharging

Ever since I first got into the photo biz as a studio manager (back in the last century), lowballing has been a problem. Usually, this is not done intentionally but rather out of fear and not knowing the actual value of the work.

Here’s a little data point that might help you understand value better: a general rule of thumb that companies use when budgeting their marketing and advertising projects is 10% creative costs; 90% placement/media.

You read that right 10% of the budget goes to creative costs, 90% to buying the placement/media.

Now “creative costs” are inclusive of things like talent; but I suspect that, even with that, many of you are undercharging. Some of you are way undercharging.

What are companies marketing/advertising budgets? Well, the consensus is that companies should budget at least 5% of their gross revenue (that is their sales–what they bring in before any costs or deductions), but some say it should be more like 7-10% for a small business. I read one article recently that said 15%! Here is a good breakdown of actual numbers from Small Business Trends. When you look at those numbers, and those are for small businesses, are you charging enough for your work?

Look, your clients are almost never going to tell you the truth about what their budgets are and how much others charge. The latter, especially. When I was a rep, I had some poor fool tell me that Photographer X estimated 10% of what my guy was asking…not knowing that I also repped Photographer X who wasn’t even asked to estimate on the project. Whoops! So I counsel doing your own homework.

If you take the time to learn what your clients are actually spending (and learn the language for all the various marketing channels, etc., so you sound like you know what you are talking about, too), you will be able to increase your rates with more confidence.

Finally, never be concerned about what you hear others are charging–it’s likely untrue and, if it is true, matching those numbers is a sure way to fail. Next time you do an estimate, do your research and present a higher rate. If the client balks, don’t over-explain–just say that you are confident that your total numbers are well under the 10% of the budget rule-of-thumb number they have for that marketing project.

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Real, Human Lawyering

I have been reading more and more articles about lawyers using AI to do their jobs. This, in my mind, is malpractice. The whole point of lawyering is to think; offloading that to some LLM makes no sense at all.

AI/LLMs aren’t even good at it, actually. There are more cases every day where a lawyer gets sanctioned for submitting a brief with fake citations. These are irritatingly called “AI hallucinations,” something that implies sentience and which the machines do not actually have. Whatever, these errors happen often. The tools produce answers their creators think we want–what will make us pleased. Need a citation to say what your client did was okay but there really isn’t a case that says that? No problem, one will be invented. Ugh!

Why use a tool when it can’t even do what it is supposed to with any accuracy and without legitimacy?

I won’t. In fact, I feel confident in saying I will NEVER use AI in my practice. I got rid of my Microsoft 365 subscription when it forced Copilot into its tools. I turned off Apple Intelligence. I am now running my practice using tools that reside on my devices, not the “cloud” and which do not access any LLM/AI-tool that I am aware of. My bookkeeping, trust accounting, case management…all of it is done offline. Research is necessarily online, but even there I try to use non-AI or the least AI-assisted tools available (this is getting harder but is something lawyers really should be fighting).

And it all works, in my opinion, better.

What you get when you hire me, then, is someone who writes all her own emails, letters, briefs, filings, and even blog posts. My work product is made by me, period. It is my brain that researches the law, the facts, and puts the pieces together to tell your story, argues your case, negotiates and persuades. If I cite a case it is because I have read the actual case and think it applies, not because some LLM has spit out a summary of it to give me what, in its digital mind, is a pleasing answer.

AI/LLMs promise speed and increased work volume–a lawyer can handle more cases with these tools, we are sold. But, in my book, I would rather be a better, more human lawyer than one with a gazillion cases. I am rather like an artisanal worker, like the guys who made and installed some windows in my 100-year-old house: the windows were custom made and fitted with extreme care. Your matters matter to me, and I will always do my best to give each matter the full attention it deserves, not offload my work to some digital tool that, frankly, is incapable of caring.

I care. It is why I became a lawyer in the first place.

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This Isn’t a Humblebrag; It’s a Buttkick

I was reminded by a client recently that what I do actually has changed (at least some of) my clients’ lives for the better. That was very meaningful for me. While of course I need to make a living, I do what I do to try to help creatives be successful (at least financially). When I hear that I have succeeded in helping, that makes me feel great.

For example, I helped fully-fund one client’s retirement accounts; for another, some serious and unexpected home repairs were much less a problem. I’ve had other clients, over the years, tell me I helped pay for vacations or their kids’ college funds. All sorts of things that simply made their lives a bit (or a lot) better.

To be sure, none of these were huge cases. I do not have any million-dollar awards or settlements…. not even close, to be honest. There have been some that have been larger, relatively speaking, but mostly my practice consists of handling what many people would see as “small” cases.

What do I mean by small? I did some math to figure that out. Most single-infringement, pre-litigation settlements in my practice lately (2024-2025) land between $7,500 to $12,0001. In the legal world, those are not big numbers. But for the artists I represent, they are not insignificant. Those numbers mean roughly $4,750 to $7,700 in the client’s pocket2. Per case. Most of my clients find multiple infringements that they ask me to pursue so, it is not at all unusual for a client to net (that is, after paying me), over a year, more than $30K or $40K. Sometimes, much more.

In other words, these cases, although what many people would call small, add up.

The key to these cases, almost always, is that the client has a timely registration. I’ve nagged about that for years, but look at the return! You can register multiple works (photos, 2-D art, blog posts, etc.) with one application and one fee (usually $55-$85, depending on the kind of works). If the work infringed is registered before the infringement at issue started3, then the minimum statutory damages (if the case is litigated) are $750 (up to $30K for non-willful). You also may be awarded attorney’s fees. That statutory (that is, written into the law) reality and the case law supporting the amounts make it possible for me to negotiate settlements like mentioned above, in many cases4.

And yet, I still have difficulty convincing some creators to register their copyrights and go after infringers. Like having that additional revenue isn’t worth the effort. That makes no sense to me. Artists of all stripes work hard to make their work (even when they feel it is easy themselves); why let someone rip it off? It isn’t a compliment to have some business use your work–it is a way to exploit your talent and efforts for its own benefit. As long as we live in a capitalistic society, you will need to make money and your work is valuable. The companies that use your work know that–they chose your work to make money… for themselves. By pursuing infringers you are not begging but rather standing up for yourself, your work, your talent, your own business.

So yeah, it feels great to know that I help people. But it is frustrating to know that I could be doing more for more of you. So please, whether you ever work with me or someone else, get off your butts, register your work, and stand up to the infringers.

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  1. REMEMBER! Previous results are not predictive of future results and each case is its own thing; just because someone got $10,000 for a case, for example, doesn’t mean you or anyone else will for a similar case. ↩︎
  2. The contingency fees (a percentage of the gross settlement or award) I charge are negotiated with each client prior to us working together. ↩︎
  3. Or if the registration is within 3 calendar months of first publication of the work. ↩︎
  4. Certainly not all cases, though. Some infringers will not negotiate, for example, meaning the case must be litigated or dropped by the client. ↩︎
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