Law Firm Meets Clients More Than Half Way:
Attorney Sends Paralegal to Client's Home or Office

By Gloria Negri, Boston Sunday Globe February 18, 2001

CITY WEEKLY ROSLINDALE - Frank Clagon Jr. maneuvered the white minibus through the traffic-clogged streets of Boston's neighborhoods with all the skill of the Greyhound bus driver he once was.

A big smile wreathed his face as he welcomed people on board.

"I'm a people person," he said. Clagon, 38, who lives in Dorchester, is lucky to have a genial nature for the job he has held for 1 1/2 years.

Clagon, an investigator and paralegal for Robert K. Rainer, a personal injury attorney based in Revere, spends most of his days listening to the woeful stories of people who feel they've gotten a raw deal.

He is the man behind the wheel and the desk of the Mobile Law Office minibus, an unusual idea that Rainer, also 38, has turned into a profitable enterprise of convenience for clients all over Massachusetts. The minibus started rolling in June 1999.

"I wanted to open some satellite offices, but the costs in the communities where I wanted to reach my clients were so high," said Rainer. "I thought this might be an interesting and provocative way to do it, and to market the business."

Clagon explained, "We go to a client's home or workplace at their convenience for a consultation. I do mostly personal injury cases resulting from auto accidents but do workmen's comp, discrimination, and malpractice cases as well."

Clagon doesn't advise clients, but gathers information and interviews witnesses and then turns the data over to Rainer, who has two offices in Revere and one in New Bedford. Then one of the firm's dozen lawyers works the case.

During downtime on the bus, Clagon said, he often rides around the city so that the public becomes aware of the service by simply seeing the vehicle.

The red lettering on the side of the bus, which has seven cushioned leather seats and a desk, proclaims it "The Mobile Law Office" and includes its Internet address and toll-free number. Rainer also advertises on television and radio.

Not all Rainer's peers like his approach to drumming up clients.

Rainer himself said in a recent Boston Business Journal article that reaction to his rolling law office in the legal fraternity has elicited "disdain to disgust."

How peers react

Still, several lawyers at some ranking Boston law firms said that though they may not approve, there is nothing "improper" about the mobile law office and that Rainer's right to have it is protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

Kathleen O'Donnell, a personal injury lawyer in Lowell and vice president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, said she has "mixed feelings" about the mobile practice. It's the advertising that bothers her most.

"My gut reaction," she said, "is that the impression it creates about lawyers isn't good for the whole profession. I'm not speaking about the van but, in general, how advertising by lawyers is viewed by people. It sort of plays into what they think about lawyers. It's things like that that have caused our reputation to be tarnished."

Yet, she said, such an approach has the approval of both the United States and the Massachusetts Supreme Courts. She also cited the First Amendment.

"There are people out there who say it is very good for consumers," O'Donnell said, "and it's not unheard of for lawyers to go to the homes of people who are unable to go out because of personal injuries."

Soon after the minibus first rolled out, personal injury lawyer Dane M. Shulman, who has been in the business longer than the younger Rainer, complained that the mobile office was parked near his Mattapan office.

"We did and occasionally do still park in Mattapan Square," Rainer said last week. "I respect Mr. Shulman, but his feeling is that all cases are his. There is no reason we can't get along."

Reaction

A spokeswoman at Shulman's office last week said Shulman did not want to comment.

On a recent stormy day, Clagon parked the bus on South Fairview Street, just yards for the home of a new client. The man, wearing a Thomas collar around his injured neck, sat across the desk as Clagon listened and jotted down what the man said about an auto accident.

The client declined to comment publicly, but did say as he was leaving that the bus stopping virtually on his doorstep was "a great convenience."

At the next mobile law firm stop in Boston's Mission Hill, Jacqueline Adams, hobbling with a leg brace because of an ankle break in November, came aboard the bus to talk to Clagon about a hospital malpractice suit involving her mother, who had just died.

"Frank is an excellent investigator," Adams said. "He puts you at ease and really knows his business."

Clagon said he has known the Rainer lawyers, father and son, since childhood and that they trained him as a paralegal.

"I was one of 21 children," he said, "so there were often times when my parents needed a lawyer's advice and we went to Mr. Rainer's father. We were 16 boys and five girls."

Now, Clagon has a 10-year-old child of his own and also works part-time nights as a laborer for the Boston Sewer and Water Department. "I love this job. I love driving. I love the city," he said of his paralegal work.

Originally from North Carolina, Clagon graduated from East Boston High School, where at 6-feet-2-inches tall, he was a star basketball and football player. For about four years after high school, he drove a Greyhound bus between Boston and New York. "I also did some car repos, which could be a very dangerous job," he said.

A churchgoing man who sings in the choir of the Holy Tabernacle Church in Dorchester, Clagon said he always uses kindness with people and with the police who sometimes make him move his van along a city street.

"Kindness will kill a cat," he said with a smile. "You have to understand people. They may come into the van crying. You have to have patience with them. When they feel down, I give them a little spirit to bring them back up. There is no neighborhood I wouldn't go into and I would do it with a smile."

Rainer, after graduating from Brandeis University and Suffolk University Law School, practiced for a time with his father, Ronald H. Rainer of Swampscott, now retired.

Rainer said his firm takes in "about 120 new cases a month and that Frank takes in about half of them."

Similar services elsewhere?

He believes his law office-on-wheels is the only one of its kind in the country. A spokesman for the Massachusetts Bar Association was unaware of any similar service here. An Internet check elicited a "Wills on Wheels" vehicle in Maryland, which visits nursing homes and assisted living sites, and a van in Florida that dispenses legal advice at flea markets.

In addition to the minibus, Rainer has a minivan for cases further away. It is driven by another paralegal named Sam Teperman, 53, of Newton, who, he said, is "a former member of the Russian Army."

Rainer remains sensitive about how some feel about lawyers who advertise. "Lawyers should not be hired based solely on a TV commercial," he said in an article on his Web site reprinted from the Revere Journal. ". . . If you find a particular commercial offensive, call the lawyer and tell him how you feel. Or just change the channel, like I do, during commercials."