March 2020 Update on JPG Legal

Things are good, but also weird here at JPG Legal. We’re busier than we’ve ever been, by far, and we have two new attorneys starting here soon, but they’re not starting until early and mid-April, respectively.

What makes this weird is that I’m not sure if the new attorneys will even be able to come to the office to get oriented if the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) situation continues to get worse here in New York City. I hesitate even to write about the virus because whatever I write will likely seem like old news in as little as two or three days.

I woke up on Monday, March 9 (two days ago) and noticed that the tone of the news had changed drastically over the weekend regarding coronavirus. Later that day I picked up a few USB headsets and gave the team the option to work from home every day until further notice. I’m still coming in every day because I live within walking distance, but everybody else takes the subway to get here, so it seems best to let them stay put.

Our norm was already to have people come in only three days a week anyway, and we give everybody powerful Macbook Pros, so the transition to full-remote is so minor that I really had no excuse for making people come in. As you can see in the tweet below, my mom is proud of me for letting everybody work from home!

I’m also supposed to fly with my fiancée to Mexico City a week from today to make arrangements for the wedding we’re planning to have there in February 2020, but we have no idea whether things will escalate enough in the next week to make flying there a bad idea, if not impossible. This is, of course, a relatively minor issue and we both feel very lucky that this is more or less the extent of our worries. It seems like in a week or two, the U.S. will get as bad as Italy is now, and then worse.

This post was not supposed to be about COVID-19; it was supposed to be an update on our revenue last year and the past few months. We finished last year at about $1.1 million in revenue, and February 2020 was our best month ever so far at about $143,500, roughly $20,000 more than our previous best month ever. March is somehow on track to be even better than February. I’ll probably do a post in the near future with some numbers and graphics.

So far, our business doesn’t seem to have been hurt by the pandemic. At this point, even though it may not be a good idea to say it in front of potential clients, we’re a bit understaffed here and I wish the new attorneys could start sooner. I’m working all the time and my backlog just seems to get bigger every weekday, meaning I have to spend all weekend catching up. I don’t really like passing extra work onto the people working for me because I don’t believe people should have to work more than 40 hours a week for a company they don’t own. Hopefully things will be better in a few weeks though.