Subject: Re: [NEXTEL-1] FCC Lawyers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 08:48:50 EST

In a message dated 12/14/2002 5:30:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> And always do your DD (Due Diligence) on which ever FCC Lawyer you select. 
> The best resources are right at your finger tips.

Fortunately, while there's excellent lawyer search tools 
(http://www.martindalehubble.com/xp/Martindale/home.xml being best for any 
type of lawyers), there are no similar tools for consultants.  In private 
radio, we have quite a few.  Often, they claim to be "licensing experts".  
Unfortunately, too often they are interpreting FCC Rules incorrectly.  Their 
errors wind up being our biggest source of client referral.

The private radio engineers that we have in the industry (Jack, Ray Trott, 
Marc Lockard, etc.) don't make these errors, because they make 
interpretations on engineering rules, and refer judgments on other rules to 
lawyers.  In turn, we look to these engineers to interpret the engineering 
rules.  I probably have had an average of three telephone calls a week over 
the last 18 years with Ray Trott's office, either me calling them or the 
reverse, for just this reason.  Recently, I have enjoyed similar exchanges 
with Jack and Marc.

Part 90 licenses these days are far too valuable to a business to be 
"penny-wise and pound foolish."  Ask Federal Express how much it cost them to 
take down their 900 MHz system in Boston when their license wasn't renewed.  
It is far less costly to make a five minute phone call before the fact 
(lawyers usually don't charge for these short calls for their regular 
clients), then to pay the lawyer (no matter who it is) afterwards to fix it.

Alan Tilles
Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker, P.A.