I am at a crossroads. This week I am crossing the Rubicon. I am moving my Dean & Kings Legal Public Relations Office from Ermita, Manila to my old house in Quezon City.
I’ve agonized over this decision for three years now following my heart angioplasty operation. It is hard to leave our present office address at Maria Orosa Street, Ermita Manila – an address known mostly to lawyers and litigants as the heartland of the judicial system in the Philippines.
This block sandwiched between Maria Orosa and Padre Faura Streets is the home of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the Court of Appeals and the Department of Justice. Thus, the Supreme Court justices – the final arbiters on whether a jailed criminal is to live or die – are called the “gods of Padre Faura.”
The media gave them such a title because here in the Philippines – or here on earth – they have the final say on all legal cases and they decide the fate of people, corporations and actions of the government. Once they decree that the decision is “final and executory,” there is nothing else one can do about it. Right or wrong, your fate is sealed with their decision.
People who lost cases here like Lauro Vizconde say they will just make their final appeal before the supreme of all courts and the highest of all judges in Heaven!
Thus, this place has been my world for five years now. About thrice a week, I go to my third floor office facing the tree-lined Court of Appeals building. A consultant even placed a telescope in our window to check on who goes in and out of the court. Of course there is no need for that because my associates can go in and out of the SC, the CA and the DOJ, where most of the justices, prosecutors and their staff are our friends.
But the stress of doing legal public relations work, the media battles to explain complicated cases to the public; and the up to four hours travel time from my Quezon City house to Manila and back have taken so much toll on my health. Being the one who deals mostly with clients, I also find myself spending more time in the Senate in Pasay, Congress in Quezon City and hotels in The Fort, Taguig; Makati and Ortigas.
My days are usually spend crisscrossing Congress in Quezon City, The Fort in Taguig, then the office in Manila and back to Quezon City at night. Although I don’t drive, the traffic stress can get you, more so when it rains; and floods and people block the roads. All these make you feel you are wasting your life on the road!
Thus, with my associates doing the legal stuff, we decided to move our nerve-center to Quezon City where I have converted one floor of my three-story house into a far bigger office space than the one we are renting in Ermita. This is a practical move as my firm expands its number of personnel as we hire IT-experts to help us fully go into the digital public relations work; and effect the convergence of the old media (print, radio, television) and the new media (Internet, social networking sites etc) disciplines.
We also saw how technology has afforded me and my associates – who still keep satellite offices in Manila -- the chance to work from separate places, with paper-less transactions, iCloud, video-conference, portable scanners and printers; and 2-terrabyte WD external hard drives; the handy Apple iPad etc making office work so easy to do whether you are in the car, the beach or in Timbuktu.
So, this month, we at Dean & Kings are not only fully embracing digital PR, but we are living it as well with our virtual office! Well, we still have our staff, researchers, lawyer-consultants; and IT-experts in Quezon City, but most of the time we are up there in the clouds and working in the virtual world!
Thus, we leave the “gods of Padre Faura” to be with the digital gods of Mt. Olympus!
I’ve agonized over this decision for three years now following my heart angioplasty operation. It is hard to leave our present office address at Maria Orosa Street, Ermita Manila – an address known mostly to lawyers and litigants as the heartland of the judicial system in the Philippines.
This block sandwiched between Maria Orosa and Padre Faura Streets is the home of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the Court of Appeals and the Department of Justice. Thus, the Supreme Court justices – the final arbiters on whether a jailed criminal is to live or die – are called the “gods of Padre Faura.”
The media gave them such a title because here in the Philippines – or here on earth – they have the final say on all legal cases and they decide the fate of people, corporations and actions of the government. Once they decree that the decision is “final and executory,” there is nothing else one can do about it. Right or wrong, your fate is sealed with their decision.
People who lost cases here like Lauro Vizconde say they will just make their final appeal before the supreme of all courts and the highest of all judges in Heaven!
Thus, this place has been my world for five years now. About thrice a week, I go to my third floor office facing the tree-lined Court of Appeals building. A consultant even placed a telescope in our window to check on who goes in and out of the court. Of course there is no need for that because my associates can go in and out of the SC, the CA and the DOJ, where most of the justices, prosecutors and their staff are our friends.
But the stress of doing legal public relations work, the media battles to explain complicated cases to the public; and the up to four hours travel time from my Quezon City house to Manila and back have taken so much toll on my health. Being the one who deals mostly with clients, I also find myself spending more time in the Senate in Pasay, Congress in Quezon City and hotels in The Fort, Taguig; Makati and Ortigas.
My days are usually spend crisscrossing Congress in Quezon City, The Fort in Taguig, then the office in Manila and back to Quezon City at night. Although I don’t drive, the traffic stress can get you, more so when it rains; and floods and people block the roads. All these make you feel you are wasting your life on the road!
Thus, with my associates doing the legal stuff, we decided to move our nerve-center to Quezon City where I have converted one floor of my three-story house into a far bigger office space than the one we are renting in Ermita. This is a practical move as my firm expands its number of personnel as we hire IT-experts to help us fully go into the digital public relations work; and effect the convergence of the old media (print, radio, television) and the new media (Internet, social networking sites etc) disciplines.
We also saw how technology has afforded me and my associates – who still keep satellite offices in Manila -- the chance to work from separate places, with paper-less transactions, iCloud, video-conference, portable scanners and printers; and 2-terrabyte WD external hard drives; the handy Apple iPad etc making office work so easy to do whether you are in the car, the beach or in Timbuktu.
So, this month, we at Dean & Kings are not only fully embracing digital PR, but we are living it as well with our virtual office! Well, we still have our staff, researchers, lawyer-consultants; and IT-experts in Quezon City, but most of the time we are up there in the clouds and working in the virtual world!
Thus, we leave the “gods of Padre Faura” to be with the digital gods of Mt. Olympus!
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