DOING BUSINESS WITH ATTORNEYS - NOT IN THIS CASE.

At least thirty years ago, my Houston business partner and I were in the business of converting large homes into apartments -- duplexes, triplexes and the like.  We did extremely well.

Our clientele was primarily comprised of young professionals.  We referred to them as the avaunt garde.  They weren't ready for home ownership, and they wanted to live near downtown and near the restaurants, bars, nightclubs, art galleries and the like.

Our properties were in great demand, and they always commanded higher rents than standard garden apartments.

But it didn't take us long to find out that leasing to attorneys was often a bad idea.  They took their lease as a challange to see how they could tight rope the provisions to keep from falling into the fire of default.  As tenants, most of them were nightmares.  They required enormous amounts of our staff time.

They'd pay late, for an example, and many would do their best to get evicted rather than pay the last couple of months of their rent when they were ready to move.  The Justices of the Peace would more often than not rule that we had to compromise on what was owed us.  IF it was three months, for an example, the judge would insist that we forgive at least a month's rent.

We grew to hate attorneys.  Finally, my partner said, "Let's stop renting to attorneys starting right now," so we did.  And it was great fun.  When one of them would fill out our leasing application and list his profession as "attorney," our leasing manager would say, "I'm sorry, we don't lease to attorneys."

Of course they'd hit the ceiling, and begin their mumbo jumbo as to why the law required that we not discriminate against them.  Our stock answer was, "The classification to which you are a member is known as "attorney."  The law does not allow us to discriminate against people because of their race, creed or national origin.  Until attorney is added, we don't lease to them."

I hadn't thought about that in recent years.  A current business situation reminded me of our former good judgement.