As the business grew and greater numbers of persons signed our contracts and received their honorarium of a dollar a month, a constantly increasing percentage of criminal or semi-criminal cases came to the office.

Of course there was no better criminal lawyer than Gottlieb in the city, and before long the criminals outnumbered our civil clients.

At the same time I noticed a tendency on the part of the civil business to fall off, the reason for this probably being that my partner was known only as a criminal attorney.

Now, I began to dislike the idea of paying a dollar a month to induce people to refer business to us, and indeed I found that the disbursement of five or six hundred dollars every four weeks for this purpose was no trifling matter.

Accordingly I decided to try letting them go for a month or so, but business fell off to such an alarming extent that I almost immediately resumed the contract system, merely reducing its proportions.
In addition to our "dollar-a-monthers," as we called them, Gottlieb employed half a dozen professional "runners," whose sole occupation it was to hunt down unfortunate persons injured accidentally and secure their cases.