Carpentry and Woodworking - Lap Joints

I am new to woodworking but I find that I enjoy it. I am making a dresser for my son. I am making lap joints in a piece of pine that is 1 1/2 inches wide. the joint I am making takes 1 inch of the board and is 3/8 of an inch deep. Is there an easy way to make these cuts. I am using a circular saw and a chissel know. It works but it is very time consuming and not a perfect science. Since i cant cut all the way through I cant use a table saw and a dado blade.

I may be just getting old and slow (some of my friends will vouch for that!) but I can't visualize the problem. I commonly use a dado setup on my table saw to make lap joints in construciton. When I built a cabinet for my saw (face frame construction) I used the table saw/dado combination to cut out the entire frame.

The problem may be in your use of the term lap joint. If it is a true lap joint, that is, a crosscut across the whole one and a half inch width, I agree with George that it is not a big deal to simply set a dado blade or even your saw blade to 3/8" depth and use your miter gauge to plow out the 1" length. If instead you mean the cut goes ACROSS THE WIDTH only 1" of the one and a half inches, then it's not a true lap joint and I can see where you have a dilemma. If the latter is your case, you might consider setting a router to a 3/8" depth, use the router's edge guide to plow out most of the material and finish it up with a chisel.