Had one of my treating doctors does scheduled at 10am tomorrow. OC calls at 5:20 claiming she wasn’t served and had no notice but was randomly on the district clerk website and saw we had it scheduled for tomorrow We eserved the notice and emailed her a copy that she didn’t open This was the first time I considered not cutting someone a break, but eventually canceled the depo
I do agree I need to try more cases. My goal for this year is to try 2 jury trials all the way. Hopefully can do more than that. I feel like in super conservative counties that is much more easily said than done. Going to trial on MIST MVAs in our counties is like being on the ground in Verdun. A meat grinder as Dan Carlin describes it. Pointless slaughter.
I've got a conspiracy case. My guy is stopped in Houston. I need to know when the canine arrived. do you know anyone that can translate these "message log reports" for me?
Around the holidays, I ran into an old friend from high school who was accompanied by the girl below. She seemed nice. I can't speak whatsoever to her ability as a lawyer, but she clerked for the 11th Circuit so presumably she is not dumb. https://www.agricolalaw.com
Hear hear. Had a decent year last year, particularly after collecting on our trial verdict. I've got a monster mediation scheduled in March with 3 carrier involved and 10+ million in coverage. Could be a really good start to the year.
It's a pretty small town without much crime. Most do criminal work for the purpose of getting civil work.
Man, I can't imagine being a solo practitioner. Just stresses me out beyond all belief thinking about it.
Hanging a shingle fresh out of law school would be scary af. Going out on your own with an established book of business doesn't seem all that bad.
Pretty tight. The harder you work the more money you make Downside is hard to take vacation. I took 4 days off last year and worked most weekends
Just nice to be able to walk down the hall and ask other lawyers for their opinion on something and to have other people ready/able to cover for you. I can only imagine the amount of malpractice that fresh out of lawschool solos commit.
I like having my own firm. I hate how much goes towards overhead. Seems like from the research I've done it is healthy/standard for a firm owner to take home 40% of the fees he earns. So if you make 500k in fees you're only bringing home 200k. And it's hard to make 500k in fees a year in competitive markets.
i dont look at is as a %. i have a fixed amount for overhead and anything over that i keep. i'll probably make less this year than i did last year because of advertising tho. good thing about plaintiff work is that you get a lot of the money you spend back.
I have a friend who did this, another who did it after working elsewhere for less than a year, and another who bought a practice fresh out. All seem to be doing well to very well but I was terrified for them.
Spoiler The past few months noticed my 80 year old uncle’s memory hasn’t been as sharp as it was and he mentioned a 55 year old gf. He’s been a whore his entire life so I give the basic “be careful”. He lives several states away from me. His best friend and military buddy calls and tells me he’s visiting my uncle. The house is a mess. Apparently my uncle has purchased a car for her, a $6,000 Christmas spree on his CC, and at least 20K of straight cash homie from his bank is gone on top of it. She’s apparently a drug addict and has a husband in prison. Military buddy gives me my uncle’s bar buddy’s number and my uncle has apparently given loans to the workers there too. Bar buddy thinks she’s gotten much more than what I posted above, closer to $80,000 to $100,000. My uncle’s mental condition has worsened and he didn’t even recognize my voice today and he kept forgetting who I was even after me telling him. Basically, what’s the process like to become his guardian? This may be complicated as he may fight us. I want her ass and anyone else involved, have laws been broken? Is the money gone forever? I’m angry. Thanks for listening.
varies from state to state. In Mississippi you'd need two docs to say he's not capable of handling his own decisions. You'd have to file a petition for guardianship in the chancery court , set it for a hearing, and go to the hearing. At the hearing you'd have to have medical records or letters from the two docs saying uncle can't handle his own affairs. Court would also want testimony regarding background and would want to vet you under oath. Assuming all that went well an order would be issued making you the guardian and him the ward. Then we also have this form called "Letters of Guardianship" and "Oath of Gaurdian" that you'd have to have the court issue. Banks would want the letters of guardianship and a copy of the order opening the guardianship before they'd let you mess with the bank accounts. You'd have to file an annual accounting regarding the state of his assets. I think that's about it. You may be able to do this without a lawyer but I think the vast majority of people use lawyers for this.
So I think opposing counsel has fallen for a trap I laid. We received notice of the entry of a final decree on the via an email from the judge saying the decree has been filed. I recognized that once the email was sent so I didn't serve the decree on counsel until the next day thinking maybe he misses it and files stuff late. Yesterday was his deadline for a motion to reconsider and he missed it. I believe he is going to file an untimely motion on Monday, which won't delay his time for filing a notice of appeal. The question I'm facing is do I raise the untimliness of the motion in my return to it? If I do, that tips him off and he can file his notice of appeal in a timely manner to cure. I don't believe there is any chance the judge modifies the ruling on the merits. If I don't raise the timeline, he'll argue that I waived the argument and his appeal was timely. I don't think the timeliness argument can be waived because 1) the ten day deadline for the motion can't be extended even by agreement or court order, and 2) the timeliness of the notice of appeal is a subject matter jurisdiction issue. Anyone ever dealt with this issue or have any thoughts on it?
Never dealt with it, but at a glance 1) If he files the motion late on Monday, do you have to respond and raise the issue or will/can the Court just reject or dismiss the motion for being untimely? 2) is it a certainty he waits until the last minute to file his appeal?
If you don't raise it then (1) you are confident he won't prevail on the motion to reconsider so you don't have much exposure (2) if he doesn't file his appeal within 30 days he is screwed regardless of whether you raised the issue of an untimely motion to reconsider. Here a motion to reconsider filed within 10 days tolls the 30 day period for filing an appeal. His motion would be considered a rule 60 motion because it was filed more than 10 days out. Rule 60 motions do not toll the 30 day appeal period. Not sure if that helps or answers your question.
30 days. I have no doubt the motion will be denied, but I'm going to respond to the substantive aspects if he files the motion Monday. He may not wait to file the appeal, but (bc of trial schedule) I feel like I can get the judge to push back our response date until a few days before his deadline to appeal. That's essentially how it works here and why I think I don't have to raise it to preserve the argument. I'm about 90% confident on the law. My concern about a potential waiver argument is I've seen our appellate courts do some strange things to get around outright dismissal of an appeal, so would prefer not give them grounds to do so if I can avoid it.
yah I would never feel great about getting an appeal completely dismissed. But if they straight up don’t file a notice of appeal within 30 days you’d have to have at least a 50% chance of getting it dismissed.