No, we're in agreement. Obviously you can't turn a scumbag into Mother Teresa, but you can make them better than they were. Part of what we get paid to do is to not just accept and swallow the case's warts.
Mark Lanier tells a story about how he said he didn’t like his client and he is sure the jury didn’t but that it was irrelevant to the case and he got $$$$$$$
Part of the reptile method for client depo prep is to get them to talk about whether they feel guilty about the incident in question even if it wasn't their fault. Well I've never had a single damn plaintiff feel some sort of guilt for the injury. I guess maybe if you had a dead child and you felt like somehow you could have done more for them or something. But I've tried to do this with several clients and none of them felt guilty.
I spent a ton of time with one client prepping her and then she totally bombed by direct exam at trial . Jury killed us.
I may have told this story before on here, but I don’t recall. A couple of years ago I very reluctantly went to trial on a med mal case with terrible damages, a very tough liability defense and a horrible witness for a client. A nice guy for sure, but impossible to control. Plaintiff wouldn’t take policy limits because they claimed the insurance company was in bad faith and they stood to obtain a multi-million dollar verdict. In preparation for trial the carrier has me hire one of those professional witness prep services who spends 8 hours with the doc over two days in addition to the countless hours I spent with him. Well, the second the doc gets on the stand at trial he breaks every imaginable rule drilled into him about how to testify and at one point tells the jury that he can personally cure cancer by prescribing certain combinations of vitamins. I felt like vomiting on the spot though I kept a straight face. In the end, the jury came back with a defense verdict within two hours. Plaintiff’s counsel spent so much time attacking my client and insulting him that it became totally irrelevant to the jury because they got tired of hearing the insults.
Damn that sucks for the plaintiff lawyers. But sounds like they did it to themselves. Some lawyers just can't help themselves.
I think one of the biggest take aways I've learned from trying cases and being in court in general is that you don't have to beleaguer any of the points. Juries don't want to hear you rehash shit over and over that has already been said. As lawyers we feel like we have to cover every point. Juries are smarter than most people give them credit for. Sometimes you can even make a point by not even spelling it out for them, they will pick up on it. All of us probably have a habit of saying things multiple times that have already been said. A lot of times less is more. Now actually remembering to do this and implementing it on the fly in trial is difficult.
Are you in Alabama or Mississippi? Do they let jurors ask questions of witnesses in your jurisdiction? They allow jury questions here, and I find it extremely helpful in preparing for subsequent witnesses.
I assumed that prepping clients was 90% of a plaintiff attorneys job. A good plaintiff is worth a huge premium over a dipshit or liar.
He's in Mississippi. In Alabama, it depends on the judge. I don't really care for it, because I feel like they assume somebody objected to their question if the judge does not allow them to ask it.
The negotiating tactics of some attorneys in "Big Law" (international firms with 500+ attorneys) are interesting to me. Typically, with non-Big Law firms, my clients will negotiate a term sheet with the counterparty and we then paper the transaction using reasonable terms. The documents then go back and forth a few times with each party making reasonable and understandable changes to reps and warranties or liability limitations, etc. and the deal gets done and everyone gets rich. I've been helping two different clients negotiate and implement a couple of fairly large deals (a large sale and a joint venture) over the past few weeks where the counterparties are represented by lawyers in Big Law that I've never worked with before. One on the east coast, the other on the west coast. East coast guy is is making somewhat aggressive revisions to documents clearly without consulting his client (and then "reserving the right for comment by my client"), and then also agreeing to certain language only to completely overhaul it 2 weeks later. The approach of west coast guy is basically, "fuck the term sheet, let's throw the most outrageous and heavy handed shit into the document and make as many one-sided revisions as possible, and then negotiate word choice minutiae where my client benefits most.". I totally get it -- let's throw it against the wall, see what sticks, and then walk away on top. But fuck is it exhausting and both approaches are about to blow up both deals. The latter point makes me wonder how often Big Law attorneys blow negotiations on behalf of their clients, because both of the ones I am working with are about to kill the deals because we're up against drop dead dates and they can't focus on the big picture to get the deal done. /blog
Yeah that would have been cool. I really, really enjoyed every history class I took at Alabama. Some great professors there
My mother in law is putting the full court press on me to move down south and take over her plaintiffs practice and after working insurance defense my only thought is that I should have taken her up on the offer day 1 and spared myself the suffering
Eh, it's a tough question for me. I had a brief two-year stint in the plaintiff world when I was much younger in my career and looking back on it I realized I wasn't ready for the business side of plaintiff's work. I was young and naive, and doing purely med mal defense against mostly pretty high end plaintiff firms, so I had a skewed view of the practice. Most of the cases I worked on were big and had hefty settlements. When I got an offer at a PI firm I jumped at it, but they didn't want to do med mal because of the expense and I had not built any sort of referral network before making the jump. I was miserable at that firm and realized after a couple of years that I didn't really plan that move very well nor did I adjust quickly enough to the business. I've been back at the defense game for many years now and to the extent that I think about trying plaintiff's work again it's more from a quality of life perspective. If you have the right referral network you can bust your ass and be successful, but not necessarily be so tied to the strict hourly lifestyle I would love to be able to take a couple of weeks off for vacation and it's just not feasible in my current set-up. That being said, building a referral network isn't exactly easy and there are a ton of starving plaintiff lawyers out there.
This is a major point in my firm. You make your point on paper. At trial, you basically lead the horse to water. Let the judge (in our cases) come to the conclusion we want. So much harder to sway people away from you when they feel they arrived at the right conclusion on their own rather than them feeling like you sold them on something.
Defense lawyers-I often go through this regarding the testimony of a police officer and I'd like your opinion. If the officer is going to say something that is going to help the plaintiff's case, does it help you get authority if the plaintiff takes the officers deposition? From a strategic standpoint, the officer isn't going to be considered unavailable for trial purposes, I'd probably be calling him live at trial anyways. However, if you hear his testimony during the deposition, and its bad for the defense, does that make it worth the plaintiff taking the officer's deposition? I suppose I could get an affidavit, but seeing the officer and hearing that testimony seems more impactful. And theoretically if the officer tries to waffle at trial then I'd have his previous deposition testimony already locked in, even if waffling is less than optimal.
I have a case where a dump truck ran a red light and smashed my client who was driving through a green light at an intersection in a school bus. It flipped the school bus around counter clockwise and into stopped cars at an intersection. Thankfully she had no kids on the bus at the time. The dump truck driver says he couldn't stop at the red light. The police report says the dump truck's tires were bald and the axle was broken. I bring up maintenance issues in the complaint. Defense lawyer says he's looked into it and the tires were not bald and the axle was broken in the wreck. He wants to fast track the case, get get me to drop the maintenance issues , and just get the case resolved. Even if the axle was broken in the wreck (he says there was no way it was broken prior to the wreck as the vehicle would not have been driveable), if the driver testifies that he couldn't stop the vehicle, and the officer testifies that the tires were bald, it at least puts the question in the juries mind and is a bad look for the defense.
Are police reports admissible in Mississippi? It's been a minute since I did auto defense work, but in Florida police reports are inadmissible (unless it's a vehicular homicide case). You might still get lucky if the officer happens to remember the case and/or you can refresh his recollection with the report. I'd speak to the officer first.
Last day in my job. My boss has been trashing me to any defense attorney who will listen (and even those who won't). The guy has worked maybe 30 days per year for the 3.5 years I've worked here, and he's pretending like he's "energized and ready to get back in the office and get some work done." lmao Leaving jobs is fun.
Hey guys, I have a family member looking for some advice. Situation: my mother in law took my sister in law's german sheppard because her and her fiance's place wouldn't allow the dog. Her neighbors grand daughter comes over to bring her cookies and the dog attacks her. She ends up with a broken arm and gash on her leg. Mom of grand daughter is now suing my MIL. The dog was apparently listed on her home owners insurance (my future BIL is her agent and I'm pretty sure he committed insurance fraud to make this happen but thats neither here nor there) I am assuming that it would be dumb as fuck for my MIL not to get an attorney, but my SIL and her fiance say she doesn't need one. Any advice for best steps to take in this situation would be appreciated.
I'll probably leave early, but for the most part I am doing everything 100% keeping things cool from my end, because I want to have clean hands in the whole thing in the coming months. I'm almost certain I'm going to have to file suit against him for like $32,000 based on information I've obtained. I want to be unimpeachable when it comes time. I'm playing the long game here. That being said, if truth slips out around the bar that he's been sleeping with his paralegal for the past five years despite being married with four kids, that would be a shame. It would also be a shame if the bar found out he's an investor in a pre-settlement loan funding company where he occasionally send his clients for loans...
I’ve always wondered how much self dealing goes on with those loan companies, medical funding, MSA specialists, etc. I’m sure there’s a ton.
Some retirement benefits that he alleges I am not owed despite two years of telling me I would receive them. It's why I was asking if anyone in here is an ERISA attorney.
My former boss probably owed me between 100-135k from unpaid case bonuses and I hated his guts and one of the best decisions I’ve made is to just let it go versus being tied up in litigation for 2-3 years with someone I detest
a couple of chiropractors approached me a year ago about investing in a pain clinic they wanted to start up. they wanted me to invest like $100k and then send all of my pain patients there. their pitch was we are going to get 10 lawyers to all put in $100k and start this deal up. was like hmm sounds interesting good luck. i want to come back as someone who owns oasis. $600 loans that are all paid back at over $1k within a year or two. what a racket.
Yea, I hear you. I'm still not certain how I'm going to approach it. He did just come into my office and drop $5k in cash on my desk with a stack of emails from his father in law (who handles our retirement accounts) saying that I am not entitled to those retirement benefits he previously told me I was entitled to. I told him that I don't agree that I'm not entitled to those benefits, and I'm not accepting $5k in exchange for such an admission. However, if he wants to leave $5k sitting on my desk for me to have separate from that, that's an entirely separate issue. Fucking snakes, man.
the fact that they are approaching you tells me they have had other lawyers invest with them before, which is alarming.
They actually told me they had several commitments from lawyers to invest in it I want to keep my law license
They'll see right through it. My former boss has apparently been trashing me but I've received nothing but compliments and "good lucks" from every lawyer I've talked to.
I imagine you could go to a big shop plaintiff's practice (where you don't necessarily need a big referral network on day one) and do very, very well handling their med-mal cases.
Lawyer: if you make a demand for X I will talk with the adjuster and we’ll meet you demand by the end of the week Just got a fax for 80% of what I demanded Awesome.