Had a workers comp case a few years ago at my old firm that then came with me to my new firm where the VA treated this guys arm injury initially. Settled the workers comp case like 2 years ago. Get an email from the VA a few months ago asking for like $2k. Didn't feel like I could win the lien arguments so I asked them to reduce and stroked them a check for like $1,000. Charge it to the game.
Yeah, I mean that's the cross on the billing expert. Inflated or not, they've still got to pay it back from any judgment they get, don't they?
FXG is hosting a 4-hour Virtual Summit, that I have to imagine is similar to WalMart's Bentonville/cult retreat (bertwing ) We've spent 20 minutes giving all of FXG's corporate board wrestling names. Some side splitters Jim "the man who can" Smith Jean "Get it done" Smith Travis "ready and able" Smith But I'm fucking billing for it
I love settlement season. I wish lawyers operated this way all the time instead of the typical bullshit we deal with.
I understand I'm a glorified insurance adjuster for like 95% of cases. I'm largely in the business of giving away money. We can do it the hard way or the easy way. Billing by the hour, it makes no difference to me. I can tell within 2 minutes of talking to a Pltf lawyer whether they're a true believe or reasonable.
Isn't it a little early for settlement season? When we get into December I'll have a few adjusters mention closing out files before the year is over. It's usually not a ton of them though.
so, yes, there may be some companies that open the check book because end of year is 10/01....but what really gets the ball rolling is when the insurance company pulls the end of year files to review the work product of the adjusters that is tied to their pay/raises/promotions. Typically this is early/mid November. As an adjuster, once I knew that the last file pull had happened and no one would be looking/evaluating me based on how I resolved a claim file, I would Loosen the pocket book and be liberal with my initial evaluation so that I could get my inventory down. Then, sometime in early December, the boss man would start authorizing settlement values outside my authority that Jan-Sept/Oct would have never been given with out pushback.
I dropped a "dude, what the fuck?" on the record today during a Zoom depo. Admitted liability FXG case, true-believer Pltf lawyer is just berating my driver on the facts of the accident, whether it's safe to do XYZ, having him agree/disagree with hand-drawn illustrations of the accident. His client has $25K in soft-tissue b/s. Work smarter, not harder, folks.
I spent hours today discussing insurance coverage to make sure a client’s obligations under a contract are appropriately covered, and JFC i hate insurance. For one thing, agents like to send a binder rather than the policy when I request the policy, and perhaps more infuriating there’s never anyone to have a call with who can actually discuss the terms of the “policy” (based on the binder’s terms). As I texted my buddy who is an insurance agent, my level of hatred for insurance lingo is probably similar to his hatred of tax lingo. At the end of the day, both of us want to pay someone else to deal with it and DGAF about how it gets done. 100% of the time I would rather focus on esoteric tax issues, but at least once a year I have to spend an unexpected amount of time talking in circles about insurance. Bullet to the head. /rant
Cross posted from the Covid thread Work at a law firm in Denver. After the stay at home orders ended one partner (super right wing) was basically like everyone back in the office. Myself and one other of the 10 attorneys are masking. The rest of the attorneys/paralegals/support staff...none at all. (This also violates Colorado's mask order) I've been trying to work remotely a few days a week just so I can avoid that disaster. Worked in office full days Monday-Wednesday of this week (was the only attorney who did so), and was working remotely today, and planning to do so tomorrow. Said partner schedules a client meeting for tomorrow at 10am in office. Asks me if I can attend and I respond I was planning to work remotely tomorrow but will absolutely come to the meeting. Get an e-mail back stating that they wish and expect that I will be in the office more frequently. It's infuriating that people don't take this seriously. Is anyone else having to deal with shit like this?
I hate "covid is fake" people but I think you can work in the office with proper protocols and be safe. Now if you're having to be in close personal contact with a bunch of staff and lawyers that aren't following any protocols.... that would be a problem. I have a small firm and trust everyone in my firm and know them well enough that they aren't hanging out at bars on weekends /they know COVID is real and follow our protocols etc. But generally you can sit in your office at work , wear a mask when you have to interact with people, wash your hands a bunch , and be safe. If I had ppl at my firm trying to work remote all the time I wouldn't be cool with it. Just my take.
Our governor issued a mask order. The guidance is if you can close yourself off in an office (with a door) you can remove your mask. In common areas or even cubicles with walls, must be masked. 8/10 lawyers (all who have offices) don't mask, and the entire staff stays in the area outside of offices (cubicles/kitchen/conference rooms/walkways through the office) without masks
I think I take COVID seriously. We’ve got a mask order. I wear one in any meetings. I wear one if I’m getting right up on somebody. But I don’t put it on to walk to the copier. I can’t imagine wearing it all day in the office.
I don't wear a mask to talk to my paralegal who I trust isn't being a moron about things. I wear a mask to talk to anyone that comes in from out of the office be it potential client, client, opposing counsel, etc.
One of my partners worked remotely for a really long time. We finally sat him down and said this isn’t going to work.
We wear masks in all public areas. You take it off in your office only. Every meeting is zoom. You don’t enter anyone’s office without a mask.
Well no one besides another associate and me actually wears masks. We have 11 attorneys and 25 staff. The managing partner is a super right winger and most of the folks follow his lead. The fact that people literally violate state law every day (because our mask orders are state law)frustrates me. It'd be nice to have your circumstances where people are responsible. I think our national covid numbers show people cant do that
If he’s not meeting with clients, and he wasn’t, he definitely wasn’t getting all of his work done. But more importantly, we have a lot of walk-in traffic, and that meant he was not taking any portion of that workload.
I go back to what I said in here when this all broke out, it's really hard to tell if someone is working hard if they aren't in the office.
Do people literally walk into your office and become clients? No phone calls in advance? Do people do that?
If the work product is good and things are getting done, who cares how hard they're working. Although that's sort of a tautology if working hard = getting things done.
For staff, maybe. For attorneys, not really. Just look at what they‘ve billed and collected. My firm crushed its budget this year with 90% of our attorneys and staff working remotely.
For a straight insurance defense firm maybe you could get away with it. But I basically do no billable work and I'm straight contingency. Some potential clients refuse to do zoom conference or telephonic conferences and want an in person consultation. We'd be losing business if we didn't meet them in person at the office. I've found older people are more likely to want an in person conference. For family law and criminal defense lawyers, they rely a lot on in person potential client consultations and retainers of $2,000-$5,000 in volume to make money. I know one of my partners gets a decent amount of DUI clients to do docusign contracts, pay over the phone, and telephonic conferences, but I think my partner that does family law mostly gets money through in person consultations. If they were doing all remote work I'd have no clue how hard they are working. I see weekly fees brought in through internal reports. I'm not sure their money would be near as good if we were all remote. When the pandemic first started their money was wayyyyyy down.
We don’t do insurance defense, but your points make sense. You’d have no idea if your contingency partners are working until you’re super deep in the hole. I’d definitely want to be in the office (with precautions) in that scenario. On the other hand, it’s easy for us (a large national firm) to track performance and dollars in the door because the questions are: (1) are attorneys billing to paying clients and (2) are relationship partners collecting from those clients? Our biggest worry at the start of the pandemic was whether clients would start slow paying and what that would do to cash flow. It ended up not being an big issue since we have enough diversity in our practices and clients that the slower groups were buoyed by the groups that got hot (e.g., healthcare).
Should I ask this defense expert doctor who hasn’t seen a patient since 2016 why he is wearing a lab coat
I feel the need to briefly vent about an issue I keep running into lately: I fucking hate when someone in the Plaintiff’s bar gets some new strategy idea then goes around giving speeches about it at marketing events, leading to a bunch of other plaintiff lawyers trying to copy it without thinking. The current issue is suddenly in every med mal case I have there is a claim that my client committed fraud by over-billing the patient. First off, unless you’re paying purely out of pocket, you have no standing to make a fraud claim. That’s between the doctor and the payer. Second, I don’t give a flying fuck what the “charges” are on the bill, the issue is what the doctor accepted as payment. Goddamnit, it’s not that complicated and yet I find myself going into court (via Zoom anyway) at least once a month on motions for summary judgment or motions in limine to get these stupid fucking claims bounced.
I've never done that and it seems like that's a big waste of time and distraction from the actual issues. These cases are tough enough to win when you are focusing on the merits themselves. Why poke around on the periphery? Go for the jugular and the meat of the matter. If you think he committed fraud and overbilled and want to do something about it then turn that over to the DA or an AUSA etc. Disclaimer: I am completely ignorant on issues of fraud, white collar crime, criminal aspects of medical billing and insurance or how civil RICO works etc.
Defense expert agrees that my client was hurt as a result of the wreck and that her medical timeline was reasonable ok thanks pimp
Disagreed with the bills but didn’t provide any support why other than just his opinion they were overpriced that will get struck
is Texas the wild west again? I've never had an expert witness offer an opinion such as bills were overpriced without having some sort of literature etc to support that conclusion. Wish I practiced in TX where apparently the defense lawyers and defense experts all suck ass
Asked him what his supporting evidence was and he was like well I practiced 20 years ago and talked to friends oh ok I don’t think that will cut it p
Developer client just copied me on an email to another developer (long story). The title of the email was "Cease to exist." In the text, he demanded that they "cease to exist in perpetuity." Dude demanded eternal damnation.
Ive made a foray into real estate investing with some friends that have been doing it for 10 years. I love lawyers now. This elderly homeowner I am dealing with (I am working with the daughter) is in foreclosure from both a hard money lender and her HOA. When the hard money lender gave her the loan, he made her put the house in an LLC. House is worth 400k. She owes 100k to the lender, 20k to the HOA, 20k in taxes. We made a cash deal to buy her out of it. Turns out the 100k she owed to the lender she tried to pay back with bad checks (long story, but the reasons why all this happened and the checks were issued was very predatory). He filed for treble damages and got a final judgment (300k), then got a charging order against her interest in the llc and it sold at public auction to the plaintiff. Now he owns the LLC that holds title outright. The homeowner is fuckedddddd.
I have an other side of the v dec action coverage case where I filed some counterclaims on the insured’s behalf. I just won the most decisive judgment from a bench I’ve ever seen. He lit the bad faith/breach of contract claims on fire. Fun playing plaintiff for a minute.
I've almost worked through all my domestic cases now , I think I'm down to 5 . I had 2 contempt trials last week on back to back days. I'm telling you , you have to prep for this stuff like crazy. I had police officers subpoenaed , multiple other witnesses under subpoena, body cam footage from certain incidents involving the police. I was accused of being a vindictive lawyer in open court by the defendant in a post divorce contempt trial , I was accused of defamation, I was told that when this litigation is over they are going after me personally. For what , I have no clue. Bottom line, I went 2 for 2 in having defendants found in contempt. In the first hearing the judgment included inter alia $14,000 in attorneys fees to be paid to my client. In the second hearing , which was the next day in a different case, the judge also found defendant in willful contempt and ordered, among other things, GPS monitoring during visitation and limited visitation. The defendant in that case admitted to lying under oath to the judge about 5 times over the course of 2 hearings, and lying probably 20 times during her deposition. Also admitted to being in contempt of a court order probably 50 times. I had her on surveillance breaking a court order multiple times then asked her about it during her depo, she lied about it over and over. After her deposition I then produced the surveillance and hit her with a motion for contempt and sanctions and her lawyer dumped her. Then she got another lawyer right before the hearing last week. That all was fun but I still can't wait to get the domestic cases down to 0.
I have a damn good tractor trailer case where the insurance company went into receivership. It's a total mess and there's basically no insurance money anywhere, and I'll get pennies on the dollar from the receivership, if I get anything at all. I keep up with the receivership proceedings and the receiver is suing the managers of this insurance company, related entities, shell companies, etc. for rampant fraud in running this company. For example, the managers embezzled $500,000 and lost it all "through a high-risk crypto currency investment." All in all, like $40 million has basically disappeared.
we have a similar situation where i received word that an ins co in tx is going into receivership soon but apparently are still cutting checks for cases that aren't in lit while their in house law firm has been told to cease all activities. we are settling all of those cases fast as f. had a case with windhaven ins that went into receivership and we went to mediation, have a signed mediated settlement agreement and release and six months later are still being told to fist ourselves. fun