FWIW, I was making fun of my own broke self talking about taking the fee. Lol at telling him to quit his equity partnership job at a big law firm over it.
Dude in my law school class: https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/...ff-arrested-on-child-solicitation-charge.html Shocked, to say the least. We weren't close, but I consider him to be a friend.
It's really any kind of contingency arrangement, but that's almost always going to be personal injury. You can't split fees with non-lawyers, though. So, you're SOL on the CPAs.
Fortunately, I don’t have many friends or family calling me about horrific trucking accidents so I don’t worry too much about lost income on referrals.
I wonder how this hole thing happened. LIke he was on some child porn site, started messaging with an undercover agent acting like a kid, and then tried to pay for sex with the undercover agent posing as a kid? Is dude married? Kids?
The dominos are starting to fall and that's changing in some states, but that trend generally hasn't reached the eastern US yet. If I'm still practicing law by the time the change occurs here, I will seriously consider opening a firm with a few CPA buddies. The economies of scale with tax law and tax accounting would be pretty nice, especially in some of the more specialized areas that are both entity structuring and tax modeling intensive (e.g., tax credit finance).
I didn't say quit an equity partnership. I said if it was me, I'd be looking around for a similar situation that doesn't handcuff me when it comes to referral fees.
Nope. Just a coincidental last name. He's from Tennessee. No idea on what happened. Yes, wife and two kids.
He said this is the one time it's happened in his ~20 years of practice. I don't think that referral fees are a major compensation issue for him.
fair. Different mentality. I'm always hunting for referral fees. But I'm also trying to establish myself and an extra 10k on a referral fee makes a decent difference in my yearly income.
Well, good discussion of referral arrangement fellas. Just another chapter in the long history of the Lawyers thread.
The attorney to whom I want to refer this claim agreed to drop his contingent fee to 25%. Hopefully you guys are right about the seven figures and this nets my buddy an extra $80,000.
Who do yall like for a rail road lawyer in Mobile, AL. Just had a good sounding rail road case come in. Was thinking Cunningham Bounds.
I can at least give you an idea about what you're looking at value wise etc if you want to DM me the details when you receive them.
I assume you're talking about a grade crossing case, right? Most FELA stuff goes through the unions. Cunningham Bounds would be where I'd send pretty much any case down there.
Those are tougher cases than they ought to be, but I would imagine that Cunningham Bounds has plenty of experience with them. I know they have the briefing/appellate chops to take on the preemption issues.
If I recall correctly, grade crossing cases are pretty much impossible in Alabama against the railroad since contrib is an absolute defense. I think the rule is that if it's possible to stop at the tracks (even where you might have a green light and have no obligation to do so under the rules of the road) and look and see the train then you can't recover. Maybe there's a case against whoever maintains the crossing (which I assume is also the RR). Or some municipality or county for failing to put up a RR crossing sign. But they're tough.
You have a duty to stop, look, and listen. Failing any one is contrib. But, you can prove wantonness on the part of the RR in certain circumstances, mostly dealing with operation. Signage cases are generally losers.
Someone that has done a good bit of both insurance defense and plaintiff work: who is the worse client: the insurance company or the plaintiff?
Dang one of my comp clients died yesterday or early today after complications from a routine foot procedure that was necessitated by the subject incident. Now I'm having to look into whether that converts it into a death case or the carrier gets off the hook. You would think it wouldn't relieve the carrier from liability but I've heard of wacky things happening when comp clients pass away .
I'm experiencing a level of schadenfreude I didn't know existed. One of my larger clients has national counsel that we have to answer to all the time. They require us to take illogical positions, very much "protecting the brand" rather than actually defending a case on the merits. It's infuriating. We just don't respond to corporate deposition requests, object to EVERY discovery request (no matter how innocuous), and otherwise obstruct the discovery process as much as we can until the case settles. There is one female lawyer at this national firm that's assigned to our area that I primarily work with. To say we despise each other would be putting it mildly. We fucking hate each other. This client just got popped with sanctions in FL. Come to learn they really fucked around in discovery based on this same lawyer's advice. During the corporate deposition, when asked any question on liability, the 30b6 deponent would hand Pltf lawyer a piece of paper with an attorney-drafted response on "[the company's] position." Not exaggerating -- this is all spelled out in the order. But the real kicker is this national lawyer had to sit for a deposition, and the order for sanctions is basically quoting her deposition transcript and the Court commenting "this was false." Karma's a bitch.
She sounds like a real bitch and horrible person. I hate knowing that what I suspected some companies do , is in fact true. I always hoped I was just being cynical and would give them the benefit of the doubt.
Facts. I've won two crossing cases in my career and both were private crossings which nullified a majority of the preemption arguments.
wes tegg , rate Colbert as a venue. That’s my home county, but I know nothing about it from a PI standpoint. Just got an MVA there. Liability is clear. High speed rearend collision and car flipped multiple times. Injuries aren’t too severe though. Expect to be all soft tissue.
Knew it wasn’t liberal. Was afraid it might be pretty conservative. If I have to try it, my first strike would be my mother, who is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.
They both suck, but I’ll never go back to defense work. constant emails from litigation specialists telling me how to do my job. Having to ask their approval to do anything before wiping my ass. Constant emails asking for a deposition summary they won’t ever read. Slashing billable hours every month. “This ten page case eval you submitted should only be a .5” Plaintiff Insane clients who want weekly updates on cases filed a month ago. ex. Got a client who left me a nasty voicemail today demanding I make his case my #1 priority for no reason other than he wants his case settled ASAP. Quite the emergency. clients who bitch about fees. clients who lie.
don’t have it off hand, just had a friend send it to me a couple of months back because we’ve got a couple cases against the same carrier.
Some friends got an $18mm verdict overturned on an evidentiary (probably harmless error) grounds. Oof. https://law.justia.com/cases/alabama/supreme-court/2021/1190725.html
I had a client a couple days ago email me that he wanted an update on mediation that we’ve been trying to schedule for a couple months now. He demanded that I send some crazy high demand and has obscene expectations, so it was no surprise when the insurance company said they were not interested in settlement at all and he could just keep treating. So I responded to his email asking me for an update telling him that I wanted to speak with him, and I included a link for him to schedule a call on my calendar (Calendly thing). He got super pissed off that I would ask him to schedule a call with me, thought that I was going to tell him he had to pay for the call (lol I wish), and says that if I need to talk to him I can just pick up the phone and call him. He’s being a massive dick about it for no good reason and I was pretty caught off guard by the whole thing because I thought I was doing him a favor by giving him the opportunity to schedule a call at a time that works best for him. Basically, fairly normal Claimant bullshit. But still, I’m pretty convinced that this past year has brought the absolute fucking worst in everyone in GA Workers Comp. Adjusters are demons right now. Defense attorneys are massive pricks who are denying any and everything with near impunity, and clients are all feeling like they’re entitled to more than they actually are. I honestly don’t know how much long I can deal with the workers comp system in GA.
Just call the guy, don't worry about scheduling a time. Try to reason with the guy and if he continues to be unreasonable you may consider terminating rep. Usually the fee isn't worth dealing with that kind of abuse and stress. I know you already know all of this. I haven't had the same experience with WC in MS. I do have several cases that should've settled and I'm going to have to try them. But I've still been able to get stuff settled, sometimes at really good value.