It's weird. I would say it's only ever happened to me with your firm, but I wouldn't have known about it with you if you hadn't called. I always mark them as not spam. Must be watching too much porn over there.
Allstate: gotten significantly better to deal with State Farm: only considering Medicare rates for medical bills now
i think the only state farm cases we have settled over the last two years have been cases where clients basically just said i want 1-2k and you figure out how to make it work i probably have 30 where all that is left to do is go to trial.
At a mediation where the other other side has a $1 million SIR before insurance indemnity kicks in. It's like pulling teeth.
Two weeks ago I walked into my "partner's" office and told him I had an offer for another job that I couldn't turn down. He asked me to give him a day or two to come up with a counter-offer before I decide. He then makes me the counter-offer which, of course, has several qualifiers in it. Out of a sense of being respectful, I tell him I'll consider it before making a final decision. For the last two weeks he has avoided me as much as he can considering it's a small office. Never mentioned jack shit again about his offer or taking any steps into making it a reality. So tonight before I left I tell him I'm officially out and have accepted another job. He acts like it's the first time he's heard any of this, tries (unsuccessfully) to gaslight me then stops by my office on his way out teary-eyed blaming me for basically shutting down his firm.
Around midnight of a long, frustrating day a few weeks ago, I responded to a recruiter with my resume. By lunch the next day she let me know a competing firm was interested in going to lunch. I’ve been slammed so I’ve put it off, but it’s now time to shit or get off the pot. My question has to do with lateraling from one bigger firm in a small town to another similarly sized firm in the same town. For one thing, I’m somewhat worried about the risk of being seen at lunch with boomer partners from a competing firm. For another, assuming lunch goes well, how do you handle the in office interview and tour of the office given that I know people there but don’t want word getting out that I’ve made it to an in-office interview with a competitor? THis seems logistically complicated and fraught with risk, so thinking of just bailing entirely. Or focusing on my app.
Had my first return to in-person deps this week, and had to listen to testimony from someone who broke into her dad’s shop after he sent out suicide note text messages to all of his kids. She credit carded the lock (she was a teenager and had already been doing this for a while because he kept a lot of alcohol in there), saw him crying looking at his phone, he noticed her get in, managed to force the door shut, and fucking killed himself with a gunshot to the head while she was on the other side of the door trying to shove her way back in. After he shot himself, she was able to force the door open again (which would have taken a massive amount of effort because of the weight difference), and tried to apply pressure to his head wound until realizing he was already dead. Absolutely fucking brutal and quite the rude awakening to being back in person for the first time since March of last year.
Same daughter found her dad drunk with a gun the day before, after he’d been texting her some dark shit, and was able to get the gun from him and locked it in her car. Family took him to the hospital for inpatient, but he got released the same day. The estate is suing over the decision to release him.
As a person who himself struggled through getting past the sunk cost fallacy, it seems you know that your days with your current firm are over. You ask the other firm to keep things as discreet as possible, but you have to be prepared to just say fuck it and walk away from your current situation if they find out. Your current firm only has as much control over you as you're willing to cede to them.
I was going to post the same thing. I’ve done the full interview dance with two firms and word never got back to my firm.
I honestly have no idea what I want except for more comp. Hell, I found myself looking at M&A tax gigs in NYC the other day. I hate M&A. It's just hard to ignore the headlines on sky high associate raises/bonuses and the 3x daily emails from recruiters looking for senior transactional associates and not at least start to wonder what may be out there. Plus, I'll lose a lot of leverage in 6 or so months when I presumably have my title changed to (non-equity) partner, so I figured I should at least get the ball rolling
If you are looking for NYC pay but don't want to move to NYC, there are a ton of firms that are paying on the $205k scale for offices outside of NYC/LA/Chicago/DC. Firms are dying for senior-level transactional associates. You would have a ton a leverage on the open market. If nothing else, you could use a credible offer to get a better deal from your own firm.
I was looking at Big 4 M&A tax law gigs rather than NYC law. I don't want to work 230+ hour months on the reg, and Fishbowl leads me to believe that's what is expected from the firms in exchange for the sky high salaries. I just know that bigger firms in the SE are also deluged with more work than they can handle, so I'm trying to make a lateral move workload wise but with better comp. I'm being greedy. This is my primary plan if we're being honest. Go through the process in order to gain better insight into market terms, then apply leverage to my firm's leadership. If they balk or get pissed, then having an offer in hand will be the backup. I like where I am and like the main partner I work with, so I'm naturally inclined to stay. But everyone has a price, and the price has changed from what I negotiated a few years ago. Time to re-negotiate while I can. PM
I don’t think getting and offer and then asking your current firm to beat it will work out well in the long term. There will be some resentment towards you
I was in a similar situation two years ago. I was a non-equity partner at a large statewide firm. Despite the assurances of leadership, after a few years in the non-equity role, it became clear to me that the likelihood of becoming an equity partner was slim. So, I went through the process switched firms in 2020. I joined a large firm in the same smallish town as a full equity partner. The process was awkward but other than a few sleepless nights caused by switching firms six weeks before the pandemic, I haven't thought twice about my decision. Happy to discuss via pm if you want.
The truth is you’re fucked without leverage. Sure, it sucks to flirt with another firm and secure an offer only to use it to force a counteroffer from your current gig. But if your current gig doesn’t feel like they’re at risk of losing you, they’ll bust out their million excuses for why they can’t pay you more or they’ll make some promise to “take care of you” in some undefined way at an undefined time.
FTR, my current gig made a potentially generous counteroffer to keep me. I say potentially because there were qualifiers built in. That being said, there’s no fixing my issues short of my partner out and out immediately retiring.
That's not my experience. By all accounts, he is a valuable associate, and they will want to keep him. I had other firms come after me multiple times as an associate and I always was open with the partners in my office about was going on. It wasn't about leveraging for a pay raise but more about being open and up front about the situation. I did the same thing when I ultimately left.
The fact that none of the equity partners had to go through the non-equity stage but acted as though it was always that way pissed me off. Plus they continued to move the goalposts and I finally got sick of subsidizing unproductive lawyers in a different city so I dipped.
The whole non equity partnership stuff always makes me laugh. I get the supposed excuse is that it’s supposed to make it easier to bring in business if you’re a partner but that seems like BS to me
It is BS. If they took it to court, I think a lot of non-equity partners could demonstrate they are actually employees rather than partners... otherwise known as associates. It's just a way to increase the height of the pyramid to make the pyramid scheme bigger.
Non-equity partnership is a way of saying that the person in question is capable of doing partner-level work and should be compensated as such, while also saying “we don’t actually want to share with this guy.”
This was actually under consideration and I was in the preliminary stages of planning that out. But then another opportunity came up that was just better.
Firms generally expect it, and I’ve seen it work for a number of folks. That being said, I think you should only play that card once as an associate.
mine are going nowhere. State Farm is offering excess money on cases. Allstate just keeps sending back policy limit offers. I hate car wreck cases.
Got a file where the opposing party appointed local counsel after their out-of-state rep botched a procedural pre-lit motion regarding confidentiality (govt case). Local counsel, who formerly worked for us and is very familiar with which individual does what in the relevant areas, proceeds to file a 593 page motion (all text, no exhibits), but can't be bothered to file it with the right person even though that is addressed in the first paragraph of the authorizing rule, which he cited a dozen times while emphasizing that he was submitting the motion "as provided in..." Please Lord give me the restraint to not send it back and ask him to resubmit as provided in the rule.
Technically it's a pre-answer administrative law "request" and not a motion so there are no limits as far as I know. It is substantively identical to a motion, though. Combative and intentionally over-burdensome is quite literally this guy's schtick.
He is mid 30s and works of counsel for a decent local firm. His arrangement is unique from what little I know, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if the length was his own choice. I also think there was quite a bit of c+p in the filing -- I didn't read past page 5 but I think it's a lot of applying identical arguments to several dozen similar factual items.