Have an in-house counsel for a carrier that has been the bane of our firm's existence/our best source of income. This is one of those attorneys who is so bad at litigating she is dangerous because judge's would just rather not deal with her incompetence rather than sanction them and deal with her once and for all. Respond to emails? Nope. Meet court ordered deadlines? Not necessary. Coordinate scheduling depos? Why do that when you can uni-set them. In another case, she refused to settle an obvious covered loss and took it all the way to trial. We won at trial and she had the gall to contest our proposed final judgment. In my case that was assigned to me yesterday, the judge filed an insane order saying that there will be no extensions granted on deadlines. If you miss the discovery deadline, its a $500 a day fine. Guess who blew the discovery deadline by 20 days? Per the judge's case management order, I had to give OC a courtesy email before filing a motion to compel discovery responses and triggering the fine. 10 minutes after I send her the email, I get a call from the head attorney for the carrier begging me to settle the case before the judge notices the handling attorney blew the discovery deadline and hits them with a 10k fine.
Can I get a Friday before Christmas week motivation level check in ? I'm going with 3/10. I have 2 settlement disbursements today which is always nice. Christmas firm dinner at a fancy restaurant tonight.
I have the excess carrier a big mediation Monday with all kinds of indemnity and coverage issues. Once that’s over, I’m done until 2022.
Deposition today, mediation Monday, deposition Tuesday, MSJ due Wednesday and then I’m done. Contemplating riding off into the sunset like my hero BamaNug.
I was at a 1/10 for a few weeks, I’d say I bumped up slightly to 3 or 4/10. Next week is gonna be back to 1/10.
Just scored my first plaintiff settlement, which takes care of half the case. Hospital stays in and I preserved the vicarious claims against the hospital. Pretty, pretty good and I won’t book it until January to start off 2022 right. Mediating with the hospital in January and have a presuit mediation(at the defense request) in a second case in January. Hopefully this ball keeps rolling.
I'm sitting at a good 9/10. Haven't worn a shirt in probably 3 weeks, but appeared in Court twice this week. Settled 2 cases in past 2 weeks. Working until about 1:00 today and then got a surf lesson. Going to catch that sunset lineup this evening.
About 10-12 years ago, I was involved in a massive lawsuit in which plaintiff was represented by Philadelphia and NYC based attorneys at an AmLaw 50 firm. I got served via email at 8:30 PM on Christmas Eve with a 12 page meet and confer letter on discovery deficiencies drafted by a fourth year associate at their firm. They wanted a 7 day response or motion to compel, falling on NYE. I think of that letter every year, and wonder if the partner supervising that associate was visited by three ghosts that night.
I sent an email after Christmas stating we’re all out of the office and would respond after the holidays. The associate lasted about one more year on the case before she left the firm.
I never understand why. Their only purpose is to act as an exhibit to your motion to compel, so why come off like an ass in a letter the Court is likely to read?
Yep. Last resort thing for me. I usually email about 5 times asking when you think you can get it to me before some letter goes out. Hate people that practice that way.
Any lawyers in here who deal with probate/estate? FIL just passed. Due to the time he passed and when we found him, the coroner could not identify him, therefor we have to wait for medical proof. All we have been able to find is a will from 1995 from when he was married. Trying not to hire a lawyer, as there's not many possessions that need transferred. Just want to get access to his apartment (his daughter wasn't part of the lease, so they won't turn over the keys), get his utilities shut off/transferred back to the apartment, check his work HR to see if he had life insurance, get access to his bank accounts/credit cards. His two daughters were given everything from his will, but executors went his wife (divorced), father (passed), his sister (lives 2 hours away).
Not an estate lawyer but I think you're going to need to probate the estate and have administrator/executor assigned to accomplish all of that.
Get a local lawyer to file petition to probate and for letters testamentary. Hopefully divorced wife will pass on role, and his sister can take it on.
It's cool when you send a demand to a lawyer and then the adjuster calls you and says, "I need 45 more days. I had no idea this guy was hurt this bad. I have to kick this to the top to get the reserves totally reset." And then your liability expert crushes it at deposition the next day.
Been talking to a potential (now actual) client for a few weeks now on what looks to be a really good case. He called today to say he wanted me to handle the case over two other firms he consulted. Death following a laparoscopic nephrectomy featuring a surgeon who took off immediately after the procedure to head out on vacation coupled with nurses who watched this lady deteriorate for a couple of days before finally calling a backup surgeon in to evaluate the patient. When the backup comes in he immediately recognizes she had a bowel injury caused by the surgeon but even though he took her to emergency surgery it was too late by then because she had contents leaking into her abdomen for 48 hours and was severely septic. She died a couple of days later in the ICU. And the hospital system involved looooves to settle cases in presuit even if it means overpaying.
Had adjuster call me on a WC case today and say "Hey man we've done a bunch of cases together through the years and you and I pretty much know what a case is worth. This case just got assigned to me today and I looked at it for the first time this morning. I don't have time to do anything but get this case settled [I guess this has something to do with end of year bonus?]. I don't want to go back and forth on this one. Let's just get to the bottom line." And then proceeds to talk through the actual value of the claim and we're crunching numbers on the phone. Then we get pretty damn close to agreeing on numbers. All in one phone call. I hadn't even made a demand prior to the phone call. And we're talking about $90-100k. Pretty rare.
funny you should ask, I just filed my 2nd motion for sanctions about an hour ago. he has been completely radio silent since he freaked out and turned over the recorded statement of this witness. I’m dumbfounded by what’s happening. we have to meet and confer before the end of the year to update the court on what discovery I need, but he hasn’t even finished the search for emails that I’m supposed to have in order to do so. Part of me believes that for the first time it has actually sunk in that he’s gotten himself into a really bad situation. The other part thinks he realizes that and fled the country with BamaNug
Have I told yall about this dick PI attorney I'm dealing with? It's a small negligent security case and the other guy just wants everything under the sun, and the fucking Judge is letting him have it. It's like chill bro, I'm in Mexico.
Doing okay. As an associate, use it as an opportunity to catch up on stuff while other work slows down. hate the holidays all falling on a Saturday tho
The dream situation. Nothing brings me more satisfaction than getting a case and having it settled by the end of the week.
Oranjello in mid-November: Client, we need some deal terms to have this fund formed, operating agreement in place, and bank account opened in order for funds to flow before 12/31/21, which is a statutory deadline. Please send terms. If not available, we can put placeholder docs in place for now. Should the placeholder docs be on arms length terms or not? [no response] Oranjello in early December: See previous message re: arms length terms. [no response] Oranjello on 12/13: Client, we really need this information if you want to make this happen. [no response] Oranjello on a call on 12/14: Client, here’s why this is important… we really need the info. Client on 12/14: They’re in NYC but I’ll have you an answer tomorrow. [No info for client] Client on 12/17: Here’s vague and ambiguous answers alluding to non-arms length terms. Oranjello on 12/22 at 8am: Here are your docs, client. Client on 12/22 at 11am: We need a call today. Oranjello at 11:15: I’m available at these times (fingers crossed it’s not after 3pm so I can go to Christmas party) Client during 3pm call on 12/22: Yeah so everything we told you was incorrect. We also need fully negotiated and ready to sign docs by Tuesday but we don’t have any specifics. Oranjello: that’s not going to happen, and our alternative is to form a parallel fund but the IRS website is down from 12/23 through 12/27 so whether you can get everything in place before 12/31 is uncertain. Good job waiting until the last minute.
This is my practice in a nutshell. I also get a lot of things like this: Client: "Hey, we want to do a [vague description of a complicated several million dollar convertible note offering]. We'll need an operating agreement with [vaguely describes a complicated distribution waterfall and laundry list of option and buy-sell provisions]. Just use a form. We're looking to start raising money by end of week." Stagger: OK, I think there's a lot to discuss here. Let's first go over the proposed securities offering. Give me a call tomorrow." Client: "You're making this too complicated. We're selling notes, not equity, so it's not a securities offering. Keep it simple. Just send a form over with placeholders for deal points."
Also my favorite is when they wait to get an EIN until the last minute and the IRS rejects the online application requiring you to fax the SS-4 in and wait several days (or since Covid started, several weeks). Clients love that.
Faxed one in a few months ago, received an EIN back via fax. Then we got a second EIN. Sent a letter explaining, presumably cancelling it. Then client noticed the IRS misspelled entity name on initial EIN. Told client let it go, but client insisted due to some tax incentives, so I got a POA and happily sat on the phone with the IRS for a few hours. It’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to billing for travel time and was great.
God I hope you didn't work on another client's matter while on hold and double bill. I'd hate to have to refer a fellow Deadhead to the Bar.
Do you know the actual reason why the IRS rejects some of the online applications? I've noticed it usually happens when I form an entity with a name similar to affiliated entities, but that may just be coincidence. A guy who used to work with the IRS once told me the IRS auto-flags for quality control purposes, but when I mentioned that to an IRS rep on the phone, she said that's not true. But she also couldn't give me a clear answer on why some get rejected.
I didn't make shareholder until this year. I have seen no practical difference with being an associate. If anything, I'm even less productive/motivated than ever.
if you aren't double billing while in the airport (and drinking a beer) on your way back from a deposition the asshole managing partner made you fly out to for no reason, what are you doing?
Have a MVA client with a settlement that was ready to be disbursed to her. I'm going to out of town at noon today so I scheduled my morning around getting her to come in and disburse the settlement to her. Appointment was at 9AM. Texted her at 8AM reminding her of it. Drive to office. She's not here. Call her at 9:05AM. She's obviously asleep and sounds groggy and was going to blow it off. When I tell her I'm about to leave town and she won't get it until next week she says she can get up and drive 30 minutes over here to get it
Can I ask you guys a Texas Standard Possession question?? My ex and I are on very good terms and don't fuss with each other over much at all. But we seem to annually have an impasse on 1st 3rd and 5th weekends. So, Friday is December 31, Saturday is January 1, does this count as the fifth weekend of December, the first weekend of January, or what?? I'm so confused as to what happens when the first day of the month falls on a Saturday. Because the month ends on Friday, so it seems like double dipping to count it one way or the other. I want my kids as much as possible, so I'm hoping that this coming weekend is a fifth, and that I'll get them next weekend as a first, but there is a little uncertainty between us. I was just hoping that somebody could give me a mnemonic device to remember how this plays since it really seems to happen at least once a year. She's in Lubbock and I'm in Midland, so the more than 100 miles rules apply. Also, I'm stupid, so bear with me.
Clients who are lazy/ambivalent about getting their money is absolutely insane to me. I’ve got a client who is simply sitting on agreeing to a settlement offer that would pay her 85k in her pocket. Keeps delaying saying she needs more money (she doesn’t) and that she needs to think about it some more. It’s been 6 months of thinking.
Back in the office this morning. We had last Thursday Friday off and we have this Thursday /Friday off. Motivation level may be at an all time low. 1/10.
I have my work remote desktop open, but the real question is how much work is going to get done this week.
Same. But the internet at my office is down so I can’t log in. Oh well an OC just called me and apologetically said that his carrier is making him file a motion to compel better discovery responses if I don’t get him some useless piece of info by end of day. I’m still not getting him that info until next week at the earliest.