Clients typically belong to the firm and not the service provider, as it’s up to the client to decide if they want to stay or switch to the associate’s new firm. As far as I am aware, that’s how it works in all professional services firms (law firms, investment advisory, CPA, etc.). Absent a non-solicit or other contractual restrictive covenant, then I’d imagine your boss would have a hard time saying they’re entitled to 40%. If anything, maybe they could get compensation for time spent working on the file as an employee of the current firm, but an uncapped percentage recovery seems off. That said, Florida is probably the most employer friendly state at least when it comes to restrictive covenants against employees, so it wouldn’t surprise me if your boss could recover.
Firm is representing a client indicted in a big gang bust with multiple bodies. We just got the Cellebrite Reports from all their phones and they're all 80,000+ pages because they were all in these PPP loan scam groups on Telegram with hundreds of other people. Easily 30,000+ pages of dumb fucks starting record labels to get fraudulent loans.
I’m 99% sure you can’ have a non-solicit or restrictive covenant in place in Florida. Based on the description, the associate may have violated Section 4-5.8 of the Florida Bar professional conduct rules. The Restatement and other state courts have frowned upon requiring a percentage of the commission rather than just payment for the work actually expended by the firm.
Have you ever looked at a multi-state comparison of restrictive covenant law or actually drafted a non-compete or non-solicit intended to be enforced? If each state were on a spectrum, Florida would definitely be one of the most employer friendly. I’ll take your “restatement of laws” malarkey and raise you $1 bajillion: Fla. Stat. 542.335. See also Hilb Rogal & Hobbs of Fla., Inc. v. Grimmel, 48 So. 3d 957, 961, 2010 WL 4861762 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2010)
Not sure how relevant the case provided is since it is not an attorney being restricted. Especially in comparison to this ethos opinion: https://www.floridabar.org/etopinions/etopinion-93-4/
Also I practice law in Florida. Attorneys have different rules from other employees such as non-competes generally not being applicable to us.
Cool. In that case, you might want to look into the nuances of non-competes, non-solicits, and how they can vary when applied to attorneys, employees, and clients. And then you may want to look into how all this stuff works in the absence of a contract. As far as I’m aware, there’s not one here.
No thanks. You may be confusing me with the poster originally asking for any additional pertinent information. I’m up to date on the Florida ethics rules and already provided relevant links and rules.
A law firm will have to face a lawsuit claiming that it violated confidentiality laws when it disclosed mental health records about its lawyer client when touting a win in his medical-malpractice case, according to an Illinois appeals court. The Illinois Appellate Court’s First Judicial District revived the lawsuit filed by a former corporate lawyer identified only as John Doe. Law360 has coverage of the Oct. 7 decision. The law firm defendant was known as Burke Wise Morrissey & Kaveny. The appeals court said Doe had sufficiently alleged improper disclosure to withstand a dismissal motion. Doe sued after Burke Wise issued a May 2015 press release, and one of its lawyers spoke with the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin about the jury award of more than $4 million. The medical-malpractice suit stemmed from Doe’s suicide attempt while in a hospital’s psychiatric ward. Doe alleged that statements in the press release and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin revealed mental health information about him in violation of the law. Doe contended that the law firm violated an Illinois law known as the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Confidentiality Act. He also said the firm violated the law by disclosing information that was protected by a qualified order under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Burke Wise had claimed that the Illinois law didn’t apply to it because it didn’t have a “therapeutic relationship with Doe.” It also said the information was public because Doe had testified about it at trial, and he had waived confidentiality by putting his medical condition at issue. The appeals court said the law firm is not relieved of potential liability simply because it did not provide mental health services to Doe. And the law firm’s alleged disclosures fall under a section of the Illinois law that prevents anyone from redisclosing information after receiving it, unless consent is given, the appeals court said.
She got the signatures from all of "her" clients. She was also told not to tell any of the clients the firm assigned her that she was leaving.
Also, just had a first today supposed to take the depo of a field adjuster at 11:00 today. Neither the defense attorney nor the FA show up. Right after I take the CNA, they email me and say it was a scheduling issue and that they thought the depo was at 2:00. My afternoon was open so I agree to reschedule. 2:00 comes and the Attorney shows up but no FA. OC's assistant emails me that the FA is having trouble with the zoom link. Ok, no problem. 20 minutes later the assistant admits to OC that she hasn't heard from the FA since this morning. 2 CNAs in the same day for the same witness.
It’s an ethics violation then on her part. No offense to your firm but it sounds like the partner would likely have committed one too by not letting the clients know she was leaving and simply reassigning her cases but she didn’t give them the opportunity.
So she is required to tell all her current clients that she is leaving and ask them if they want to follow her to her new firm?
No she is required to allow your firm to work with her on a mutual notification to clients before she notifies them. In Florida, she can’t just tell the clients and take them.
oh they absolutely had a joint form that they agreed to which was sent to all of the clients she brought it.
Okay, then I don’t really think there is much your firm can do or recoup aside from fees and expenses prior to the clients leaving. Getting 40% of the fees seems outlandish unless the cases settle quickly. Also if this went to litigation I’m assuming your firm would not want clients speaking badly on the record about the firm in an effort to promote the associate’s work. Not that y’all did anything wrong but human nature to want to talk up the person you went with.
Assuming it's all contingency, it *should* be quantum meruit for both sides. For example, on a $100 fee, if 90% of the work was done while the attorney was at the firm, then the firm gets $90. If only 10% of the work gets done while the attorney was at the firm, then the firm gets $10. But that's impossible to figure out so people normally just come to an agreement on certain percentages of certain cases.
I don't know, man. I know of at least one big time plaintiff firm here that won a suit against the group of partners that broke off and were able to enforce the provision requiring the departing partners to pay them 75% of the fees on cases they took.
Partners are different from associates imo. First, the partners may have an agreement in place. Second, partners leaving can dramatically lower the value of the firm.
After I left my old firm I sent a letter to all my clients saying they could stick with the firm I had been at, go with me to my new firm, or get different representation all together. I didn't trust my old firm to send the proper letter or not try to persuade clients to stick with them. I eventually filed suit against my old firm and then we mediated and settled most cases on a 50/50 fee split and the prior firm got their expenses back.
Got a policy limits offer on a case that another firm turned down on liability. All I did was file the complaint and send a time limit demand. Unfortunately, the limits aren’t what I wish they were, but it was still a pretty nice little flip.
Receptionist we hired 3 weeks ago. She was late 3x this week. Over an hour late yesterday. We work at home fridays and she logged in at 9:35 today saying her alarm didn’t go off
Had a client come in for her disbursement today. When we went over the numbers she objected and said we should subtract her out of pocket medical expenses and her remaining outstanding medical expenses from the amount of the settlement and then multiply that number by my % to determine the fee. Have you ever seen that before?
Almost hard to make this up Allstate lawyers just read off a script for a lot of their depositions trying to discredit chiropractors by asking if they’re medical doctors, are they biomechicanl engineers, can they prescribe meds so I ended my questions with I’ve done a lot of depositions with this law firm and I know they’re going to ask you questions about whether you’re a medical doctor, or engineer or whatever and if they do what will your answer be No ok thanks def lawyer: so are you a medical doctor? Can you prescribe medication
Accepted a new job on Friday. Much better pay, necessary title to keep moving forward (Regional General Counsel (US)), seemingly better company, and company car. Going to be a lot more work, but I think it'll be worth it.
I'm in a depo right now where the attorney for the carrier just spent 5 minutes on the record asking questions about the device the witness is using to take the depo.
i see on august 2nd he didn't make his daily visit that you asked him to do ....it was a sunday and we are closed? this allstate lawyer is brutal.
I was able to get a med mal settlement from an uninsured doctor for significant money considering she was paying out of pocket. Client has an ERISA lien that’s like $65k, and when we settled I explained to the client that getting that lien down is going to be very difficult because of federal law. The insurer responded to my reduction request yesterday by telling me to fuck off and pay them, and now the client is getting all antsy that her take of the case will dip below six figures. Good times.
Insurance should be a required class in law school. There are some dangerous local yokel lawyers out there who can disastrously fuck their clients.
An update to this with a potentially interesting angle: The letter from the insurance company was about as smug as smug gets, waving the contractual language around and basically saying, "We don't give a shit about your client's predicament, you pay us 100% of the lien or we'll see you in court. We look forward to any 'legal argument' you have to make on this issue." So, since they were so reliant on the 144-page insurance contract, I decided to read it all and look for any possible language I could find to support an argument for the lien reduction. When I got to the section that discusses repayment of liens after a settlement, the language was overwhelmingly to the effect of, "We don't give a single fuck if your client settled for $1. If our lien exceeds the $1, then that $1 is ours. Fuck you. Fuck your client. Fuck all of your families. No exceptions. period. YOU WILL FEEL THE LONG DICK OF ERISA!!!!!"......not very promising, huh?.....BUT..... A couple of pages after that, I found language regarding certain health conditions that are excluded from coverage. In their very arrogant language, they added that if you have a surgery that is not covered by the policy, then the policy does NOT pay for any complications from that surgery no matter how bad those complications may be. The list of those non-covered surgeries and attendant complications includes liposuction. WELL, guess what? That's exactly the surgery my lady had. Her bowels were perforated multiple times during a liposuction procedure leading her to experience severe peritonitis, require emergency surgery and a 3-week ICU stay. The health insurer paid bills that they had no reason to pay under the contract...a gratuitous payment, if you will. And since their payment was not made pursuant to the contract, I don't believe they have any standing to assert a lien. There is a case in Florida involving an attempted worker's comp lien that arrived at the same conclusion. If you make an erroneous gratuitous payment, you lack standing to assert subrogation rights. I'm going to have fun writing an equally condescending letter to these fucks tomorrow explaining that any prior offer I made to pay the lien is hereby rescinded and they can suck the entirety of deez nuts.
LOL. I love it. I'd tell them that if they won't agree to a 75% reduction or something along those lines that I'll be promptly filing a dec action on their ass and we'll see what the court thinks about this insurance contract and those provisions. Good work reading the contract. I need to do that next time I have a carrier pull that stunt.
Have yall ever had BCBS or some other private health insurance carrier come back after a settlement is disbursed and ask for some money when they had never put you on notice of a lien or subrogation prior to the setttlement/disbursement? I've never had it happen. I always pay Medicare, medicaid, tricare, VA, comp liens, and statutory liens. But if my client has BCBS , even if it is ERISA, and the health insurance carrier doesn't put me on notice of something, I don't go barking up their tree asking them for a lien. But I know some attorneys do. But in 10 years of practice I've never had a negative experience doing it my way. If BCBS etc puts me on notice then I pay them after haggling and trying to get a reduction.
It's technically the "plan documents." This is an employer-funded health plan that uses a TPA to administer it. The TPA, in turn, hired Optum to pursue the lien. So now Optum is going to have to explain to the TPA that they fucked this up themselves, and the TPA will in turn have to explain to the employer why they wasted its money.
Keep us posted. I want to know if they roll over when they realize they are fucked, or if they pick this hill to die on.
The lien doesn't have anything to do with boarding economics here due to collateral source. So I guess it is apples and oranges with Florida.
I'm going to a trial lawyer convention in Portland Maine Thursday-Sunday where I'm going to know very few people and try to network. Sounds kinda brutal.