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Dargon Drama posted:Although his firm no longer exists, nine of Dargon's former employees are named in Judge's order and could also be liable for the fines. "If there is no firm, we're going to chase the individuals," Richard Arcand, a spokesman for the Banking Department, said yesterday. Oh no! They are going to levy and execute on Don Rader's beard! 
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Jul 21, 2011 02:13
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gvibes posted:I talked to another associate here who billed something like 670 hours over the last two months. A few years ago, I was a senior associate who didn't make partner when I thought I would, so I went on a round of interviews at other local small firms. I made the cut at one particular firm, and for a third interview, I had lunch with a name partner. The whole lunch was telling me about his (third) divorce that started last year when he hit 4000 hours for the second year in a row. Gee, I wonder why? I got back and sent a polite letter withdrawing my name from consideration. Oh - by the way - suit BOGO at Men's Wearhouse this weekend. I could die and go to heaven.
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Jul 22, 2011 21:36
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evilweasel posted:So he claimed he worked more than 2/3rds of every waking hour for two years straight? That's loving insane. I figured he was either lying or insane. Either way I didn't want to work with him.
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Jul 22, 2011 21:54
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Ainsley McTree posted:I have jury duty tomorrow morning. They'll let me go once they figure out I'm a lawyer, right? They have to. They have to. While I am sure this is a heavily local thing, the one time I was called to jury duty, I waited around in the bullpen for half a day, then got called up in a venire. The judge looked out, recognized me and another lawyer, and told the lawyers trying the case "that's x- he does plaintiffs' work, and that's y - he does defense. You don't want them on the case, right"? They both said right and we left.
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Jul 25, 2011 01:01
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SlyFrog posted:I think this thread has been focusing too much on the "no jobs" stuff lately, and not enough on how the job itself will twist and corrupt you as a person. Clearly we need more, "The futile search for money is the only salve for my empty soul, for I have chosen a profession that makes monsters out of men," chat. Let me tell you about my "vacation" with my family this week. Saturday, travel. Sunday, edited brief, reviewed 70 page lease, returned calls on cell phone, was able to join family for dinner. Monday, went swimming with kids, then prepped the rest of the day for a depo. Tuesday - 8 hours of travel for a 2 hour depo, returned to vacation location only to have a multi-party email discovery fight. Today, worked all day on appeal on my laptop while sitting on deck, watching kids play. I did get to play a game of yatzee. Tomorrow, must finish appeal, and begin trial prep. Friday, if I get enough done with trial prep, I hope to go to on a boat ride. Probably not. Saturday, travel. entris posted:It's pretty cool/confusing having a secretary - what do I use her for? Copying? I don't have any idea how to handle that. LEARN TO DICTATE. I don't care how fast you can type, you can talk faster.
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Aug 4, 2011 04:50
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Penguins Like Pies posted:My office dictates. It makes sense for our most senior partner but the student was told she should learn how to dictate. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be dictating. I'm the type, reread, and edit type. Speak, rewind, and rerecord seems meaningless to me since I'm still working on speaking off the cuff. I'd rather have my assistant do my formatting than type for me. Dictation is a tool, not a means to write briefs or contracts. I also am a very fast typist. But that is not the point. Dictation is extremely valuable for documenting things, not for writing. For example, if I have a phone conversation with a client, I pick up the recorder and dictate a 30 second memo about the conversation. Then 2 years later when the client is mad at me and says "I never told you that" I can demonstrate that yes, he did in fact tell me that. It is also extremely useful for giving tasks. At home in the evenings, I will be struck with thoughts of things that need to be done, and I dictate a 10 second instruction to my secretary - things like "prepare a bill for X, call accounting and get the costs for Y, pull the Z file and scan in the contract and email it to me, etc." I do a lot of appellate work, and dictation is invaluable for summarizing transcripts. I can read a transcript and dictate facts and page numbers at a much faster rate than I could type all that stuff myself. A transcript summary for a two week trial can reach 70+ pages. I'm not going to type "(Tr. Vol. VI, p. 749)" over and over again. As you get more comfortable with it, you can even dictate first drafts of substantive letters, then do the edits yourself. As soon as you realize that you don't have to rewind and get it perfect the first time, you can fly through it. Beleive me, as you get more and more buried later in your career, knowing how to dictate can allow you to dictate yourself out of holes.
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Aug 4, 2011 13:33
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SlyFrog posted:I just don't fundamentally understand it. I have no idea why any person on this planet, who is making $500,000 and could easily live on $300,000 if they scaled back their hours accordingly, would prefer to spend their free time reviewing yet another 80 page M&A agreement instead of reading a book of their choice, learning to paint, etc. All it takes is coming to your office once, and having NOTHING TO DO. It has happened to me twice. Come in, look at the files that you looked at yesterday, and nothing new has happened, and the phone is not ringing. Water your (dead) plant, clean your office, wonder who you will send bills to at the end of the month, and how you will make rent and payroll. It is terrifying. So when you are so buried you can't see straight, and a new client calls you with a $25,000 retainer and a sparkly, succulent lawsuit, you say "yes." Because if you say no, you may find yourself with NOTHING TO DO in six months, and as a result, nothing to bill. The next thing you know, you are one of those people.
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Aug 8, 2011 02:49
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nm posted:Nothing. I agree wholeheartedly. I have both sent work to and received work from former opposing attorneys. One even sponsored me for an specialized bar membership. But I know of three lawyers who are notoriously combative, and in weird ways, it has helped their careers. Two are so obstinant that their opposing attorneys give up and look for ways to get rid of the case. The third is so evil in depositions that I hired him as co-counsel in a fee dispute I had with another lawyer just to take that lawyer's depo. Good times. But I have seen it backfire much more often.
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Aug 13, 2011 02:58
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cerebral posted:Thanks for that, it puts some things I've seen and not entirely understood in a different light. One of the rear end in a top hat/bastards I mentioned above got a greivance filed against him by a client. Our local bar association greivance committee investigated and substantiated the claim. rear end in a top hat's response was to sue each member of the greivance committee, in their individual capacities, for defamation. TOTAL WAR ARRRGHH....
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Aug 13, 2011 12:04
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Unamuno posted:So, how do y'all deal with the non-stop regret and self-loathing borne of knowing you ruined your life by going to law school? How do you learn to trust yourself again after having it great and, ignoring all the well-reasoned advice at your disposal, choosing to throw it all away? You buy a boat. A big loving boat. Then you invite friends and clients to the lakehouse for a weekend of impressing them with your big loving boat, and the motor won't start and you are left swimming from the dock, bathing in even more self-loathing.
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Aug 22, 2011 03:02
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quepasa18 posted:I think the most I ever took at once was two weeks when I got married. I don't get it. Were you so enraptured by your new love that you couldn't check your blackberry?
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Sep 4, 2011 11:36
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HiddenReplaced posted:As my IRC bros can confirm, I do well with the ladies. You are just jelly. I'm too old to learn a new technology. "Chat clients" frighten me the way that TV remotes frighten you grandmother. Besides, I have been warned by Dateline not to chat on the internet.
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Sep 28, 2011 16:44
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Look, take me back to the days of the 2400 baud modem calling into the local BBS to download the Anarchist's Cookbook as a .txt file. I am comfortable with that. All these mibbits and gribbits and whatnot are too taxing for this old man to take, what with text messaging and low-riding pants and all that.
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Sep 28, 2011 20:58
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HiddenReplaced posted:At least you're not in the South? Save them for 10 years then post them in the restroom over the urinal.
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Oct 1, 2011 03:44
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Weird sense of deja vu this weekend as I vomited into the dumpster behind my old law school. Ahh, those were the days.
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Oct 11, 2011 11:20
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Saga posted:No, it's dark irony, because thanks to the economy he now lives in that dumpster. Not at all. I was vomiting because some bankers took me out and got me loaded because they think I am in the 1%. Ha. Fools! As for deja vu / nostalgia, I did specifically vomit in that dumpster previously, around 1997, so I think it is a toss-up.
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Oct 11, 2011 13:45
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Green Crayons posted:He must have settled for one of those government jobs. I hear that you only hit the 100K threshold but the benefits are pretty sweet plus you get to spend a little extra time at home. Get some time to work on that book. Nah - 13 years of small firm. I'd do better but only about half of the work I do is on my own clients. The rest is for my partners' clients, and they eat up most of the fees. I do have lots of flexibility - I have been in the office only about 8:30 to 4 since football season started, and last week I didn't come in at all because I had a sick kid. I still billed, mind you, but I did it from my back porch. So we are not quite in the 1%, but if my wife gets another promotion at her large faceless corporate entity, we'll be there soon.
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Oct 11, 2011 20:35
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IrritationX posted:It basically gives the firm a permanent person to foist that poo poo off on, with a title of Office Manager if they don't have a JD or a Managing Partner if they do. The problem with this idea - getting a management degree so that you can become the managing partner - is that managing partners don't get to be managing partners by being good at management. They get to be managing partners by generating an enormous amount of legal work for the firm. When a partner controls the influx of money to a firm, and could take that money to a different firm, he or she gets to be in charge, because everyone else is scared that the managing partner will turn off the money faucet. Skills at management are simply not part of the equation.
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Nov 4, 2011 11:17
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dos4gw posted:Which in the end amounts to just paying a management consultant for advice Which the rainmakers won't do. "Why do I need a consultant? I generated $x last year!"
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Nov 4, 2011 16:59
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10-8 posted:That's all well and good in a MBA 101 sense, but in law firm world the guy who brings in the most money gets to make the decisions even if he's not the best person for the job. Additionally, the guy who brings in the most money gets to make the decisions even if he's not particularly nice, humane, sane, or oriented in time and space. In my firm, two of the partners generate 70% of the work in the firm, and the other four of us generate the other 30%. Yes, we are all partners and we could outvote the two BSDs, but at what cost? "You guys outvoted me? gently caress you. Imma take my work down the street." Then what?
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Nov 4, 2011 20:18
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CaptainScraps posted:How do you guys drum up clients? Poorly, in my case. Most of my business comes on referral from other lawyers. I get it by joining lawyer clubs, teaching seminars for lawyers, and writing smarty-pants articles for attorney magazines. This year, I am on pace to generate around 800 hours of work for myself, which is the most I ever have generated. The other 1200-1400 hours comes from work generated by my partners. The guys who drum up 70% of the work for the firm have done so in two different way. Both built their practices in the 1980's and early nineties so the model is unlikely to work in today's market. Both bought houses in big fancy neighborhoods and are very active in those neighborhoods, becoming friends with rich people. One of the lawyers parlayed a relationship with one of the area's largest real estate developers into representing lot developers, contractors and banks. The other one joined a lot of community organizations, country clubs and other places where he could meet rich people, and he schmoozed like hell.
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Nov 4, 2011 21:59
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CaptainScraps posted:Those are harder than the real test. Barbri wants to sell you poo poo The hard thing for rookies hanging a shingle is that you don't have anyone with experience to approach for help. It was around year 7 before I felt that I could handle most matters without asking dumb questions of the folks down the hall who had been doing it for 20 years. Good luck.
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Nov 5, 2011 01:40
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Roger_Mudd posted:Experience is awesome but I've found that with a) a good selection of books b) example pleadings and motions and c) the rules of procedure/evidence & d) westlaw you can pretty much get what you need (in motions practice, haven't gone to trial yet). I don't mean it to come off like this will probably sound, but if you have not been through a trial yet, you don't really have a handle on how to work up a case (at least a civil case). Much of what you do in discovery and motion practice is driven by how you want the case positioned at trial. You have to envision what you want the case to look like at trial, project out the evidentiary issues from the outset so that you can solve them in discovery, and set trial traps for opposing witnesses in depositions. You have to picture the trial, and work backwards to set it up. If you have never had a trial, picturing how the trial will work out is difficult. Here is a practical tip for new lawyers filing a civil lawsuit. If your jurisdiction has model jury instructions, start there. Before you draft the complaint, look at the model jury instructions and try to put together a set of jury instructions for your case. Then, when drafting the complaint, be sure to allege facts which support each element of each claim as described in the jury instructions. Then make a list of those facts, and determine how you will try to prove those facts at trial. Which witnesses can testify to which facts? If proof of a fact is document-dependent, who has the document and how can you get it? Once you have the document, how do you authenticate it? If you need an expert, what foundational facts does he or she need to support the opinion, and how do you get those facts into evidence? If you make a roadmap for yourself, it makes everything else a little easier. You can pull it out before depos, to make sure you ask the right questions. You have a head start when a summary judgment motion comes in. How do you defeat the objection to the document that your client stole out of the front seat of his opponent's car (true story)? It is best not to get caught flat-footed at trial. Most importantly, if you know the target you are shooting at at trial, it reduces a lot of wasted time going down blind alleys, and helps you focus on the important stuff. I was lucky enough to start my career working for a lawyer who had been in practice for 40+ years, who gave me that tip. He also trusted me enough to simply hand me low value cases, and told me to go try them. I still had to frequently call back to the office (in the days before cell phones) for answers in the middle of trials. I don't know how you guys are going to do it without a resource like that, but you have my admiration for having the guts to try it. Solomon Grundy fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 12:24
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Erdricks posted:Holy poo poo, there are people out there who don't draft a complaint without looking at the model jury instructions first? Sorry, it was not something that was covered in my law school, and it was quite a revelation when the tip was passed on to me.
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Nov 6, 2011 16:21
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yronic heroism posted:They need to start making CMR guides to the actual practice of law so I know what the hell I'm supposed to do now, because "talk to a bunch of lawyers to figure it out" is just awful. Would pay thousands more dollars for this option. Put me on retainer for consults.
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Nov 11, 2011 02:27
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yronic heroism posted:Weren't you listening? The beauty of CMR is it lets you not deal with other past/current/future lawyers. It was an object lesson. Once you practice for a few years, you won't hear anything a potential client says either, execpt for words like "thousands more dollars."
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Nov 11, 2011 12:08
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nm posted:Most states do. California is weird. No wonder it is so hard to pass the California bar exam. I thought attorneys were flocking there for the nice weather.
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Dec 5, 2011 12:14
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