Today’s topic may seem elementary, but there’s a reason professional athletes continue to work on the fundamentals of their game. It’s important. Communication is fundamental to having a successful practice. Responding to emails and phone calls is an often underappreciated and overlooked area of professionalism and practice management. Here are three groups of people from whom you are likely receiving regular communications and to whom you should be responding promptly. Responding to Judges A judicial assistant called me and said, “I called you instead of the other lawyer because he never answers or calls me back.” I was totally befuddled....
Once upon a time and persisting for many years, when I woke up in the night or early morning, I found difficult to go back to sleep. Regardless of the reason for the awakening. Regardless of how tired I was. I just had a hard time going back to sleep. I lay awake for long stretches trying to will myself back to sleep, which incidentally is more stress-inducing than relaxing. Then we had a baby. And you may know this already (and I was only recently reminded with the arrival of kiddo number 2) but newborns have to eat every...
I went to a client’s panel counsel meeting several months ago. The presentation the client gave was focused on what outside counsel could do to help the claims adjusters and management team handle their claims more efficiently and effectively. Of course, any time a client is taking the time to tell you, “Here are the things you can do to make my life easier,” or “These are the things we consider when we’re evaluating our relationship with you,” you had darn well better be listening. While I’ve written on some of these topics in the past and will certainly extrapolate...
I was on the phone with an insurance adjuster when she said to me, you’re not going to believe the case evaluation this lawyer down in [another part of the state] gave me. Now, I have a policy of not speaking badly of my competition, so it appeared that I was about to be entering some choppy waters. Nevertheless, I asked her to tell me about it, mostly because I was curious, but also because, what else was I going to do? “We’ve got a construction defect case over in [geographical region omitted] Alabama. There was about $150,000 in claimed...
In early March 2018, I flew from Birmingham to Minneapolis, where I rented a vehicle from a certain rental company that shares a name with a historic Texas landmark. Then I drove to Wisconsin. The next day I drove back to Minneapolis and returned my rental car. I took the tram to the terminal where I got my ticket and went through security. As I was getting re-dressed going through the TSA scanners and began rearranging my belongings, I realized I had left my sunglasses in the car. Looking at my watch and then at the lines, I realized I...
Law firms should base their case budgeting processes on real numbers that better enable clients to manage litigation costs and set reserves. Undoubtedly, litigation budgets can change during the course of litigation, but attorneys need to notify their clients as soon as practicable of expected upticks in case expenses and necessary budget increases. Too often, when preparing litigation budgets for clients, lawyers copy-and-paste a set of numbers from one report to the next without stopping to consider the fees and expenses that may be associated with individual cases. Like many things, budgets require some experience to do well, but they...
A few days ago, a fellow insurance defense lawyer said to me, “I wish I were as bold and confident as [a certain personal injury lawyer]. He’s so quick to say, ‘Fine, let’s just try it and see what happens.’ Maybe I’ve been beaten down by too many bad verdicts.” The lawyer who said this is good and experienced. I was surprised to hear her say these things, but once I thought about it, I shouldn’t have been. Setting individual personality traits aside, it occurs to me that many of the personal injury lawyers I know exude more swagger and...
A few weeks ago, this website got hacked. Some malicious person [note: much editing had to be done here to choose a non-offensive term, on account of the terrible headache – and expense – that resulted from this episode] dropped some malware into the site and caused all the search result traffic to redirect to a pharmaceutical website. So if you plugged a search term into Google that would otherwise brought up a link to one of my blog entries, when you clicked on the link, it took you instead to a website where you could purchase any number of...
I’m a litigator, and I like thinking of myself as such. I participate in written discovery, review and assess thousands of pages of documents, take and defend depositions, and try cases. I’ve learned that every aspect of a case should be conducted in furtherance of preparing the matter for trial. Interrogatory responses, site inspections, party depositions – none of them happen in a vacuum. Everything that happens in a case is (or should be) in anticipation of putting your client in the best position for final resolution. Tunnel Vision for Litigators As a trial lawyer, sometimes when I catch a...
Sometimes you’re going to have a client who wants his day in court. That client may be a plaintiff who says he’s interested in justice, not money. But unless your client is Taylor Swift, who sued someone for $1 for sexual misconduct, it’s unlikely that the client is truly not interested in a monetary award. Or that client may be a defendant who wants to be proven not liable for the allegations brought against her. Even for those clients, mediation may provide an opportunity for your client to have his day in court without having to endure the risks associated with...
