Re: unconscionable fees?

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Well, it seems like in order to get a large group of people together, where
each member in the group is both willing and able to risk $2-4 k on a case
analysis, you would have to get a group of people who were mostly smart
right? I mean, people who make poor decisions with their money usually
don't have a lot of money to spend. Also, foolish people do not tend to be
willing to spend what money they do have on "analysis." They do not usually
appreciate the value of analysis the way smarter people do.

So, it seems to me that if you have a lot of people paying you to do many
hours' worth of "analysis" on their cases, that you are probably going to
have some good cases in there. I don't mean all the cases. Obviously, the
law is an esoteric subject and plenty of very smart people are no good at it.
But generally, if you take 100 smart people each of whom thinks their case
is good enough to warrant investment of a few thousand dollars in
professional analysis, wouldn't you expect there to be more legitimate cases
in that group?

Also, not to be picky but it's kind of an understatement to say that
"routinely intentionally misleading" would be unethical, isn't it? I mean,
intentionally misleading even once in unethical, and fraudulent. I would
expect a lawyer must actively prevent himself being unintentionally
misleading as well.

On 9/26/06, rrr wrote:
> Its the Lawyers Ethical duty to give a realistic analysis of the case and
> its value. If an attorney were to routinely be intentionally misleading
> clients as to the value of the case then yes it would be unethical.
>
> The practical problem is knowing if the attorney is intentionally
> misleading or not.
>
> The true value of a case cannot really be obtained without a total
> analysis of the factors involved. Most clients seldom give you a complete
> & accurate synopsis, so its quite possible that the lawyers investigation
> and analysis of value exceeds the value of the case.
>
> Think of it like this: a tax preparer gets paid to prepare a tax return,
> whether the tax return results in money owed to the IRS, or a tax refund.
> Either way, the time, knowledge and effort required to complete the tax
> return properly is the same. The client doesn't get to say... "whoa, Mr.
> Tax Preparer, I'm not getting a refund, your fee is unconscionable". The
> same is true of most pre-litigation & litigation. In a contingency
> matter, the attorney takes risk that after the investigation is done the
> value of the case will exceed a certain level. In a non-contingency case,
> the client takes the risk.
>
> An attorney who charges money to do the case analysis is providing a
> value. Even if ultimately he tells the client... "your case is crap".
> Thats a value provided. For some reason, the general public seems to
> think that Attorneys should give that value away for free, though there
> is no rational or ethical reason to do so. The fact that the Attorney
> then mitigates the clients loss by obtaining a "nuisance settlement" from
> the other side is something the client should be happy about, not a
> something the Attorney's ethics should be questioned for.
>
>
> On 9/26/06, secretary wrote:
>> Even when it's part of your business model to regularly recover less
>> than you charge? I'm not just talking about the odd client who wants to
>> make a statement. I mean virtually one's entire caseload.
>>
>> I would quit if I didn't like who I was working for, or if I felt I was
>> helping someone unethical.
>>