Re: unconscionable fees?

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On 9/28/06, secretary wrote:
> 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.

I couldn't disagree more with your assumption. Smart people do not
necessarily manage their money well, some of the worst money managers I've
known are doctors and lawyers.

A smart person does not know the law. I see it every day. in fact the
smarter person (or at least the ones who "think" they're smarter) is
frequently more difficult to work with because they've "read the
constitution" or statute or case law or code or whatever and want to tell me
what the law says and how the case will come out. then they're mad when I
disagree. One can almost never have all the facts before accepting a case
that's what discovery is for. you take the case, go through discovery, find
out it's crap and to salvage something for your cleint you accept a nuisance
settlement because going to trial is throwing good money after bad. I
almost always take "ify" cases on a fee basis because there's a lot of money
that has to spent in prosecuting a case, copies, depositions, etc. and I'm
not going to eat that. They want to pay to find out if they have a case,
great. In fact, my state forces people to have an expert opinion in medical
malpractice cases before even filing the complaint. who pays for that? I'm
not going to. Having said that, I refuse cases that I believe don't have
merit, and that is ethical. I know there are attorneys that do this, but i'm
not one of them. for the rest, I agree wholeheartedly with rrr. below.

> 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.
>>
>>