South Carolina Trial Law Blog

I did a very difficult thing yesterday. I turned down a case of a friend’s son. The facts aren’t important, other than it wasn’t a good case. Liability and causation of injuries were not there. There was a significant gap in treatment and even pain symptoms and the young man worked in construction.

In days gone by, I would have oredered the accident report, got the initial meds and seen what we could do with it. But in the long run, we really wouldn’t be able to do much of anything with it. The insurance company might have settled it for nuisance value, but that’s about it. So, I talked to the man and told him that we could not help him and why.

It was difficult, I had done a significant case for his father. I had done a number of cases for the family. I took a second, third and fourth look at the case trying to convince myself that I would be able to do something with the case, but in the long run, I knew that I couldn’t, so I turned the case down.

I’ve been working with Cheryl Leone of Catalyst Group and one of the metrics that she harps on is the average case settlement. After being an injury lawyer for a period of time, I’ve noticed that if I divide the cases into smaller, medium and more substantial cases that they tend to follow the same pattern.

For example, I know any case over $100,000 will require filing suit and conducting discovery. The only way a larger case will settle early is if we clearly have a $250,000 case with only $100,000 insurance coverage. On the sizeale cases, we know that we’ll have to do our work.

Before, I had grouped cases into various categories to determine projected settlement dates and cash flow. So I wondered why the average case settlement was important. When I thought about it, it became obvious.

A friend recently asked with the advent of social networking, whether he should be on Facebook and what good is it? Here's an example of the power of social networking from Seth Godin's Blog.

The flipside? A friend got into college last week. The university gave her a list of the kids from our state who also got in. Within 24 hours, they were all friends. ALL of them! They knew who knew who, what they looked like, what their histories were. Facebook to the rescue. A new network built on the old network within minutes. By the time September rolls around, they won't need college, they'll need a reunion.

Neat stuff, but as Seth points out, the older generation doesn’t use the social networking to the same degree as the younger generation. So is it worth it to establish an acccount on Facebook? Probably, yes. Will you get the same out of it as a younger ‘tuned in’ attorney? Definitely not.

Sadly, even for a gadget freak like me, I’m part of the older generation that does not MySpace, Facebook or even text message (I send full e-mails). I’m part of the older generation.

I was at a practice management retreat where they posed a question. Looking for a new staff member, you have the option of choosing two great people. The first has 20 years experience and can hit the ground running, but is very expensive. The second has limited experience, is a fast learner is relatively inexpensive, but will require training. Which one do you pick?

The question was very careful to be weighted evenly and the answers were more of a rorschach test of the attorney, rather than which would make a better employee. The responses were interesting. Some people like to work side by side with their employees, handing off information to type, research and get out, on a regularly through the day. Others wanted to touch base briefly during the day and then each taking care of their own work. It isn’t a matter of what’s better or worse, but what is a better fit.

I personally, want to be able to touch base in the morning and let the employee do their work.

There were a lot of good responses to the question, but the one response that stuck in my mind was a very sharp attorney that had been around for more than 30 years. He said “I would have normally said the experienced, expensive paralegal, but I’m finding more and more ‘kids’ come in with limited experience being able to find nearly anything on the internet. They can use computers and technology to run rings around experienced paralegals without technical savvy”.

That might be an exaggeration, but I think that’s right. I don’t have any interest in employees that can’t find basic information on the internet with a simple Google search.

I was recently asked whether I use Windows of Mac OS X at home.

I use Windows (Toshiba R500) and Max OS X (MacBook Pro), my wife uses a MacBook and my 4 year old daughter kicks it with Linux (Asus Eee PC).

Hmmm…….I didn’t realize we had that much going on.

A guest post from a friend:

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

So this lawyer is in a doctor's office in Mount Pleasant yesterday.
She is asked to present an identification with a picture so that her
insurance card and use can be confirmed. She IMMEDIATELY begins to
yell loud enough for my friend (and the other 20 people in the waiting
room to hear): "I am a lawyer and I know the law. Since January of
2008, it is against Federal law to request a picture ID. You should
know this......." blah blah blah.

After her outrage, the people working at the office AND in the waiting
room (part of any potential venire) were heard to comment, almost in
unison, about how bad lawyers are, how they are and have destroyed
America, etc etc.

This lawyer hurt us all.