As a lawyer, I hate all lawyers, and I really hate lawyer advertising. I have never seen an advertisement that made me want to hire that lawyer, but I have seen a lot of ads that made me NOT want to hire that lawyer. If lawyers actually conveyed the truth behind their ads, this is what they would actually say in these respective medias.
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If you ask a new associate what he or she actually does all day, you will undoubtedly hear a list of convoluted and exaggerated activities (lies) that only pretend to paint the bigger picture. What new lawyers actually do is not all that complicated, and almost any literate jack-ass can be an associate attorney if he has access to a computer and/or a ride to a place that does. Here are five examples of what a new lawyer actually spends time doing everyday.
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If you work long enough in a large law office setting, you tend to notice certain types of legal assistants who make you crazy with their worthlessness. While we at Bitter Lawyer know a good legal assistant is worth her weight in gold—and that a paralegal’s memory is long—you sometimes end up with dead weight. Like these five types of “legal assistants” who bring little to the table other than occasionally answering the phone and putting the mail in your chair.
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A personal injury practice encounters all kinds of clients (some with pee-stains on their sweat pants), and all kinds of “injuries.” Since a plaintiff’s practice cannot sustain itself on cases predicated on finger-cuts from ketchup packets, diarrhea from oysters or intentional infliction of pinkeye, we wait for those clients with cases that are worth our time and carry modest settlement value. Generally, the personal injury plaintiff will fit neatly into one or more of the following categories:
1The Lottery Winner: This client is overly excited to meet with you, and discusses his or her “injury” in terms of money, rather than pain or treatment. Typically, he was involved in a minor incident mere hours before he consults with you, and may even stop at your office on the way to the emergency room (unless he is bleeding). He acts as if he has walked into the regional lottery office with a winning ticket and is looking around for the over-sized check and balloons. This client usually has the whole family with him to help “celebrate.”
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When was the last time you actually went to trial? For most new litigators with caseloads, a trial is a mythical event that is postponed long enough for the insurance adjuster to realize that a trial is too expensive and risky. So most of us are “Certified Pre-Trial Attorneys” who merely engage the “tools” of discovery to garner enough information and billable hours—to settle the case before trial. But what are these “tools” of discovery, really? Let’s take a closer look:
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