Thursday, December 29, 2016

The way to get money back from a divorce attorney?

5:42 AM Posted by Unknown , , , No comments
I will provide some useful information to help you figure out how to get money back from a divorce attorney: 
The first thing to do is to set up a meeting with your attorney to explain your concerns about the bill. See if you can come to a meeting of the minds about what you should have been charged versus what you have been charged.
Your lawyer should provide you a bill which gives you a sense of what he did for your money. However, you need to understand, there often isn't "tangible output". Tangible output is not something against which you can judge a fair legal bill. A lot of our time is simply spent talking to people. That isn't tangible output, but it is something for which you will be billed.  Nor are you required to give permission for everything the lawyer does. If your lawyer contacted you to ask you if he could do something, he would charge you for each of those contacts, figure 6 minutes to send an email 6 minutes to read the email with your permission to go forward. That would add up fast. (Or 10 or 15 minutes, depending on how he charges.)
Lawyers simply do not stop and contact their clients for permission to act once they have been retained. They go forward with the representation as they believe is appropriate. For example, your lawyer is not going to ask your permission to speak with opposing counsel or write a letter or conduct research on a legal issue. He is going to call you when you need to be updated or asked a question or if he needs something from you. If he has begun negotiations and wants to know if you agree to the settlement, he will call you there too. He should also call you if he has given you an estimate and the cost is going to go well beyond the expected.
Family law cases are expensive. If the opposing side is not cooperative, they get even more expensive. If the client calls or emails a lot, that makes them more expensive too.
If you are unable to come to an agreement, then your next step is to look and see if you have access to a fee dispute process handled by a local bar association. You can find more information here. Resolving Fee Disagreements
A fee dispute, incidentally, is not something over which to file an ethics complaint, unless the fee itself shows unethical conduct. A dispute about a fee, generally speaking, has nothing to do with the ethical rules.
Remember, unless the lawyer's fee is essentially outrageous for what he is claiming he did, then you will are unlikely to be successful in a fee dispute. So your best bet is simply to work through the issue with your lawyer and resolve it.
Additionally, In order to answer your question appropriately, I would need to know what you expected from your divorce lawyer. Your question states that you where charged for "work for which no tangible output exists"; in your mind, what is tangible output from a divorce proceeding? What was tangible in your marriage? If you mean that the pieces of paper declaring your dissolution of marriage or your marriage are the tangible items that you should pay for, then I would suggest that your understanding of the effort that went into the production of those pieces of paper is profoundly lacking (and may very well explain why you had a divorce attorney to begin with). Even "uncontested" divorces (with very, very rare exceptions) have some element which is contested and requires some negotiation. Do you consider the time your lawyer spent conducting that negotiation to be of no value because you can't touch it?
Of course if you mean that your lawyer billed you for time that was not expended or for activities that did not further your divorce proceeding, then you can, after giving the lawyer an opportunity to explain themselves, file a grievance against the attorney with the bar disciplinary office or committee in your jurisdiction. In many jurisdictions you can find out how and where to file your grievance at your local courthouse (and many jurisdictions have this information online). Most bar disciplinary bodies have a mechanism to order (with the aid of the court if need be) return of unearned funds.
As far as the second prong of your question regarding work you "never authorized them to do", you need to clarify what work you're talking about. I am assuming you were given and directed to read, understand and sign a retainer agreement outlining the terms of your lawyer's representation of you (if not, that alone s a grievable offense in most jurisdictions). So, for instance, if you where billed for time "reviewing bank statements", dd you expect your lawyer to contact you before he/she reviewed the records to see if you "authorized" it? or to call you before they prepared a subpoena to obtain those records? If you did expect that kind of minucial micro-management of your divorce proceeding, then either your lawyer failed to adequately apprise you of how their representation works, or you have completely unreasonable expectations, or you're just trying to beat paying your bill.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

What should a client do to her lawyer when they lose a case?

8:58 AM Posted by Unknown , No comments
  Were you thinking about the stocks or publicly caning her?
   In litigation, one side wins and the other side loses. If you don’t want to risk that outcome, you settle.
Not every case is a good one.
   Additionally,  A good lawyer will give you an honest appraisal of what your chances of winning are. We’re trained never to give guarantees of outcomes. If a lawyer tells you any outcome is 100% certain, they are probably a hack desperate for your business.
   I usually won’t take a case with a less than even chance of successful outcome. Clients like to think they pay lawyers for outcomes rather than representation, and will often turn on their lawyer if they lose. Besides, It depends on how the lawyer performed. If they milked your retainer for every billable second and failed to produce an acceptable work product, try to settle. Not all lawyers care if you win. The system is about resolution not justice. If you are truly wrong or guilty, do not expect miracles. Live is not TV, lawyers lose cases or simply screw up. If your lawyer did their best, pay the bill. If not, then compromise

   In my opinion losing and winning is not a certain game specially in the field of law. If your lawyer looses a case this does not mean that he has done any injustice to you, your lawyer has given enough time to your grievance and prepared your case but if the law does not support your contention then you might loose. Therefore, your lawyer has a right to take the share of his service which he has provided you and of course your lawyer will always be available to provide you further legal assistance in case you need it.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The way what prosecutors justify putting innocent people in prison

8:51 AM Posted by Unknown , No comments
This is what explains the topics above, including the why fairness is protected:
We know that this gets asked all the time of defense attorneys (no idea why prosecutors get to be heroes 100% of the time, despite the fact that sending innocent people to prison is a far worse crime to society than a guilty person going free, in my humble opinion), and it always stems from a misunderstanding about the system.
In an adversarial court system, the prosecutor represents the State (or the Crown in some places). They are there to present the State’s case against the defendant. It is the prosecutor’s job to attempt, to the very best of their ability and through whatever (legal) means they can to find the defendant guilty.
The defense attorney’s sole job is to represent the defendant and ensure that they receive proper legal representation in court. All defendants are innocent until proven guilty, remember? The defense attorney must, by all methods, seek to prove their defendant not guilty. That is their job. If a defense attorney helps their “monster of a client” escape justice, then they did their job. You know who didn’t do their job? The prosecutor. They clearly did not argue their case properly, or missed key witnesses or pieces of evidence that would have sold their case, but they didn’t obtain what they needed. They failed.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, is entitled to legal representation. That is guaranteed by law. Do not blame defense attorneys for doing their job, because you don’t like the outcome of the trial. This is how the system is designed. Instead, blame the prosecutor for not mounting a proper case against the defendant.

Additionally, The law has been designed to put only guilty people without a reasonable doubt into prison. The defense attorney has to prove that there is a reasonable doubt, he doesn't know if his client is actually guilty or not. If there is ample evidence to prove in court, then he would ask his client to take a plea deal. A defense attorney cannot lie or make up stuff to help his client go Scot free. He just has to ensure that all procedures are followed according to the law like search warrants or warrant to obtain DNA and not by force etc. Most cases defense attorneys don't know if their client is guilty or not as there is no concrete evidence, he steps in at that time. Earlier when there was no DNA evidence, people were persecuted, now when they do DNA tests they find out that they are not guilty. See how it works!! Next time you are arrested by the police, you should pray for a good defense attorney as you could be innocent but the evidence with the police or assumptions by the police says otherwise.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

What do you need to do to become a great attorney?

9:50 AM Posted by Unknown No comments
To become with a good attorney you have to go through a lot of things, here are some things you need:
  1. you are not afraid to turn down a case that is outside my practice area. I don’t have a problem telling a potential client that I am not familiar with a certain area of law. I don’t mind referring clients elsewhere when the need arises.
  2. you are not afraid to tell a potential client that they don’t need to spend money on me. Many times, they have a remedy available for free, they don’t need an expensive procedure, or the remedy they want simply isn’t available.
  3. you are not afraid to give an amount of time, for free, to see if a client has a case that I can help with. I don’t mind talking to a client on the phone about a case, to see if something is there. I also don’t mind if I talk them out of hiring me.
  4. you don’t mind telling a client that spending money on me is a waste of resources. Many are pleasantly surprised at my candor when I tell them that I will not take their money to pursue a remedy that they’re not likely to get.
  5. you don’t have to take every case that comes to my office. I also don’t have maximize billing on every capable client. I also tend to look at billing clients on a value added basis, and I try to do most of my work on flat fees vs hourly.
  6. you are not afraid to take a case that is goofy, messed up or otherwise out of the norm. A lot of my practice is repairing work done by well meaning, but inexperienced counsel, non-lawyers who are in over their heads, and DIY gone wrong.
  7. you are not judgmental. Whatever you tell me, it’s not the worst thing I’ve heard that day.
  8. you have excellent staff who are kind, compassionate, intelligent and hard working.
  9. you don’t just “tell you what you want to hear.” If your case stinks, or you’re being foolish, I have no problem telling you so.
  10. you will answer the phone, return your calls and emails. It might not be immediate, but I will communicate with you. I actually enjoy talking to clients.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Serving alcohol in the hospital

7:43 AM Posted by Unknown , No comments
I do not support the use of alcohol in the hospital. There are many reasons to oppose that:

Firstly, Alcohol can increase the effect of medication, causing terrible side effects in patients that were taking some kind of drugs.

Secondly,Even if you served it only to visitors, plenty would sneak it to the patients if they asked.

Finally,Having anyone drunk in a hospital is a terrible idea. What if they become violent and cannot be restrained? What if they go somewhere they are not supposed to? What if they lose their balance, and knock over some important equipment, or vomit all over someone?

And there is a terrible reason that you would always have that odd doctor or nurse who thought they could do a cardiac surgery after having a few beers and end up killing the patient or leaving their stethoscope in the patient’s chest! That is bad publicity, something that a hospital’s administration spends an incredible amount of time and resources to manage.
I do not understand why alcohol is used in hospitals in some countries in French and most European, I am totally against it because it is extremely dangerous.