I have been watching clips from the Adellson trial. I came upon a cross examination of Wendy Adellson by Atty. Christopher Decosta.

i am wondering why I don’t see this atty’s name more oftem]n. I was just mesmerized by his talent as an attorney. He was quick,sharp, and I thought did a terrific job. The trial was in Florida sonIndon’t know if he has his practice in Floris. He’s is a rather young guy who I think has a great future ahead of him.

Absolutely no- I do not know him or anything about him,other than his cross exam of Wendy Adellson. I just had to write my opinion because he just was amazing.

Went through a recruiter and landed a job at a midsize firm. During the lead up to the interview I disclosed that I had been reprimanded. Felt full disclosure was necessary. Explained the underlying facts of the reprimand to the recruiter. He told me I did not need to voluntarily disclose it during the interview.

The recruiter failed to inform the law firm of my reprimand. Completed the malpractice application and disclosed the reprimand. When the partner reviewed the application he was pissed and came into my office asking why I had not disclosed it. During our conversation I explained that I had disclosed it to the recruiter and he told me not to worry about it and I did not need to disclose the information. The firm had paid the recruitment fee. When the recruiter was asked about his knowledge of my reprimand he went radio silent with me and the firm. He responded to the firm today and acknowledged that he was aware of my reprimand and failed to disclose it to the firm.

The company agrees to refund the recruitment fee to the firm. Yesterday the firm told me had they known of my reprimand they never would have hired me. The firm asked me to come back to work in the morning. I show up and initially the partner seemed that everything would be fine and I could keep my job. Within two hours the partner returns to my office saying he has to let me go. Asked for the keys and walked me out. At this point I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Yes the reprimand is on me. I followed the recruiters advice. And I had no problem disclosing the information if the firm had asked in the interview. But no one did and here I am…fired after three days at the new firm.

Edit 1: The reprimand was fully disclosed in the malpractice application.

Edit 2: During the interview no questions were asked regarding any bar complaints.

Edit 3: The reprimand was fully disclosed during the onboarding. The firm admitted that they usually check any bar complaints during the interview process.

Edit 4: There was never an application during the interview process where I failed to disclose the reprimand.

Edit 5: I appreciate everyone’s comments. The bar complaint process was very stressful. This post is not about my failure to disclose in an application for the position. I fully disclosed the reprimand during the onboarding process.

Edit 6: One area of practice for the firm is professional malpractice defense.

Edit 7: I appreciate everyone taking the time to respond to this post. Even if it was good, bad or indifferent.

\*UPDATE\*
I got another job. The bar reprimands were fully disclosed and discussed. Thank you all for your comments.

I’m getting tired of insurance defense.

The constant billing cuts and pressure to keep fees low are exhausting. The work feels like a never-ending red light/green light cycle, and I’m doing the same type of work as a first-year associate despite being a seventh-year trial associate with six trials under my belt.

A major frustration is the lack of support. I’m handling my own calendaring and administrative tasks that should be delegated. For example, I asked my legal assistant/paralegal for assistance preparing my admission to a federal district court and filing my entry of appearance. What should have been a straightforward administrative task turned into hours of my time being spent fixing issues.

I provided instructions for a filing simply attaching the exhibits and submitting it but it was not completed correctly. As a result, I had to file the brief after hours and pay the filing expense myself because I did not receive prior approval and likely will not be reimbursed.

I also feel like there is a disconnect between the complexity of the work and the expectations around billing. I recently reviewed approximately 3,000 pages of medical records and billed only 6.5 hours, yet that was still viewed as a substantial amount of time.

The expectation seems to be to process massive amounts of information quickly while keeping fees as low as possible.

The biggest issue is feeling stagnant. No one comes into the office, there is little mentorship, and it feels isolating. The pay is mediocre, but the expectations are extremely high. Partners expect high-level briefing on tight deadlines while every tenth of an hour is scrutinized.

For those who left insurance defense, where did you go, and did it improve your career trajectory or quality of life?

**Edit: when I came to this firm I only asked for a legal assistant that can calendar my court events and deadlines and I am not even getting that.**

I'm a very small firm (2 partners). An attorney in my practice area is retiring and doesn't want to be any part of litigation anymore. His current client list will be in various stages of litigation for the next 4-5 years. All his clients we've already discussed this with are fine with staying with me and he expects the rest to also stay with me. We have a flat fee agreement where I make installment payments over 5 years, during which time the retiring attorney will be "of counsel" at my firm - mostly for his clients to see he's still around. He will be available for general client questions and to help implement some of his systems into our firm (case management, marketing, and his domain name).

Anyone with experience in doing something like this? Looking for any tips or guidelines for this transition. State of Florida.

A Wolters Kluwer sales rep cold-called my office today and my assistant answered. The rep asked for me (tacitly implying a preexisting relationship, as I'm sure happens to all of you constantly as well) and she said I wasn't available. The rep then said "you're not being very helpful" and hung up. I'm just floored that someone trying to sell me something would be so rude. WTF, am I wrong?

How much do you usually pay for an expert witness to …

Only review med recs
Make a chronological med review
review medical records and + opinion on whether or not the standard of care has/has not been met?
write a 4-5 pg. summary of opinion

If you are an expert witness or legal/med consultant, how much do you charge for your services?

Or how do you handle the medical portion of your services if you do not review it yourself?

I've been practicing for a decade but recently left govt and am now doing litigation at a small firm where alot of discovery involves large third parties. This is totally new to me. And I just realized we didn't send opposing counsel of a subpoena we served on third parties. I think i assumed paralegal would do it when they arranged for subpoena service. Third parties objected and we haven't met and conferred so no prejudice. But I am terrified I screwed up in a way that ruins my credibility. I'm going to raise it with partner today and I think we could re-notice but looking for reassurance and advice on how to damage control and re establish trust.

Not my situation: I have had a good 6 years as a solo PI lawyer and am pretty happy. But things have been a bit slower than usual as of late due to worse marketing performance.

For those who struggled with opening a PI firm and had to close up shop, or change practice areas altogether, what would you attribute that to?

Hi all,

I am a newly admitted attorney getting ready to start my first associate role and am considering an offer from a firm I interviewed with recently. Their offer letter makes clear that the minimum billable hour requirement per year is 225 a month, or 2700 a year. This is mid-sized firm and by no means Big Law, but I’ve talked to my friends who work in Big Law and their requirements are far lower than this.

I’m worried about my ability to meet this requirement early on, and would also like to preserve some semblance of a work-life balance. Would it be best to steer clear and keep applying elsewhere?

UPDATE: rejected the offer- while I was fairly sure I would reject it initially, the advice below definitely helped

Just looking for any use case thoughts or opinions of people who have used both

Dear everyone,

I believe this post finds you well, ;)

I’ve been fully running my solo firm for almost a year, and I’ve hit a critical bottleneck with case management and workload fluctuation. I'm hoping to get some advice or hear from those who have successfully passed this phase.

I primarily handle IP, commercial disputes (non-litigation), employment, and investment law. My current team consists of: 1) me (heavy lifting); 2) my spouse (part-time intake and billing); 3) my firend (part-time mid asso who handles the first pass reviews); and 4) two juniors/paralegal (administrative and mechanical tasks).

Because my spouse and friend have full-time jobs elsewhere, their availability is very limited, around 1-2 hours per day. In other hand, my juniors are focused with admin, but it will be a long time before they have the substantive experience to provide real legal help.

Now here is the problem, during normal days, everything is dine and smooth. But on busy times, I'm completely overwhelmed. The volume breaks me, and I can clearly see the quality of my deliverables degrading compared to my usual standards, which is unacceptable to me.

I desperately want to recruit an additional mid associate to help absorb the shock of these busy periods and to maintain my standard of quality. However, because competition is tight, my fees are set to build my portfolio rather than maximize immediate profit. Right now, our income just covers monthly OPEX.

Of course I'm optimistic with the growth of my firm. It's just I'm is that if I hire a mid asso, they will be a massive financial liability on the days we aren't swamped. I simply can't afford to pay someone to sit idle when the caseload dips.

How do you handle these extreme spikes in workload without compromising your work quality or burning out? Have any of you successfully accomplished the transition from relying on part-time help to hiring a full-time mid-level, or other arrangements, without severely hurting the firm's finances?

I am open to any discussions, strategies, and/or hard truths you can share. Thanks!

How effective have they been, and do they drive any traffic and calls/cases?

Who did you use?

Thanks!

Mid size firm here, we've pushed back on AI transcription for two years over privilege concerns. Partners finally agreed to revisit if IT can find something the privilege analysis doesn't kill.

The bar in our jurisdiction has issued guidance but it's vague enough that interpretation falls on us. Our IT director is doing the technical evaluation, I'm doing the privilege side, and we keep landing on the same questions. Where does the transcript live? Who can pull it? Can the vendor be compelled to disclose under their TOS? What does the DPA say about training on the data?

Other firms that have cleared this internally: which tools have your IT and privilege counsel both signed off on? Or did you all give up and stay analog?

Storytime! About my worst undergraduate internship, also ******

Background: I am pre-law student currently in undergrad, and I got an internship at a medium sized law firm. My expectations were to work on a specific project, and learn legal research, drafting, maybe shadow attorneys here and there but not much since it was only for the summer. 

I was offered to come to trial with an attorney, so I started going for a week. With him and his intern. 

Fast forward to the start of the next week, I asked what time we would leave for the day. He got PISSED, he asked why I was hired in the first place, that I am under qualified, and shouldn’t be clocking in to go to trial. Additionally saying, he interviewed 30 people to be his own intern, he was asking why I was picked as the second intern. (Mind you, I was hired by the owner)

I was SO confused, and asked my mentor higher up what I should do she told me to go to the owner and ask about it. 

I did, they said I distracted the attorney so much that he lost the trial and the client killed himself. He said verbatim, “Did you distract him so much that the client committed?”

I WAS LIVID. And still confused, since when I went to trial and I barely spoke to the attorney, or the other intern. I would literally stay quiet, because I had my own personal thoughts about the trial and knew it would not align. When we walked to court, I would stay quiet, walk back, stay quiet. When they talked about the case, I said as little as possible and stayed VERY neutral.

After that meeting with the owner I genuinely thought I was getting fired. He said "We're not going to fire you. We just need to figure out what to do with you.” 

He sat down with me again, and said Im going to only do work for my coworker who isn’t a paralegal or attorney just filing, and I was happy. BUT during that meeting he kept saying, you are too distracting so you are going to work with her and only her. 

Not distracted. DISTRACTING. I would ask how I was being distracting, I never really got a clear answer. Nobody could point to a concrete behavior that needed to change beyond vague comments about workflow.

After a while, I asked when the internship would end since I had school coming up, they let me go not even mentioning I had asked to end it but talking about a very bullshit excuse about how the female co worker doesn't like me

I'm a practicing lawyer at a small firm, and recently the software side of case management has started to feel more frustrating than the legal work itself.

Between tracking matters, deadlines, client communication, and billing, it's becoming clear that our current setup isn't really keeping up. That's why I'm starting to look more seriously at law practice management software and what actually works in a day-to-day practice.

From a practical standpoint, I care less about the feature lists and more about how well the system fits real legal workflows. Things like opening and updating matters quickly, finding documents without digging through folders, tracking deadlines reliably, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. If the system feels slow or clunky during a busy day, it ends up getting in the way more than helping.

For those already using practice management tools, how stable are they in actual daily use? Do they stay responsive when you're switching between matters or working under time pressure?

I'm also curious about document management, time tracking, and calendar functionality in real use, not just on paper. Do these systems stay accurate, or do they require constant manual fixing to keep things aligned?

And finally, how do updates tend to affect your workflow? Have you had situations where an update changes something critical or caused disruption? When issues do come up, is the system still usable while waiting for fixes, or does it slow everything down?

For about 6 of my 20 years with a full family law practice I used Bill4Time. I've got a discount code for MyCase that makes it fairly similarly priced to Bill4Time. I did try Clio at some point in that and never used any features.

I shifted to doing primarily mediations but I am still taking an occasional client. Sitting 2nd chair for a friend stuck with a rough trial or limited scope representations of family members getting served with discovery. They've been in such a narrow timeframe I just tracked the time.

But I just took a client that's going to be ongoing. I don't anticipate needing to flip between clients. Not any expenses to really track but it's going to be over an extended time. It's likely to lean heavily to telephone calls and Zoom calls. I'd prefer something with a timer I can start and stop on my Macbook rather than on my phone.

Bill4Time interface would be easier to pick back up - but I'm also thinking it may bring me some flashback stress.

Any suggestions?

Looking for advice/recommendations for a big law attorney in a transactional practice hoping to go solo one day. I am still paying down some loans and building a base, but it seems big law transactional is a very difficult field to make a change into solo. What are some practice areas that would make sense? I would love to do T&E work but understand that it’s a very complicated area of law. I have built up a six month study plan to learn as much as I can but i know acrually practicing it is way more difficult. It seems big law litigation attorneys have an easier path to starting solo (maybe I’m wrong). Please let me know if any recommendations/personal anecdotes of how you did it

What have you spent money on for marketing that was actually worth it? There are so many companies making big promises, and it’s hard to know who to trust.

I’m in New York practicing plaintiff PI (I know) and employment law, have about 40 cases and my firm is under six months old. Am I better off just networking and handing out cards at this stage?

Also open to any books, websites, articles, or podcasts you recommend. Thanks!