A Big Part of Why I No Longer Practice Law

@Bi-Polar Bear,

Just showing off my sense of humor, BPB.

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I get it bud. Just playing along.

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

It makes ME tense whenever a lawyer rings or writes to me!!!!

You guys are contagious!

Oh so that's why you don't like me ....

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A lot of my past practice had been in the plaintiffs side of mining insurance claims (mostly environmental).

The lawyers working for the insurance comanies were mostly all those who, at one time in the past, sold their personal souls to the devil and continually try to buy their ways out with pro bono work.

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@jespah,

When I studied law in the early 70's, we were just a couple of hundred students in our faculty. And then - due to some "in" professors, suddenly 900 students started their first semester ...

Well, I used what I'd studied a lot: most of my (later) years works and other degrees were more or less somehow law-related ...

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@farmerman,

http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/SatanLawyer.jpg

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

A lot of my past practice had been in the plaintiffs side of mining insurance claims (mostly environmental).

The lawyers working for the insurance comanies were mostly all those who, at one time in the past, sold their personal souls to the devil and continually try to buy their ways out with pro bono work.

Agreed that insurance lawyers do often stretch the limits of decency, but the plaintiff's lawyers are often no better. I worked with both a lot in my immediately previous vocation, and the depth of dishonesty that is sometimes naturally built into the system is mind boggling.

Having said that, I have also worked with lawyers who refused to participate in quirky ethics and who did yeoman's work in ensuring that their clients were properly and competently represented and who prevented great injustices from being done. Attorneys have also saved me and mine a bundle by helping close loopholes in contracts, helping eliminate unnecessary risks and hazards, and bless them all. It would be a worse world without them.

There are assholes and saints and everything in between in just about every occupation, more of some than in others though.

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@Ticomaya,

Ticomaya wrote:

dlowan wrote:
It makes ME tense whenever a lawyer rings or writes to me!!!!

You guys are contagious!

Oh so that's why you don't like me ....

Nah...as far as I know I am safe from the depradations of American Family Court lawyers.

At least I hope so!

Never say never they say.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

farmerman wrote:

A lot of my past practice had been in the plaintiffs side of mining insurance claims (mostly environmental).

The lawyers working for the insurance comanies were mostly all those who, at one time in the past, sold their personal souls to the devil and continually try to buy their ways out with pro bono work.

Agreed that insurance lawyers do often stretch the limits of decency, but the plaintiff's lawyers are often no better. I worked with both a lot in my immediately previous vocation, and the depth of dishonesty that is sometimes naturally built into the system is mind boggling.

Having said that, I have also worked with lawyers who refused to participate in quirky ethics and who did yeoman's work in ensuring that their clients were properly and competently represented and who prevented great injustices from being done. Attorneys have also saved me and mine a bundle by helping close loopholes in contracts, helping eliminate unnecessary risks and hazards, and bless them all. It would be a worse world without them.

There are assholes and saints and everything in between in just about every occupation, more of some than in others though.

Great Caesar's ghost!

I agree with Fox!

By heavens, though, the awful sleazebags do stick in one's mind like ticks, though.

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@dlowan,

If I may further expand MY experience (from which I cannot draw any additional comparisons)
My clients had payed fortunes for Environmental Impairment Liability Insurance, with the clear expectation that, if an environmental casualty loss ever took place, my clients would be "made whole".
The insurance companies ALWAYS, upon a claim being filed, denied coverage so that every time a claim was made, it resulted in a court case in the specific states legal roadmap. (Ohios mining laws are totally different from Wyomings)
I say that the insurance lawyers had alaways taken a position that we were not entitled to the coverage ( by the way, the insurance compainies keep collecting the premiums which can , for a small mining company, cost as much as a sizable percentage of a mines annual yield.
As my attorney friends had stated. "The job of an insurance company is to take your money and never give it back"

Ive been involved in many EIL (what we call it) cases and the defenses positions are always the same. The insurance company will fight the claim to their last breath, untril the judge says to pay up.

I realize that certain areas of law have evildoers on both sides. However, in environmental EIL (especially in mining claims) the devil lives at the insurance company's legal representatives house.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Having said that, I have also worked with lawyers who refused to participate in quirky ethics and who did yeoman's work in ensuring that their clients were properly and competently represented and who prevented great injustices from being done. Attorneys have also saved me and mine a bundle by helping close loopholes in contracts, helping eliminate unnecessary risks and hazards, and bless them all. It would be a worse world without them.

((((((((((((((( Foxy )))))))))))))))

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@Ticomaya,

Lawyer???

Your profile says you're a grimbribber! Now, I don't know what the hell that is, but it surely sounds more interesting than lawyering

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@margo,

margo wrote:

Lawyer???

Your profile says you're a grimbribber! Now, I don't know what the hell that is, but it surely sounds more interesting than lawyering

it is lawyering

1 Reply

Half the paralegals at my law school are lawyers who had to find other work.

Cycloptichorn

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@dyslexia,

I've had a lawyer help me, and I can imagine hiring Tico if I could. I took some kind of LSAT sample test and came out of it swell (yeh, and so) but would be a total conflagration as a lawyer. However, some of my best friends...

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@margo,

Interesting ... if you search "grimbribber" in google, my profile comes up as the #6 result.

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@Ticomaya,

Well, so it dies.....

and still a lawyer.....

In Oz they're often called solicitors - this appears to have a slightly different meaning in the US (although some solicitors/lawyers may feel they are prostituting themselves!)

A solicitor friend of mine took great delight in standing next to a sign saying "No Solicitors", somewhere in the US.

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@Ticomaya,

Ticomaya wrote:

Interesting ... if you search "grimbribber" in google, my profile comes up as the #6 result.

Tico, it does!!! That's wild!!! A little scary even.

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@Foxfyre,

I never heard/read the term grimgribber before. See, this topic is educational!

Yeah, hmmm, ethics. Certainly there were plenty of otherwise fine folk trying to get extra bucks from the insurance company (Oh, my neck! Oh, my spleen!) just as surely as the carrier was trying to keep from paying out what it was supposed to pay (Oh, you were injured while driving a car insured under our policy? You couldn't possibly be covered ....).

My last day practicing was spent defending the company from the evils of someone wanting $6,000 for damage to items stored in their basement when the plumbing leaked/there was some other damage, can't recall what but it wasn't a fire (mold? It's been close to 20 years so details are sketchy). It wasn't a flood claim, it was a homeowners' claim. Bottom line, there was coverage, the claimant was legitimately damaged and had proof of same, and I was to deny, deny, deny because they wanted me to get trial experience so I was pushed to take it to trial. Finally got a continuance and dumped my resignation letter on the boss's desk when I finally got back to the office after a day of being screamed at, at Supreme Queens (skeevy Jamaica, NY).

My reason for quitting? I remember this like it was yesterday: I don't like the person I'm becoming.

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@jespah,

I didn't like my adversarial role as an adjuster either. You couldn't make anybody happy. The insured and/or the claimant often thought you were screwing them; the agent wanted me to make his policy holder AND the insurance company ecstatically happy; the insurance company expected me to do my job and pay only those claims that we could not legitimately deny but pay as little as we absolutely had to legally pay.

I had one claim from a lady who stated her suitcase was stolen at the airport. She provided a list of stuff that was inside the carry on sized suitcase. You couldn't have put all that stuff inside an ocean going steamer trunk. But she got a lawyer who negotiated about 3/4th of what she was claiming and the insurance company paid it rather than incur the expense of fighting it.

I had one work comp claim in which the claimant was asking for advance payment so that he could pay his rent. He provided a note from his land lady as evidence that he had to pay up or be evicted. He misspelled her name. He had an honorable attorney, however, who fessed up that his documentation lacked a certain amount of credibility. Smile

And there was the case where two brothers who were off duty at the time came onto a jobsite and assaulted a coworker. The coworker, smaller than either one, took them both on simultaneouslly and beat the snot out of them. They filed work comp claims for their injuries and the judge made me pay them on the grounds that 'they could have been at work and in the course and scope of their job' and 'the employer did not take sufficient steps to protect them from injury.' Things like that just make me want to scream.

After eight years of that, I was becoming hard and cynical in a way I didn't like and it just wasn't fun. El Stud and I went into business for ourselves, still insurance related, but we don't have to fight those kinds of battles any more.

1 Reply

A Big Part of Why I No Longer Practice Law

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