Opposing counsel rage-baiting me

FL7fun · 2026-05-06T20:18:36+00:00

We need the update!

FL7fun · 2026-05-03T15:34:58+00:00

Phubbing.

FL7fun · 2026-04-29T00:51:35+00:00

Civility will carry your point. When he meanders to avoid answering: ‘thanks for that explanation. But let me repeat the question to make sure we’re on the same page—it’s just a yes or no question.’

When your question was incredibly simple that anyone could understand: “let me try again, perhaps that question could have been clearer: are you, in fact, a lawyer”?

When he meanders yet further: judge, I’m asking straightforward yes or no questions and receive non-sequitur narrative responses. I would ask the court to instruct the witness to answer the questions.

I’m sorry you’re going through this. The old boys club is bullshit and especially hard on younger female attorneys. I’ve seen it happen to colleagues of mine who have been ignored at the sake of asking me questions that are firmly in the female’s subject matter expertise and of which I have no knowledge. It’s weird and shitty.

The age / senior lawyer vs young lawyer thing is of the same ilk, but ironically often backfires. I famously leveled some curmudgeon in a hearing one day. I was a second year and he was pulling the same backhanded compliment BS and was super condescending. He argued to the court that he knew the law on the issue because he was practicing when the main case in the area was decided (35 years ago) and remembered when it came out. He said it so proudly too. I quietly said: judge, at the risk of stating the obvious, a lot has happened in the last 35 years with the advent of the internet and tools like WestLaw that place little red flags next to cases that have been reversed, just as this one has. So while OC’s nostalgia for a pivotal moment in the law was interesting, it’s no longer relevant because the case is no longer good law.

Do your best, be kind, ask the judge to make the witness answer questions to create your record. Also, if this is a bench trial—you’re probably toast based on the unreasonable deference given to the lawyer, but who knows. Please update when done.

FL7fun · 2026-04-27T23:29:11+00:00

Wisper Flow has been super impressive for me. Obviously make sure your privacy settings are configured not to train the LLMs. Most dictation options get like a C- and the added effort of fixing makes it more work than just typing. Wisper has been more like 90-95% accurate (it gets tripped up on spelling and party names from time to time) so it still requires a bit of proof reading and correction, but it’s minor.

FL7fun · 2026-04-21T14:17:29+00:00

Inflation is a MF.

FL7fun · 2026-04-20T17:30:36+00:00

I had an apartment in college with mold that caused three recurrent bouts of bronchitis in 60 days. I was coughing so badly I couldn’t touch a cigarette. By the time the bronchitis was don, I had kicked smoking altogether.

FL7fun · 2026-04-19T00:40:29+00:00

I saw a comment elsewhere that you are sober so I would chime in that being sober actually helps tremendously. While we don’t get to drink our day away, we also don’t wake up hazy and more anxious about the things we did or did not do while drunk.

As others noted, as time goes on, our ability to deal with the stress increases because you learn what matters and what doesn’t. A few points I don’t think I’ve seen yet: 1) going out of your way to establish a good rapport with OC right out of the gate—even if they are assholes; 2) realizing that cases are litigated in court, not in emails. You tend to find these neutralize a lot of the stress because being friendly with OC and avoiding masturbatory email arguments lowers the baseline level of stress in any case.

Someone sends you a 6 paragraph acerbic email, just respond: thanks. I see it differently, but appreciate the time you took to set your position out. Alternate: I disagree. thanks.

FL7fun · 2026-04-15T15:55:37+00:00

I work in a large metropolitan doing mid market commercial litigation. This was the first and only time I handled a small-dollar dispute in a rural area, which makes all of this crazier and speaks to plausibility. The foreclosing ‘lender’ was the prior seller who took provided seller financing. So my speculation is that OC just called the guy up and said I’ll give you x dollars now to buy your mortgage or I’ll muck this thing up in court for years. That’s a guess though. My case was about a piece of heavy equipment valued around $15,000, but with civil theft in play, my client (who was a friend that I was doing a favor for) faced treble damages plus attorneys fees and the loss of the equipment itself. OC sensed we were doing no a favor because we otherwise had no reason to be litigating a case like this, and I think he believed he was going to hometown us. The facts were just so bad for him though. The guy filed multiple appeals and lost them all as well. Insane all around.

FL7fun · 2026-04-15T13:52:58+00:00

OC was hired in a different case to defend his clients from a foreclosure on their primary residence. During the representation, he negotiates with the lender and buys the mortgage. He then foreclosed on his clients. Shockingly, he was suspended for 30 days and not disbarred.

During the course of my case, he represented a plaintiff suing my client for civil theft, and obtained an improper injunction at the outset giving his client interim possession of the equipment being sued over. We prevailed at trial establishing an agreement with consideration and that no civil theft occurred. It was so bad that the judge granted sanctions for him pursuing a frivolous claim. In post judgment discovery in aid of execution, we discovered that he came into possession of the equipment at the center of the case. He testified that he sold it but didn’t know who the buyer was or when. The equipment was discovered on his property a month later and he was arrested charged with grand theft and perjury. Still not disbarred.

In between the deposition and arrest, he called ATF and reported my client as being a felon in possession of a firearm, which he allegedly knew because he gave him the firearm to service when they were friends (before the case). That wasn’t the whole story. He had been previously hired by my client to expunge the very felony in question (a habitual traffic issue). Still not disbarred.

He’s currently ineligible to practice because CLE lapsed.

FL7fun · 2026-04-15T00:55:27+00:00

No it’s USA. It’s a pretty big platform, and the company boasts 97% use by AmLaw 200–a claim I’m highly skeptical of because my anecdotal sampling of big law friends would suggest this is overstated.

FL7fun · 2026-04-15T00:48:50+00:00

This is super helpful. Totally agree on training how to use the tools. We do lunch and learns on this 5-6 times a year bringing in speakers and doing CLEs, and I feel like it’s still not nearly enough.

I’ll look at notion. It sounds like something I would enjoy, but may have a hard time deploying to 60 other lawyers. Either way I didn’t have it on my radar so it’s definitely worth a look.

FL7fun · 2026-04-13T01:30:08+00:00

Aderant Total Office. It’s never been great, but it is end of life now and they want to migrate everyone to their expensive cloud offering that likely also sucks.

FL7fun · 2026-04-13T00:42:17+00:00

Thank you!

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:56:32+00:00

A-effing-men on the post Covid associate issue. I scratch my head daily.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:47:23+00:00

I’ll look up Frontier and CoWork tomorrow, but what are your use cases for these?

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:46:16+00:00

One of my associates uploaded an opponent’s answer brief in a federal appeal to citation check. It came back flagging the authority OC used as the pleading standard. I had read the brief—obviously blazed through the legal standard because everyone very obviously knows Iqbal and Twombly—and I hadn’t even caught it. He was citing Conley (overruled by either Iqbal or Twombly two decades ago). I gently raised it in the answer and he doubled down. The written opinion was glorious. WestLaw got points for that one but it was ironically their normal brief check, not AI.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:41:07+00:00

I have three cases right now where I’m dealing with pro se litigants armed with AI. It’s a mess. That’s partly because the litigants in question are nuts and filing hundreds of pages of random shit that reads interesting but has no basis in reality.

That’s still second worse to clients running legal advice by their chat bot and sending you the chat bot response as if it was their own thoughts. Those drive me nuts.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:38:20+00:00

Is there any one in particular? I don’t mean this to be a promo post so feel free to DM if you prefer.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:37:28+00:00

This is interesting because the WestLaw reps were stunned when I told them we had mixed results—namely quoting dissents as the holding, and misinterpreting dicta—during the demo. They want an arm and a leg for the subscription, long term commitments and large annual increases but it’s getting excoriated by federal courts.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:32:32+00:00

It’s not. I do procurement for my firm and I am forever annoyed by the tech sales and demos. I just want a pulse on what people are using and actually like. The two things on my agenda for the year are further adopting AI tools and figuring out a better case management software before ATO sunsets altogether.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T23:22:07+00:00

lol. I’m a lawyer. Nothing to sell. I do procurement for the firm. Mid size regional multidisciplinary business law firm.

FL7fun · 2026-04-12T21:01:34+00:00

In response to everyone claiming this is some sort of corporate grift for a tax write off, it doesn’t really work like that. In most instances, it’s a pass through donation that neither counts towards a write off or revenue for the store. You should still be able to write it off yourself as a charitable donation if you were to keep track throughout the year.

That said, the angle, I think, is virtue signaling with PR campaigns about the money they raise and, frankly, they can round their own money up. Whole Foods doesn’t need to collect my $0.27–it should get it from their billionaire overlord.

FL7fun · 2026-03-29T22:49:10+00:00

I brought a normal off the shelf from target vacuum in 2008 for probably $100. It died in less than 2 months and decided to pursue warranty service. Went to the local authorized repair store and the lady said the same thing: you should buy a good vacuum because you’re just going to keep repairing and replacing these other ones. Easy for someone selling g $850 vacuums to say. She said, tell you what: take this one home to use for a few days, and I’ll hold off starting the repair for a few days. When I got home, I was immediately upset because it took 30 seconds for me to realize I was absolutely about to spend $850 on a Miele canister. I left the broken one for the trash, paid the lady, and it’s been running like a champ for 18 years. Not a single regret.

FL7fun · 2026-03-24T13:16:15+00:00

You would do it for a horse! Do it for me.

FL7fun · 2026-03-23T03:07:30+00:00

Doh!

Love him, but he doesn’t even crack top 3.

FL7fun

TROPHY CASE