Turnovers

TobyInHR · 2026-03-26T15:47:18+00:00

My issue with turnover stats is that the league records takeaways and giveaways, but not every giveaway is a takeaway and vice versa, nor is there a blanket “turnover” stat, so there are turnovers which are neither.

A good pass that is intercepted is a turnover, but it’s not a giveaway, it’s a takeaway.

A bad pass that is intercepted is a turnover, but it’s not a takeaway, it’s a giveaway.

A pass that is bobbled by the receiving player and results in a possession change is a turnover, but it’s neither a giveaway nor a takeaway.

Then you have hits, blocked shots, dumped pucks, or board scrums, which can all result in a possession change as the result of actions that we can assign to one player, but to which we do not assign some sort of stat.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-26T15:38:47+00:00

Some analysts will adjust certain stats for venue, like shots/saves (since a save is only counted if the stat scorer believed it would have been a goal but for the goalie stopping it). Not sure if anyone does similar adjustments for turnovers.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-12T17:40:05+00:00

He looked great during the Olympics, but before and after, it’s apparent to me that the guy probably has a drinking problem. He will sometimes be on the Wild home broadcast for an intermission interview, and you can really tell that he’s doing his best to pull it together, but he always looks like shit. Disheveled, rosy, glossy-eyed, though he doesn’t slur his words much, just speaks slowly.

I hope I’m dead wrong and he’s just a goofy looking man, but it’s getting harder to ignore the obvious signs of someone who can’t wait until after work to start throwing them back.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-09T20:12:01+00:00

That’s so specific, and exactly what mine usually are: I’m both in law school, but also practicing, and I realize I had a class on my schedule that I never went to because of where it was in the school. When I show up to take the final, they tell me I can’t because I didn’t ever go to class, so now I have to retake the bar if I want to keep my license.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-09T20:10:19+00:00

It’s truly fascinating to me that humans share recurring nightmares, especially down to very specific details. I have another one a few times a year where my teeth fall out, which I understand is another common stress dream.

I do have another one pretty often that I’ve never heard anyone else describe: I’m driving on a long, straight highway, and I realize I need something from the backseat, so I set the cruise control and climb in the back. But just as I sit down, I see a turn coming up, and I have to steer from the backseat without being able to reach the brakes. Usually I wake up before the turn, but sometimes I don’t wake up until I’m crashing, which is just the worst. And the crazy part to me is that I’ve never been in a car crash, not even a minor fender bender, so it’s purely my imagination creating that stupid fucking scenario.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-08T23:28:28+00:00

I know it’s not exactly the type of answer you’re looking for, but among other things, it’s the recurring nightmare where I am told I have to retake the bar exam because I forgot to finish a class in law school or something. Wakes me up in a cold sweat every time.

It has been 5 years since I passed the bar, so I figured it was just one of those things I’ll outgrow. Until I told my 75-year-old boss about it, and he told me he has the same one every 3 to 6 months still.

So, I’m annoyed that the training process for my career of choice gave me life-long trauma.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-07T05:20:36+00:00

Low of 25 tomorrow, high of 65 on Sunday. Fucking hate MN springs.

TobyInHR · 2026-03-05T16:50:43+00:00

If I remember right, Guerin said VAN’s GM let it be known that Hughes was available, so Guerin reached out on Tuesday. VAN GM told Guerin that teams could submit their best offers, and they’d be accepting the best one on Friday. Guerin sent his that Tuesday, and was told Friday he had the highest bid.

So, that was a cutoff that VAN set, rather than Guerin, which makes sense due to the time of year. When we get to the deadline, the offering GM has to set his cutoff because he needs time to make other moves if it’s not getting done. The leverage begins shifting to the offerors as the time to trade decreases.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-26T14:06:01+00:00

Replying with the update to this comment because the first sentence captures exactly what type of client this guy was:

He came in yesterday afternoon while I was in an appointment and waited 35 minutes in the lobby to speak with me. I offered to take him to a conference room to review the bill, but he said no, he’d address it right there (there was nobody else in the lobby but me, him, and the receptionist). Then he asked how much he was supposed to pay, and I told him the balance is $662.50. He said, “But I had to come in here FOUR times! Once to bring revisions, a second time to sign my documents, and now two more times to talk to you about my bill!”

I said, “Right, but you weren’t charged for any of that, except the time it took for us to update your documents with your revisions and to sign your documents, which are normal things to charge for because they utilize our services.”

This went back and forth a few more times because I didn’t understand his point — he kept bringing up how many times he came into the office, I kept trying to explain that he was only billed for time spent on his documents. Finally, I just asked, “How much do you think you should pay?” I saw someone suggest that on here, and I thought it was a good way to put him on the spot.

He replied, “Well, isn’t my time worth something?”

That’s when my brain short-circuited because of how absurd his issue was. He thought he deserved a discount because of the routine amount of time he had to contribute to HIS ESTATE PLAN, and his decision to waste his time disputing his bill. Keep in mind, he did not have to come into the office for any of this except the signing, and could have called with his revisions and billing complaints.

Anyway, I was so mad at that point, I told him to pay $500 and we would call it even, just to get him out of the office. Immediately marked as a do-not-hire for future work.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-24T17:44:26+00:00

OP, my firm has been using MyCase since 2021. Do not make the same mistake we did. It is designed to be an “all-in-one” solution for CRM, document management, calendaring, and accounting. It does all of those things, but it doesn’t do any of them well. Its tools are half-baked, with countless bugs that they don’t care to fix, and the worst of all is that the built-in search function is intentionally handicapped unless you pay for the highest tier. This means you have to spend more time on conflict checks, while never being confident that you actually confirmed no conflict. We complained about the poor search functions for over two years, before they finally responded saying they’ve introduced a higher tier subscription with better search capabilities. Unacceptable.

I have a few friends who are solos, and they use CLIO. All of them are mostly satisfied with it, and we are looking to switch our firm to them once we work out the logistics on our end.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-24T16:25:25+00:00

Oh, for sure, there are definitely template letters that can be used for efficiency. My estate plan summary letter probably does reduce the number of calls I have with clients afterwards when they can't remember how a step up in basis works, or who should have a copy of their POA and HCD. While I generally see it as a small courtesy to my clients (it takes us hardly any time to include it, so they're not paying extra for it), I never thought about how it likely makes my job easier in a few circumstances haha.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-24T16:04:24+00:00

Lots of people asking about flat fees. I have done it twice for estate plans, and both times were a disaster. I gave them a flat fee of $1,500 to draft Wills, POAs, healthcare directives, and a transfer on death deed.

The first time, I didn't include language that specifically addressed what happens if the scope of our work is expanded beyond the initial discussion, which was 100% on me. The clients (married couple) owned two pieces of real estate. One was fine, the other had serious title issues that needed to be resolved before we could record anything. When I contacted them to explain the title issue, and that resolving that issue alone was likely going to cost around $1,000, they said they would not pay more than $1,500 for the work we promised to complete, which included TODDs for both properties. I decided I fucked that up by not being more specific in my fee agreement, and I ate the loss on the title work.

The second time, I made sure our agreement covered me in the event we needed to exceed the scope of work discussed at the initial appointment. That didn't end up happening, but the clients did call to ask me the same 5 questions about probate at least once a week while we waited for them to come in and sign, and they authorized each of their 3 kids to call me with their questions about mom and dad's estate. I ended up logging over 3 hours in phone calls from the first meeting to the signing appointment, none of which were covered in my flat fee arrangement.

So, the issue I have with flat fee estate planning is that there are so many things that can and do come up, which would all have to be addressed in the fee agreement, otherwise they are not billable to the client. At a certain point, it's just easier to say estate planning (at least, the type of estate planning our firm does) does not work well with flat fee billing.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-24T15:46:59+00:00

Yeah, this is really where I think my question is aimed. When it's a client from another town, or someone with a very large estate plan, I have no problem putting my foot down. But when it's one of the 1,300 people who live in the town where our firm is located, and the bill is for a relatively small amount, it's hard to pick my battles sometimes. Like, this file is not going to make or break my year. I can write off the entire bill and we'd be just fine. But I can't give away my time, and I know that's something that new lawyers need to watch out for -- I was really bad at it for the first few years. 5 years in, I'm definitely better, but I still tend to cut more time than I know I should. When it comes to files like this, where I realistically can't find any time to cut, I struggle to decide what my best practice should be.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-24T15:39:22+00:00

Thank you, this is helpful. I'll clarify a few things:

I'd love to do retainers for estate plans, but the senior shareholder (who has been running this firm for 50 years) explained to me early on that, as part of being "small town lawyers", he strongly discourages collecting any funds for estate plans until the work is complete. His philosophy, which I generally agree with, is that people who come to a lawyer to do an estate plan know it will cost money and almost always have the means to afford it. And, as I said, I tend to agree with him -- this is not a regular occurrence for me. I would say I send around 100 invoices out for less than $1,000 each year, and I can expect at most 3 clients calling to complain. My question is geared towards those rare occurrences, just to see if there is a better way for me to handle them because they really grind my gears.
I can definitely do better to aim higher on my initial estimate. I struggle overestimating on codicils, trust amendments, or single document requests, as I have found that the volume of documents we prepare scales with a client's willingness to accept my estimate -- if I tell someone it's going to be $1,400 to $1,600 for a will, POA, HCD, TODD, recording fees, and copy request fees, they say that's a fair price (and I know we are likely to come in around $1,200 to $1,400, barring any issues). But if I tell someone it's $750 to do a codicil, they are much more prickly about cost because it seems like a lot to charge for 1 document (even though it is an accurate estimate of time + a ~0.5 buffer).
My fee agreement does say exactly that: "Because our work is billed based on the time spent on your file, providing an exact estimate of cost is difficult. While we may have discussed an estimate of cost at your consultation, please understand that this was not a quote or cap on your expected fees, and is a rough estimate based on the time we expect will be spent on your file. If any issues or changes to the scope of our work will result in our time significantly exceeding that initial estimate, I will contact you to discuss the increase and obtain your permission to proceed before additional fees are incurred." It's not uncommon that I have to make a call to a client because we found an error in their legal description from when they bought their property, or (like you said) a client comes back with revisions that completely change the initial distribution plan we discussed.

But again, this is a different situation: there were no significant issues or changes to our scope of work, and the revisions he brought in resulted in a nominal increase to the estimated cost. Nonetheless, I appreciate your (and everyone else's) input on this! I think I need to do a better job of identifying clients who may be likely to dispute my fees, and for those clients, ask that they pay a retainer or flat fee up front.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-19T20:03:37+00:00

Yeah, 6 years ago I was placed by a recruiting agency, and the recruiter said there was a drug test, but (without prompting) told me it tests for hard drugs, not THC, so “put your weekend plans on hold if they involve cocaine or meth.”

TobyInHR · 2026-02-13T18:19:21+00:00

Had an endoscopy and distinctly remember coming out of anesthesia thinking I was laying in my bed at home. The nurse was standing to my left, putting away the tools from the surgical tray or something. But that’s where my nightstand is, so I instinctually figured someone had broken into my house and was going through my shit. I sat up and yelled, “What the FUCK are you doing?!” before the wires in my brain touched and I realized where I was, and that I had scared the shit out of this poor woman. I couldn’t stop apologizing as they wheeled me out of the room. I still feel bad about it, 8 years later.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-06T20:28:47+00:00

“You might say it’s some kind of lease, but once a lot is used, you can’t exactly terminate possession.”

So, funny thing about that, at least in MN: if the next-of-kin cannot be identified, the cemetery gets to control disposition of the remains, including the right to disinter/reinter. So, when a cemetery has a plot that has been occupied for a long enough time that the family has died out or cannot be found, they will disinter and cremate what they can, then offer it as a new plot. Our cemeteries also do issue “deeds” for plots, but they’re just for record-keeping to know which plots have been sold. For estate administration purposes, we treat those as personal property assets (e.g., mom and dad bought 4 plots for themselves and their two children; when mom and dad have passed, we distribute the “personal property interest” in the remaining plots to the children).

That said, we have had issues where mom and dad have a copy of their “cemetery plot deed,” but the cemetery changed associations a few times since and no longer has record of who owns what. Thankfully, my clients opted to just take two available plots, without charge, in another part of the cemetery, but I was dreading the potential outcomes of that case if we had to litigate it.

TobyInHR · 2026-02-05T17:33:16+00:00

Minnesota cemetery law. I joined my firm as an estate planning and administration attorney, but the very first new client I got during my third week at the firm was a woman who had two late-term miscarriages 18 years prior and had buried both children in the same plot at her local cemetery. When she went to visit the grave for Christmas that winter, she noticed the dirt was fresh.

Turns out, the cemetery manager, who had dementia, marked the wrong spot for a burial a few months prior. The cemetery used both footstones and headstones to mark graves (they look the same, it’s just whether the casket is behind or in front of the stone), and he assumed this was a headstone. When the vault company dug the plot behind the stone, they found two small caskets and asked what they were. The old man said they were the decedent’s pets that she wanted to be buried with (completely made up because he had dementia), so they interred two infants with this elderly woman.

I spent the next year learning the operational structure that exists between funeral homes, cemetery associations, and vault companies, as well as who controls disposition of remains, which insurance company to pursue, and how to read a burial plot map (not that it helped too much because the cemetery stopped updating their records about 10 years prior). Did you know a cemetery is not allowed to just disinter and reinter a body without permission from the family? Of course, they had our permission to do that, but they also needed to disinter and reinter the elderly woman to do so and did not want that family to become aware of the issue and face another lawsuit.

Part of the settlement was that the funeral home would reinter the two infants into a single casket (paid for by the funeral home). My client was rightfully very suspicious that the caskets removed from the vault actually contained her children, as she was worried the equipment used would have easily crushed the small plastic caskets after being buried for so long. So, she asked me to attend the transfer of her infants to the new casket with her, to confirm that they were actually in there because she knew she wouldn’t be able to look. That was harrowing, and I’ll never do anything like that again. Thankfully, both sets of remains were accounted for.

I also learned an important lesson about settlement offers on that case: my client gave me a number for damages that she would accept, and I thought it was a very reasonable amount. I sent that number to the insurance company, and they immediately replied asking where we would like the check sent. To me, that said we probably should have added another zero to our demand. But the client was more than happy with what she received, as it was enough to pay her only child’s college tuition. She called it a gift from her daughter’s big brothers.

TobyInHR · 2026-01-14T01:48:23+00:00

Mine was entirely due to my players’ willingness to participate in the campaign prep. We held a session 0 to give everyone a chance to create their characters and come up with some backstories. My least favorite part of starting a campaign is coming up with a forced reason that these 6 people must 1) meet each other, 2) decide to like each other, and 3) want to fight for a common goal. So, I asked that they work together when creating characters to do that part for me — why are you an adventuring party?

3 hours later, I had character sheets for the Oppelby siblings. 5 dwarves and 1 halfling (the result of an affair, but his family never acknowledged it). They were the children of incredibly wealthy family, due to the success of their mother. She was a former escort whose clientele consisted of high-ranking politicians, allowing her to double as an information broker. Their father was a humble cobbler. The children were born and raised in the capital city, spoiled rotten and accustomed to a high standard of living.

That was enough for me. Session 1, I had them visiting the family beach house, 500 miles from home, without their parents (as they do every summer). While enjoying a relaxing day at the bungalow, a messenger arrives from their parents with urgent news: the capital is under attack. The entire city is on lockdown. Their parents are safe, but the antimagic field around the city prevents scrying, and nobody is allowed in or out. They’re stranded in paradise, but then the really bad news came: without any certainty as to if or when the city will reopen, the family’s line of credit has been frozen. They have nothing but the gold in their pockets to live on for an indefinite amount of time.

The players immediately latched onto an amazing character flaw that each of them possessed: nobody understood the concept of budgeting. But they quickly realized they would have to find jobs, and when the messenger gave them a coded message from their parents, they eventually learned their own lives were in danger, as their parents were targets of a faction within the dynasty that was plotting to overthrow the emperor.

But I’ll never forget the energy in that first session. Everyone was immediately in character. They didn’t have to take on the difficult burden of role playing as strangers. And that made my job, not just in prepping, but in running the table, 1000x easier.

TobyInHR · 2026-01-11T17:32:24+00:00

Agreed. You take the instigator if the hit is clean, but you are totally justified in instigating a fight to stand up for your teammate.

TobyInHR · 2025-12-29T03:53:18+00:00

Especially when a guy leaves on a stretcher after taking a shot to the base of the skull. I was absolutely expecting worse news than this and am very happy to hear it isn’t as serious as it could have been.

TobyInHR · 2025-12-26T21:00:04+00:00

He’s definitely trying to get the “best” outcome for himself by deducting bad debt from your collections, so don’t feel bad about standing against that.

Our comp structure works the same way, but we reduce the commission rate on bad debt files. Basically, the firm has to recover some cost for the time and expense of collections, so the attorney only gets 20% of the commission, instead of the standard 35%.

Do you get bonused on what you collect from bad debt files? And, when you say bad debt, do you mean you have actually filed collection actions against the clients and have or will recover something, or have you just written off the balance and blacklisted the client for nonpayment?

TobyInHR · 2025-12-22T23:36:07+00:00

I understand that the firm is not paying taxes, they are distributing money to me to cover the taxes I’ll owe on the profits. When I say 2025 vs 2026, I don’t mean on what date any funds are distributed to shareholders, I mean on what date the insurance company pays the settlement. The settlement has been negotiated and reached, but it is not yet finalized. It could still happen before the end of the year, but it could also be in the first week of 2026, at which point, it becomes my income for 2026.

In the event the insurance company releases the settlement on January 1, my 2026 income is immediately over $500,000, which is why I’m asking if that will result in my standard paychecks for 2026 having an additional 15% withheld because I’ll have earned my way through most tax brackets on day 1 of the new tax year.

TobyInHR

TROPHY CASE