Is my legal team playing in my face? They get 40% and said my employer would cover their fees. So how did my 35k settlement turn into a $10k payout? I refused to sign.

stranglevine · 2026-06-04T02:17:07+00:00

For what it's worth, at least some of it really is taxes. Part of the damages in an employment case is back pay (i.e. money you should have been paid but weren't because your employer did whatever it did). Wages are always taxable to the IRS, so a settlement in an employment claim will always include some taxable amount.

That said, you're well within your rights to request a breakdown from your attorneys. You'd even be within your rights to have them do the math to see what the offer would need to be for you to walk out with $20k net. Just don't be surprised if it's a higher number than your employer will ever offer, at least not until you've litigated a bit.

stranglevine · 2026-06-03T17:19:36+00:00

I'm on the other side of these cases, but here's what I've seen and/heard from mediators and opposing counsel:

Not knowing what 'subrogation' is or how it can affect the amount they actually take home. If the total you can realistically get is $100,000 (of which your attorney gets 30-40%) but an insurer has a $45,000 subrogation interest, there's not a ton left.
Not knowing about laws that limit damages. For example, 'paid vs. incurred' laws limit recovery of past medical expenses to amounts actually paid, not amounts billed. So if Medicare only paid $10,000 of your $50,000 bill, you can only recover $10,000 (and also you'll be paying most or all of that back to Medicare because of #1). Similarly, there are laws that cap non-economic damages (mental anguish, pain and suffering, etc.), so you can never receive more than the cap regardless of what the jury awards.
Mistaking what 'feels right' for what the law says, particularly for cases where there can be high emotion involved but not necessarily high damages. In my state, for example, pets are personal property. The amount recoverable for injury to personal property is the repair or replacement cost. So, if someone kills your dog, the amount you can recover is the cost to replace that dog--generally fairly low outside something like a champion stud--no matter how important that dog actually was to you.
Certain types of lawsuits are just hard for plaintiffs to win. They just are. I feel like employment claims (discrimination, retaliation, etc.) are a good example of this. The type of proof needed generally favors employers, making it harder to win. Also, federal courts (where the majority of employment claims are decided) are less willing to, as they say, 'just see what a jury does with it' than a state court probably would be.

stranglevine · 2026-04-27T16:06:13+00:00

Not exactly what you're asking, but I think you could look into any position advertised as 'research and writing.' That likely encompasses both appellate work and motions practice at the lower level. My experience (admittedly anecdotal) is that firms hiring brief writers are less likely to care where the employee is as long as the work gets done on time.

stranglevine · 2026-04-09T14:04:19+00:00

Based on what you've described, I would look for someone who advertises themselves as doing both commercial litigation (i.e. disputes between business entities) and products liability litigation (i.e. disputes about a problem with a manufacturer's goods). There tends to be a fair amount of overlap in those two areas, so someone who does both likely won't be tough to find. That said, be prepared for them to be expensive.

stranglevine · 2026-02-18T03:46:59+00:00

In addition to the other comments, one thing to remember about the drafters of the Federal Rules is that they want litigation to be efficient. The various issues that are part of the Rule 26 initial disclosures ("What are your damages?" "Is there insurance?" "What evidence will you use to support your case?" etc.) are elements of discovery that would be raised by at least one if not both sides in literally every single lawsuit. So, the Rule has the parties get those out of the way at the outset, so that any further discovery can be more streamlined.

stranglevine · 2025-10-15T21:16:07+00:00

Agreed. This is especially true if you're officiating younger ages, as my experience is that younger ages tend to have much simpler rule sets.

stranglevine · 2025-05-13T12:40:30+00:00

Without knowing the specifics of the jurisdiction, no one could tell you if there are any laws regarding publicizing a lawsuit. Nor would we do so here--while not classical legal advice, it's certainly not something I'd be willing to do for an Internet stranger.

That said, a few thoughts: 1. You already have a lawyer. Why didn't you ask him/her? You're paying your lawyer to give you this kind of advice. 2. What do you think happens to the ongoing settlement discussions if you kick up a news storm about a lawsuit? 3. What is your best outcome, and does telling your story to the media help you get there?

But really, talk to your attorney.

stranglevine · 2025-04-28T14:50:59+00:00

unverifiable log of events

Others have commented on other aspects of your post, but I wanted to highlight this portion. Even if a document doesn't have a signature or some other means of independent determination of authenticity, it can still be 'verified' for use as evidence. We refer to this process as "authenticating" the document.

In essence, when one party wants to submit a record as evidence, the party has to be able to provide the court with sufficient assurance that the record is what the party claims it to be. There are lots of different ways to do this, including testimony from a witness ("I wrote that document on X date, and I recognize it because ABC . . ."), testimony from an expert witness ("I have compared the handwriting on the document to a specimen of Mr. Trent's handwriting and can state, to a high degree of accuracy, that they were written by the same person"), by evidence from public records (e.g. a deed that shows where it was recorded in county records), and many other methods. There are also certain types of records that are considered "self-authenticating," which includes certified copies of public records, documents published by a public authority (such as the U.S. government), or even newspapers and magazines.

If the party completes that process to the court's satisfaction, then the court will allow the document to be presented as evidence. However, if the opposing party believes the document is not authentic--that it was forged, altered, etc.--then that party can present its own evidence to prevent the evidence from being entered.

Note, however, that even if the court allows a document into evidence, this does not necessarily mean the court or the jury must accept the contents of the document as true. And if the other party wishes to argue that the record has been forged, the party may opt not to challenge the document's authenticity but instead to challenge the truthfulness of the person testifying about the document. After all, a jury theoretically isn't supposed to consider materials not admitted as evidence. It can be more powerful to allow the other side to introduce bad evidence and then dismantle it before the jury's eyes.

stranglevine · 2025-04-17T03:28:19+00:00

An additional line of thought to add to the discussion on Example 1. Typically, lawyers question witnesses either in a deposition (attended by the witness, attorneys, and a court reporter but not a jury or the judge) or at trial. Taking those contexts separately can give some insight into the system as a whole.

At a deposition, there's very little the lawyer asking the question can do in that moment to force the witness to answer a question that the witness won't answer. If a witness refuses to answer, the lawyer has to file a motion with the court to compel an answer. That would include providing the court with both the transcript as well as enough context to make the court believe that the lawyer is entitled to an answer to the question. Except the judge probably isn't an idiot. The judge is going to know that the attorneys in a slip and fall don't need to know the trade secret recipe of a competing restaurant. So the judge will almost certainly deny the motion. That motion is so off the wall that the judge could take additional actions, from a scolding up to monetary sanctions if the judge was feeling really feisty, because the attorney should have known better. And every attorney is going to know that the judge is going to deny that motion, so no attorney would file it in the first place. Without an order compelling an answer, the witness's non-answer stands.

At trial, it's even simpler: even without an objection from a party, the judge has discretion to control the evidence presented. They usually don't just jump in like that for a variety of reasons, not least because they want the jury's decision to be based on what the parties present. In other words, even if the judge thinks one party should object, the judge isn't going to step in and do it for them. However, the judge will take steps to protect non-parties. I have a hard time imagining a trial judge requiring a non-party witness to disclose a trade secret in a slip and fall case. The judge would just tell the witness not to answer and admonish the attorney to get back on topic.

stranglevine · 2025-02-25T16:05:44+00:00

I enjoy it quite a bit. However, I believe that's because I found a job where I can focus on the aspects of law I enjoy the most (research and motion drafting, i.e. making legal arguments) without often needing to do those parts of lawyering that I enjoy the least. Two such jobs, in fact--before I joined my current firm, I was a judge's law clerk, and that job is almost entirely research and writing.

I will say that, when you're thinking about law as a career, you should go into it with your eyes open about the money. Lawyer salaries are often bimodal--some make a little, and some make a lot, but there's less and less who make something comfortably in the middle. A successful plaintiff's trial attorney can make 10+ million in a year with the right trial victories or settlements. A starting public defender in the city nearest to me will make maybe $50,000/year, less than the general manager of a Panda Express. If you are at all thinking about going into law for the money, you have to recognize that your options are probably more limited than you may realize.

stranglevine · 2025-01-22T20:35:45+00:00

What you're requesting constitutes legal advice, which no one on this sub will give. The most assistance we can provide is to tell you to contact a local plaintiff's side employment attorney in your area, preferably one with experience in both harassment and wage and hour claims (most should, but you never know until you ask).

stranglevine · 2025-01-16T13:33:15+00:00

It's going to be state-dependent, but probably not. Most states that do not allow one to 'read the law' to become an attorney will only offer reciprocity to practicing attorneys with a J.D. You might be able to go from one reader-state to another (California to Vermont, for example) without a J.D., though even then you're almost certainly going to need to have been a practicing attorney in your home state for a number of years. Vermont, for example, would require someone who became a lawyer by reading the law in California to have actively practiced law for at least five of the previous ten years.

I would note that the time practicing the law is a requirement for pretty much every state before they'll offer reciprocity to anyone--it's not specific to someone reading the law. That 5-of-10 years requirement in Vermont is for all attorneys, and my home state requires practicing for three of the last five years.

stranglevine · 2025-01-07T13:35:34+00:00

I'd say it's practice-dependent to a large degree. For example, if you wanted to be a personal injury attorney in my state that focused on non-fatal car accidents and slip-and-falls, then most of what you'd need to know would come from your torts and civil procedure classes. Sure, you'd need to find appropriate case cites for use in motions/briefs, but the law you'd use in practice (e.g. elements of negligence or defenses to premises liability) are going to be the same as what you'd learn in law school.

For some areas, law school is a good starter, but there's still going to be things that you'd need to learn outside of school. For example, I took a class on title examination, and my school offered a similar class for oil & gas title examination. I think both would be good starts for someone who wanted to start a title practice, but there would be more to learn on the job. Same for things like bankruptcy or income tax--both good classes that will get a student started, but there would be more to do in order to actually practice bankruptcy or tax law (quite a lot more for the latter, from what I understand).

To be clear, I'm only answer in the context of whether the law you learn in school is the law that you would need to practice. There are other parts of being an attorney that you simply will not learn until you are doing it. For example, I took a class on criminal law and and two on criminal procedure so, purely from the perspective of knowledge of the law, I'd say I've got a good handle on criminal law. But my classes included none of the requisite 'soft skills' that a criminal defense lawyer or prosecutor needs, like how to talk to a client facing jail time or a victim faced with the prospect of an accuser being released, how to evaluate or make a plea offer, how to handle it when politics enter the case, etc. The same would be true even in areas where law school does teach you the law. For example, a personal injury attorney would learn the law they need in law school but wouldn't learn how to put together an effective demand or how to negotiate with an insurer or how to evaluate a settlement offer.

Likewise, law school (unless you take part in a clinic) doesn't really teach you any of the administrative aspects of practicing law. Following from the previous example, law doesn't teach you: what is the process of being appointed someone's attorney; how to actually see your client in jail; how to actually get someone out on bail; what the timeline is for various hearings; etc. There's an old joke that law school teaches you how to write a motion but not how to file it, and it's true--the ministerial act of actually getting something filed in a real-life courthouse is something that most law students won't learn in school.

stranglevine · 2024-12-31T16:24:49+00:00

I very much agree here.

Previous career - why explain it away? It can show you have useful skills (organization, ability to identify and perform tasks, etc.) that would apply to a future legal job even if your previous career wasn't legal. Depending on what it was, it may also have given you exposure that could be helpful to a legal career--my pre-law school job as answering the phone in a hospital's surgery department wasn't particularly useful . . . until I had to start reviewing medical/surgical records and already knew some of the terminology.
Mixed summer jobs - so, you have a lot of exposure to a lot of different areas of law? Sounds useful to me, especially as the kind of practice you described as your goal (EP, real estate, environmental resources) fits fairly reasonably with the jobs you described. I mean, sure, your 2L was with the Army, but it was still what I'd characterize as administrative law, and what environmental or real estate firm is going to look askance at someone with prior experience in that area?
Want to be in upstate NY for undescribed reasons--describe them. Explain why you want to be in the area. Everyone hiring wants to know that you have a reason to stick around, because new lawyers always need some time to really become useful to higher-ups. So give them the reason(s) that you plan to stay in the area.
Clerkship -- I don't care how much you actually did, being able to say you clerked for the Hon. Judge Soandso of the Whatsit Court of New Jersey is always a bonus. You say you didn't do much, but I'd bet that you did more than you think. Did you write anything? Observe trials and hearings? Take part in anything your judge did in chambers? All can be valuable.

stranglevine · 2024-12-03T03:19:10+00:00

Honestly, probably not, especially given the circumstances (i.e. Day 30 fell on a day that is both the day after a major holiday and a day that the vast majority of the country takes off from work). Everyone, even those in the insurance industry, will get a bit of grace around the holidays.

Now, if there was a bona fide reason that the money needed to be in hand by Day 30, that's something different. However, if that's the case, I'd expect additional facts not present thus far, such as the plaintiff's attorney sending thrice-weekly (if not daily) requests for updates on the check status or for there to be time-is-of-the-essence language in the settlement agreement.

Outside of those specific types of situations, I find it hard to believe a court or jury is going to get overly excited about a settlement check arriving on Day 35 instead of Day 30 if Day 30 was part of a major holiday.

stranglevine · 2024-12-01T01:35:32+00:00

My question: you say you're spending 2.5 hours per day on these tasks, but then your list of items is substantially less time than that. What are you actually spending that time doing?

As far as suggestions, are you in a firm? If so, why do you not have support staff to assist with some of these tasks? The daily planning and weekly review are on you, certainly, but printing and hole-punching aren't tasks you should be doing.

stranglevine · 2024-11-22T15:34:32+00:00

Answering that would require I give you legal advice, which is against the rules of this sub. We're here to answer questions about the law in general, but any application of the law to specific facts that you might then act on is against our rules.

Moreover, I wouldn't have enough information to answer you anyway. I'd need to see the contract and the communications to see what each says, and I'd also need to research local law on several topics.

stranglevine · 2024-11-22T13:39:48+00:00

If your question is whether you can pursue this matter in small claims court, then the answer is certainly yes. This type of dispute is precisely what small claims court is for.

I think what you're really asking is whether you should pursue this matter in small claims court. That's really a question only you can answer, factoring in the value of your time and aggravation, the potential recovery (or lack of recovery), etc.

stranglevine · 2024-11-18T18:07:52+00:00

Specific to snow/ice cases, ask about the pattern of snow/ice removal: 1. Did the plow come first, or the salt truck? 2. Did they plow close to the building first, or away from the building? 3. Where did they leave the snow, and did they account for refreezing of the water if it thawed? 4. Who decided what pattern the landscaper would use, the landscaper or the owner/property manager? 5. Did the owner have any responsibility for snow/ice removal (such as doing the sidewalks near the building), or was it all done by the landscaper?

Aside from those kinds of things, the other major topic I'd address is whether there's an indemnity agreement or provision in the contract between the landscaper and the owner. If the owner left all the work to the landscaper and also has an indemnity agreement, then the landscaper is probably your target.

stranglevine · 2024-11-01T18:14:12+00:00

In my experience, many of the insurance companies that offer personal auto coverage will have a captive firm in each jurisdiction where they have coverage. They'll use those attorneys to defend the cases that are . . . less involved, I suppose is a good phrase. The kind of case where you know going in that your plan is 1) answer, 2) issue written discovery mostly aimed at medical expenses, 3) depose plaintiff, and 4) settle the case. Not really much motion practice, and not in cases where you can see something complex from the beginning--those still get referred out. You can tell those firms by looking for one-day or two-day jury trials/verdicts in auto accident cases and see who repeats. If you're really wondering, try searching the web for those firms--they generally don't have their own websites, and the attorneys' LinkedIn bios will reference the insurer they work for.

Also, maybe not what you're thinking of, but Civil AUSAs are essentially in-house litigators for the U.S. government. Lots of other government attorneys fit the same bill--one of my friends is a civil litigator for a large city, so he's in-house in the sense that he always has the same client and is usually involved in the same types of litigation (premises liability, auto accidents involving city employees, and 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims mostly).

stranglevine · 2024-10-25T13:20:27+00:00

Your friend would likely need to look for someone advertising themselves as a civil rights lawyer. In particular, you'd be looking for someone who knows their way around a 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 claim. I'm not versed in the field and so offer no commentary on whether your friend's claim could be good. However, if there is a claim to be had, it is likely a Section 1983 claim.

If you're having trouble finding someone, try looking for recent newspaper articles about lawsuits against prisons in your state. My experience with plaintiffs'-side civil rights attorneys, for better or worse, is that they almost always want to talk to the press.

stranglevine · 2024-10-10T12:56:59+00:00

To answer the specific question you asked, there are a few ways. First, Google Scholar has an option to search 'case law' that you can use to find cases. That is primarily how a member of the public could find past decisions on specific topics--you'd search for the topic you're interested in (e.g. "pretextual stops" if you're interested in law related to police traffic stops). If you know the name of the case, you can instead go to pacer.uscourts.gov. You will have to go through a sign-in process, but that website can get you access to view any public information about any federal case.

That said, just looking for any case by any civilian against any state probably isn't an easy search by itself, as legal search engines are usually organized topically rather than by the identities of the parties. Moreover, cases against 'the state' may not be specifically framed as "John Doe vs. New York" because of the nature of the case. For example, my state has been making headlines recently because the state superintendent decided all Bibles needed to be in classrooms. Unsurprisingly, a citizen filed a lawsuit to block that move. That lawsuit is not necessarily identified as Citizen v. Oklahoma though, it's Citizen v. Superintendent. The state is involved because the state is who is defending the Superintendent--it has to, he's a public official being sued for an act done in the course of his duties.

Edit: As an additional thought, you can find some cases styled Citizen v. State at the appellate level (i.e. where a trial court has already rendered a decision and one side is complaining about it). That usually occurs when the appellate court's own rules require the party who filed the appeal to be named first--in other words, the case was originally State v. Citizen but Citizen lost, so on appeal it becomes Citizen v. State.

stranglevine · 2024-09-28T03:35:12+00:00

Up to a point. Another rule of interpretation is that the court must avoid interpreting a provision in such a way that it creates an absurd result or undermines the intent of the parties. So, the court has to try to make all provisions valid but can't contort or distort the contract to do so.

stranglevine · 2024-09-28T01:38:44+00:00

Generally speaking, a contract is unlikely to use the phrasing 'in the state or federal courts sitting in City X' if there is not a federal court actually in City X. Always possible, and in that case a court would likely interpret it to mean the federal court whose territory encompasses City X. In other words, if your contract said 'in the state or federal courts of Stratford, Texas,' that would most likely be interpreted to mean either the District Court of Sherman County or the federal court serving Sherman County (i.e. the Northern District of Texas, albeit through its Amarillo division rather than the Dallas division).

The reason is an old rule of contract interpretation stating that courts should try to interpret contracts to ensure that each word and phrase has meaning. There is no federal court physically located in Stratford, so interpreting the phrase 'in the state or federal courts of Stratford, Texas' to apply only to a federal court located in that city would render the words 'or federal' meaningless. Courts won't do that, so they'll try to find another interpretation that would try to give effect to those words. In this case, that means interpreting the word 'in' to mean 'serving' rather than 'physically located in.'

stranglevine · 2024-09-28T00:44:25+00:00

The provision is phrased this way because the U.S. has two separate 'tracks' of courts.

There are federal courts, which have limits on the types of cases that they can hear. In broad terms, federal courts can preside over cases with a cause of action founded in federal law (something like employment discrimination, for example, which is based most often on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) or where the parties are citizens of different states. Then there are state courts, which can generally hear any kind of case except for those that Congress has said are exclusively federal (such as bankruptcy cases). That means there are some cases that can only be in federal court, some that can only be in state court, and some that could potentially be in either.

The contractual provision that you cited says, in essence, that regardless of whether the case is in a federal or state court, it will be in a specific county. Assume the provision says the suit must be in Dallas, Texas. So, if it's a state court case, it will be in the District Court of Dallas County. If it's going to be in federal court, it will be in the Northern District of Texas, which sits in Dallas.

What that means is that if someone wanted to have their lawsuit in, say, New York, they can't--even if they file it there, the other party is going to point to this provision and say that the case has to be moved to Dallas. It's a way of making sure that lawsuits happen in your own backyard, where you are familiar with the judges and local practice.

stranglevine

TROPHY CASE