Attorneys can get free marketing, kinda, if they agree to be part of a referral service for prepaid legal services. It’s a type of insurance that employers give employees for modest premiums. The attorneys are put on a list and when the insured needs legal help, they call the insurance company who then picks a name on the list for that area. So the attorneys get clients, usually half a dozen to 10 a year, for free, but they have to agree to reduced rates or flat fees. Sometimes its a payday, sometimes it sure ain’t.

Example 1: We charge 150 for wills, pourover trusts, etc. 250 gets you a will, power of attorney, AMD (advanced medical directive). It’s usually easy as hell. However, the legal insurance pays each document separately, so we make 400 for the three docs total. Last week, a woman comes in (ID lawyer at that) and says she needs to finally get this done. One kid, One husband, not a ton of assets. Pourover trust, AMD, Power of attorney. What about the husband? “Oh he doesn’t have one either. Might as well do his too.” Cut, paste, finish. It’s shitpaper, but we’ll make an extra 300 bucks for another 4 minutes of work thanks to the insurance. For an hour, I can feel like Life At 160 AKA Patrick Bateman (he feels the comparison is SO unfair) charging exorbitant fees for little work.

Example 2: The shitlaw divorce. The clients either have full coverage or partial coverage. It’s funny since the partial coverage pays more. Partial means the first 15 hours are paid for ay 85 an hour, followed by billing the client at 75% of normal fees. We’re working on our second year of litigation of one of those.

Example 3: The Make you want to Kill Yourself Divorce. Oh we got one of these, full coverage. But the insurance company pays in litigation stages, and they pay flat rates. Anything else and you have to submit a “Request for Additional Fees” or RAF. This started as an easy divorce, there are two infant age children, the mom ran off to be a welfare queen, and the husband and wife have like 0 assets. Well, custody has been hell on wheels. The temporary custody motion got cut off by the judge after 30 minutes. The wife ran on and on about my client being a deadbeat with the bills and a permanent fixture at the slot machines. My client and his parents say the wife is a welfare fraudster, and lives with a drug dealer (and cop batterer to boot). The judge orders a custody evaluation and sets it off to be dealt with at a full hearing some other time. In the meantime, he orders rotating custody with the receiver parent picking up the kids. The wife bitches as she’s a welfare queen, my client gloats as he can drive and his parents can see where the kids are, etc. The wife lies to the court about her address.

The insurance company decides that my client’s 15 phone calls for about 3 hours of work plus another dozen emails plus an hour meeting in office plus the hearing time is all pre litigation discovery motion, and says they will only pay 300 bucks. You can see how this is karmic blowback from the will windfall. The full coverage clients really try to squeeze every last bit of blood from this withered turnip. Then they leave human waste in your parking lot.

Every time I hear the acronym for this insurance company though I cringe since we more often than not do not turn a profit on these cases. But in the ever loving world of shitlaw/toiletlaw/clients leave meconium stained newborn premie diapers in your parking lot law, you take what you can get and like it.

This is meconium.

One Response to “Meconium Law”