Word: client
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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CONTINGENCY FEE. Most personal-injury cases are taken by lawyers for a percentage of the gross award, often one-third if the matter is settled before trial, perhaps 40% if a costly, risky, laborious trial is actually necessary. This creates a potential divergence of interest between lawyer and client. Since the potential additional reward for trial work may not be worthwhile, many attorneys encourage their clients to accept even an unreasonably low offer from an insurer...
...PRACTICE. According to Sidney Roberts, a New York tax lawyer, there is a "Gresham's law of tax practice" in which daring practitioners drive out the more conservative ones. The reason is obvious: clients want to pay as little as possible to the tax collector without actually breaking the law. Although most lawyers deny it, some firms charge clients a percentage of taxes saved. Boston's Hale and Dorr, having saved a client $4.5 million in taxes, submitted a bill for $760,000 for 2,000 hours' work ?a cool $380 an hour. A court upheld the bill...
Cooling the client out: deliberately lowering a client's expectations, so that he, the client, will be pleased with whatever settlement he eventually gets. Lawyers who do a high-volume business in personal-injury cases are sometimes reluctant to go to trial (too time consuming) and will cool a client out by persuading him to accept a lower settlement than might be attainable in a jury trial...
...access to top officials, the image is vastly distorted. Says one associate: "New York lawyers spend a lot of time poring over statute books. We spend time on the phone-often with the same public-access person available to John Q. Citizen-and then explain the situation to the client. It's usually awfully mundane...
...dealing with a Government official, the Washington lawyer uses the same weapons as his colleagues elsewhere. "I sit there giving him 800 reasoned arguments why my client should be allowed an exemption," says one lawyer. "But what I don't say is more important. If he's not reasonable, he knows I'm going to file a 40-page brief. That means he'll have to write a 40-page reply brief. I work Saturdays; he doesn't. He knows the trouble will go up and down the System and hang around like a black...