USAA is usually fine when it comes to injuries and especially property (had a guy pay me for a destroyed violin after we'd signed a release and the statute had run)... but sometimes you get a dick adjuster. Their PIP department was/is straight up fraudulent.

I don't have insight from the defense side, but I have definitely seen this in action. There is a huge douchebag defense attorney here in my neck of the woods who is just one of the worst people ever. He apparently gets good results at trial and just literally makes stuff up. Gets someone agreeing to innocuous stuff then drops in a "You testified earlier you couldn't see over the hill, correct?" and that's not what they testified to and there is no hill at all...and then he acts incredulous if the witness denies it, etc. That's just the very tip of the iceberg. Telling my legal assistant she's committing fraud..etc. fraud...etc...it goes on and on. Anyway, I get like a 170k verdict on a case where they offered like 4k against this *******.

So, I'm at a hearing months later in a different court and the bailiff is talking to me and the other lawyer..."did you hear about that kid who kicked xxxx's ass at trial?" So I'm like "yeah...?"

Then I'm talking do a defense lawyer who asked me if I'm the guy who kicked xxx's ass at trial, and that mediator Y was talking about me. I had never heard of or met mediator Y.

So then someone suggests mediator Y for a case where they aren't paying but they should be. I agree obviously, and then I'm getting the "look, their offer of $5k is really reasonable, do you really think you're going to do better at trial, kid" routine from him at mediation. He obviously didn't remember that he had apparently been talking about me.

So I'm not a big *don't you know who I am* guy at all, but I kind of needed to do that in this situation, so I slipped in the details of the opposing lawyer, the fact that we had a good result, and we think we'd do fine with similar facts...and his whole face changed, he goes "hang on, let me see what I can do" and they come back in and pay policy limits.

I think it sucks the way they treat kids. It's not so much the insurance companies/adjusters because they are just doing their job trying to minimize exposure, etc., but it's the tag team from the mediators. Or it's trying to defend a summary judgment on a very serious case and having to bring an old person just to stand there with you so that they "know you're serious".

Can you link an article or tell me what to google about this? Curious what happened and what USAA was allegedly doing.

Their stats up here are insane. It's pretty clear their business model is deny everything no matter what and hope their insureds don't go to an attorney. The percentage who don't must be pretty high, because USAA rolls over pretty quick and pays the bills + attorney fees nearly 100% of the time once an attorney gets on board. I know a bunch of solos who make a decent living off PIP denials and injury cases < $10,000.00 (we have a statute that allows for attorney fees in such cases under certain circumstances if you beat the top pre-filing written offer).

Talking to mentor today who has discussed this with other attorneys, he says us having contributory negligence makes it easier to work with adjusters. My initial reaction was shouldn't contributory negligence make it harder for plaintiffs? As in, all defense has to show is you did one little thing wrong and you lose. He wasn't 100% on the reasoning, but it sounds like other jurisdictions where you can say 60% at fault makes it easier to predict outcome and how much liable for. I guess here, if you lose, you're losing big, the whole thing. Also I'm thinking I wonder how many things really count as "negligence." Didn't use turn signal, is that just bad driving or negligence?

I'm still crossing the street in the crosswalk with the light every time tho.

Doing my first solo cross examination of a police officer Monday.

Nervous AF, even though it is a pretty low stakes civil admin proceeding. Supervisor just wants to get testimony down.

How'd it go Cohiba?

My first cross of a PO was in law school as a supervised student. It didn't go very well lol.

After over two years practicing cannabis law I still see something brand new nearly every single day. It’s so stimulating and so exhausting, the field is direly in need of good transactional attorneys.

Go on?

What do you want to know?

The field is incestuous and crawling with conflicts. There are regulatory pitfalls everywhere. Handshake deals for $500K or more are not uncommon. The quality of work out there is middling to bad with a few exceptions. We are constantly at war with state and local regulators. Clients disregard advice (certainly this isn’t unique to cannabis).

The cannabis part is easy to learn, the hard and interesting part is offering a full suite of business services to cannabis clients. In any given month I have secured transactions, real estate, securities, M&A, IP, litigation and dispute resolution, entity formation, regulatory compliance and public policy issues just to name a few.

What state are you in? i just wonder if lawyers are worried about gwtting in trouble especially if members of the Federal bar.

Colorado, we have a comment from the Supreme Court regarding ethics of assisting clients with violating federal law. We dont litigate in federal court if we can help
It.

My practice is 75% hemp/CBD now too so that’s federally legal since December.

Aspiring lawyers. Learn blockchain. Similar to above post, it touches on almost every area of law, so many grey areas and tons of new and novel stuff. Ample opportunities for blockchain savvy lawyers. Of course being proficient in securities, corporate, IP, tax, employment, litigation, and cross-border issues would be helpful too.

I think it well well, ALJ reserved decision. The key was I watched video of the incident prior to the hearing and the PO was going off paper work.

But the PO's paperwork was written kind of lazily saying my client did not do X; but I provided a document turned over in discovery by an ADA showing that client did do X (doing X was a good thing for the client).

Hmmmm, law school or russian roulette, law school or russian roulette? Sooooo much to consider.


The lawyers in my family say that there's just endless new lawyers getting pumped out of schools so much so that there's aren't jobs for a lot of them. I guess it's an easy answer....


Seriously tho it's the worst time to go be a lawyer so if you need it for something else it's a good investment. There's too many lawyers from what I've heard.

Seems like around 2012 law schools started accepting around 25% less applicants but also applications dropped by that amount too. Also better applicants started doing other things so the ones applying were the worst applicants. I imagine there’s a lot less grads coming out now than in the past, and more people are getting some money to go.

The government contracting protest game is really interesting. I switched agencies in January and there’s a lot more discussion of it in the new place. Does anyone have any experience with this? Contractors hire white shoe firms to spite protest obvious losers and only ten days to file so complaint standards are low. Seems like easy money for lawyers, if you can get it.

Really depends on school and rank. There will be plenty of jobs for people who graduate T14.

I'm at a T2 school, and the top 30% of the class are easily finding jobs.

I think something like 129k people took LSAT in 2017-2018. And while that is an 18% increase from the prior two years, it's still really far behind the post recession era where close to 160k people were taking the LSAT every two years. So in comparison, that's really not true endless lawyers are being churned out.

Claim: it’s the worst time to be a lawyer
Evidence: the lawyers in my family say so

Hmmm...

LSAT Question:

It is the worst time in history to become a lawyer. While popular culture would have you believe that law school provides passage into a lucrative, lifelong career, many members of my family who are lawyers themselves assure me that the market is heavily oversaturated.

Who is here to judge the highest laws?!! Jahjah.

It was legal to rake the games alot. Not sure about the present moment and the days and years to come. Stuff might have to CHANGE......

If you can get in T14 and not f up 1L and/or OCI royally, law is in fact quite lucrative.

(Sigh) signed up for gym.

Rent locker.

Go to locker.

Workout.

Shower.

Go back to my locker.

Find a partner butt naked with no towel next to my locker.

NYC really is too small sometimes.

That’s what you get for being an Equinox member.