- law dawg
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- Pending lawsuit against CCSD could shed light on district’s latest financial woes. [RJ]
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- Clark County considers stiffer laws to crack down on copper wire theft. [News3LV]
- Nevada Supreme Court upholds language for question 6. [Fox5Vegas]
- Here’s your friendly reminder that the Annual CPK Party is tonight from 5-11pm at 501 S. 8th St.!
Any word on who applied for the second Probate Commissioner position?
I would like to know this too. I practice in probate, have been asking around, and haven’t been able to learn of a single name.
It’s the CIA officer that framed Telles.
Heard yesterday that they’re thinking about upping the ADR limit to $100k. It was second-hand, but I guess it was discussed at the Bench Bar meeting? Have you heard the same? What do you think?
I think that if the bench can find a way to reduce its case load, it will.
ADR Commissioners floated that thought at the NJA convention couple weeks ago. maybe there’s some real discussion there.
Here is a productive idea…. Attorneys fees in arbitration are $3,000. Attorneys fees in short trial are $15,000. All of your discovery gets done in arbitration. Up the fees in arbitration to $7,500 if you are going to allow 5x the existing amount of fees in short trial for what is basically retrial of the arbitration.
How about upping the fee for Arbitrators? Look at the fees for the American Arbitration Ass’n, or for even higher fees, JAMS.
@2:03 here with an after thought.
The SBN and ADR folks think, or least give lip service, to the notion that ADR arbitrator’s are “giving back”. What a load of crap. It’s legal work and everyone but the Arbitrator is getting paid a fair amount. The public service nonsense might apply to pro se litigants, but if you want another attorney to seriously review your evidence and give a thoughtful decision, the Arbitrator should be paid appropriately.
Before the wailing begins, I acknowledge that some ADR arbitrators are not very good.
You pick your arbitrators at JAMS or ARM. Coin flip on the credentials for court-appointed arbitrators.
And by “coin flip” he means 4 solo PI practitioners who will award cap to Plaintiff and one ID attorney who will be stricken from consideration immediately. Kind of like a trick coin.
Sounds like more ID lawyers should volunteer to serve as arbitrators.
An A-Case with between $50-100k in controversy is almost always going to be a guaranteed financial loser for all parties. Raising the threshold is a good idea.
This is confirmed. Commissioner Ganz told me and opposing counsel this at a hearing a few weeks ago. Seems like a good idea. Though as one commenter below said, they should also raise the cap on fees.
I think a case worth $90k could easily be worth $150k depending on the wisdom of the jury–and what facts about pain and suffering come out in discovery that would not be listened to in a request for exemption.
But I also think there are a lot of cases that bump up against the $50k cap at short trial and arbitration that might benefit from that increase.
Hooge is an expert in this despite never having done it and should immediately assume control.PP can be at his side for “counseling.”
Flat Fee Agreements
In light of the recent NVSC decision, essentially deeming flat fee agreements to be no different than a retainer fee deposit, which must be deposited into a trust account and permitting draws only based on milestones; it is interesting that SBN offers a sample flat fee agreement.
https://nvbar.org/wp-content/uploads/Sample%20Flat%20Fee%20Agreement.pdf
Note the SBN language “This fee is earned on receipt, and will not be deposited into our client trust account.”
That’s hilarious.
It’s long been obvious that the SBN and especially OBC are not to be trusted. As far as the Sull decision, after reading the opinion I’m reminded of what my civ pro professor said when we were studying Palsgraf – bad cases make bad law. Sull took a huge fee for what amounts to form work in immigration court. From the record it does not appear that the form was even submitted or that she ever went to court on the case before the client cancelled the request. After numerous and lengthy delays, she refunded about 15% of the original retainer. No wonder the case didn’t sit well with the supreme court and now the rest of us are ****ed because one attorney wouldn’t respond to her client and got greedy.
This is dead on; we’ve always known a fee must be “reasonable.” Several thousand dollars for having a case for a week then being fired is not reasonable.
If the fee was completely unreasonable, why was the refund out of the fee dispute committee only $3,500? I don’t practice in immigration, but this would suggest that some meaningful work was performed, although there was no filing.
Don’t be so sure. There are significant problems with immigration attorneys. A few years before COVID there was a report that came out basically stating that immigrants were better off going through law school clinics than licensed immigration attorneys. I can’t find the report, but this article has some links that outline the problem. https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/vaz-v-neal-policing-immigration-attorney-incompetence-and-misconduct/#_ftn12
Was it a mediation or an arbitration? If it were a mediation the person may have just felt that getting something back was better than nothing. It’s not like the bar fee dispute committee gets to decide what’s fair unless it’s a binding arbitration which doesn’t happen overly frequently.
For those who have done arbitration/mediation with the fee dispute committee, what was it like? I have a client who is being ridiculous and I’m thinking about using it.
I did a mediation, but the client brought me in there. I did not want to have any more contact with her. The client wanted every dime back even though I had documented billing that showed that I had done the work. I had also incurred filing fees, but the client wanted that back too. I also had billing showing that the client still had an outstanding invoice with me that they had not paid. It was stupid and I did not pay the client anything.
Our Fee Agreement mandates going to SBN Fee Dispute mediation (with the understanding that its mandatory for the attorney but not for the client). I know people do not love and trust OBC (and for good reason). But fee dispute has offered a good forum to have another lawyer explain to your client that they are being ridiculous without you having to file suit and risk the inevitable counterclaim.
You’re wrong and obviously know nothing about immigration law. An E-2 visa is a lot more than forms and has nothing to do with immigration court. Nothing would be filed with an immigration court, it would all be done through the Department of State or USCIS. Also, the fact that you think you can just file applications in immigration court shows me that you have no clue about immigration cases whatsoever.