- Quickdraw McLaw
- 39 Comments
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- UNLV Provost John White is stepping down to return to being a professor at Boyd Law School. [RJ]
- The forged signature of Judge Jennifer Togliatti is being used in a scam. [Fox5Vegas]
- Was the road rage victim at fault? Here’s some insight from attorney Michael Pandullo. [KTNV]
- The February bar exam takes place next week. Have any advice for those taking it?
Here is some advice for those taking the bar:
If you pass, don't expect to be listed as an attorney with the Nevada Bar for a long time. Those who passed the July 2014 exam are still not listed on the Nevada Bar (find a lawyer) directory.
BTW… any word on Half Price Law? Their website has been down for days. Just wondering.
Where will their "talented" attorneys land?
I have it on good authority that they plan on shutting down within the next 2 months.
Is a "Half Price Lawyer" a "Half Ass Incompetent" Lawyer? I wonder…
As long as we are drifting off topic; would anyone care to share current rates for insurance defense work in Southern Nevada?
Thanks in advance.
From my limited experience in that field, insurance defense work here bills out between $130 to $220 per hour. Only rates I've seen north of $200 were for 1st party bad faith/UM/UIM type cases. The majority were around $170ish.
I bill my paralegals at a higher rate than that. Why even go into that area of law if you're going to bill like that?
In general terms, the range of about $130-220 is about right, though in some instances it can be more and in some, a lot more, but that's pretty atypical.
Insurance defense clients generally pay their bills in full and within 30 days. Nice for cashflow
To 4:34 – It's a successful business model for the people at the top, something like a pyramid scheme. You just need a bunch of associates that you start at $75k a year and force to bill 160+ hours a month (usually via scare tactics relating to job loss and/or a carrot on a stick "bonus"). It's all about volume. The associates all pay for themselves within months and then you get everything else. It makes life miserable for everyone but those at the top. And the people at the top are the ones with relationships with carriers, so they are the only ones who aren't dispensable. Everyone else can and will be replaced.
@8:03 am: When you say they "generally pay their bills in full", do you mean they pay 80% of their bills after running your billing entries through software to cut 20% of your time due to "inadequate" descriptions? And then you have to spend additional time going back to justify those entries that got cut? Then yes, you are correct.
But then again, most attorneys learn to just inflate their hours by 20% to counteract that problem.
A friend of mine is a high end insurance executive back east. He loves lording over his attorneys. He knows he owns them. So, yes, the guys at the top of the pyramid do okay, but they are not attorneys in the truest sense. They are serfs tilling massa's field. Their motto is: Better to live well on your knees than to be tortured by uncertainty on your feet.
Lest anyone think I mean no one on the defense side is happy, allow me to clarify that I do know many fat and happy kneelers who would not last one day on the other side of the fence. Think of comfortable, chubby cows grazing the field versus, say, an American Eagle soaring through the skies scanning below for his next meal.
Interpretation – only gold diggers are attorneys. Every one else providing competent representation and serving the best interests of their client (hint- the client is not the insurance company) is, apparently, not an attorney. Good to know.
Asshat.
– From someone who has had to frequently explain why I am ethically bound not to provide the insurance adjuster with information about the client that could jeopardize their coverage, despite being paid by the adjuster.
Choose what kind of attorney you want to be. Some soar, some chew cud.
I love being an American Eagle…………
And prize bulls do nothing but grow old and have constant sex.
Fuck you.
200-250 per hour, though bad faith and coverage work would be much higher than that
200-250? I hope that is for a partner and not some overworked and undertrained lackey. (.2 – Assess, analyze and review, and draft response to, blog post.)
very nice 1:53
Stop block billing bro! It's an art:
Detailed review and analysis of Anonymous's February 19, 2015 comment made at 1:43 PM, for the purpose of developing a thorough understanding of Anonymous's position as to the standard billing rates for insurance defense work in Southern Nevada, in preparation for responding to Anonymous. – .1
Prepare detailed response to Anonymous's February 19, 2015 post made at 1:43 PM, focusing on Anonymous's failure to relate a reasonable range of billing rates and otherwise making his comment seem juvenile. – .1
ROFLMFAO!
February 19, 2015 at 2:26 PM – What you said.
To: 2:12 P.M.
Thank you for your submission of a bill through the ScrewAFirm billing system. The following explains our reasoning for adjustments to your submitted invoice:
Detailed review and analysis of Anonymous's February 19, 2015 comment made at 1:43 PM, for the purpose of developing a thorough understanding of Anonymous's position as to the standard billing rates for insurance defense work in Southern Nevada, in preparation for responding to Anonymous. – .1
Adjustment: (0.1) review for purposes of understanding a case in an effort to prepare a competent response is considered "firm overhead." It is not billable under guidelines.
Prepare detailed response to Anonymous's February 19, 2015 post made at 1:43 PM, focusing on Anonymous's failure to relate a reasonable range of billing rates and otherwise making his comment seem juvenile. – .1
Adjustment: (0.1) Preparing a post, though clearly done in interest of the case, is something we just don't feel like paying for. There is also no confirmation of pre-approval by an adjuster for this activity. Pre-approval is required for everything done in litigation, including taking a bathroom break. Please consulting the litigation and billing guidelines.
Adjusted hours: 0.0.
Amount due ($/hour): $0.00
If you wish to contest this decision, please submit it in your next quarterly billing submission for further review.
Conduct legal research into prior posting by Anonymous relative to legal billing practices in southern Nevada in preparation for revising initial draft of response Anonymous's February 19, 2015 comment made at 1:43 PM .5
conduct review of ABA listed rates for insurance defense work based upon employment status, size of firm, client profile and class rank from t-200 school in preparation for revising initial draft of responsive e-mail to Anonymous's February 19, 2015 comment made at 1:43 PM .7
revise, finalize and transmit responsive email to Anonymous's February 19, 2015 comment made at 1:43 PM .2
hey 2:12 are you single?
Are you offering me a job or asking me on a date? I mean, do you like my billing skills or do you LIKE my billing skills? 'Cause baby, I could BILL ALL DAY.
Oh la la!
Regarding the road rage incident, it's first of all important to realize that not all the facts have been collected and assessed yet. That being said, I'm finding it difficult to scrape up much sympathy for any of the parties to this fiasco. What civilized people, in a civilized society do when they feel someone has crossed the line to criminal behavior is they call the police. Chasing somebody down and threatening them is the act of a thug, not a hero. Even if they were reacting to thuggish behavior on the part of the provoking driver. A pox on them both; I don't want my wife, my children or grandchild to have share space with any of them. Little good comes of taking the law into your own hands, it's why we have a system of laws in the first place.
Ross: Idiot.
February 19, 2015 at 3:17 PM – Thank you for your cogent, thoughtful, ethically defensible, morally supportable and highly intellectual response to my advocacy of living in a society under the rule of law as opposed to your thesis supporting a society living under the rules of Grand Theft Auto.
Advice for the bar–if you are from Boyd–no worries. They dumbed down the exam for you. They let your faculty waive in so as not to embarrass them with failure. You are bright and gifted. Your "B" average will shine. You attended the Harvard of the desert. Expect to that fat letter with admissions information.
What's worse is that one of the higher up employees at Boyd (a Dean) doesn't even have a law degree.
Off topic. I used online Bar renewal service. After inputing data, it sent me to summary page and session ended. Never received a confirmation email. Anyone else have this problem? Payment went through and I received confirmation for that…..
e-mail them. I had the same issue but docs were received anyway
Any advice for looking for law clerk positions? I recently took the February 2015 Nevada Bar exam.
Hustle. That's my advice. Be ready and willing to hear "no" 1,000x because unless you have an amazing academic pedigree or your Dad is connected in town, that's what it's going to take for you to find any kind of employment. Remember that law schools are still producing substantially more graduates than the market actually needs. No offense, but I can't understand why people in your class thought it was a responsible choice to go to law school. When your class entered law school in 2011, it was widely known and publicized that only about half of JD's became lawyers. What on earth were you thinking? Not everyone you went to law school with will even have the opportunity to be an attorney, regardless of whether they pass the bar exam. The only hope you have is to hustle. Hustle like hell.
When you say hustle, do you mean cold-calling or mass-mailing my resume? I have attended bar associations meetings and have made contacts but nothing has really come of it.
I don't know about other people, but I went to law school because I had a useless undergraduate degree (Sociology) and I could not really think of anything else I could do. I can't change the past, so now I have to push forward and make the best of the current employment situation. I specially chose Nevada because there are supposedly less lawyers here per job than where I graduated law school (New York City).
Hustle, son. Learn to smooth-talk. Schmooze. Reach out to your friends and colleagues to find out if anyone is hiring. Get them to drop your resume on someone's desk. "Contacts" ain't worth shit unless you can do something for them, or they can do something for you.
Or get used to the unemployment line. Heaven knows there are enough lawyers already there.
Of course, I knew about a lawyer who met the president of a small company when the president paid him to move some boxes. The lawyer was waiting for the results of the bar. He was hired on the spot as general counsel. By several years later, this guy was flying around the world. THAT is what it means to hustle. Folk you meet should know you're a lawyer who's looking to work.
9:31 Here.
It's hard to put into words what it means to hustle. At the outset, it means that other than finding employment, you just don't give a f*ck. (See here: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/search-great-american-bible).
I graduated in 2011. Where did I first learn to hustle? The ultimate hustle, my friend, hustlin' for Jesus. I was a Mormon missionary. You gotta be completely unfazed by repeated rejection, and a Mormon mission will teach you that really hard and really fast. Unfazed and undeterred. That alone will be one of the biggest assets you can get for yourself because most of the world is feeble and weak and gives up after a couple of "no's" and retreats to their parents basement to become a millenial cliche. Here's the truth about hustlin'. When you're really hustlin', and I mean with all your heart, might, mind and strength, not faking it or just going through the motions – people notice, and they're impressed. People want a hustler to work for them. If you don't know exactly what to do, that's allright, just always be moving, always be talking to people. Talk to everyone. Be where people are. JUST. HUSTLE.