Mistakes Made by Trial Lawyers
As I mentioned before, at the Fall Retreat of the Southern Trial Lawyers we did an unconference. One of the topics put forth was ‘Screw Ups We Have Made’. First off, it’s hard to get trial lawyers to admit to any type of mistake, but it was a very interesting and useful discussion. The conversation was very frank and open, but I only took generic notes. Here are the top mistakes made:
- Accepted a Case that they Shouldn’t. – A case with bad facts or an extremely difficult client.
- Overtried a Case. – They believed too much in the case. What was a good small case, trying to make it a good big case didn’t work.
- Letting their Caseload Manage Them Instead of Vice Versa. – I think we’ve all had this problem at one point in our career.
- Didn’t Take Into Account the Client When Accepting the Case – The jury is going to award money to the client and not the attorney. It doesn’t matter how good the case looks on paper, if the jury really, really won’t like the Client be careful in accepting the case.
- Didn’t Manage Client Expectations – When the lawyer got twice as much money as they ever thought that they would get on the case and it wasn’t nearly enough for the client.
- Didn’t Listen to Gut Feelings – When there was a bad feeling about the liability, damages or client and ignored it because the gut feeling because it was a high dollar case
- Got Sidetracked by Side Issues – Got caught up in the litigation and didn’t focus like a laser on what the defendant did wrong.
- Sued the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota – Everyone in town worked there, had a relative that worked there or made their living directly or indirectly from the clinic. The attorney got a defense verdict.
Looking at the list like this, those are all pretty self explanatory and common mistakes. It’s good to discuss issues that come up and re-evaluate now and then.
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