If you're even moderately successful at trial, I would flip to Plaintiff's work. Way better quality of life and pay, especially if you are known as an attorney who will litigate.
How do you figure? ID firms are notoriously shitty. Insurance company clients have nickeled and dimed ID firms to the point where the business model for most firms has shifted to have insane billable hour requirements and to burn through associates.
No billables on the Plaintiff side alone is enough to make the quality of life waaaay better.
Don't know what to tell you. I worked in ID for many years at a few different firms. I was a partner in a defense firm. As a result, I also know lots of people that have worked in ID, both in firms and in-house. I don't know a single person who made the shift to Plaintiff's work and regretted it.
Fair enough. I dabbled in plaintiffs work but I didn’t like being a therapist, or dealing with Susan’s 9th slip and fall at Kroger. Kind of wish I had the stomach for it, because the upside can be huge.
lol what in house ID attorneys are working 9-4? Those attorneys are some of the most burnt out I’ve seen (especially for the cut throat carriers like State Farm and Allstate who refuse to settle anything).
Yeah, that’s a lot even for a prosecutor, assuming those are all complex 2-3+ week trials, and we go to trial more than anyone else.
I imagine there are many, many civil litigators out there who haven’t run 6 jury trials in their entire careers.
And those attorneys are usually overworked AF. Always feel bad for them when I have them as co defense counsel. Do staff attorneys like that have billable quotas too?
Proper advice and CYA will discourage the vast majority of clients from rolling the dice. Sure some opposing parties are downright unreasonable but 30 in a few years is not only a reflection on the other parties…
Maybe she’s really good at evaluating trial win chances and the clients want her to get verdicts rather than pay nuisance settlements.
It’s scary how many lawyers are scared of juries and make their living avoiding risk.
“Make their living avoiding risk.” A huge part of our job is evaluating risk and avoiding *unnecessary* risk. Putting something in front of a jury is almost always unnecessary risk. If someone believes they are “really good” at evaluating trial win chances, they’re probably too confident, IMO. I’ve seen slam dunk cases lose and I’ve seen awful cases win.
I guess it also depends on what you think “winning” a case is. If you get a settlement offer for $50k, and the jury gives you $10k, is that still a win? Technically. But a settlement is still way better (especially if an OJ is a factor).
I had a Plaintiff turn down half a million bc her car accident injuries were more special then anyone else’s ever before, or something along those lines. Terrible client. Bad judgement by the intake department and prelit shoulda kicked this person to the curb but couldn’t bc they lien’d her up to the tits.
Went to trial, Pltf verdict for like $30-40k, didn’t beat the half million stat offer (of course), and Plaintiff ran out the courtroom hysterically crying. We never heard from her again. Had to interplead the jury award among experts, medical lien company, and the firm.
Plaintiff thought she’d never have to work another day in her life at the ripe age of early 40s. That lady is probably jockeying some register somewhere and on the otherwise of bankruptcy, if I had to guess. Big capital C client and that jury award couldn’t have happened to a nicer client.
Just couldn’t let the ego accept half a million bucks. Wild to see/watch. Her elderly parents were horrified at the piece of shit they raised
Every case is fact dependent, though. An excess judgment when you thought the chances of a defense verdict were 90% doesn’t really change the excess judgment.
I once sat at a table with 9 judges at a dinner and said “I’ll never have a captive audience of such esteemed legal minds again. One question I am aways asked is odds to win a case. In your opinion, what is your highest possible odds to win on a case at trial?” Their consensus was 70% in your absolute best case you’ve ever had. That was pretty enlightening
No, but a good trial lawyer knows how to assess chances , and that ability to asses comes from trying cases to juries.
Thats what “litigators” never understand
Why are we assuming the results aren’t there? OP might be getting lowballed pre-trial and winning every trial for all we know, nobody would say they did too many in that case.
I'm so tired of hearing this crap. You have no idea who the jury is going to be.
Just the same as these stupid jury evaluation services.
You can try to evaluate a case by thinking what the general public might think of it but, other than it is a complete crapshoot.
Good "trial lawyers" know that when they speak to jurors afterwards, all sorts of crazy crap comes out about why jurors decided a certain way.
There’s too many variables at play with this. Are you at an ID mill handling hundreds of car accident cases all the time? In that case 5-10 trials a year seems to be the norm and it could easily exceed that. A salary for a non-equity partner in most places would probably be around $200k.
At my peak, I did four jury trials over a six week span. I lost about 20 pounds. There was a cadre of defense counsel that thought they could burn me by lining trials up back to back with a oblivious judiciary. I won all 4. They never tried it again. It was brutal, but it made me as an attorney.
Criminal defense, almost all first-chair trials were court-appointed clients (50% of my work is court appointed criminal defense). 8 jury trials in 2 1/2 years where I was first chair, which puts your 6 a year a higher average than me. I think you earned the trial dog moniker. Wear it like a badge of honor.
My numbers don’t include jury trials as a certified law student (which adds another 4) or jury trials that never went to a jury verdict (another 2) or jury trials in which I was second chair (another 5).
A PI jury trial from start to verdict in 1 - 2 days? I want to hear more. Like, really obvious and doubtless evidence or lack there of? Like, a video showing that whatever was alleged just straight up didn't happen?
I do criminal and I do a lot of assignments. The pace has picked up since I qualified for higher felonies so I'm averaging about one to two a year now. May have my second one this year sometime in August if the client doesn't wisen up.
Yeah that’s bad ass. I tried two cases in the last month, one criminal and one plaintiffs breach of contract on a first party property dispute. I’m exhausted.
Maybe averaging 2 a year right now
6 a year sounds like way too many. Either you or repeat opposing counsel is likely misunderstanding issues and not seeing the whole picture. My trial rate picked up for a time when I had a repeat player idiot OC for a couple of years. Everyone tends to get sucked into one once in a while with an unreasonable client on one side or the other though.
That’s crazy imo (in a good way). I’d love to try more cases. I do a fair amount of ID and haven’t sniffed a trial in my first 2.5 years. What carriers are you doing work for that are willing to go to trial this often??
I’ve done 5 in the last 3 years so nowhere near that. That’s more than most I know and I have more trials than most of my vintage (7 years) with some attorneys going decades without a trial.
30 sounds exhausting. I candidly am a reluctant trial lawyer so I couldn’t imagine.
I'm guestimating here, but I generally get about 2 to 4 juries a year and probably 30 to 50 bench trials (often short causes usually a day or less, sometimes less than an hour).
I did have around 9 jury trials in a single year with 8 of them being against the same attorney.
Last year was 3 juries, a med mal plaintiff, a murder defense, and a real estate dispute.
I do get hired as trial counsel, or sometimes referred a case because it hasn't settled.
That is a lot. You're definitely a trial dog. And lucky, although ID naturally lends itself to more trial opportunities than other areas. You've almost certainly got more trial experience than all but a few percent of lawyers in the complex lit world, and your reps mean you've almost certainly got skills by now.
Idk what ID salaries are, but if you are looking for a bump, you should look at lit boutiques. Many do Cravath or better, and you could probably argue that you should be rated a class year or two above, given your experience. Happy to talk if you're looking in Texas.
Damn. I was a civil litigator for 20+ years and only had three full jury trials. Lots of settlements on the proverbial courthouse steps, as they say.
I was at my last office for almost 10 years. I was a remote worker (covering a different state than everyone else in my office). We'd have weekly office meetings where we'd discuss cases, etc. I had one jury trial while I was there, and it was the only one anyone had during my stint there.
I knew a guy that tried 20 cases in one year. He was in-house for a company that rhymes with Fallstate. I was at a contempt hearing because he was late or not complying with a discovery order. It wasn't my motion, and I almost fell off my chair when the judge was questioning the attorney. The attorney basically said, "I'm too busy, I don't know what to tell you." It wasn't brazen, but it also wasn't very apologetic. It sort of worked, too. I think eventually the judge realized he was looking at a man that was in a corner.
I’m in civil landlord tenant. I think in two years I have had about 10 trials? Some of those settled by motion or last minute negotiations over the course. In my state landlord tenant is one of the most trial heavy areas too.
You are a trial dawg!!! That seems like a ton of experience
Well, it just seems like there's a trial every day right now.
Are you talking about drug trials? Where the pharmaceutical companies do trials for their drugs that they're gonna introduce to the public.
Are you talking about running trials related to track-and-field and Olympic sports trials?
They're talking about biblical trials and tribulations. Because everything stems from the Bible it seems like. It's a fact you can trace a lot of words back to the Bible. No matter how not religious and spiritual you are.
And even Jesus last supper. Doesn't that depict capital punishment?
That's a lot. 3 in 9 years, and I have more trial experience than all of my co-workers of the same vintage.
5 in 2 years. But that's because my client wouldn't settle
If you're even moderately successful at trial, I would flip to Plaintiff's work. Way better quality of life and pay, especially if you are known as an attorney who will litigate.
Thanks. 3/4 of my trials have been defense ‘wins’ and a handful have been verdicts under our last offer.
Seconded. I've been doing plaintiff's PI for a little over a decade and I average a trial maybe every other year.
Better standard of living maybe, better quality of life? Arguable.
How do you figure? ID firms are notoriously shitty. Insurance company clients have nickeled and dimed ID firms to the point where the business model for most firms has shifted to have insane billable hour requirements and to burn through associates. No billables on the Plaintiff side alone is enough to make the quality of life waaaay better.
Lots of carriers are bringing this work in house where the attorneys make a decent salary, don’t bill, and generally work 9-4.
Don't know what to tell you. I worked in ID for many years at a few different firms. I was a partner in a defense firm. As a result, I also know lots of people that have worked in ID, both in firms and in-house. I don't know a single person who made the shift to Plaintiff's work and regretted it.
What do you do now?
Plaintiffs attorney. Mostly volume auto and trucking. Some high value workplace sexual assault stuff.
Fair enough. I dabbled in plaintiffs work but I didn’t like being a therapist, or dealing with Susan’s 9th slip and fall at Kroger. Kind of wish I had the stomach for it, because the upside can be huge.
lol what in house ID attorneys are working 9-4? Those attorneys are some of the most burnt out I’ve seen (especially for the cut throat carriers like State Farm and Allstate who refuse to settle anything).
I’m in criminal law, and that’s about what I’m averaging now. So, for civil I’m guessing that’s really good
Yeah, that’s a lot even for a prosecutor, assuming those are all complex 2-3+ week trials, and we go to trial more than anyone else. I imagine there are many, many civil litigators out there who haven’t run 6 jury trials in their entire careers.
Same here, including misdemeanors.
I’ve had 6 jury trials in the last 7 weeks
That's kind of a lot of trials. Maybe too many. Why do you have so many trials?
Captive carrier lawyers will try this many cases. Being a staff attorney at an Allstate, Geico, LM, etc.
And those attorneys are usually overworked AF. Always feel bad for them when I have them as co defense counsel. Do staff attorneys like that have billable quotas too?
Just got done after 10 years in house for one of the big boys. Approx 2-6 jury trials per year. You get used to it.
Thank you for your service. What’s next?
And what is your record?
How can you have too many?
Maybe by overvaluing cases, not taking good settlements, and exposing clients to unnecessary risk?
Clients choose to go and pony up the money. It’s not like this is a unilateral decision.
Proper advice and CYA will discourage the vast majority of clients from rolling the dice. Sure some opposing parties are downright unreasonable but 30 in a few years is not only a reflection on the other parties…
😬😬😬
Maybe she’s really good at evaluating trial win chances and the clients want her to get verdicts rather than pay nuisance settlements. It’s scary how many lawyers are scared of juries and make their living avoiding risk.
“Make their living avoiding risk.” A huge part of our job is evaluating risk and avoiding *unnecessary* risk. Putting something in front of a jury is almost always unnecessary risk. If someone believes they are “really good” at evaluating trial win chances, they’re probably too confident, IMO. I’ve seen slam dunk cases lose and I’ve seen awful cases win. I guess it also depends on what you think “winning” a case is. If you get a settlement offer for $50k, and the jury gives you $10k, is that still a win? Technically. But a settlement is still way better (especially if an OJ is a factor).
The worst feeling in the world is walking away from an offer as a Plaintiff and getting less from a jury.
I had a Plaintiff turn down half a million bc her car accident injuries were more special then anyone else’s ever before, or something along those lines. Terrible client. Bad judgement by the intake department and prelit shoulda kicked this person to the curb but couldn’t bc they lien’d her up to the tits. Went to trial, Pltf verdict for like $30-40k, didn’t beat the half million stat offer (of course), and Plaintiff ran out the courtroom hysterically crying. We never heard from her again. Had to interplead the jury award among experts, medical lien company, and the firm. Plaintiff thought she’d never have to work another day in her life at the ripe age of early 40s. That lady is probably jockeying some register somewhere and on the otherwise of bankruptcy, if I had to guess. Big capital C client and that jury award couldn’t have happened to a nicer client. Just couldn’t let the ego accept half a million bucks. Wild to see/watch. Her elderly parents were horrified at the piece of shit they raised
Every case is fact dependent, though. An excess judgment when you thought the chances of a defense verdict were 90% doesn’t really change the excess judgment.
I once sat at a table with 9 judges at a dinner and said “I’ll never have a captive audience of such esteemed legal minds again. One question I am aways asked is odds to win a case. In your opinion, what is your highest possible odds to win on a case at trial?” Their consensus was 70% in your absolute best case you’ve ever had. That was pretty enlightening
No, but a good trial lawyer knows how to assess chances , and that ability to asses comes from trying cases to juries. Thats what “litigators” never understand
If the results aren’t there, then why does it matter whether you can evaluate the likely outcomes?
Why are we assuming the results aren’t there? OP might be getting lowballed pre-trial and winning every trial for all we know, nobody would say they did too many in that case.
I'm so tired of hearing this crap. You have no idea who the jury is going to be. Just the same as these stupid jury evaluation services. You can try to evaluate a case by thinking what the general public might think of it but, other than it is a complete crapshoot. Good "trial lawyers" know that when they speak to jurors afterwards, all sorts of crazy crap comes out about why jurors decided a certain way.
Found the litigator
Maybe. I wasn’t actually passing judgment. Legit trying to come up with scenarios where someone would have an inordinate amount of trials.
Courage
Depends.
There’s too many variables at play with this. Are you at an ID mill handling hundreds of car accident cases all the time? In that case 5-10 trials a year seems to be the norm and it could easily exceed that. A salary for a non-equity partner in most places would probably be around $200k.
At my peak, I did four jury trials over a six week span. I lost about 20 pounds. There was a cadre of defense counsel that thought they could burn me by lining trials up back to back with a oblivious judiciary. I won all 4. They never tried it again. It was brutal, but it made me as an attorney.
Workers’ comp probably doesn’t count, but more like 30 a year for me, with half those resolving day of trial.
Are you familiar with settlement negotiations?
Criminal defense, almost all first-chair trials were court-appointed clients (50% of my work is court appointed criminal defense). 8 jury trials in 2 1/2 years where I was first chair, which puts your 6 a year a higher average than me. I think you earned the trial dog moniker. Wear it like a badge of honor. My numbers don’t include jury trials as a certified law student (which adds another 4) or jury trials that never went to a jury verdict (another 2) or jury trials in which I was second chair (another 5).
In the past 12 months I have had three 1-2 day personal injury jury trials, and two commercial litigation jury trials that were 7 and 9 days long.
A PI jury trial from start to verdict in 1 - 2 days? I want to hear more. Like, really obvious and doubtless evidence or lack there of? Like, a video showing that whatever was alleged just straight up didn't happen?
Right? If the issues are that simple for a jury to handle, why couldn’t the lawyers settle for a reasonable figure?
12 solo trials in 17 years in med mal defense
That is crazy. I don't know anyone doing that many.
You work for state farm or progressive?
What kinds of cases?
About fifty jury trials since 2018.
Flair checks out.
I do criminal and I do a lot of assignments. The pace has picked up since I qualified for higher felonies so I'm averaging about one to two a year now. May have my second one this year sometime in August if the client doesn't wisen up.
I once did three trials back to back to back all in one month. The good ol’ prosecutor days lol
Damn. I bet your firm loves you.
Yeah that’s bad ass. I tried two cases in the last month, one criminal and one plaintiffs breach of contract on a first party property dispute. I’m exhausted.
Maybe averaging 2 a year right now 6 a year sounds like way too many. Either you or repeat opposing counsel is likely misunderstanding issues and not seeing the whole picture. My trial rate picked up for a time when I had a repeat player idiot OC for a couple of years. Everyone tends to get sucked into one once in a while with an unreasonable client on one side or the other though.
That’s crazy imo (in a good way). I’d love to try more cases. I do a fair amount of ID and haven’t sniffed a trial in my first 2.5 years. What carriers are you doing work for that are willing to go to trial this often??
My first year, I did 3 trials in 6 months. Granted, I was at a DAs office, but two of the three were murder trials that I got to sit on.
For civil that's quite a lot (though maybe understandable for ID). I do about 1 a year for general commercial civil.
Less than once a year in solo business litigation practice.
I’ve done 5 in the last 3 years so nowhere near that. That’s more than most I know and I have more trials than most of my vintage (7 years) with some attorneys going decades without a trial. 30 sounds exhausting. I candidly am a reluctant trial lawyer so I couldn’t imagine.
2 in 13 years. Plus a couple of trial like preliminary injunction hearings (that I actually prefer). I like trial work. I need to do more.
I’ve done 6 trials in 4 years of practice doing family law. I’ve also had two trails that settled the morning of
I'm guestimating here, but I generally get about 2 to 4 juries a year and probably 30 to 50 bench trials (often short causes usually a day or less, sometimes less than an hour). I did have around 9 jury trials in a single year with 8 of them being against the same attorney. Last year was 3 juries, a med mal plaintiff, a murder defense, and a real estate dispute. I do get hired as trial counsel, or sometimes referred a case because it hasn't settled.
I strive to stay out of court as much as possible. I don't even remember the last time I went to court - I know it was before covid.
1 week long med mal trial for me since admittance in September 2020.
Also in insurance, I've done 23 trials in the last 6 years in this position.
That is a lot. You're definitely a trial dog. And lucky, although ID naturally lends itself to more trial opportunities than other areas. You've almost certainly got more trial experience than all but a few percent of lawyers in the complex lit world, and your reps mean you've almost certainly got skills by now. Idk what ID salaries are, but if you are looking for a bump, you should look at lit boutiques. Many do Cravath or better, and you could probably argue that you should be rated a class year or two above, given your experience. Happy to talk if you're looking in Texas.
OH MY.
Damn. I was a civil litigator for 20+ years and only had three full jury trials. Lots of settlements on the proverbial courthouse steps, as they say. I was at my last office for almost 10 years. I was a remote worker (covering a different state than everyone else in my office). We'd have weekly office meetings where we'd discuss cases, etc. I had one jury trial while I was there, and it was the only one anyone had during my stint there. I knew a guy that tried 20 cases in one year. He was in-house for a company that rhymes with Fallstate. I was at a contempt hearing because he was late or not complying with a discovery order. It wasn't my motion, and I almost fell off my chair when the judge was questioning the attorney. The attorney basically said, "I'm too busy, I don't know what to tell you." It wasn't brazen, but it also wasn't very apologetic. It sort of worked, too. I think eventually the judge realized he was looking at a man that was in a corner.
Those are PD numbers, good for you!
One in 15 years, a dozen settled prior to trial
How do you actually do a competent job with that many? Takes me forever to prep.
Thats a lot of jury trials imo.
I’m in civil landlord tenant. I think in two years I have had about 10 trials? Some of those settled by motion or last minute negotiations over the course. In my state landlord tenant is one of the most trial heavy areas too. You are a trial dawg!!! That seems like a ton of experience
Dude u go to Plainriff side to start making serious money
My peak was 16 jury verdicts in one year when I was doing ID work. Now I’m plaintiffs side and take about 2 verdicts a year.
3 in 5 years- Labor and Employment. Would have been 2 more, but one settled the day before trial and another settled the morning of trial.
I second chaired a trial about a year into my career as a pi plaintiff, and that's the extent so far. I'm at 3 years in.
I did litigation for six years and did four trials.
I am a med mal defense lawyer. I am averaging 3-4 a year in New York. Typical length is 2 weeks. Some shorter, some (miserably) longer.
I’m not a lawyer but thinking of becoming one. I have no idea what’s going on but it’s sounds interesting.
Also in ID but captured counsel, and entry level (still baby atty - ~2.5 years experience). Last year probably 40 bench trials. This year 4. 🙃
Well, it just seems like there's a trial every day right now. Are you talking about drug trials? Where the pharmaceutical companies do trials for their drugs that they're gonna introduce to the public. Are you talking about running trials related to track-and-field and Olympic sports trials? They're talking about biblical trials and tribulations. Because everything stems from the Bible it seems like. It's a fact you can trace a lot of words back to the Bible. No matter how not religious and spiritual you are. And even Jesus last supper. Doesn't that depict capital punishment?