Lessons Learned in the Practice of Law -or- Civil Litigation Might Not Be For Me

So I work for a small civil litigation firm that mostly represents insurance companies and their insureds. Most of the time, we're defending people who have insurance who get sued. Sometimes, once the insurance company has paid on claims made against their insured, we sue other people to try and recover the money that was paid. These types of lawsuits are called subrogation lawsuits. I've had a heavy hand in several of this type of case.

Once a lawsuit is filed, discovery begins. Discovery is where the plaintiffs (suing party) and the defendants (party being sued) ask each other for information. These requests take the form of Requests for Admissions, Requests for Disclosure, Interrogatories and Requests for Production. The real bitches are production requests because the opposing party is generally asking for a shit load of documents. They can ask for anything, and they always do because one strategy is to ask for so much shit that is so burdensome that the opposing lawyers will say, "fuck this," and let them out of the lawsuit. Except that never works because most law firms have people like me to gather this enormous amount of material together. So what you have are these law firms battling to outdo each other and asking for more and more complicated types of material. And the requests are worded so fucked up that sometimes it's hard to even know what in the hell they want.

The one counter to the FUBAR discovery request is the "objection." It is often used. At first, I thought the object of discovery was to find the stuff opposing counsel wanted, copy it and send it to them so that they could get informed about all of the facts of the case. Since I realized that is completely fucking wrong, I've gotten pretty good at objecting to discovery requests, mainly because I'm keen on finding ways out of searching through boxes and boxes of papers and making a helluva lot of copies. I'm still new at this so I don't know if objections can be overused. I've heard of something called a Motion to Compel, but I'm pretending that I've never heard of it while I object, object and object some more.

By now you may be saying to yourself, "That sounds like a big fucking waste of time." If you are, you are absolutely right; it is a HUGE fucking waste of time. And it's expensive. Firms bill hourly for dreaming up the most complicated ways to ask for a piece of paper or an answer to an otherwise simple question. And the other lawyers bill for coming up with ways to weasel out of giving them what they want.

This is the way lawsuits in every city and state across the U.S. are being played out every day. Lawyers asking for information, other lawyers giving up the least amount possible without getting in trouble. Apparently, this is the way the game is played - and I'm learning how to play it.

If I think this is shitty and ridiculous and horribly inefficient already, it could be that civil litigation just isn't for me.

Comments

[allbilly]

Please see my post on the new John O'Quinn theatre being built in downtown Houston. Civil litigation appears to me to be a big Clust#rF*@k of pushing paper at each other by a whole bunch of guys that are afraid to "take it out into the parking lot". Lawyers, who have these giant egos and prickish personalities love to rack up giant amounts of "billable" hours pushing this paper back in forth when both sides are afraid to go to trial. I know you would take it outside Cursed...maybe that is why you aren't fitting in. For a real lawyer, see my hero Rusty Hardin. Apparently the Supreme Court likes him. If my ass was on the line to go to death row....someone please pay enough for Mr. Hardin to represent me. http://www.rustyhardin.com/

[Ojo Rojo]

I read your post and commented. I have to disagree with your comment here, though, that civil litigators don't go to trial because they are afraid to. Quite to the contrary, the ones I work with itch to go to trial. The reason they don't is that the lilly-livered insurance companies are too afraid to let them because of the inherent uncertainties of trial. I've seen cases come through that were sure things where the insurer bought off the plaintiff for the settlement value instead of going to trial. It's kind of nauseating, but there's some economics involved that can't be ignored.

If insurance companies weren't involved as much as they are I think you'd see a lot more civil trials. That's not a knock against insurance companies (they're currently paying my bills) it's just that they're in the business of managing risk and trial is risky.

[llogg]

When I worked for an attorney in Waco, his tactic for response to discovery was to seem like you were trying to provide what they want, but include so much other stuff that they would have to spend days searching through boxes of documents to find what they originally asked for. I think I recall one case were somebody filed a motion to have all discovery requests filled with electronic files whenever possible to cut down the expense of all the paper and printing, but I don't remember how that panned out. That case involved around thirty different parties, each of whom had to receive all responses to all requests. It sucked because our office copier would break and I'd spend the next two days at Kinko's. Looking back, that's probably when I crossed law school off my list of things to do after graduation.

[Ojo Rojo]

Yeah, I just spent all day making copies of all the shit for the non-requesting parties. It sucked.