Articles Posted in Lawyers

One thing I love about being a personal injury lawyer (besides all the great jokes that go with it) is that there is always room for improvement.  Yes, that’s right.  Even after twenty-five years of representing injured people against big companies and insurance carriers, I can still learn to do my job better.  Since I can always strive to get better, I never get bored with this job.

Case in point:  Recently a very accomplished fellow New York personal injury lawyer recommended a book to me, “Advanced Depositions”, by Phillip Miller and Paul Scoptur.  The book is designed to teach experienced personal injury lawyers like me additional skills for taking depositions, especially of experts and “tough” witnesses who might be evasive or tricky.

I admit I picked up the book somewhat skeptically, figuring I would already know everything in the book and that it would be a mere “refresher” course for me.  But I was wrong.  I learned some knew techniques for “boxing in” witnesses, for “exhausting” their knowledge on a topic, and for ensuring that the deposition transcript reads well so the jury can easily understand the “points” I scored.  I also learned better ways to make corporate witnesses concede that certain safety rules apply to the conduct of their employees, and even perhaps to get them to admit the rules were broken.

Yes, once again all four of the lawyers here at Auburn New York’s premier personal injury and medical malpractice law firm have been included in this most prestigious legal directory, the 23^rd (2017) edition.  They have been selected for both the “personal injury” and “product liability” litigation categories.

According to the publishers of “Best Lawyers in America”, inclusion in Best Lawyers is “based entirely on peer-review and employs a sophisticated, conscientious, rational, and transparent survey process designed to elicit meaningful and substantive evaluations of the quality of legal services.” Best Lawyers asks voters – which consist only of other lawyers and judges who are named Best Lawyers – the question: “If you were unable to take a case yourself, how likely would you be to refer it to this nominee?”

The American Lawyer magazine – one of the nation’s preeminent law magazines – describes the Best Lawyers directory as “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

Dear client: You have been ripped off. No, not by me, silly! By your doctor, by the hospital, by your physical therapist, and by anyone else who has treated you for your injuries. Let me explain.

Your medical providers have been charging me 75 cents a page for your medical records. This money initially comes out of my pocket, but eventually comes out of yours because I charge it as an expense on your case.  The charge reduces your “net” settlement or recovery.

Seventy-five cents a page may not sound like a lot.  But it’s a nickle-and-dime ripoff that can add up to a lot of money if we are ordering hundreds or even thousands of pages of medical records.

As long as there are lawyers, there will be lawyer jokes and lawyer insults. You can probably think of three lawyer jokes off the top of your head. I know I can. (Don’t worry – I won’t tell any in this blog post!)

But was William Shakespeare among the insult-hurling lawyer joke makers? Was the best writer of the English language among the mud-slinging anti-lawyer crowd? I ask this because of the famous line from one of his plays where one of his characters says, “‘the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”? This phrase is often bandied about as proof that the great bard hated us lawyers. And if Shakespeare – the greatest writer in the English language – hated us, shouldn’t all reasonable but less skilled writers and thinkers hate us as well?

In my opinion, and the opinion of many Shakespeare scholars, Shakespeare did not despise lawyers! Au contraire, he loved us. Shakespeare’s famous “kill all the lawyers” line was uttered by Dick the Butcher in ”Henry VI,” Part II, act IV, Scene II, Line 73. Dick the Butcher followed rebel Jack Cade who thought that if he got rid of law and order, he could become king. Thus, when Shakespeare has Dick say, “the first thing we do (to take over government), let’s kill all the lawyers”, he is really giving a kind of backhanded compliment to lawyers. He is saying, “if you want to illegally take power and set up a totalitarian regime, you need to first get rid of lawyers who will stand in your way”.