No it’s not for myself, but apparently one of the attack stories against Hulk Hogan was that he employed a divorce lawyer during his messy/expensive divorce and then after the trial pretty much stiffed him on all his lawyer fees.
Can this actually happen, can you simply just refuse to pay and then use hollywood accounting to ensure that he never receives a dime from you despite using his services? The sheer idea of somehow stiffing a lawyer sounds highly improbable but if you’re smart/devious enough can someone actually do it?
Well, trying to stiff a lawyer does seem rather like starting a bar fight with a professional boxer.
It seems to me that if you felt a lawyer did not deserve to get paid, your first stop would be another lawyer to discuss whether you have any legal basis for refusing to pay.
The lawyer would know how to sue this somebody who is not the OP, and get a court judgement for the money owed. That’s a public record and with the internet the way it is, this information could have world-wide exposure. If this somebody when to buy a house, say, the bank will check and once they see this somebody stiffed a lawyer for $500,000, the bank won’t provide a mortgage.
Here, judgements have to be updated every seven years, so it can last for life, winding up in this somebody’s executor’s lap after they pass.
I’ve worked in law firms for close to twenty years now.
Fee collection is a huge issue for law firms.
It’s less of an issue for the huge Wall Street firms (like the one where I work now) – they tend to have institutional clients who depend on their lawyer on an ongoing basis, and they pay their bills.
But smaller firms, with individuals or smaller companies as clients – it can be tough. They get stiffed fairly often.
Rule #1: ALWAYS get paid up front.
Rule #2: But what about the nice guy/gal who is down on his/her luck and promises to pay “next Friday”? See Rule #1 if you want paid.
If you fail to follow rules 1 and 2, you probably will not get paid. Don’t sue the client, however, because the client will likely be judgment proof or file a frivolous ethics complaint out of spite.
Hollywood accounting only works for Hollywood firms. They do tricks like paying sweetheard deal “management fees” to the studio from “MY Stupid Movie Inc.”, exorbitant advertising contracts, location rental fees, etc. Contract with the studio to do the digital effects for a small fortune, and they subcontract it to independent firms for much less. So the movie racks up a debt it can never recover from; the stiffed actors have to prove the costs were unconscionable to prove there’s a profit.
It’s a lot harder for Joe Schmoe or Hulk Schmoe. You get money for a job, the lawyer attaches it before the other person pays you. If as a result you can’t pay your agent or mortgage or bar bill, that’s your problem. The only way around that is to make sure the lawyer does not know who is paying you money and how. But then… you have a bank account, we hope, not living strictly cash. The lawyer can take that bank account, can ask the bank for an accounting of what’s going through, etc. If there’s a 100% personally owned company doing your business, they can take that too. It just depends how motivated they are.
(This is why OJ Simpson tried unorthodox methods to recover his property. If he’d gone through the courts, the Goldmans would have shown up and filed to have any recovered property delivered to them to help pay his civil judgement.)
Hollywood accounting works everywhere. It’s not the same as just refusing to pay. You would expect a divorce lawyer to be on top of things like that.
One of the things that sometimes happens in divorce cases is that assets are moved to where they can’t be touched by the other party. or companies trying to move assets before liquidtion.
If someone rich successfully managed to hide their assets from their lawyers, I’d say that the lawyers messed up pretty badly.
Ha, some years ago I worked for this lawyer. He got a client, and this client, whew. Very bad people (a corporation). For instance, they had a bunch of vehicles painted. They then disbanded that corporation, formed a new corporation, with a very similar name–similar enough that they could still use their nicely painted trucks. Of course the painting company sued them. And that is where this lawyer came in.
I told him, as I was putting the new matter form together, that he ought to get a particularly large retainer amount and make sure the check cleared before starting work. But he just did the standard engagement letter, standard retainer, and…
…of course the check bounced. The client became a former client basically before he did any work on the case at all, and certainly before the matter was resolved (which it eventually was against the client, I think, in the form of a judgmet that probably was never collected). And he then went after this former client with all the stuff. But of course, they had changed their corporate name yet again…although still to something that worked with their trucks.
They hadn’t paid their phone bill, either. They somehow went to a different carrier and got the same number back.
As far as I know, he never did collect on the work he did for them, but like I said, it wasn’t a lot. He didn’t collect on the bad check, either. Karma. For signing up to defend a client like that in the first place.
My own rule (when I think I might get stiffed) is to demand twice what I think is appropriate and settle for “half right now”. Even money, never get paid the outstanding.Though in criminal law, State Expense clients are even worse, the Government might take months to get around to paying you (after you have filled in about 253 forms, all in triplicate of course).
Individual clients can be arseholes. Tell a man the case might require mortgaging his house, giving up his first born, prostituting his wife, and he won’t bat an eyelid. Mention your fees and he will suddenly become “oh sir, maybe you can give me some concession, I have a cash flow problem”, dude I just saw your financials, I know exactly how much you can afford.
It seems to be a magical method of avoiding your debts, this name-change dodge. I’m guessing it wouldn’t work for me as a private person? (Hangs hopefully on the answer though kinda knowing what it will be.)
Write to them omitting a current address explaining you will gladly pay them as soon as possible, but unfortunately you are not liquid just now; you are waiting on a remittance, and several big things are coming off. The cheque will be in the mail instanter.
The lawyers will surely understand.
My divorce attorney required a retainer up front (maybe 5k?). When that was used up I had to repeat the retainer. I got a check for what remained in the end. Why wouldn’t all attorneys run their businesses this way?
Because often clients, even honest clients, will balk at that. And you’d like to get this person as a customer instead of not. Closing the deal is part and parcel of staying in business.
So the lawyer takes the calculated risk that the client is both honest and has the money to pay the eventual bill.
The whole world is slowly drifting into a no-trust way of doing business because of the deadbeat problem. *Pay inside before pumping gas *was not consumer-friendly at all, but had to be instituted back in the 1970s because of rampant fuel theft. The *pay by card at the pump * method came 30 years later and took most of the pain away. Meanwhile everyone suffered for the sins of the few.