Federal Judge Dismisses Suit Alleging False Billing Of Medicare, Medicaid Claims
Ask Liza: Annual Gifts and Lifetime Gifts
Dear Liza, I would like to give my son $200k to upgrade homes. Can me and my wife each give $13,000 to my son, daughter in law, and two grand children? That would be $102,000, and then apply the remaining…
Wisconsin Federal Judge Dismisses Medicaid False Claims Case
Ask Liza: Annual Gifts and Lifetime Gifts
Dear Liza, I would like to give my son $200k to upgrade homes. Can me and my wife each give $13,000 to my son, daughter in law, and two grand children? That would be $102,000, and then apply the remaining…
S.C. Federal Judge Denies Injunction In Medicare Provider Termination Suit
Ask Liza: Annual Gifts and Lifetime Gifts
Dear Liza, I would like to give my son $200k to upgrade homes. Can me and my wife each give $13,000 to my son, daughter in law, and two grand children? That would be $102,000, and then apply the remaining…
Suit Filed In California Federal Courts Alleges Benefits Wrongfully Denied
Ask Liza: Annual Gifts and Lifetime Gifts
Dear Liza, I would like to give my son $200k to upgrade homes. Can me and my wife each give $13,000 to my son, daughter in law, and two grand children? That would be $102,000, and then apply the remaining…
The Older Americans Act Reauthorization is Important for Long-Term Care Consumers
The Older Americans Act (OAA), enacted in 1965, was designed to provide services and funding in every state to support the dignity and welfare of seniors age 60 or older. These services focus on improving the lives of older people in areas of income, housing, health, employment, retirement and community services.
The OAA is required to be reauthorized every four years in order to provide Congress the opportunity to update and improve upon the law’s vital programs and services. However, reauthorization expired in 2011, as Congress failed to act on this requirement, and with every day that passes the future of critical programs that serve seniors is more uncertain.
On a positive note, reauthorization is under way. Recently, bipartisan legislation has passed in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to reauthorize the Older Americans Act in the 113th Congress. This legislation now awaits further consideration by the full Senate. If passed, the reauthorization of the OAA would benefit long-term care consumers greatly by:
- encouraging the development of a tool to assist consumers in choosing home and community-based services, with a particular focus on how providers protect the health, safety, welfare and rights of consumers.
- funding a range of home and community-based services for older Americans, including assisted transport services, home-delivered nutrition services, homemaker and chore services and transportation.
- helping to educate older Americans on their long-term care options and benefits, by authorizing benefits counseling programs in each state that assist older individuals, their family members and/or caregivers in applying for benefits and services, understanding their rights, exercising choice and maintaining their rights in solving disputes.
- protecting elderly long-term care consumers, by requiring each state to have a long-term care ombudsman program. Ombudsmen work to resolve problems of individual residents and to bring about improvement in resident care and quality of life at the facility, local, state and national levels.
- combating elder abuse, by providing states with grants to conduct elder justice activities, administering elder abuse prevention programs, and funding the National Center on Elder Abuse.
- supporting family caregivers, by funding for the National Family Caregiver Support Program. This program assists individuals that serve as unpaid caregivers for persons sixty or older and also grandparents that serve as primary caregivers for grandchildren or other related children living in the grandparent’s home.
With 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day, the Older American’s Act is needed now more than ever. According to Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, “Seniors deserve high quality care that keeps them healthy and safe. This important bill contains provisions to protect seniors and reduce the burdens on families who are caring for their loved ones.”
At the Fairfax and Fredericksburg Elder Law Firm of Evan H. Farr, P.C., we are excited that the OAA is in the process of being reauthorized and about all of the new and renewed provisions to help seniors with various aspects of long-term care planning. Long-term care planning should be an important part of your retirement planning. If you have a loved one who is nearing the need for long-term care or already receiving long-term care or if you have not done Long-Term Care Planning, Estate Planning or Incapacity Planning (or had your Planning documents reviewed in the past several years), please call The Fairfax and Fredericksburg Long-Term Care Planning Law Firm of Evan H. Farr, P.C. at 703-691-1888 to make an appointment for a no-cost consultation.
Fairfax Estate Planning
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In Which the Artisanal Lawyer Dismisses Google
You have inquired as to why I billed 4.6 hours on the Cleburne file for “research on the issue of the population of Papua New Guinea.” It is an excellent question. This memorandum attempts to set out a full explanation of the time I spent conducting this research which, as you and Mrs. Cleburne and several senior partners in the firm now know, resulted in an answer of 6,431,902. That is, there are 6,431,902 Papua New Guineans in the world, as of July 2013.1
As you recall, you and I and two other associates attended a luncheon with Mrs. Cleburne on October 15, 2013, during which time we discussed various political and social events, as well as, somewhat peripherally, Mrs. Cleburne’s pending legal matters. During our conversation, the country of Papua New Guinea came up. I believe it arose with respect to Mrs. Cleburne’s late husband’s journey to Papua New Guinea in 1999, from which developed several legal issues. There was some discussion among you and others about how big that country was, at least in population, not so much geographically. At one point, after the two associates had claimed to know nothing of the country, you turned to me and asked, “why don’t you locate that information for Mrs. Cleburne.”
I responded that I would do my best. In retrospect, while I do believe I did my best to find the answer for you and for Mrs. Cleburne, I perhaps should have disclosed a few pertinent things about my legal research methods and ideology.
As you may or may not be aware, beginning June 2, 2013, I gave up using the online search service commonly known as Google. My reasons are primarily personal, as I believe this particular mainstream search service has become a daily irritant, if not an international nuisance. I hesitate to go into further detail as to what amounts to irrelevant personal beliefs, but I felt then—and feel strongly to this day—that answers to seemingly trivial questions are often too readily available in our day-to-day interactions with each other and the world. In other words, modern tools like Google remove the mysterious wonders of the world, emasculate the pure joy of difficult personal discovery, and destroy what was previously an honorable response of “I actually don’t know.” But I digress.
As to the question. How many people live in Papua New Guinea and why did it take me 4.6 hours to find this information? Let me explain.
Typically, when I receive a question such as this one, I internally inquire as to whom I may know to know the answer. My question generally is stated thus: “Who do I know who may know the answer?” Suffice it to say, I know many intelligent and well-connected people, including professors, physicians, and other like-minded professionals, including a few cobblers, sawyers, coopers, and silversmiths. Seemingly trivial but difficult questions are often dispatched quickly by calling on said persons and presenting them with the information and a request for an answer. In doing so, I always insist—as they do for any reciprocal inquiries they make to me—that they refrain from using the online search service commonly known as Google.
For instance, I am on good terms with a research librarian at one of the local branches of the New York Public Library. I have called on this librarian often, and she has expeditiously assisted me in finding answers to various legal and pseudo-legal questions. Of course, to accommodate my particular research requests, if she does not know the answer offhand she completes her research using materials or other reference matter that is physically available; i.e., located on shelves in a building. This is true with any other requests—-the person to whom I present my question must know the answer personally or use traditional methods to find it. I believe—and I hope you do too—that it is the least we can do to maintain a necessary connection to our legal heritage.
On this particular day—the day of Mrs. Cleburne’s Papua New Guinea question—we were away from the office and eating lunch at a local establishment. I obviously did not have access to my office telephone, even if I were to choose to use such a means of communication. And while it would be a relatively short walk to return to the office, I felt that I could discover an answer to the question more quickly and easily, so long as I located an available pay phone.
Let me back up a bit, to approximately May 4, 2008. I call to your attention that, on that day, in order to adopt a more authentic law practice—as is the fashion today in parts of New York and in rural areas of California and Manitoba—I relinquished the use of a mobile phone and most privately-held telephones in general. This again derives from deep personal devotion to my craft. I also believe a law practice that adopts an artisanal approach will become a profitable niche area in the very near future. I expect, in fact, that my approach to the law should pay off handsomely for the firm in three to five years, provided that I am allowed to continue on this fascinating and rewarding journey.
Again, I digress. As you fully know, in order to contact someone by telephone, you often utilize a telephone. I did not see a readily available public pay telephone in our dining establishment on this particular day, and since I’m loathe to borrow another’s mobile phone for personal reasons I’ve already disclosed, I excused myself from our lunch so as to begin my research.
Again, I did not expect the research would take long, particularly the 4.6 hours I ultimately billed to Mrs. Cleburne’s file. In fact, I had in mind to call on the librarian I earlier mentioned or, failing to find her, to contact a professor of art history at New York University. I jotted down the Papua New Guinea question in my notebook and walked outside to locate a public pay phone. Seeing none, I began walking west in the general direction of the aforementioned branch library, all the while searching for a pay phone. Though in retrospect I admit the unlikelihood of it happening, I also held out hope of finding a person on the streets of New York who hailed from Papua New Guinea or who was at least an expert on that country’s demographic affairs.
I don’t know if you know this, but publicly available pay phones in New York are increasingly difficult to find. It is, in fact, something that I independently researched last year. Since 2007, the number of pay phones in operation in the United States has declined by 48 percent, a statistic that holds true in New York. Indeed, in New York City, the number of pay phones has dropped from 21,824 in 2008, to 11,249, as of January 2013.2
Accordingly, after walking four or five blocks and asking people along the way if they knew of a pay phone or knew of a demographer from Papua New Guinea, I temporarily gave up locating a pay phone from which to call the librarian or the art history professor. I instead hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to the embassy of Papua New Guinea, where I could quickly and easily locate what I rather proudly considered a primary source for the answer to Mrs. Cleburne’s question.
Little did I know at the time that Papua New Guinea does not maintain an embassy or even a consulate in New York, something I am sure that you and others have verified through your own independent research channels. Luckily, the taxi driver disabused me of my own misunderstanding and redirected me to the United Nations, where I was told Papua New Guinea maintained an office.
Funny thing, though, if I may use such an idiom in a formal legal memorandum. While one would assume that every country in the world maintains an office at the headquarters of the United Nations, the truth is that the UN’s various offices are scattered across a complex of buildings within a four or five square block area. While I should probably have known this as a native New Yorker, I had the misfortune of learning it from one of the main building’s security guards, who directed me to the “Permanent Mission of Papua New Guinea to the United Nations,” an office several blocks away. Though I do not believe he was a reliable source, I also asked if he knew the current population of Papua New Guinea. He told me I should look it up on Google, which I took as a no.
I made my way to the Permanent Mission of Papua New Guinea near the corner of 2nd Avenue and 42nd Street. Unfortunately, I could not gain access to the office at the time and, despite asking questions of those in adjacent suites, including some very kind and helpful people associated with Tanzania and the Lesser Antilles, they could not inform me of the current population of their office suite neighbors, other than they believed “four or five people worked there.” As I walked away from the office building, though, I noticed a pay phone that I had overlooked earlier and, with a pocketful of quarters that lawyers like myself often carry, I began making telephone calls.
My contact at the library, however, was on vacation. I deposited another 25 cents and called the previously mentioned New York University art history professor, who was in class and unavailable. I called a political scientist at CUNY, who was also similarly unavailable. Feeling slightly desperate, I called a previous contact at New York’s City Hall but ended up on hold for so long that my quarter’s worth of time ran out. I then called a friend in Brooklyn who was a fly-fishing outfitter, and he directed me to a professor he knew at Berkeley who was an Africanist literary critic.
Feeling this was close enough, I called her collect and was able to connect with her, despite the toll charges. She informed me that, while Guinea was a West African country, Papua New Guinea was in fact several miles off the coast of Queensland, Australia, something I rather embarrassingly admit I had not yet realized. But she was kind enough to transfer me (at Berkeley’s cost, I might add) to a specialist in the affairs of the Indo-Australian archipelago. Remarkably, this person answered the phone and, after introducing myself and my purpose, he retrieved the latest edition of the CIA’s World Factbook from his shelf, from which he informed me that the estimated population of Papua New Guinea was 6,431,902 in July 2013.
I fully understand that you may question my methods, particularly 1) my initial optimism of meeting a Papua New Guinean on the streets of New York or 2) how any of the initial people I contacted would know the relative current population of Papua New Guinea. Please understand that, no less than twenty five years ago, my approach would have been an accepted and honorable way to find information that was not otherwise readily available, at least without visiting the library or calling on knowledgeable acquaintances. I should hope that this honor extends to the modern day.
Certainly, I do not—and I use this solely as an example—expect a New York art history professor specializing in Cubist art to know definitively the population of Papua New Guinea, or at least accurately the population since 2010. But I do know that he knows people who may also know further people who know others who may know the answer. Luckily for all of us and for Mrs. Cleburne, my friend the Williamsburg fly-fishing outfitter knew of an expert in African literature, who knew someone with knowledge of Pacific island nations, who also happened to have a CIA World Factbook on his shelf.
Thus, at the end of my research, I provided you with a memo containing the answer of 6,431,902, billing 4.6 hours for my work in finding it. I trust that my answer and my explanation meets with your approval.3 If I can be of any further help, whether for you or for Mrs. Cleburne, please do not hesitate to request my assistance.
Top 3 MS-DOS Commands for Your Practice
I’m often asked about MS-DOS and why it gets such a bad rap within the legal profession. I don’t know how to answer that. It provides great granular control over your PC, something that we all strive to do (and, believe me, we also fail a lot to do it!). MS-DOS is also simple, both in its interface and how to use it. I expect the antipathy may be related to confusion about how to use it effectively, especially in an active practice. Here are three powerful commands that I like to use, and I recommend that you learn them and incorporate them into your day-to-day work.
chdir
chdir allows you to change your directory on your computer, something that you likely do frequently when you are working on client files. Say, for instance, you need to change directories to access a client folder in another directory. Use the format of chdir [[/d] [Drive:][Path] [..]] [[/d] [Drive:][Path] [..]] and you are there in a jiffy. Nice. Remember, though, that when you disable command extensions, chdir does not treat white spaces as delimiters.
Prnjbs.vbs
This is a great little command that helps you control your printers. It can be used to pause, resume, cancel, and list your print jobs. Handy when you are wondering why something’s not coming off the printer fast enough and you want to find out what the problem is. Just dash off a script like cscript prnjobs -z [-s RemoteComputer] -p PrinterName -j JobNumber [-u UserName -w Password] and you are good to go.
secedit
Though not the most glamorous command, it does help you immensely with your security settings, especially in a pinch. Just type in secedit /analyze /db FileName [/cfg FileName] [/log FileName] [/quiet] and your security template will be imported into the database for analysis (though remember to type in the correct file names and database paths for it to work).
With just these three commands, you should be able to increase you efficiency in your practice, improve overall computer performance, and get better control over your work flow. Microsoft also maintains a nice list of other commands on its site here. I’ll check back in later with some more MS-DOS tips to incorporate into your practice. In the meantime, remember to fsutil your reparse points!
Guardianship Revisited: a Serial 911-Caller and a Bigamist
A “guardian” of an adult is a person appointed by the court who is responsible for the personal affairs of an incapacitated adult, including responsibility for making decisions regarding the adult’s support, care, health, safety, habilitation, education, therapeutic treatment, and residence. A “conservator” is also appointed by the court, and is responsible for managing the estate and financial affairs of an incapacitated person. In some states, a “conservator” is called a “guardian of the estate” and the “regular” guardian is called the “guardian of the person.”
When we think of legal guardianship or conservatorship, several scenarios typically come to mind: an elderly parent with dementia; an adult who has been severely injured and can no longer take care of himself; and, increasingly, young adults who are making unsafe, dangerous, or destructive decisions. For examples, please read our recent celebrity series, featuring Amanda Bynes,Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan for more details.
Below are the stories of two people who, like the celebrities in the previous series, need to be protected from themselves. In these cases, extreme measures, such as guardianship may need to be taken.
Serial 911- Caller
Martha Rigsby, a Washington, D.C. resident, has called 911 thousands of times over three decades. The phone calls began after a fainting episode in 1977. D.C. officials wish to give Rigsby her own home health aide because it would be cheaper than sending an ambulance each time. But even that may not stop the calls as the help will not be staying round-the-clock. In addition, even after a group involving representatives from several city agencies suggested Ms. Rigsby should have a home health aide or even use a wheel chair, she declined their offers.
According to court records, Abayomi Jaji, a psychiatrist with the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health, said that Rigsby continues “to place herself in real danger of bodily injuries from falls under the claim of seizures or Narcolepsy,” which have never been correlated with medical findings. Jaji also said that Rigsby “lacks the mental capacity to take care of herself as evidenced by almost every other day calls to 911.”
Although Ms. Rigsby has been known to paramedics for decades, city officials increased their focus on her in December after she called 911 and threatened to harm herself, according to court testimony. Now she has an added worry – that the volume of calls might lead to criminal charges.
Rigsby owes more than $60,000 to D.C. emergency services. Officials have filed a guardianship petition to take over the medical affairs of Rigsby, the most frequent 911 caller in the history of the city.
Bigamist
Reese Witherspoon‘s 70-year old father, Dr. John Draper Witherspoon, was recently married. There’s one problem. He was never divorced from Reese’s mother, Mary. While they’ve been living apart for the last 16 years, they still are married. Mary says she still loves her husband of 42 years, but they had to separate because of John’s alleged alcoholism, overspending, infidelity, and hoarding.
Mary found out about John’s marriage to Tricianne Taylor by reading the wedding announcement in the local paper, and she is very worried for John. She recently sued Tricianne in order to annul the marriage, due to bigamy. Reese’s mother also asked the court to order Tricianne to vacate the condo where John and Tricianne live (and which is owned by Reese), and to return any property she has received from the family.
Mary alleged in her court filing that John and Tricianne used fraud or forgery, with her possibly posing as Mrs. John Witherspoon, to trick a bank into lending $400,000 to them. She said that Tricianne has tried to borrow money as John’s wife. She’s also living in his condo, driving their families’ vehicles, and even has convinced John to sign a new will.
Mary says she confronted John about it, and he didn’t even know he had gotten married. She is very worried for John’s mental and physical health, pointing out that he suffers from diabetes, a heart condition, and what she fears is early-onset dementia. She says John was recently let go from the medical practice where he was an otolaryngologist for 30 years.
What can Reese Witherspoon and her mother do to fully protect John? The only way to really insulate him, if Mary’s fears and allegations are true, is with a guardianship/conservatorship proceeding.
While in this case the relationship turned into bigamy, many gold-diggers are content to convince their victims to give them gifts, add their names to bank accounts or deeds, or change their will or trust to name them as beneficiaries. All of this can be achieved without a marriage, and the only way to stop it is with a guardianship court proceeding. But, to succeed in a filing like that, you have to prove that the elderly victim is, at least to a certain degree, incompetent and in need of protection. That certainly is the case here, if Mary’s claims are shown to be true.
—–
Guardianship is an extreme form of intervention in another person’s life because control over personal and/or financial decisions is transferred to someone else for an indefinite, often permanent period of time. Once established, it can be difficult to revoke. Therefore, guardianship should only be used as a last resort. There are times when a person might need a guardian, but can be served in a less restrictive way.
Very few people want to have court oversight and be unable to make decisions without getting someone else’s permission. That’s a big reason why proper legal planning is so important. The very same protections can usually be achieved without any court proceeding, through the use of good Power of Attorney documents for medical and financial decisions. If you and your loved ones don’t already have up-to-date power of attorney documents in place, then it’s critical to do so right away.
Certainly there are times — as with the people described above— that Powers of Attorney aren’t enough to help. But those instances are the exceptions, not the rule. Every adult 18 years and older should have proper power of attorney documents, just in case. See Part 1 of the celebrity series for other alternatives to guardianship and conservatorship.
If you have an incapacitated family member like Mr. Witherspoon or Ms. Rigsby, or just a “borderline” or “unstable” family member such as Bynes or Lohan, and you would like to talk about your options, call 703-691-1888 in Fairfax or 540-479-1435 in Fredericksburg to make an appointment for a no-cost consultation at The Fairfax and Fredericksburg Elder Law Firm of Evan H. Farr, P.C.
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LGBT Seniors Find Challenges in Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing Facilities
Marlene, 81, and Charlotte, 77, have been together for 43 years. If one or both of them needs long-term care in the future, their first choice would be getting private in-home care by Marlene’s sister, Vera, but they realize that a skilled nursing facility or assisted living center is always a possibility. Marlene and Charlotte are aware that many LGBT people who came out of the closet go right back in when they need elder care, and like many LGBT couples, they are concerned about their future.
The number of LGBT Americans 65 or older is estimated to be around 1.5 million and is projected to reach at least 3 million by 2030. Baby boomers are bringing huge numbers of people, gay and straight, into retirement in a way our country really hasn’t seen before. The question now is, when seniors who identify themselves as LGBT need long-term care, will they be treated with the same dignity and respect as their straight counterparts?
To help answer this question, six LGBT and senior advocacy groups, in conjunction with the National Senior Citizen’s Law Center, conducted a nationwide study to determine what long-term care was like for LGBT seniors. The study, “LGBT Older Adults in Long-term Care Facilities: Stories from the Field,” suggested that more public education was needed.
Of the 769 people who completed the online survey, 284 identified themselves as LGBT older adults and 485 as friends, family members, social or legal service providers or simply “other.”
Many of the comments in the report ranged from staff harassment to refusal of care. One responder commented that “It’s a major challenge. You go into a nursing home or facility, it’s not supposed to mean your civil rights are taken away.”
To educate professional caregivers, staff, and residents about LGBT seniors in assisted-living and nursing homes, a recent film called “Gen Silent” was developed and is being shown in facilities around the country. The film follows the lives of six LGBT seniors who need care but are afraid to ask for help or have few friends or family members to care for them. According to Stu Maddux, the film’s director, “[a]s we watch the challenges that these men and women face, we are offered new hope as each person crosses paths with impassioned people trying to change LGBT aging for the better.”
Whether you are gay or straight, if you haven’t done so, now is the time to get started with planning for your future and for your loved ones! Read our recent blog post about why it is especially important for the LGBT community to plan ahead. We here at The Fairfax and Fredericksburg LGBT Law Firm of Evan H. Farr, P.C. have strategies in place to help LGBT couples. With advance planning, each person, regardless of sexual orientation, can retain the benefit of the money, income and assets it has taken a lifetime to accumulate. Learn more at http://www.LGBTelderlaw.com, or call us at our Virginia Elder Law Fairfax office at 703-691-1888 or at our Virginia Elder Law Fredericksburg office at 540-479-1435 to make an appointment for a no-cost consultation.
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I’m 24 and Head of the Litigation Department
Q You can say that I’ve made it in the law, but perhaps not. I graduated from a good law school in the top 10 percent of my class and shortly thereafter joined a 15+ size law firm near Los Angeles. Within a year I was knee-deep in mostly administrative and regulatory work, which I actually love, and doing fairly well, at least for a new grad. I would also take a few small criminal defense matters through a cooperative program with a local nonprofit and did well with those, each ending with dismissals for the client. Maybe it was because of this, or maybe because I do good work, or maybe I just found myself in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time.
During one of our recent weekly department/staff meetings, one of the firm’s co-founders said we needed a litigation department to handle spillover work from our trust and municipal law areas. Out of the blue, he announced that I would be the head of that department and that “[my last name] will get working on it right away.” He assigned two other attorneys to the department: a fifty-some male partner in trusts and a 40+ female lateral associate who practices in health care matters. Both seemed displeased with the decision— though it was a bit hard to read them, given my own shock.
The thing is, I’m 24, a new female associate with just under a year of experience, most of that doing regulatory work. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, yet here I am the head of the firm’s litigation department. I tried talking to the partner and he didn’t back down and said he’d give it two years “tops” to see how well I do and how the work develops. Litigation cases are starting to come in, one of them a federal ERISA case, and I’m reading the Rules of Civil Procedure seriously for the first time since my law school Civ Pro class. I also find it awkward to be in charge of people nearly twice my age, neither of whom are thrilled about this new direction in their careers.
I feel like quitting because, honestly, do I want to work for a firm that assigns someone like me to head up a department in an area I don’t generally practice. More importantly, on a very basic level, I’m terrified. Is this nuts?
A Yes. And I feel like ending my advice there with that simple answer: yes, it is nuts. And you say this law firm is successful? Actually, you didn’t say that but I have to question the wisdom of a couple of things: 1) starting a litigation “department” without much discussion among any of the other lawyers, especially if it is built on “spillover” work; and 2) assigning a 24-year-old to head it up. Maybe you’ve got beaucoup talent and leadership (and you should actually feel flattered), but that does not mean you have any litigation wisdom and savvy. As in the rules say one thing but how a case works and how to make it work your way is quite different. I’m not sure any kids less than two years out of law school would have that wisdom. And that’s probably why they aren’t heading up litigation departments.
I’d start looking around. Seriously. This can generally end only one of two ways: 1) you and the so-called codger lawyers screw up cases and lose your “spillover” clients; and 2) you get frustrated, burned out, and end up in a lawyer’s support group at a bar.
Or you could stick it out, get burned a bunch of times in cases, admonished by the court perhaps, and learn from it, building a practice and rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of a partner’s idiocy. I don’t know you, but I’m placing 10 to 1 odds that a fresh associate can take this direction and make it work. After all, youngsters like you are hanging their own shingles and reading the rules of civil procedure seriously for the first time since law school—which, I guess, wasn’t that long ago for them. Your gamble. Theirs too.
Image Beautiful woman with question mark over head from Shutterstock