Keeping Litigation Fees Lower
There is no avoiding the fact that litigation is expensive. It takes a lot of time to review documents, respond to discovery requests, adequately research the law, draft persuasive memoranda, and prepare for and attend court conferences and depositions. And each of these tasks is necessary; there is unlikely to be any way to skip over them. Still, there are some things clients can do to lessen the burden of litigation costs. And while reducing litigation costs means less money for lawyers like me, I welcome these moves by clients because they allow me to focus a client’s limited budget on the work that is most likely to get a good outcome.
Why should you read this post about keeping costs down?
This may be the most helpful post I’ve ever written.
You prefer to be informed, even if there is some uncertainty.
You are waiting for your food to heat up in the microwave and need to occupy yourself for a small period of time.
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Respond to Attorney Requests
Part of representing a client is asking the client a million questions. The lawyer needs to understand a lot of information so that she can properly explain to a judge, adversary, or jury why the law should treat the client favorably. And the lawyer also needs a lot of information to respond to discovery requests. Lawyers frequently ask clients for a lot of things, and in my experience, clients respond with varying degrees of thoroughness. As a result, lawyers spend a lot of time and money pestering clients to supplement their responses and ensuring that they are complete. And, when the responses are incomplete, lawyers may need to spend a lot of time and money addressing the problems that ensue.
To reduce this burden, it is a good idea for clients to make a list of all of the things attorneys ask for and perform thorough searches and provide full explanations for everything the lawyer asks. Doing a half-good job may seem easier, but it will just cause the lawyer to do more work later on. And responding to only some of the lawyer’s requests may seem easier and likely to placate the lawyer, but it will just require the lawyer to spend more time and money to follow up with the client later.
Pick Your Battles, or Ask What is Likely To Happen And Only Pursue Projects That Are Likely to Have Helpful Outcomes
There is a natural inclination to have your lawyer fight every inch of a lawsuit. And the truth is that, if a lawyer wanted to make a lawsuit expensive and difficult for another side, there are numerous ways to do so. Similarly, there are things that adversaries do in a lawsuit that are unfair and that a lawyer could fight back on and possibly win. But not every fight is likely to succeed and some are not worth the cost. So it makes sense to ask your lawyer which arguments are likely to succeed and which are not and not spend too much time and money on the arguments and fights that are unlikely to yield productive outcomes. And it makes sense to weigh the cost of fighting back against unfair tactics versus the cost of just dealing with them.
For example, a plaintiff may seek a lot of documents about an embarrassing but irrelevant issue. The defendant could seek a protective order from the court and litigate whether it needs to disclose the documents. But a client should consider whether it is worth the cost of that fight or whether it may be preferable to save that money and just hand over the documents.
There is a corollary to this rule, which is to question everything your lawyer does. It is completely normal and appropriate for a client to ask her lawyer why she is doing various things, especially things the client pays for. And asking about work may lead to discoveries of ways to make the work more efficient. But some clients ask lawyers to justify every single task, which may lead to lawyers spending more time justifying their work than they would spend to just do the work. So be careful about demanding too much information from a lawyer about their work. Instead, it may be best to ask about a few issues and develop a sense of trust with counsel based on those issues that the lawyer understands your budget and outlook for other issues, which you may still ask a few questions about.
Keep Calls Short and Focused
Many lawyers bill by the hour. So when you are on the phone with them, imagine you are on a very expensive 1-900 number. But instead of speaking to a psychic or meeting people on a chat line, you are getting legal advice. So your goal should be to get on the call, say what you need to say, get the information you need, and hang up as quickly as possible. The more time you keep a lawyer on the phone, the more money you spend.
To that end, be on time for your calls. Lawyers bill for the time they spend waiting around for the client to come on the line. And if a lawyer asks a simple question, only provide more details if they are useful to answering the question. If you are about to tell a long story or go off on an unrelated tangent, consider asking the lawyer first if the information you are about to share is useful. If it is not, telling that story may be a waste of your money.
Delegate As Little Work as Necessary to the Lawyer
A lot of work that lawyers do can only be performed by a lawyer. Only a lawyer can properly draft briefs, perform legal research, and argue motions. But some work can be done by the client, such as gathering and reviewing documents, mailing documents, compiling lists, performing calculations, and contacting third parties.
While it is nice to know that a lawyer is available to take the burden of a lawsuit off of a client’s shoulders, a client should also remember that lawyers often bill by the hour. And so it may make sense to delegate the work that a non-lawyer can perform to less expensive workers or for the client to perform the work themselves.
A great example of work that clients should consider not delegating entirely to counsel is gathering documents for production in discovery. While some lawyers ask clients to send them their entire hard drives or email accounts and then find the relevant documents therein, a cost-conscious client may take direction from the lawyer and perform these searches themselves or delegate them to IT professionals.