I glad you were nice about that. I was actually being arrogant there and flaunting my stance on argumentative honesty. Thank you for taking it kindly, and I hope we have interesting conversations.
Awesome-sauce
This is kind of what I'm talking about. You're proud and impressed that he charges $185 an hour? I think $100 an hour might be reasonable. It's a professional job with professional pay. Like an auto mechanic, but with a little more training and a lot less broken knuckles.
Well four things here though:
a.) He works pretty fast and well. He's sort of a gray old blur of activity, which is impressive at 74 years old.
b.) Going right in there with "a" he doesn't have to research as much as normal lawyers do cause he's been doing this forever, hence the faster thing. Less time, less money. He will never retire but rather die in the office.
c.) That's only for billable hours. Most of the time he doesn't even bill some of what he could. Other times, you have to wade through the crappy unbillable hours (like balancing a dead person's business accounts/expenses) to get to the billable ones. I cannot tell you how many checkbooks I have balanced and we got paid zip for it. *shivers*
d.) Yeah, but have you seen law school tuition lately? It doesn't take over $120,000 to become a basic auto mechanic. In this crappy economy, financing that much is a major pain even with federal loans. Not to mention giving up 3 or 4 years of your life. Don't even get me started on the regulatory hoops you need to jump through to be licensed to practice law. Then there's representing people I sometimes think are assholes for what they did.... i dunno man, we might have to agree to disagree about the auto mechanic stuff. 1/2 the people who start law school drop out in the first year, it's really hard and a major pain in the ass.
[ends rant]
At least now my lawyer is starting to make sense. He demanded $1000 up front and $2500 as fast as I could pay it, then had the audacity to charge me $150 for a half hour of phone calls (if that much time) when some paperwork needed shuffling. For a case to get the fine reduced from $1500 to $500, and then backed down from that too. And he was the cheapest guy in town.
Can't comment without knowing what he really did. We also charge for phone calls, because you're purchasing legal advice really. if we didn't do that, no one would make an appointment, they'd just call, get it for free and we'd never be paid, even though it's time out of our day. Some firms will charge 15 minutes for a 5 minute phone call. My boss will charge 6 minutes, because he makes a detailed note of it in scribble only he can read (I like to think it protects attorney client privilege). Your guy may have screwed you depending on what he did, I dunno. Phone calls are a common source of overbilling via stating more time than was used though.
Basically, an honest lawyer will support his charges. We typically do, unless it's so obvious that brain dead, spongebob watching acid trippers, who can't tell if they are the hallucinatory chipmunk or not, could figure it out. ["Trial"]
Concisely I think it has a root of lack of critical thinking skills.
We have another winner?
Author
Topic: Why do people argue and fight instead of calmly debate? (Read 7552 times)