Good morning and welcome back to Monday here on Lawyers & Liquor, where I try to recoup all the goodwill I burned through in recovering from an injury and being a general roustabout in anything not case related by redirecting you all away from my flagrant ignoring of my responsibilities on this site and back towards the questions of law, fact, and fun that tend to pop up profanely here. Isn’t that just one hell of a run-on sentence? Anyhow, I’m your hobbling host the Boozy Barrister, here to pour seething hot rage and recommendations into your eyeholes as we keep trucking on through the dark night of litigation finance.
You may remember that last week, before I disappeared into the netherworld of lazy lawyers in their off time, I spoke about the threats that are coming to bear on the Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that provides grants to legal aid non-profits and assists them in letting the indigent have their day in court. The whole reason we have to have organizations like this is because, frankly, if someone hires me to bring a lawsuit or defend one I expect to get paid as a result. Now, some of you out there are saying “Boozy, I thought lawyers only get paid if you win!” To that I say: Do I sound like the type of guy who takes cases on contingency? I like eating my meals. The only gambling I ever do is at the pai gow table, surrounded by hard-smoking and hard-drinking Chinese businessmen screaming things in Mandarin and Cantonese (neither or which I speak) and occasionally I place a few bets on sports betting sites like FanDuel to see if I can make a quick buck. I’m not gambling in the office.
I mean, I would if I could. I could go to mega888 for that fix, but it just isn’t my style. I much prefer my settled table, but it’s been hell on wheels trying to get the partners to recognize the need for a pai gow table in the conference room. It is a necessary business expense in my humble opinion, but I am not about to bring in the Profit accumulator review one of them talked about as evidence of the need for such a space.
No, in most cases us American Attorneys get paid win, lose, or draw. You may go home with empty pockets and a judgment against you, but I go home with my check or I don’t sally forth into the legal battlefield with you in the first place. And that, for many people out there, is the problem. But…what if I told you there was another way? And there may be one, too, if we dig back through the past and examine the alternative method of paying for a lawsuit…which is what we’re doing this week.
But first, let me explain the two historical methods of paying for a lawsuit: The English Rule and the American Rule.
Continue reading ““Fees Fi Fo Fum”: The English Rule and The American Rule, Part 1″