Author Archive

Most lawsuits are going to be horrendously expensive. This is one of the key points discussed in my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”. Many law firms will not take a case on a much preferred contingency arrangement – meaning where you only pay once your lawyer has won a settlement and then your lawyer gets a portion of your settlement. My lawyer’s firm refused the contingency option to us right from the start. That immediately should have tipped me off that they didn’t believe I had a great shot of prospering in this matter, even though in words they had told me that I had a ‘good claim.’

A contingency arrangement also ensures that your attorney will put in his or her finest efforts, as they will NOT be getting paid unless YOU are getting paid! But many may not agree to a contingency option which would benefit the client. There may of course be exceptions to this rule, such as if you have overwhelming, slam dunk evidence against your opponent; if you were physically injured in an accident; or perhaps if it is a wrongful death lawsuit. The contingency option seems to become more likely under those circumstances. If you are not a celebrity or do not have a special connection with someone at a law firm, you should expect to pay your legal fees out of pocket… just as we did.

Following my experience with the legal system, I have come to conclude that lawyers and lawsuits are primarily for the wealthy and privileged. Had my father and I received a better estimate of the actual costs and expenses involved, I can almost guarantee that I WOULD NOT HAVE FILED THIS LAWSUIT!!!!!!

One of the things I learned from the case I describe in my latest book (Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System) is that it is not advisable to try to judge a judge’s behavior.

This was a lesson I had originally learned during my unemployment benefits hearing back in the summer of 2010. Sadly, it was reinforced again in this defamation lawsuit in April 2018.

At the earlier unemployment hearing – detailed in my third book about workplace bullying – the judge had grilled me with questions and even made statements indicating he could understand my ex-employer’s position on the issues. Yet, as it turned out, that same judge eventually ruled in my favor!

And, in the story in my latest book, during the appeal hearing of the summary judgment decision, the judges appeared to take the defendant’s lawyer to task and seriously question the lower court’s decision to grant summary judgment in her favor. It was enough to fool my lawyer into fully believing that I would likely prevail. But as it turned out, I did not win in the second case.

If you should ever find yourself involved in legal action, it is wise not to judge a judge’s behavior. I can tell you from my real life experiences, their behaviors may not match with their rulings!

In my latest book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I have described how a lawsuit can negatively impact the person bringing the lawsuit.

I had filed a lawsuit to teach the defendant a lesson and to restore my harmed reputation. Little did I realize that in declaring war on my opponent, I was also declaring war on myself! I had no idea as to the true financial costs of legal action; the tremendous distress of depositions; the motions your opponent’s lawyer can file or the claims they can level against you. In doing so, they added plenty of insult to the initial injury. So often during this lawsuit, I felt as though I WAS THE ONE BEING SUED!!!

I had no idea that the courts would allow defendant’s lawyers to use a lot of unrelated info against me in this lawsuit. I was taken by great surprise when defendant’s lawyer filed the motion to compel a forensic examination of my communication devices; as well as the subsequent discovery requests seeking unlimited access to documents from every employer or organization I have ever been associated with! Though my lawyer made efforts to counter these attacks, I had no clue that the lawyer of the person you are suing can hassle you with demands for so much irrelevant information. And according to the rules of a lawsuit, it was perfectly OK for them to do so!

It was good to find out at the end that the appellate judges eventually didn’t focus on all those irrelevant discussions promoted by the defense lawyers. But all those irrelevant discussions do have an impact on you. And if the case was allowed to go to a jury trial, such irrelevant information could have negatively impacted some of the jurors.

There’s a saying that all is fair in love and war. It seems the same applies to a lawsuit. Be forewarned it could be as awful or worse on you as it will be on the person(s) you are suing!

There is a lot that can be learned from what happened in my tragic true story that I describe in my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”. When the defamation occurred in March and June of 2016, I felt so harassed and violated that I couldn’t wait to get started with legal action. I think that was a huge, huge mistake. The defamation I endured had a two year statute of limitations during which I could potentially file a lawsuit; meaning I had until spring of 2018 to carefully explore ALL my options. I should have taken the time to learn more about the issues involved and then make a more informed decision about filing the lawsuit.

I also should have talked to as many different lawyers as humanly possible before deciding on any one person to hire. If I had taken the time to talk to 10-20 different lawyers, I might have learned many more things that could have helped me make my decisions. I also could have taken the time to do my own research on defamation cases via reading library books or looking up cases online. That would have made me much more well-prepared to initiate and follow through with the law suit. That would have also allowed me to ask the right questions to dig out the necessary information from my lawyer.

Should you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, I recommend you think hard and research extremely well before deciding to venture down this unpredictable path. Unless you are rich and famous, you should consider a lawsuit to be a windy road with signage stating: “VISIBILITY UNCLEAR AHEAD: PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!”

In my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I discuss the interactions I had with the MN Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB) about the performance of my lawyer. I was really disappointed in the way LPRB handled the issue.

The document titled “MN Rules of Professional Conduct” published by the MN LPRB clearly makes the following statements:

“The lawyer must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the client possesses information reasonably adequate to make an informed decision”.

“A lawyer who does not personally inform the client assumes the risk that the client is inadequately informed and the consent is invalid”.

“Whether the information and explanation provided are reasonably adequate, relevant factors include whether the client is experienced in legal matters”.

“Informed consent requires that each affected client be aware of relevant circumstances and of the material and reasonably foreseeable ways that the conflict could have adverse effects on the interests of that client”.

All these statement indicate to me that I had a valid complaint. Is it wrong of me to expect the board to explain to me why my appeal (with detailed clarifications) did not fall within the categories described above? The letter written by Virginia Klevorn (who reviewed my appeal) literally consisted of 4 sentences. Why was there no response at all to our polite request to have more information as to how they viewed my complaint? At a minimum they could have at least responded to my letter.

I honestly believe that the LPRB needs to be more open and responsive if they are to truly uphold the standards of this critically important profession.

In my new book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I discuss the issue of what can a client do if he/she believes that there were a number of errors and omissions on the part of their lawyer. After being dissatisfied with my meeting with the managing partner of the law firm, I decided to take my complaint to the MN Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB).

However, I was truly disappointed with my interactions with the MN LPRB, not because they decided not to investigate my complaint, but because of what I perceive as their lack of adequate communication to me,  the person who made the complaint, and also because of their apparent lack of willingness to truly understand what the complaints were all about.

At least their first response to my complaint was 3 pages long (more than just a couple of sentences). However, after reviewing their response it was clear to me that in a number of areas they failed to truly understand what I was complaining about. I was specifically disturbed when I noticed that my complaint about “lack of adequate information for informed consent” was viewed by them as “poor communication”!

After their first review of my complaint, it seemed to me that on a number of issues the board’s understanding was not what I had intended to communicate. The board never called me to understand my complaint better. There was no phone interview or an in-person interview. So I decided to file an appeal which is allowed by the board. The response came back from Virginia Klevorn, who had apparently reviewed the appeal. Unfortunately the response back was only a few sentences long and was most disappointing. I believe it was reasonable for me to expect a longer and more elaborate explanation of why my complaints were not investigated further.

How does a lawyer’s performance get evaluated – this is one question that I discuss in my new book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”. What can we do if we feel that the performance of a lawyer did not meet our expectations?

As I discussed in the book, I had decided (based on advice from a number of other lawyers) to have a meeting with the managing partner of the law firm to discuss the issues. I was happy when the law firm agreed to set up a meeting with the managing partner. But it appeared to me that the managing partner was not open to understand my complaints; in fact, I felt that he was primarily focused on defending his lawyer on each of the issues. I would think that a law firm would expect the utmost professionalism and competence from their lawyers. Then why wouldn’t they want to hear and understand what the clients think of their lawyers’ performance?

That brought up a question for me – how do law firms really evaluate the performance of their high-priced lawyers? I am not aware that there is ever a survey sent out by a law firm about how a lawyer performed for his/her client. Most service industries send out surveys to collect information about their performance. Some clinics these days send out surveys to find out how their doctors do on a regular basis – why don’t the law firms do that? What are the law firms afraid of?

I find it very difficult to understand why critical feedback from clients don’t seem to be welcomed by the law firms. Is it possible that the key performance criterion for a lawyer is how much money the lawyer is able to bring in, at a high rate of profit, irrespective of how he or she performs for the client? If that is true, then that will certainly determine the driving forces as to how a lawyer acts and performs, because performance management guidelines drive the behavior of the professional.

The bottom line is that welcoming and honoring detailed critical feedback from the clients will improve trustworthiness of the legal community.

In my new book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I have put in some discussions about what should a client expect from his or her lawyer. One of the things I discuss is about lawyers taking some responsibility for the outcome of a case.

So, what does taking responsibility really mean – well, it means that a lawyer needs to be the leader (more so when a client is someone who had never brought a lawsuit before), a lawyer needs to have an overall plan of attack (considering all possible moves by the other side), must leave no stones unturned, be aggressive about pursuing all possible angles, and be a fighter to the end. And if the outcome is negative, then as the leader, the lawyer needs to sit together with the team and discuss what could have been done differently to possibly get to a positive outcome.

I think it should be okay for a lawyer to admit that he or she might have made a mistake or two; or that the results might have been positive if a different approach were taken. This is one of the greatest things in our country – we are allowed to make mistakes, but we are also expected to take responsibility for our mistakes and learn from them. That is what “experience” is all about.

No one can go back and undo what has already been done, but a lawyer can still do something to show that he or she is taking some responsibility. One way to do that would be to pay some money back since there might have been some mistakes made. That would certainly improve the trustworthiness of the legal community.

One of the things I discuss in my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System” is about lawyers taking responsibility for the outcome of a case.

I have noticed that the legal community seems to believe that a lawyer’s job is simply to manage the litigation process and go through the necessary steps and not have any responsibility for the outcome. They seem to point the finger at the “adversarial nature of the legal system”. In other words, what they seem to say is that because of the nature of the legal proceedings, they take no responsibility. I find this to be a cop out – a way to shirk responsibility. I thought lawyers are trained specifically to be able to deal effectively with this adversarial nature of the legal system. And that’s why we are paying the big bucks for the lawyers to be able to handle this adversarial nature. The meaning of the word “adversarial” is “involving or characterized by conflict or opposition”. So what I am hearing from the legal community is that because the lawyers have to deal with conflicts or opposition, they have no responsibility as to the outcome of the case.

Once again I go back to my example of a professional football game. In a professional game there is an opposition and one cannot always predict what the opposition might have in store for them. But the team cannot say that “we have no responsibility because we had an opposition and we had no idea what they could bring to the game”. Most professional teams will take responsibility for the outcome and will analyze what they could have done better and be responsible for their own performance.

I believe that’s what professional lawyers need to do especially after a loss. They need to think hard to figure out what they could have done better or differently that could have resulted in a more positive outcome.

One of the issues I talk about in my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice system” is the way hourly rates might be changed for the legal professionals.

I was shocked to find out that my lawyer’s rate was suddenly increased by 18.6%. The case started in August and in 5 months (i.e., the following January) the rate was increased by this huge margin. When I was talking to another lawyer about this and asking why I did not receive any communication about this change, he asked me to go look at my retainer agreement and see what it said about rate increases. I went back and looked and found that the agreement stated that “if the hourly rate of any individual is increased, the new rate will be indicated on your next bill”. So I guess I was notified but I just did not realize that that was the only way rate changes are communicated to clients. When I received invoices I never looked at the details of rates and hours. I trusted the law firm and just simply made the payments.

I am not blaming anybody for this, but I do believe that it would have been much more appropriate for my lawyer or the law firm to send me a simple letter to make me aware of the upcoming increase. It could have also been done by a phone call or an email. That certainly would have seemed more open and straightforward to me. I would again like to leave this message to the legal community – more communication is much better in developing and maintaining a trusting relationship. Also, it brings up another question – is this kind of significant change appropriate within 5-6 months of starting a new case?