Update

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?

One of the things I discuss in my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American justice system” is the question about what to do when your legal team says that the judges made a mistake and the judges say that appropriate evidence was not brought forward.

This is something that puzzled me a lot. I understand that my lawyer might believe that the judges made a mistake, but I was shocked to hear the same thing even from the managing partner of the law firm. I understand that judges can make mistakes and that is why the legal system allows the appeal process. But is it appropriate for the lawyer and/or the law firm to continue to believe that the judges made a mistake, even after hearing the decision from the appeal process. I think it is very important for the legal professionals to accept the fact that there is a good possibility that either the case did not have merit right from the beginning or that we were just not able to provide the kind of evidence that the judges were looking for.

I have given an example in the book about professional sports teams dealing with bad calls. I know that the best coaches in all professional sports will never accept that they lost a game just because of one or more bad calls and they certainly will never allow their players to believe that they would have won the game had it not been for the bad calls. I believe that the best professional teams work hard to prepare themselves well so they can win games in spite of some bad calls. I think this can be a good example to look at for the legal community. I believe if the professional lawyers focus more on doing the utmost to prepare their cases (just like the example of the best professional sports teams), then they would likely not have to worry about judges’ mistakes.

Another important point I bring out in my new book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System” has to do with the fact that it is extremely important for a client to thoroughly understand the whole process before deciding to pursue a lawsuit.

Lawyers handle hundreds of cases and therefore it is understandable that many issues associated with cases might seem mundane to them. But they need to understand that for clients, and especially for clients who have never brought a lawsuit before, it is extremely important to make sure they know about every possible hurdle that could come their way, no matter how mundane those might seem to the lawyers themselves.

I believe that many average Americans do not know the steps involved in pursuing a lawsuit. I believe many people think that once you bring forward a lawsuit there will be a trial with a jury and a decision will be made. But I am sure that many of them do not know the various intermediate steps that could be involved before you can get to a jury trial. It is important for the legal community to understand that it is critical to go the extra mile to make sure that the clients are well informed before deciding to proceed with the lawsuit.

How can a lay person be expected to know that several different kinds of motions can be brought forward in a civil case? I think it is extremely important for the legal community to understand that when it comes to providing information to prospective clients, overkill is much better than assuming that the clients would already know about some of these things. Specifically, it’s critical that the clients are made fully aware of ALL possible hurdles they might have to face.

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 what kind of information is important for a prospective client to receive from his/her lawyer before he/she decides to pursue a lawsuit. One of those issues is a reasonable estimate of the possible cost involved in pursuing the case. Is it wrong of a client to expect to have some realistic idea of the total possible cost that might be involved in pursuing a lawsuit? Clients do need to have a fairly reasonable estimate so they can make a proper decision about bringing a lawsuit. Why is the legal profession not sensitive to this need?

During my discussions with the law firm (and the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board) about this issue, I was advised that lawyers are not required to provide specific or correct costs that might be involved. I am surprised that these organizations use words such as “correct” or “incorrect” or “specific” or “true cost” etc when talking about an estimate. The word “estimate” basically means an “approximation” – it is not expected to be “correct” or “exact” or “true cost”. The point is that an estimate needs to be “realistic” – needs to be in the “ballpark” – and that is the point. It is true that there are uncertainties in the litigation process; but I know that lawyers are smart people, and I believe that there are no reasons whatsoever why these smart people cannot come up with more realistic cost estimates. If they spend a few minutes to think about all the possible “uncertainties”, I am sure they will be able to come up with much more appropriate estimates for their clients. So the question is: do they really want to provide realistic estimates or are there other motivations driving their actions?

The bottom line is that I believe that lawyers and law firms can do a better job of this, if they really want to.

In my new book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice system” I have described in detail why it became necessary for me to file a defamation lawsuit and what the whole process turned out to be like.

As the title of my book states, my intent has all along been to describe my experience with the American Justice System in general, not just with any specific lawyers or organizations or judges or police officers. I have described my experiences (along with my comments and opinions) about my interactions with and observations of some specific police officers, lawyers, law firms, judges, and the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB), simply because those were the individuals and organizations that were involved with my situation. However, I am most concerned about that the issues and situations I describe specifically about my interactions with the legal community.

I believe that what I experienced with the legal community is something that likely happens every day all over this country. That is why it is not surprising why the general public often express negative opinions about lawyers and law firms. Why is it that the legal community of lawyers, law firms and boards are okay with this negative image of lawyers? Why are they okay with being known as one of the most untrustworthy professions in the country? Specifically, why are the “professional responsibility” boards across the country okay with this image of the profession?

I believe the legal community can learn a lot from this book and can try to improve their image for their clients and the general public.

In this book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I describe an actual defamation case and how it got started and what happened and everything I learned that can be extremely helpful to many average Americans. The story includes several different matters that bring up questions about where things are in terms of our justice system. Here are some examples:

• Hotels are typically extremely concerned about customer satisfaction – one is always encouraged to bring up any issues to the hotel management. So the question is: does the hotel management do anything about a complaint or just ignores it? Most hotels, I believe, take any complaints seriously and follow up on it and make appropriate recommendations, if necessary. However, in my story, it appears that a complaint to the hotel manager might have been the thing that got everything started.
• How do lawyers get evaluated for how they performed in a specific case? How does a law firm evaluate one of their lawyers? Can a firm truly evaluate a lawyer’s performance without any feedback from the client?
• What really is the role of a Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board? Is the board supposed to try and understand a client’s issues or is the board there basically to defend a lawyer? Isn’t it important for the Board to make sure clients feel somewhat satisfied with the Board’s evaluation of a complaint?
• Isn’t it critical that police officers take utmost care when talking to one individual about another individual? Do they understand that what they say about someone can be misunderstood or misinterpreted possibly causing significant issues?