Like Shakespeare said, “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers”

I hate to be down on a particular group but that’s how I felt like last week. Here’s the background (locations have been changed to protect the inept). Had a claim that was placed to my agency about 18 months ago against a debtor in Pittsburgh for $6,500. The creditor, a manufacturer located in the Midwest, had sold some equipment to a dealer they had been doing business with on and off for about 13 years. After being completely ignored I passed it to a law firm that I used once before in the past, and they in turn recommended suit, which was executed .

About 2 months after commencing with our suit, the creditor was countersued for over $200,000. The basis of the countersuit was a falsely claimed assertion that the creditor had not adhered to an exclusive dealer contract which costs this debtor dealer about $200,000 in lost sales opportunities.

After a year of unanswered discovery, delays, and a lot of up and back nonsense, the case finally went to court. Prior to the actual court hearing, there was a mediation where the debtor agreed to drop his counter suit and pay the $6,500 as long as the creditor would be open to selling the debtor equipment parts (either cash in advance or by credit card) in the future. The creditor agreed, the debt was paid that day, and it looks like a real happy ending. This is the quick background but now let me share the fine lines of this story.

About two weeks before the court date, the attorney in charge of our case, and a partner at the firm, informed me that a new person in his office would be handling it. I wasn’t too pleased in hearing that since he, I, and the creditor had been working very nicely over the past year but I went along with it. The new attorney and I exchanged a few emails and I felt a little weird with his tone as we set up a day and time for a teleconference call. Without addressing me by my name in the emails, he just started writing to me like a college buddy, using those little texting shortcuts like, “r u available” and “AFAIK”. Did you know that AFAIK means, “As far as I know”? I sure as heck didn’t. In my reply email I asked him to write in full sentences and skip the abbreviations. I also included 4 questions that I needed answered.

After a week, I contacted this new attorney again and asked him for his contact phone number and if he would also answer the 4 questions that I had previously asked. He replied with his mobile number but nothing else. I called him and asked him why he did not reply to my email. He responded tersely that he sent me his mobile number and I said, “Yes, but you didn’t respond to the 4 questions that I had previously asked you”. He now was looking carefully at the email and said, “I see them.”

“How old are you”?, I asked. “Thirty eight”, he responded. I informed him that I thought he was old enough to know how to read emails carefully and to understand how to communicate as a professional and not a drinking mate. He was silent. We stayed on the phone for 30 seconds without saying anything. He didn’t apologize and he didn’t acknowledge anything wrong. He finally said, “Anything else”?  I responded, “yes, do your homework and make sure you have looked very carefully over all the documents for this case and be prepared”. We ended the call knowing that we would be talking the next day with the creditor on a teleconference call.

The next day, I, the creditor, and this new attorney were all on the phone together. The creditor is the general manager of a Japanese company that I have been doing business with for the past few years for collections and credit risk consulting. As the teleconference call got started, the attorney (who is a fast talking New Yorker by birth) framed the conversation in a way that made us feel like we were perpetrators in a crime. As soon as I saw where the conversation was going, I told this new attorney that I will call him back shortly and ended the conference call.

I then called the previous attorney and vociferously complained about this new attorney’s style and said that I do not want him to represent us. To my surprise and disappointment, I was told that they would not change and that we would have to deal with him. “Deal with him? What does that mean”? I was horrified with his answer and told him so. I reminded him that we were the client and that his response and client care were completely unacceptable. He said he would talk with the new attorney and get things in order. If I had had the time, I would have moved the case to another firm but in view of the court date being just a few days away, I accepted this predicament and decided to make the best of it.

After a few more emails and telephone calls with the new attorney, in a short time he came around and seemed responsive to understanding our simple needs and wants to a counterclaim that was bogus from the start and that any one with a little bit of negotiating skill could manage.

On the day of the hearing, our creditor was there to meet the new attorney at the court house. As the creditor informed me later, this new attorney showed up with his shirt half out, shoes untied, the i-phone buried in his ear, and just an overall disaster. But what really blew the creditor away is that the other attorney also showed up not only looking in total disarray but also talked in a way that made a mockery of the whole affair. The creditor was just  horrified at how two lawyers could show up being so crummy looking and sounding.

According to the creditor, thank god they had a mandatory mediation before the court hearing. The mediator was a middle aged woman who spoke and acted very professionally and was able to bring the whole matter to its glorious and paid end. My hunch is that if we had had to rely on our two “professional” attorneys to negotiate this claim and counter-claim, I and the creditor probably would be writing this to you from jail.