'Not one of the complaints was suitable to be filed': Law firm partners insist lawyer rush through cases in 20 minutes, frustrated lawyer sends out 75 complaint cases 'with no edits whatsoever'

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 24, 2023 3:00 PM EST

This lawyer cares much more about their clients than their bosses do. Unfortunately for u/TheRealJohnGalt22, their bosses feel the opposite: forget about the clients, just run cases through as fast as humanly possible. 

In this work environment, partners at a law firm told one lawyer that they should take a "quantity not quality" approach to the complaints they needed to file. We all want to feel valuable and important at our jobs, and no one ever wants to hear that kind of language from a boss. They're basically saying that it doesn't matter if you do a good job or not. They just want the job to get done ASAP. 

Does this ever work out for managers, though? If you throw quality out the window and just focus on working as quick as you can, customers can see that. The OP describes a rather shady business plan, where customers would contact the firm, but then work with low-level and low-paid employees who'd help them make a cover sheet for their case. Then, the OP was supposed to spend only about 20 minutes preparing the rest of their complaint. There's no way these cases would be good quality from that level of care.

Check out the whole tale below. Then, these employees told stories about the one person at their job who is "that guy," like the woman who manages to talk about her 5 cats in every single conversation. 

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  • 01
    Told "Quantity Not Quality" by Boss, Gave Them Exactly That LOC I worked at a law firm that handled an extremely high volume of cases, I'm talking thousands per month, and due to the specific field they were in, the work called for a ton of motion practice. We had to respond to motions on nearly every case, after which the cases would settle, and we would be paid relatively small amounts that
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 02
    added up. To answer all the motions we would use a boilerplate template, input a few specifics via prompts, and send it off - this would take about 15-20 minutes. It was a profitable scheme, and to be fair, it worked for that specific field of law. This is highly irregular and would be nearly impossible to effectively mount a counter argument in any other field of law, which typically requires research and fact specific rebuttal to very specific challenges to your case.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 03
    Fast forward and now the firm is taking on cases in a new field of law, nearly all between 200-300k per case, or about 100x what a case in their original field would take. We needed to draft and file Complaints on these cases. To achieve this, the partners insisted that our senior attorney would create a template, our "paralegal staff" making $10/hr would speak with the client and create an intake cover sheet for each case, and I would be the lucky middle- man who got to input the cover sheet da
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 04
    generate a complaint, for every single case in this new field that the firm was handling. In essence, they thought we could handle this new, complex, different field of law with much higher stakes in much the same way they were handling our "normal" cases. The intake staff had no clue what they were doing, and the boilerplate template was wildly insufficient to allege the particular facts, which varied so considerably between cases (also why intake had problems). The
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 05
    Partners thought it should take me about 15-20 minutes to generate a complaint with their method, but the reality was I actually had to review every file from scratch, figure out what was going on, input the data myself, make massive edits to the Complaint, etc, it would take me at least 1.5 hours to do a good job. And honestly, that's what I did, a good job.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 06
    As you can imagine, something of a backlog ensued and the partners wanted to know what the issue was. I explained that due to the nature of the cases, they were requiring specific edits. I offered several recommendations for how we could improve our efficiency, but they didn't want to hear it. I explained that these cases were worth significantly more, and even spending 4-5x longer on them than on our other cases was still a huge win for them.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 07
    They wanted paper out. "Quantity over Quality" I was told, leave the decisions to them, do what I am instructed to do and play my part on the assembly line. Note that these partners did actually no legal work whatsoever on any cases - they once did long ago, but now just watch cameras all day and late. if you're 5 minutes
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 08
    In a fit of frustration and rage I maliciously complied. I actually stayed late few nights and banged out maybe 75 or so Complaints that had backlogged. I sent them all to the Sr attorney for final review, with no edits whatsoever, wrong data from our intake team, nonsensical legal arguments, fact patterns that were completely untrue, just like I was told.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 09
    About 3 workdays later I got called in for a meeting about what the was going on in these complaints, and that the sr attorney was about 1/3 of the way through what I had sent him and not one of the complaints was suitable to be filed. I told them I was just doing my job on the assembly line and that the issue must be coming from somewhere else, but definitely not from me, because I did exactly as instructed and mindlessly input the data and sent it along. They told me this was unacceptable and
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 10
    was an issue I should have brought it to their attention, to which I replied that I tried and was not listened to. They refused to accept defeat and attempted to change data collection, change the templates, to no avail. It got hostile. No matter what they did, their system just didn't work, and I continued to comply with their insistence I do my job and my job only. It was unbelievable how stubborn these people were.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 11
    Quit that job and moved on. I've been tracking some of the cases online, and they're getting dismissed on motion. Quantity not quality, eh? Not how I practice law.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 12
    TheRealJohnGalt22 OP. I omitted a few details to preserve some form of anonymity here. But one of the other issues is, taking on all that work in the new field, if done correctly, would have commanded the the full time of one attorney, which would take that person away from writing motions on the other cases.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 13
    The correct thing to do as a business owner there, would be a cost benefit analysis. They could have hired another attorney to pick up my motions on the other cases and left me to focus my attention on the new. The additional attorney salary would have EASILY paid for itself through revenue generated on these new cases. Instead
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 14
    they lost an attorney who was interested and capable, and are losing the new cases in court (and likely the client as well), settling for significantly less, etc etc. I just do not get it, but again, not my practice.
    via u/TheRealJohnGalt22
  • 15
    Jaxsom12 lol this is great. Glad you quit, I can't stand people that can't admit they are wrong. You look foolish when you try to weasel your way out.
    via u/Jaxsom12
  • 16
    GargamelLeNoir When you find yourself in that situation where your boss wants you to do something that will bite them in , send an email to everyone recapping the situation, your recommendation and the final decision. Keep it very factual. Otherwise they will suffer from selective amnesia.
    via u/GargamelLeNoir
  • 17
    spock_9519 Glad you got out of that sinking ship
    via u/spock_9519
  • 18
    Compulawyer Glad you quit. This is unethical and should be reported to the bar association's disciplinary committee.
    via u/Compulawyer

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