ITT we rank firms based on most atrocious opposing counsel Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

I will say - I think it's worse going against incompetent attorneys than competent assholes. On a pro bono matter I was against a small firm in the deep South - every motion looks like it was written by a tenth grader with a weak grasp on both the law and the English language. And I feel like the judge went out of their way to not call them on their bullshit.

I've had dickish opposing counsel from other Big Law firms, but I'll take that any day.

I feel like going against incompetent but well-meaning attorneys would be better than competent assholes.

I'm not sure it is. With the incompetents I have to basically do their job as well as my own. And if the competent attorneys are assholes it's way easier (for me) to tell them to go take a hike when they ask for unreasonable stuff. Plus if I lose to competent assholes I don't feel as badly as if I lose to incompetents (and winning against incompetents isn't as great a triumph either).

Nice but sneaky are probably the worst. (Since none of you will be surprised that I want to be able to take people at their word.)

[Anonymous User]

Munger. by a mile.

Seconded.

I am curious by this. Could either of you give any flavor to what makes MTO atrocious to go against?

I agree with the earlier posters. The most atrocious opposing counsel I have had to deal with are solo practitioners or small plaintiffs' side firms, in particular, those who do employment work. It can be pretty frustrating to deal with insanely overbroad discovery requests, followed by repeated frivolous motions to compels, having to constantly rebut crazy, totally unsupportable legal theories, and irrational settlement demands.

Only litigated against them twice and they did blatantly unethical things both times.

I now will never trust anything they say in the process of meet and confers and will assume they're burying as much shit as possible in their priv logs. I will also assume that I will get an inappropriately late production days before a deposition/before submitting papers.

[Anonymous User]

I don't want to generalize because there are some really good civilian military defense lawyers out there, but I've seen some of the worst briefs ever put on paper submitted by CMDLs. Terrible writing, no creativity. I've read a couple that were so inartful that they weren't even making an argument. One referred to the defendant as "Mr. Gutierrez" the entire way through for a client whose last name was Gonzalez.

[rahulg91]

I'll say what we're all thinking.

Kirkland.

Kirkland even agrees.

Deets?

[LurkerTurnedMember]

Munger. by a mile.

Seconded.

I am curious by this. Could either of you give any flavor to what makes MTO atrocious to go against?

I agree with the earlier posters. The most atrocious opposing counsel I have had to deal with are solo practitioners or small plaintiffs' side firms, in particular, those who do employment work. It can be pretty frustrating to deal with insanely overbroad discovery requests, followed by repeated frivolous motions to compels, having to constantly rebut crazy, totally unsupportable legal theories, and irrational settlement demands.

Only litigated against them twice and they did blatantly unethical things both times.

I now will never trust anything they say in the process of meet and confers and will assume they're burying as much shit as possible in their priv logs. I will also assume that I will get an inappropriately late production days before a deposition/before submitting papers.

Why not report to the bar? I dunno about MTO cause I never went against them but I've seen lawyers in litigation I wasn't involved in who did shady stuff and I was a hair away from reporting them to the bar. Had I been on the case I would have.

Also: so nobody fell for my made up law firm three pages of comments back? I for sure thought people would ask at least who they were lol

[SmokeytheBear]

I'll say what we're all thinking.

Kirkland.

Kirkland even agrees.

Deets?

I'm speaking from the corporate side.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Nice but sneaky are probably the worst. (Since none of you will be surprised that I want to be able to take people at their word.)

"Haha oops, how did that cancelled purchase order liability provision get deleted? Just an oversight on our part, we'll fix that in the next draft."

Not sure if Midwest and West Coast lawyers really are more susceptible to this or if it's just small sample size.

At least Kirkland, Latham et. al are open about how hard they're trying to fuck over your client.

[LurkerTurnedMember]

Nice but sneaky are probably the worst. (Since none of you will be surprised that I want to be able to take people at their word.)

"Haha oops, how did that cancelled purchase order liability provision get deleted? Just an oversight on our part, we'll fix that in the next draft."

Not sure if Midwest and West Coast lawyers really are more susceptible to this or if it's just small sample size.

At least Kirkland, Latham et. al are open about how hard they're trying to fuck over your client.

Would that even be enforceable if someone added a clause into a huge contract without notifying the other party and it gets signed with the assumption it's not in there? I'm always surprised when lawyers try to pull something like this. The whole point of getting to an agreed upon contract is to BUILD A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP. So doing something that shady will just lead to a break down and litigation. And their client will take a reputational hit. No one wants to do business with a cheat.

[rpupkin]

Munger. by a mile.

Seconded.

I am curious by this. Could either of you give any flavor to what makes MTO atrocious to go against?

I agree with the earlier posters. The most atrocious opposing counsel I have had to deal with are solo practitioners or small plaintiffs' side firms, in particular, those who do employment work. It can be pretty frustrating to deal with insanely overbroad discovery requests, followed by repeated frivolous motions to compels, having to constantly rebut crazy, totally unsupportable legal theories, and irrational settlement demands.

Only litigated against them twice and they did blatantly unethical things both times.

I now will never trust anything they say in the process of meet and confers and will assume they're burying as much shit as possible in their priv logs. I will also assume that I will get an inappropriately late production days before a deposition/before submitting papers.

Why not report to the bar?

lol

[clshopeful]

Nice but sneaky are probably the worst. (Since none of you will be surprised that I want to be able to take people at their word.)

"Haha oops, how did that cancelled purchase order liability provision get deleted? Just an oversight on our part, we'll fix that in the next draft."

Not sure if Midwest and West Coast lawyers really are more susceptible to this or if it's just small sample size.

At least Kirkland, Latham et. al are open about how hard they're trying to fuck over your client.

Would that even be enforceable if someone added a clause into a huge contract without notifying the other party and it gets signed with the assumption it's not in there? I'm always surprised when lawyers try to pull something like this. The whole point of getting to an agreed upon contract is to BUILD A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP. So doing something that shady will just lead to a break down and litigation. And their client will take a reputational hit. No one wants to do business with a cheat.

Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that if it happened, to have it be unenforceable you would need to litigate it, which would be expensive and a headache

[LurkerTurnedMember]

Munger. by a mile.

Seconded.

I am curious by this. Could either of you give any flavor to what makes MTO atrocious to go against?

I agree with the earlier posters. The most atrocious opposing counsel I have had to deal with are solo practitioners or small plaintiffs' side firms, in particular, those who do employment work. It can be pretty frustrating to deal with insanely overbroad discovery requests, followed by repeated frivolous motions to compels, having to constantly rebut crazy, totally unsupportable legal theories, and irrational settlement demands.

Only litigated against them twice and they did blatantly unethical things both times.

I now will never trust anything they say in the process of meet and confers and will assume they're burying as much shit as possible in their priv logs. I will also assume that I will get an inappropriately late production days before a deposition/before submitting papers.

Why not report to the bar?

lol

I'm not saying for small stuff obviously. But I've had experience with lawyers who purposefully try to mislead the court. They know that isn't the law but they'll cite cases that barely have anything to do with the issue, or are on the issue but clearly out of context, and will say things like "it is well settled that [wrong law]." They acted like it didn't matter whether they got the result based on the law, just that they got the court to order it, even if it was clearly wrong and would be relitigated. The court caught it every time and pointed out how wrong the law was and that it didn't apply. But come on. When you care that little about purposefully misleading the court and wasting everyone's time and money, I'm sure It's a violation of some duty to the court.

[Anonymous User]

Weil Gotshal

Seconding this

Also here for this party because of their sloppy UCC work.

[rpupkin]

I'm not saying for small stuff obviously. But I've had experience with lawyers who purposefully try to mislead the court. They know that isn't the law but they'll cite cases that barely have anything to do with the issue, or are on the issue but clearly out of context, and will say things like "it is well settled that [wrong law]." They acted like it didn't matter whether they got the result based on the law, just that they got the court to order it

In other words, you think that 80% of litigators should be reported to the bar.

In the situation you describe above, the judge noticed the misstatement of law, so it's really for the court to decide whether the misstatement was so blatant as to justify some sort of sanction. If the opposing party really has no support in the law for its claim, then you can of course file a Rule 11 motion (or its state-law equivalent). But if you reported opposing counsel to the bar for "citing cases that barely have anything to do with the issue" or for "citing cases out of context," you would embarrass yourself and your law firm.

[LurkerTurnedMember]

I'm not saying for small stuff obviously. But I've had experience with lawyers who purposefully try to mislead the court. They know that isn't the law but they'll cite cases that barely have anything to do with the issue, or are on the issue but clearly out of context, and will say things like "it is well settled that [wrong law]." They acted like it didn't matter whether they got the result based on the law, just that they got the court to order it

In other words, you think that 80% of litigators should be reported to the bar.

In the situation you describe above, the judge noticed the misstatement of law, so it's really for the court to decide whether the misstatement was so blatant as to justify some sort of sanction. If the opposing party really has no support in the law for its claim, then you can of course file a Rule 11 motion (or its state-law equivalent). But if you reported opposing counsel to the bar for "citing cases that barely have anything to do with the issue" or for "citing cases out of context," you would embarrass yourself and your law firm.

Not for simple misstatement of cases. That would include like you said a lot of lawyers. I'm talking about purposefully citing a single case they know isn't even relevant to say their proposition "is well settled" and that the opponent's cited cases, which include controlling on point authority explaining the law, is somehow no longer followed or not on point in any way. Like citing a case about eminent domain to argue that conversion by ordinary person is ok and the elements of conversion are irrelevant. This whole "oh I just made a simple mistake and i can't be expected to be able to read as a lawyer" to excuse purposeful deceit or careless incompetence is getting out of hand.

[rpupkin]

Not for simple misstatement of cases. That would include like you said a lot of lawyers. I'm talking about purposefully citing a single case they know isn't even relevant to say their proposition "is well settled" and that the opponent's cited cases, which include controlling on point authority explaining the law, is somehow no longer followed or not on point in any way. Like citing a case about eminent domain to argue that conversion by ordinary person is ok and the elements of conversion are irrelevant.

Do you work at a law firm? Do you honestly think that your firm would support you reporting opposing counsel to the bar for that? Why wouldn't you just point out the flaws of the opposing lawyer's position to the court, and then--if the case citation is part of a larger pattern of conduct--move for sanctions?

[LurkerTurnedMember]

Not for simple misstatement of cases. That would include like you said a lot of lawyers. I'm talking about purposefully citing a single case they know isn't even relevant to say their proposition "is well settled" and that the opponent's cited cases, which include controlling on point authority explaining the law, is somehow no longer followed or not on point in any way. Like citing a case about eminent domain to argue that conversion by ordinary person is ok and the elements of conversion are irrelevant.

Do you work at a law firm? Do you honestly think that your firm would support you reporting opposing counsel to the bar for that? Why wouldn't you just point out the flaws of the opposing lawyer's position to the court, and then--if the case citation is part of a larger pattern of conduct--move for sanctions?

I agree with all that. I didn't know this was only if you also worked at a firm. Oops. Sorry. I just thought it was if you went against a particular firm or a lawyer from a particular firm. If you also work at a firm then yea definitely be more hesitant. But generally, there is a duty to not take a case on if you don't know anything about the law in that area. There is a duty not to deceive the court. There are duties here that apply and for good reason. Of course there are baby lawyers who aren't competent yet and all that but there are limits. When I clerked I've seen a good number of lawyers who obviously took on a case and they knew very little or anything about the relevant laws. And it would come to a point where they'd get claims kicked out on summary judgment cause they didn't know which evidence to discover (and so had no evidence to cite during SJ stage) since they didn't know how the particular claims applied, even when the claims were very well solid claims had the lawyers knew how to litigate them.

[Anonymous User]

Munger. by a mile.

Seconded.

I am curious by this. Could either of you give any flavor to what makes MTO atrocious to go against?

I agree with the earlier posters. The most atrocious opposing counsel I have had to deal with are solo practitioners or small plaintiffs' side firms, in particular, those who do employment work. It can be pretty frustrating to deal with insanely overbroad discovery requests, followed by repeated frivolous motions to compels, having to constantly rebut crazy, totally unsupportable legal theories, and irrational settlement demands.

Only litigated against them twice and they did blatantly unethical things both times.

I now will never trust anything they say in the process of meet and confers and will assume they're burying as much shit as possible in their priv logs. I will also assume that I will get an inappropriately late production days before a deposition/before submitting papers.

They are also some of the most pretentious lawyers in private practice IME

[Anonymous User]

I will say - I think it's worse going against incompetent attorneys than competent assholes. On a pro bono matter I was against a small firm in the deep South - every motion looks like it was written by a tenth grader with a weak grasp on both the law and the English language. And I feel like the judge went out of their way to not call them on their bullshit.

I've had dickish opposing counsel from other Big Law firms, but I'll take that any day.

I feel like going against incompetent but well-meaning attorneys would be better than competent assholes.

I'm not sure it is. With the incompetents I have to basically do their job as well as my own. And if the competent attorneys are assholes it's way easier (for me) to tell them to go take a hike when they ask for unreasonable stuff. Plus if I lose to competent assholes I don't feel as badly as if I lose to incompetents (and winning against incompetents isn't as great a triumph either).

Nice but sneaky are probably the worst. (Since none of you will be surprised that I want to be able to take people at their word.)

To go further on this - when you're up against a decent Big Law firm, you kind of know what to expect when it comes to preparing arguments for motions and stuff. You know they're going to find the same stuff you do, and it kind of forces you to do your best and be a better lawyer yourself.

When you're up against a Shitlawyer, you're tempted to leave things you found adverse to your position out of a brief because you're not sure whether they'll even find it.