Greedy Lawyers Make All Lawyers Look Bad

I have read a lot of lawyer jokes in my time; some bad and some good. Most of the jokes tend to show the lawyer as the bad guy, and I would imagine that a decent man or woman making a living as a lawyer, would resent constantly being the brunt of such jokes. I know I would.

Just as in every other field, there are lawyers who are honest and who really care about providing service to their clients at the most reasonable cost possible. Unfortunately, it only takes one really bad one to give the whole profession a bad name.

Most of you probably know that a fund known as the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund was established to benefit those who lost loved ones in the horrible tragedy that took place in New York on that date. One of the conditions was that lawyers involved in the dispersion and collection of these funds were not to receive contingency fees for themselves in order that as much money as possible would be distributed to beneficiaries.

One attorney filed a suit in federal court seeking a fee of over two million dollars for representing a widow of a man who died in the attacks. I had to read the press release that detailed this twice, and still have trouble believing that anyone could rip off the American people who donated money to the victim fund.

The widow in question asked the law firm of simmons jannace & stagg to look into the matter for her.

After studying the situation, this company concluded that no other fee of this size against the victim’s compensation fund had ever been upheld, and that the federal courts should not be involved since the state Surrogate court was already in the process of ruling on the matter. The federal court has agreed, and it was decided that disputes over fees between those entitled to 911 funds and their lawyers should be decided in state courts, hereafter.

Which court decides the attorney fees does not concern me nearly as much as why any single attorney should have the audacity to charge 2 million dollars for simply seeing that his or her client gets the compensation due them. Maybe it’s time to do something about rolling back attorney fees.