Reasonable Fees a Must in Tight Legal Services Market

Consumer focus groups often characterize attorneys as overpriced. Combine that conclusion with a lawyer's frequent arrogance, and the overall experience of purchasing legal services can be disappointing.

A recent study cited in The Economist noted that so called “Big Law” [America’s 250 largest private law firms] shed 8% of its work force over the past two years. Many top-tier law school graduates cannot find work in their chosen field.

Local general practitioners have also seen the effects of a tight market for legal services amidst a glut of service providers. Fortunately for them, appearing before the local magistrate or county trial judge cannot be outsourced to India like an e-discovery document review.

Nevertheless, globalization, digitization, and cloud-based data sourcing are driving fees for all legal services downward. Information is coming to the people at a bit-torrent pace. The client is forcing the attorney to re-think how service is measured and purchased.

Although professional pundits have been forecasting the death of the billable hour for the past two decades, it appears to finally be happening. Value-based alternative fee arrangements such as flat fees, performance contingencies, and multiple transaction discounts, are commonplace among competitive firms.

Survival in such an industry depends on a client-focused approach. Adding value to the client’s case, always important, is now imperative.

No one wants to overspend on a lawyer.  Therefore, prior to hiring an attorney, do some research on the Internet; check the reviews; check the electronic profile.  Your digital due diligence will increase the likelihood that your dollars will be well spent.

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When the Innocent Go to Prison We All Lose

Everyone accused of a crime has a right to have the matter tried before a jury with the heightened "beyond a reasonable doubt" evidentiary standard.  Sometimes, however, the jury gets it wrong.

When that happens, you have a constitutional right to appeal.  Most convictions, statistically, are affirmed at the intermediate appellate level.  From there, a convicted felon has a discretionary appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The Michigan Supreme Court selects few cases each year; most petitions for a writ of certiorari, especially when they are from prison inmates, are rejected.

Once your state appellate rights are exhausted, you have the right to petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court.  Hopefully, your state court appellate attorney had the wisdom to "federalize" your brief in the intermediate state appellate court because if not, all your constitutional issues are deemed waived.

If the Habeas petition is denied in federal district court, as most are, there is a constitutional right to appeal even further, to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

The United States Supreme Court is the end of the road.  A petition for a writ of certeriorari to the SCOTUS is, well, best of luck to you....

Most would agree that the incarceration of wrongly convicted individuals is one of the true horrors of our criminal justice system; a less than perfect system that sends people to prison from time to time who did not commit the crime for which they were convicted.

The State Bar of Michigan's blog recently posted some fresh literature addressing this troubling subject.  We think it's worth a look.

Over the weekend, for example, the Detroit Free Press profiled its first in a series of articles detailing a West Bloomfield family's plight following criminal sexual conduct charges.

In addition to the case profile in the Freep, a more detailed study by the Campaign for Justice and the Michigan ACLU is included in the post, tracking 13 wrongly convicted individuals in Michigan; this piece also impugns Michigan's court-appointed counsel system.

The SBM blog post also includes a link to Reason Magazine's nation-wide study featuring UM Law Professor Sam Gross who concludes that wrongful convictions are far more common than most of us believe.

We are not sure what the solution is to this problem.  Many folks in our free society seem hell-bent on breaking the law in major ways, committing "crimes against the person", to use a classification phrase from Michigan's sentencing guideline manual.  No doubt, prosecutors often have a full plate.

But when the accused is innocent, we all lose some of our individual rights, liberties and freedoms.

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Breathalyzer May Be Required in Michigan Bars

There is a bill pending in the Michigan Senate which, if passed, will require bars and restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages to make self-operated breathalyzers available to patrons.  The bill, sponsored by Senator Bert Johnson of Highland Park, was submitted to the Senate Committee on Regulatory Reform on June 1, 2011.

Presumably, the legislative wisdom associated with such a law would be to provide bar patrons with some immediate feedback relative to their blood alcohol level.  There is a large body of published analysis, however, impugning the accuracy of these devices.  For example, if any alcohol or a variety of other agents are present in your breath sample, the results will be distorted.

One advantage of this law is that if patrons discovery they are "Super Drunk", with a blood alcohol in excess of .17, they would presumably not risk the enhanced penalties by venturing onto the roadways.

In a court of law, the preliminary breath test (PBT) results generated from such devices are not deemed admissible in court.  Like field sobriety test results, the PBT can generally only be used to demonstrate whether there was probable cause to support a drunk driving arrest.

These machines cost anywhere from $250 to $950.  Every bar, restaurant, or entertainment venue will have to purshase a series of these devices.  Resources will be devoted to operating and maintaining the breathalyzers by the waitstaff at each speakeasy.  Liability steming from this legislative requirement will result in lawsuits.

On the other hand, the more awareness that is raised about drinking and driving, the better.  The question is whether the costs imposed on restauranteurs, then passed on to patrons, is worth it.

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