We have a few rumors to start off your week ... let us know if you have any details in the comments. - Craig Rankin, head of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith's Las Vegas construction group, is reportedly being forced out of the firm a month ahead of a major trial dealing with yellow brass plumbing fittings with millions in exposure.
- Our old friends at ATMS may be at it again, a helpful tipster sent us the following note:
Word has it that ATMS has again changed its attorney compensation structure. We all know that the attorneys there are basically hourly employees and only get paid by the billable hour. But now they are allegedly getting docked pay for any time that isn't paid for by the client. Most of the insurance carriers I've dealt with have a policy of docking 20% of the billable hours submitted no matter what, which would have a horrible effect on an ATMS attorney's paycheck...
- And finally, we received this funny-if-true tidbit from a tipster:
Remember when the RJC was on lockdown last week? Well, word on the street has it that the entire thing was started by a "ticket busting" firm's failed attempt at advertising. Apparently, the firm hooked up a car battery to an alarm/speaker and left it across the street from the north entrance to the RJC. The plan was to have the speaker blast the firm's advertisement to the public waiting outside.All didn't go as planned, because when the morons left, the "device" was noticed by someone and reported as suspicious. The "threat" became "credible" when police ran the plates of cars parked outside the RJC and noticed that two of them did not match the cars they were attached to.
That last one made us chuckle ... can anybody confirm?
(Thanks, Tipsters!)
Anyone left at ATMS should go work for Starbucks at this rate. I guess Bruce is unwilling to dip into his Scotch budget to fairly pay the associates! And what about Taylor? Is there something in the Mormon doctrine that encourages them to screw the people who work for them?
ReplyDeleteThe ticket firm should have just used Lite Brite toys with their name and price on it, much less suspicious.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting these rumors. Definitely interesting information that inquiring minds want to know.
ReplyDeleteI heard it was a battery hooked to a Bluetooth device that would have broadcast to anyone w/ Bluetooth within a certain radius
ReplyDeleteI heard from credible sources that Bruce Alverson over at ATMS has been hooking up with Leann Sanders. Numerous ATMS employees have purportedly seen them messing around. I think Bruce is gonna be on his 5th wife soon.
ReplyDeleteWhat a couple of sweatshops. ATMS has had that reputation for years. Half the attorneys in town used to work there.
ReplyDeleteNew topic... I am curious if the traditional roles within a firm i.e., minder, grinder, finder have changed or evolved with new technology and the younger generation? Are there fixers, marketers, researchers, writers, litigators, babysitters? Or is every attorney expected to a little of each in your firm?
ReplyDeleteSeems that with technology and the almighty billable hour with have gotten further from embracing our attorneys' true talents and expect them to just do one thing....bill.
has the practice of law become nothing more than a mechanized assembly line where counsel do the same things in every case simply because the hours can be submitted to the client? but no one is really surprised that we end up with the same crappy product?
Is the legal industry just like the Detroit auto industry, archaic, bloated, stubborn, and top heavy?
LBBS is just falling apart. People are leaving left and right. Wonder if it has to do with the L.A. office's mentality.
ReplyDeleteATMS is known as a mill...churn the attorneys in and out. It's probably the one of the few places where newbies can get hired.
I'm just surprised some of the other mill firms out there in the CD land that can't retain attorneys for very long aren't talked about here.
Does ATMS offer benefits or have they stripped those too...what about other firms? What are the Benies like? Is Health coverage even functional at firms these days?
ReplyDeleteI heard talk from some of the marshals that the device was actually a recording device. But a speaker broadcast sounds more likely...
ReplyDeleteNew firm. Art Ham and Bob Eglet. Ham & Eglet.
ReplyDeleteBruce Alverson and LeAnn Sanders = OLD news. Get with it people.
ReplyDeleteThere has been no change in the compensation structure at ATMS. Check your facts.
ReplyDeleteHeard the same about it being a blue tooth device. One of those annoying ones you experience in tourist traps that sends texts to all the unsecured phones in range. Also, I heard it was supposed to go to someone in the Phoenix building, but they weren't there so it was left outside. Probably some truth to it being some kind of annoying advertising device. Love that our profession is operating at the same level as the smut peddlers on the strip.
ReplyDelete@10:30,
ReplyDeleteSo does that mean that they have always docked for collectibles, or that they have never docked?
Paid on the BILLABLE hour. Collections have never been a part of it.
ReplyDeleteBruce and LeAnn is about as big a secret as Clay Aiken's sexual orientation.
ReplyDeleteCompetent lawyers's bills are not cut 20% by auditors. Mine are cut less than 1%.
ReplyDeleteMy bills get cut all of the time, based upon what the client thinks they can pay for the month....but I still love being a solo.
ReplyDeleteAs for LeAnn, had the hots for her over ten years ago, wonder what she looks like now.
Cannon Gormley has always based bonus on collections, thus no ro little chance for bonusville!
ReplyDelete@ 12:05 p.m. = Nathan Reinmiller or Eric Taylor
ReplyDeleteCompetence has nothing to do with it. They cut bills because these companies all have BS cost-cutting "goals" to meet, the well-being of their insureds be damned. 20% is higher than I remember, but when I was doing insurance defense 5-10% was normal. The solution: read and dictate V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y, :) The defense attorneys here could start a new thread on "most ridiculous cost-cutting measure ever employed by an insurance company," and the rest of you would be appalled.
ReplyDeleteLeAnn stills looks great. Bruce
ReplyDeleteI'd have tapped Diane Carr Roth when she was at ATMS before LS
ReplyDeletePoor Leann. Personally, I hope to have a nice piece of side-tail when I am an old partner with a bitter wife who won't fuck me anymore.
ReplyDeleteWinners know you can't win the law game unless you either have the perfect spouse possessed of infinite patience (yeah, good luck buddy) or three or four divorces. Period. A decent compromise is to avoid the spouse and bang the help.
http://m.8newsnow.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=15&nid=18396103&cid=5&scid=-1&ith=0&title=News
ReplyDeleteSo, what ticket busting firm was it? And why didn't they just find a meter and park somewhere leaving the thing in their car?
May be an empty desk soon at Van Shumway. Attorney who wore out his welcome in at least 3 prior firms, had a federal judge rule that he & former partner had so mishandled a case they would get $0.00 fees, has former clients suing him for malpractice & filing bar complaints, & is now filing BK. Hope he gets that job out of state. That's the kind of attorney the rest of us don't need here.
ReplyDelete@ 11:22 Know that guy. Hope he & other others like him do leave the state. Tired of battling the bad rep & cleaning up messes losers like that leave wherever they go.
ReplyDeleteSeems like there are a few flakey attorneys at VS.
ReplyDeleteMan oh man. Saw one of the NAMED in court once. He was being asked to be removed from a case for not telling his client about something pretty huge. Also sounded like he had some culpability of his own. Maggots.
ReplyDelete12:05 here - not Taylor or Reinmuller. I'm a competitor and I charge rates that are significantly higher than ATMS rates (a three digit difference). Clients will pay for quality in non-commodity cases. Hacks like ATMS will get cut.
ReplyDeleteWhat are your 3 digit rates?
ReplyDeleteDivorces for $10,000,000!
ReplyDeleteTraffic Tickets for $30,000
ReplyDelete@1122 and 1130
ReplyDeleteDont be pussies.
You are talking about Will Bryson. His EX-partner is still cleaning up those messes, or so I hear.
Aldrich, what the hell were you thinking goin in partners with that guy.
Z@ 2:29. 75 hours billed for one opposition. Over $3,000 charged for copies in a case where things were filed & served online, plaintiff paid costs directly to doctors & up front for medical records & then those records were put on disk. A client abandoned as the 30 day deadline for a joint pre-trial memo was running. That Judge also told Aldrich he didn't deserve any fees.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's the kind of firm that will hire people like Bryson after knowing what he did. Same kind of firm that pretends they have a "DC office."
@2:29. Calling other posters pussies for not naming names while you stay anonymous? Stay classy.
ReplyDeleteRumor about Rankin is false. He wasn't forced out.
ReplyDelete10:53 doesn't deny Rankin's gone. Still suspicious if there is a big trial on the horizon.
ReplyDelete