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Rising Star
So many more practical experience opportunities in defense.
Rising Star
My comment related to my experience in mid size insurance defense.
Chief
The billing gets easier. There’s an Art to it and it’s very tedious and nobody is really teaching young associates how to do it. Ask a more experienced lawyer, preferably a senior or a partner who does the prebill or deals with non paying clients to look at your time sheets and I guarantee they will give you some helpful suggestions and ways to save time. I’m still fine tuning how I bill after many years.
I’ve worked for three medium to large defense firms and had my own plaintiffs practice for five years. I prefer defense because of the opportunity for variety and the seemingly unlimited resources to litigate. I recommend giving defense some more time. In addition to the above, I would suggest asking your billing clerk (or related position) for a few approved/submitted bills of attorneys that bill well and require few corrections. In addition to learning some general tricks of the trade, your firm may have a certain preferable style and most clients differ in preference as well.
I’m also 2 years in. I switched VERY quickly and I am never, ever going back. Positives include: NO BILLING. Negatives: I’ll let you know when I find any.
And my experience probably has more to do with the partners than the sides. Definite difference in mentorship and sense of community.
Plaintiff’s side has better pay, more grateful clients, less hours, and no billing. Cons? You don’t get to be a cog in a machine for a multi billion dollar insurance company, if that’s your thing.
I work well with members of the local insurance defense bar, some are treated like professionals by their clients, some are treated, unjustly, like idiots by some adjuster out of state. In my opinion, it’s much easier to get behind changing someone’s life with a great result than by zeroing them out for the insurance industry.
Chief
You also should be careful of which plaintiff firm you choose if you definitely want to switch. I am not saying all big defense firms are the greatest things out there. And I’m not saying the big corporations they rep are without sin (some of them are indeed awful). Plenty of issues there, and the worst boss I ever had was a defense attorney...but based on real world experience, I can tell you some (not all, but some) of the really successful plaintiffs lawyers are ruthless, egomaniacal sociopaths who are not bound by facts or any actual ethical or moral code. And they have chewed up and spit out dozen of associates throughout there careers and screwed countless associates and referral lawyers out of money. There’s a reason why some of these folks have completely absurd and stupid amounts of money. Most of them (but not all) did not get there by being nice, mentoring, sharing, telling the truth, or playing by the rules. They are as cunning and deceitful as the worst in humanity. Don’t worry about trying to find the biggest sharks in the ocean to work with and the highest salary. Try to just find a good plaintiff firm where you mesh well. A place where they will actually teach you things and help you develop business and sign up some cases on your own, and give you a nice little taste of the cases you work up on your own, and not expect you to work up only their cases like a possessed lunatic 7 days per week, 15 hours per day.
And be very wary of the “no billables and less work” talk. If you think defense lawyers work hard, wait till you see how intense some plaintiffs firms are.
My problem isn’t so much the actual act of billing. You’re effectively tied to the billable hour. Slow Friday and you decide to check out early? What happens to those 4 hours? Decide to go on a vacation? Great - how are you going to make up those 2 weeks? That’s what I hate about billing.
Actual dealing with my time isn’t so bad. I dictate it into my phone and send it to my admin and she does it and then I edit by hand. It’s not that bad.
I work insurance defense and in the last two plus years I’ve sat first chair on 4 trials, 2 arbitrations, taken and defended countless party depos and have been lead on private mediations and MSCs.
I work directly with claims reps and clients. I have my own caseload and I also support my boss.
I may be a unicorn but I’m not alone here in SoCal.
Billing is 2100 per year and I make great bonuses and salary. Class of 2015
Auto, premises liability and wrongful death.
The billing gets easier but it does NOT get LESS TEDIOUS. That is the point. In fact the tedium gets worse once you have to review others' billing.
But that is not a reason to switch sides. If you switch sides for that reason alone you will fail.
You love defense, so stick to it and find ways to overcome the tedium.
I started my career doing defense work. I honestly liked how flexible most defense firms were because you could just leave anytime and do work anywhere, so long as you kept up with your billing/work. But I got bored of just doing doc review just to do doc review or relying on the partners to give work. I am doing Plaintiff work now which I like because I’m helping people/practice area. I do make more as a Plaintiff because I get a base plus bonuses. Defense firms are generally capped unless you’re equity. Defense makes it up in other ways like health insurance and 401K. Plaintiff you generally are in your own minus some basic health insurance).
Plaintiff side and billing
I still bill because the type of cases I handle are subject to attorney’s fees.
Effort
I found that plaintiff work is much much much more difficult than defense work and requires a lot more work. The Plaintiff bears the burden of proof. Accordingly, you must be well versed in the law - substantive and procedurally. You must know the facts of your case: good, bad, ugly and of course consider how the other side will destroy your case.
I would agree that some plaintiff’s firms are more vicious than others especially the smaller ones. Don’t work out at a firm where the partners leave too early or expect you to handle everything without help because they’re too fucked up in their own personal lives, that’s not how it works.  Those firms, will throw you under the bus at their earliest opportunity especially if they improperly value a case. Find a good one with a mentor/partner that will help you.
Join us.
We are a plaintiff firm and I pay for all my employees health insurance and 401k. I wonder if I am doing this wrong.
4th year here following 👀
I started plaintiff side:
No billing is a definite plus (my SO is biglaw so I'm using her experience as a comparison point.)
I am going to push back on the experience point slightly. General biglaw litigation definitely provides a better breadth of experience but I think depth of experience has been much higher plaintiff side (substantive drafting experience, second chairing depos, running meet and confers, just generally being looped in more to the litigation process as a junior) and it continues at that pace (most midlevels will first chair a depo and fully own smaller substantive filings with minimal partner oversight if you show you can handle it)
I think this is partially a result of size, but also if you're not billing there is no benefit to having juniors do any work that can be handled by support staff or producing work product that won't be immediately helpful.
Cons: lower pay (for the most part); lack of name brand recognition compared to big law shops, and you might end up pigeon holed. If I want to move on in a few years I really don't know what my options would be.
Billing is kind of a motivator to me. Maybe try to look at it that way? Of course, now I'm an independent contractor, so billing is VERY motivating...my paycheck depends on it. 😊
Go for it! But every defense attorney hates billing. Have you done appeals for deductions? Awful. But be wary of the disqualification factor when deciding which plaintiff firm to submit a resume.
Do plaintiffs law firms really not bill? When I clerked, we saw tons of plaintiff’s motions for attorneys fees where I saw time sheets. Are those BS?
Depends a lot on the area of law and the claims. Employment, consumer and some others routinely include recovery of attorney fees but if you end up doing car wreck work most claims will not include fees. I've only worked plaintiff-side and still track hours into the file for those times we can pursue fees or need to document work to substantiate fees like in probate proceedings for minors.
That is entirely different from working on a billable hour because nobody is tracking time outside of individual files or setting hour reqs. On the other hand I am judged by how many cases I settle, how many go into lit and how much I generate in contingency fees which comes with its own frustrations.
Chief
What practice area? What firm size? Location?
Chief
My PI plaintiffs’ colleagues say that they get a lot of phone calls. The firm works on contingency so he bonus structure, increases, benefits, depending on the firm, may vary. Will come back if I can think of anything else.