I work for a sole practitioner on a contract (hourly) basis. He is filing a lawsuit to recoup unpaid legal fees from prior clients; which includes fees he paid me for my work but the client failed to pay him. We have a few other cases, but things are pretty slow at the moment. He has been asking me to do a lot of work for free to help him with the litigation to recoup legal fees. I feel as though my time is much more valuable and I should not be spending all this time doing free work. Advice?

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Posting as :
works at
You are currently posting as works at

Graduated and licensed in 2017.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts and advice here!

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I would run, not walk, away from a solo who was suing a prior client over unpaid fees, esp if you’re just paid as an hourly 1099 and he isn’t even paying you for your work. This isn’t even a close call

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Yes I have thought about this; however, he pays me the equivalent of a second year big law attorney and I work part time. Tough situation to walk away from.

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Hey op. When did you graduate from law school?

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Good luck to you.

likeuplifting

Why hasnt he hired you as an employee of his firm? Has he ever mentioned bringing you into the firm or you succeeding him one day?

How much free work are we talking about? Like 10% of your time of 50%

Can you get blood from a stone? Maybe these clients have no assets to pay anyway. Thoughts?

He owes you the wages either way....

What are your alternatives in your geo to be paid similarly/do similar work?

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Honestly, because he is likely trying to avoid paying CA taxes. I’m in CA; he’s in D.C. And yes he has brought up the idea of me taking over the firm. He constantly refers to the firm as “ours,” and even gets upset when I refer to it as his firm lol.

The free work is taking about 50% of my time right now. Work with him is slow at the moment, which is why he is working on filing the lawsuits against the previous clients. I, however, do business transactional work on the side, but the free work for him is not eating into time for my transactional work.

I’m going to finalize the complaint and file tomorrow for free and see where it goes from there. He has mentioned the “possibility” of increasing my bonus at the end of the year for the free work that I have done thus far. Likely depending on him winning the case of course.

Ask for half time pay on the collections stuff?

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