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We had a partner leave to do plaintiff’s work and 6 months later he came back and said it was a mistake. I said, “I told you so.” I think you need to really think about why you want to do plaintiff’s work and give it some hard honest thought. If it’s for financial reasons, I can tell you from doing plaintiff’s work for almost a decade before going to defense myself that, at least in my market, you’ll be making about the same or maybe a little less unless you get in with a boutique firm that mainly does catastrophic cases. If you want to do plaintiff’s work well, you also won’t be working fewer hours - you just won’t have to keep track of them. Plaintiff’s work is also a lot more stressful in my experience, less steady (some months your fee receipts may be $0.00), and has a lot more difficult clients you have to contend with (a councilor for our State Bar once told me statistically plaintiff’s attorneys are the second highest rate of grievances lodged behind criminal defense lawyers because you’re dealing with people who don’t understand how the system works and when things go wrong they’re going to blame you).
Interested to know what part of the country these scenarios are taking place in. So many people tell me my personality is more suited for the plaintiff side and that I should stop wasting my time grinding on defense and flip, but I can’t pull the trigger.
If you don’t feel satisfied now on the defense side, make the switch. You’ll work harder as plaintiff attorney but you’ll love every minute. Job satisfaction should increase significantly. Your work will be actual work to move the file instead of working to “collect” hours. You can also help people who are being taken advantage by the “big guys” (ins co). In my 5 ish years on defense side, I got maybe 2 thank yous from clients. I now get them weekly.
Thanks for the insight! I’m leaning towards making the switch. I’m thinking I can always return to the defense side if it doesn’t work out for some reason.
I do PI work. My firm handles around 100 active wrongful death / TBI cases. I did some defense work for a year or so, and I’ve quickly realized that people suck on both sides of the V. At least on this side, I don’t have to keep track of my hours and I’m focused on an end goal as opposed to daily billing.
The major difference, which is often overlooked, is that the quality of your work is if primary importance. You can spend as long as you need to on tasks without having to worry about whether it’s billable or whether the client will pay, or how you have to bill it. There’s simply not the same kind of pressure to rush through tasks, and you can be far more thorough. Obviously this doesn’t apply in every scenario, but it’s a big difference when it does.
I can’t imagine what that would be like. The clock is always ticking in the back of my mind and it never goes away no matter how many years go by
Anyone ever leave a firm soon after making partner (non equity)?
Why are you considering the change?