Miles B. Cooper

Pixar’s filmmaking discipline as analog to successful contingency work The lawyer stood watching the drone show overhead. What had appeared to be a July 4th celebration over the water resolved into something else entirely. Hundreds of coordinated drones formed shapes against the night sky. A spaceman. A cowboy. “Is that Woodie?” the lawyer heard someone say. It was indeed. The...

The lawyer received an email after the video session containing a transcript, meeting summary, and notes from the session. A useful tool to understand what was discussed, and increasingly common today. The lawyer recognized that folks should always check to see whether a meeting is being recorded, transcribed, or summarized, with the presumption that anything said may show up later....

The lawyer stared at the screen. The responses to document demands had come in, and the production was thin. Suspiciously thin. As in a couple pages. The lawyer had seen this before. But what used to be more isolated was becoming more and more common. Non-answer answers to discovery. Non-production production. Persons least knowledgeable. These seemed to be used increasingly...

Surrendering the illusion of control when faced with tremendous uncertainty Before I was a lawyer, there were the early years as a law firm gofer. In that law firm there was an older attorney who rented an office. That older attorney had been a trial lion, a medical malpractice hitter. Then came the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975,...

Fighting lien overreach and the hidden tax on client recoveries The lawyer sat down with the firm’s Pre-Litigation Manager, one of those types who always read the instructions for the board game in full before playing. “Rawlings is trying to get a piece of an uninsured motorist policy, but I don’t think they can,” said the Pre-Litigation Manager. The lawyer’s...

Cash flow strategies for the contingent fee firm The lawyer looked at the case projections. If everything came together the next 18 months would be the best yet for the firm. That was the upside. The downside? A couple of those cases were super expert intensive, increasing the firm’s burn rate. It looked like everything would come together without a...

Responding to a catastrophic event within one’s professional community The lawyer, usually never at a loss for words, sat speechless. The lawyer’s heartbeat thumped, interrupting the silence as the brain attempted to process the information that had just come through the phone. Death and injury weren’t foreign. Helping clients through catastrophic loss came with the territory. A close loss though...

Telling clients what to expect helps with their confidence in the process The lawyer was finishing the client meeting. “We’re really pleased to be helping you with this, and I’m glad we all had the chance to meet you. Going forward your primary contact with the firm will be with _____, who will be taking lead. But rest assured that...

Avoiding, overcoming, and proactively pursuing attacks on the pleadings The lawyer reviewed the communication from opposing counsel. It was a meet and confer about the pleadings’ sufficiency, a necessary step before a demurrer or motion to strike was brought. Was it a delaying technique or did the opposing counsel’s argument have any merit? The lawyer pulled up the complaint to...

Wisdom gathered over the last few decades’ practice (and with a few to go) “Okay, Boomer,” said the lawyer’s 11-year-old daughter with a twinkle in her eye. The lawyer frowned. While the lawyer could be, and sometimes was, mistaken for a Boomer, that was the mileage and not the age. Apparently, the finer parenting points the lawyer was attempting to...