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Better Call Saul


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14 hours ago, Lawful Metal said:

It's going to be a really long answer, but I'll start with the old Racehorse Haynes quote: "If you want to be a millionaire as a criminal defense lawyer, start with 2 million."

Nice.  That's up there with "if you want to lose money on an investment, open a restaurant."

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8 hours ago, A Guy Named Tracy said:

BCS makes me dislike Walter White even more now that we are exposed to the lengths Mike has gone to support his granddaughter and daughter in law.  

Yeah, BCS is making me have similar feelings. Jimmy was clearly into some shady shit before meeting Walt, but nowhere near the level of shadiness that Walt would introduce him too. Jimmy foolishly crossed that line though, and took a gigantic risk doing so. If he never meets Walt, I doubt Jimmy ever winds up having to disappear. At worst, maybe he gets disbarred.

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12 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Nice.  That's up there with "if you want to lose money on an investment, open a restaurant."

Ok. 

Generally speaking, if you want to do a good job on a case, you're going to spend 6 months to a year on a criminal defense case. Regardless of how many hours or how few, it's going to last that long just by how slow court operates and how slow the state operates in getting your discovery (including your videos, witness statements 911 calls etc.). You're also obligated to do your own investigation. If you and the state can't come to an agreement on punishment, then you're getting another delay when you get set for trial. And, because the court can only go to trial on one case at a time (and there can be up to 100 on the trial docket), you're looking at more delays until it's your turn.

Public Defenders are part of a government office and are on salary regardless of how many or how few cases they have.

Appointed counsel (like me and our hero) are private attorneys who get appointed on indigent clients. We get appointed, work a case until it's finished, then get paid an (allegedly) hourly rate. Somehow it's always a nice round number significantly lower than you'd think. And you only get paid at the end of a case. 

And because it's the government paying you, expect a payment 3-6 months after you submit the voucher.

So, in short, it doesn't matter how many cases you get appointed to. You still have to finish them (plead guilty or go to trial) before you get paid (underpaid 3-6 months later).

I primarily use appointed cases as free advertising to get retained work. Any money I make from appointed work is treated as bonus money because it comes so infrequently. If I solely depended on appointed cases I would not be able to support my family.

Fortunately, word of mouth is great on appointed cases because expectations are super low. You do a decent job for an appointed case, they love you for life and will send all their friends and family to you. Whether they can pay is another question.

That said, the scene in the first episode where he got $700 for a full jury trial is only unrealistic in that he got paid that quickly.

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10 hours ago, Craig H said:

Damn. That's a depressing read.

It gets worse. There are lawyers who get 4-5 appointments a day and plead them all out the same day and sending the clients to prison without getting discovery, without investigating. Judges and prosecutors love it because it doesn't clog up the docket and their gave to do less work. There was a study in my home county and there were appointed attorneys that made half a million pleading 4-5 cases everyday. They did the math and these lawyers spent on average 6 minutes per case. 

I don't know about y'all, but if I'm potentially going to prison, I'd want my lawyer to spend more than 6 minutes on my case.

Fortunately, I have a good reputation and I make their indigent counsel plan look good by winning trials and getting good results for my appointed cases (my trial win last week was an appointed case). Other lawyers who try cases or take too long to plead their clients out are liable to be dropped from the appointed list if they don't plead them out quick enough.

Honestly, I feel better about representing my indigent clients than I do about my retained clients, even though the retained clients are the only way I pay my bills. Just feels like a better fuck you to the system.

TLDR - criminal justice system sucks and doesn't pay well unless you're a patsy who pleads everyone out without doing your job.

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So I suppose a couple of my friends who went to law school at Notre Dame might not be making as much money as I figured they were. I honestly wouldn't have a clue since one moved to New Jersey and the other to southern California and I don't talk to them that much these days.

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2 hours ago, Craig H said:

So I suppose a couple of my friends who went to law school at Notre Dame might not be making as much money as I figured they were. I honestly wouldn't have a clue since one moved to New Jersey and the other to southern California and I don't talk to them that much these days.

Median income for all lawyers in Texas is $60k. Criminal brings down the average. Civil pays more, but it's all paperwork and no court action. You get one big settlement it makes your year.

You make the really big bucks if you work for the big firms. There's not a lot of those jobs though, so you have to graduate at the top of your class at a good law school. 

But nothing feels better than a not guilty verdict.

 

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On 5/27/2017 at 10:41 AM, Lawful Metal said:

It gets worse. There are lawyers who get 4-5 appointments a day and plead them all out the same day and sending the clients to prison without getting discovery, without investigating. Judges and prosecutors love it because it doesn't clog up the docket and their gave to do less work. There was a study in my home county and there were appointed attorneys that made half a million pleading 4-5 cases everyday. They did the math and these lawyers spent on average 6 minutes per case. 

Holy crap that's depressing.  Stay on the right side of the law, kids.

On 5/27/2017 at 1:13 PM, Lawful Metal said:

Median income for all lawyers in Texas is $60k. Criminal brings down the average. Civil pays more, but it's all paperwork and no court action. You get one big settlement it makes your year.

You make the really big bucks if you work for the big firms. There's not a lot of those jobs though, so you have to graduate at the top of your class at a good law school. 

 

My first IT job was at one of the big three firms in my city.  Most of the attorneys seemed miserable and stressed over meeting the billable hours quota.

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Never have I seen such a historic handshake since the meeting of the Madness and Mania on SNME. Also, Slipping Jimmy was in all his glory...great stuff. I also loved the little touch of showing us the viewers Nacho's painstaking homework to nail the pill bottle toss in one try. 

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1 hour ago, CreativeControl said:

Is that where his haul of floorboard money came from? 

Yeah

Here's the Mike recap I read.  He got 30K from Nacho for splitting the Hummer with him, 50K from Hector to testify that the gun wasn't Tuco's, then, the big score, 250K from Hector's ice cream truck.

He is paying for his daughter-in-law's house, though, so he has less than 330K (he said "I have 200,000 I can't spend" to Gus).

The initial beef was that he didn't want to testify for Tuco so Hector and the twins threatened his family.   It was made worse when they killed the "good Samaritan" who stumbled across the Slaamanca truck Mike had knocked off.

 

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Based on ways I've seen that play in other shows/movies, I expected her to get t-boned but couldn't figure out why they would bother within the context of this show at that particular moment. Maybe we've all just seen too much, but there was definitely a sense of impending doom there. 

And then that happened and I was kicking myself for not seeing the exact circumstances coming a mile away. Brilliant stuff. So well done. 

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Yeah, from  "just think of everything you want to tell me and then tell me when I get back" (a bigger kiss of death than the cop who's one day away from retirement) to the way the driving scene was framed, I figured she was going to get t-boned and die.  The jump cut to the crash was amazing stuff, as was the framing of the shot with Kim staggering from the car with the Gatwood Oil papers blowing all over the road.

They really set the whole thing up much earlier, as Kim's conversation with the Gatwood was really erratic and they made sure to show she had a bottle of No-Doz in the car.

Other fun stuff: Chuck proves there's a little Slipping Jimmy in all of us by conning Howard with an immersion blender.  Mike's entire conversation with Lydia.  Nacho's heartbreaking meeting with his father.  ZafiroTequila makes another appearance.  

I'm still torn on Jimmy working the old ladies.

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