Mamas, don't let yore babies . . .

[wundergore]

When CEO's of big companies get bonuses, it is often the stockholders/directors rewarding them for being able to squeeze more blood out of a rock.  Your partners are basically your stockholders and your board, and so have the 'stockholder' view of money outlay against produce, in your instance successful cases, sold on the market.  Fewer successful cases means less repeat future business.

It's sems to me a simple calculus. 

True and not true. In the type of firm that I work in (and the type I suspect Goldfish works in), both paralegal and attorney ("timekeepers") are expected to generate more revenue than what is expended in their salaries. In the last firm I worked at, the attorneys were expected to generate 3x their salaries in billable time (I think). That's a pretty big number when you may have a six or seven figure salary. I figure that I was generating about $15K/month for that firm in billable hours. Imagine what the attorneys were billing. Kinda scary that much cash being passed around.

Within the firm it's not neccessarily how good a lawyer you are, but how many hours you can bill. I knew some piss poor attorneys that didn't know jack (all they did was go to depositions and do nothing) and were still very well paid; all becuase they were able to bill a staggeging amount of hours. Now with the clients, the win/loss record does have an impact. But even then, it's not all cut and dried. How do you justify keeping a firm on retainer that cost you a hundred million dollars in a judgement? You pray they do better on the appeal or they are doing much better work on other cases.

Ah, the joys of mass tort. I kinda miss it. :lol:

And I didn't mean to imply any ineffceincy on the part of Goldfish's firm. Some places don't utilize paralegals as much as other firms (also it can depend on the client how much involvement paralegals have; some like the attorney to handle every little detail).

W>