On Jul 21, 8:14*am, wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:51:23 -0700 (PDT), keith
wrote:



On Jul 20, 4:03*pm, RickH wrote:
On Jul 20, 3:26*pm, Evan wrote:

On Jul 20, 2:00*pm, keith wrote:

.

While your statement might be 100% correct, it's irrelevant. *The
*fact* is that employees aren't free, just as attorneys hired on
retainer are not free. *Litigation costs money no matter which sort of
lawyers are used.

Absolutely not... *The only costs involved are the filing fees and the
costs of any presentation materials and expert witnesses...

When in-house legal staff are busy with one case that means that
any other cases would just take the remaining staffers longer to
deal with until the "case of utmost importance" is resolved and
those tasked with taking it on are free to deal with other matters....

What litigation would cost excessively more money, one in which
your in-house counsel staff is inadequate to deal with either because
of the legal area in dispute OR the amount of time it would take away
from other legal matters and therefore hiring on outside attorneys
at a great cost is required which costs money upfront which can be
recouped in the damages awarded if you successfully prosecute
your case and win...

~~ Evan

And if you consider benefits, and inability to layoff easily if you
over-hired, it might be cheaper to augment the staff with contracted
attorneys. *In any case the legal work is a planned, budgeted, known
expense for a company like wal-mart. *But having to pay suits is not..

Finally, someone else in this group with a brain.

It doesn't matter if they're hired guns or in-house staff, the
decision to litigate has its cost/benefit tradeoff. *Which to use is
purely a long-term economic issue. *WalMart didn't make the decision
to litigate because they have free labor.

In house legal staff dramaticaly lowers the costs of this sort of
thing. A non-lawyer paralegal secretary does 99% of the work. Things
like slip& fall cases are so routine, the paperwork and filings are
mostly boilerplate. The paralegal asks the supervisor, "should we use
defense #a3c on this, or #ac7?

Ah, I see. Out-house legal staffs aren't allowed to use paralegals.

Meanwhile the plaintiff, who is of MUCH more limited means must hire a
lawyer at retail.

You mean, like the US government? ...which BTW, is the subject here.

The corporation lawyers often use that as the only leverage needed to
make a case go away. They simply keep delaying progress in the case by
filing extensions, which cost them relatively nothing, while it makes
the plaintiff run out of money to pay THEIR lawyer. A case can be
strung along for YEARS this way.

Another one who thinks employees are free.