Lawyer Fees Research Articles

Lawyer Recommendation System Based On User Profiles And Collaborative Filtering

This study discusses the difficulties that ordinary citizens face when dealing with legal problems in the process of China's rule of law, including high lawyer fees, lengthy litigation processes, the shortcomings of existing lawyer recommendation methods, and the lack of channels for efficient matching between user needs and lawyers. Currently, when seeking legal rights protection, citizens usually rely on referrals from acquaintances or search engines to find lawyers, but these methods have some issues. Lawyer recommendation platforms are still in the early stages of development in China, with problems such as data gaps, opaque information sources, and quality issues. To address these problems, this study proposes a user profile-based lawyer recommendation system, aiming to provide citizens with more accurate and centralized legal aid services, as well as establish an efficient user-lawyer matching channel.

Opinion: Do universities help or hurt innovation?

Opinion: Do universities help or hurt innovation? Do Universities help or hurt innovation? Find out in this 25-year academic entrepreneur’s anecdotal perspective of starting companies and developing implants. Thomas J. Webster shares his opinion here. Top research U.S. Universities and others worldwide, sometimes along with respective government funding agencies (like the NSF and the NIH in the U.S.), have spent billions of dollars trying to translate their faculty’s research to industry to develop real commercial products. Whether establishing University technology transfer offices (whose objective is to foster faculty research translation), paying IP lawyer fees for patents, establishing incubator spaces for University faculty spin-out companies, or issuing grants aimed at research primed for industry adoption, it is clear that U.S. Universities are in the high stakes and high funding game of entrepreneurship, and have been so for the last several decades.

The income bond puzzle

The income bond puzzle

Stepan Borysenok: to the Portrait of the Scientist

The history of the law in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has always attracted the attention of researchers. The productive period in its study was the activity of the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law of All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (hereafter AUAS). The theoretical achievements of the commission are significant. Nowadays some of its members’ works have been republished with modern commentaries, and separate studies have been devoted to them. But there are such members whose works do not have any historiographical researches despite their great scientific achievements. One of them is the historian Stefan (Stepan) Hnatovych Borysenok (May 17, 1891 – November 14, 1937). Borysenok was a talented and extraordinary researcher. This article presents his biographical data as well as the theoretical achievements of the scientist are analyzed. The scientific achievements of the researcher in the field of law history are not very large. They are about 10 works (thorough scientific articles) and several reviews. They were significant for that time. However a few decades later after writing of these articles modern researchers point to a significant number of inaccuracies and errors in his works. S. Borysenok’s works were highly appreciated by his contemporaries and scientific mentors M. Vasylenko and O. Malynovsky. First of all they were impressed by the fact that he always tried to turn to primary sources and was critical to the works of his predecessors. His works show an excellent knowledge of the historiography of a particular research problem. In addition S. Borysenok being a lawyer by education was able to analyze in more details the certain problems that were not always clear to historians. The issues related to the First Lithuanian Statute and the history of the Bar in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been researched by S. Borysenok since the middle of 1920s. In particular the main subject of his research in Moscow archives was "History of the Bar in Ukraine in the 16th–18th Centuries. The special articles of the researcher are interesting and original. Among them are such articles as "Formation of a Professional Bar in the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State", "Lawyer's Fee in the Lithuanian Principality in the 16th–17th Centuries" (The latter was published in the 7th issue of the "Proceedings of the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law". But that issue was destroyed). One of the greatest work by S. Borysenok concerns the history of the Bar formation in the first half of the 16th century. Also in the late 1920's the researcher had been preparing for publication a thorough work with focus on the Lithuanian Statute (history of drafting the code, sources, lists). Correspondence with Lithuanian researcher A. Janulaitis (the ancestor of the Lithuanian Statutes historiography) indicates that the manuscript of this work (or a significant part of it) probably existed. At the same time the facts of cooperation with Lithuanian historians are recorded and they give us the opportunity to hope that the lost achievements of the researcher can still be found and introduced into scientific circulation. And we are convinced that they will be the impetus for the new scientific research and will cause a significant number of scientific discussions. In the early 1930's S. Borysenok was an employee at the library. He actively worked at the acquisition of the library fund with foreign professional publications. He tried to establish and systematize international exchange. On September 23, 1937 S. Borysenok was arrested on trumped up charges of alleged involvement in an "anti-Soviet nationalist organization". On October 25 of the same year he was sentenced to death via shooting (executed on November, 14).

Court Case Management Software

Law and Order acts as an important part of a country's peace and security. Laws are the rules of conduct established and enforced by superiors (authority, legislation or custom of a given community, state or group). When the people in a community abide by the laws made for them by their superiors, orderliness comes to that community. It acts as a guideline of what is accepted in a society or a country. Law and order also resolve disputes among the people and among the nations etc. As law and order is handled manually these days it takes lots of time and energy of the people. A person will be able to find a lawyer after visiting many lawyer's offices according to the case. In this process lots of energy and time is wasted by individuals, so to overcome this problem, we have decided to build an application which will help a person to find a lawyer suitable for their cases as well as it will help a person to keep track of each and every aspect of the case from start to end. This application includes activities such as a search for the best lawyer, uploading of case-related documents, payment of lawyer fees, hearing date alert, etc. It will also fasten the work of both users as well as lawyers. This application will be secured and the details of the case will only be known to the respective person and respective lawyer. This application is also eco-friendly as it reduces the lots of paperwork and the whole process will be digital.

«SUCCESS FEE» AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF ENSURING THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF A PERSON TO PROFESSIONAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE

The purpose of this article is to study the legal essence of such a method of calculating the lawyer's fee as «success fee», disclosing its positive and negative features, as well as the experience of the European Court of Human Rights and the experience of foreign countries in its application.
 In the context of disclosing the subject of research, both to achieve the goal of scientific work and to ensure the completeness, objectivity, reliability and persuasiveness of the results, the author used a set of general and special methods that are characteristic of legal science. In particular, the origin and long historical path of development of this legal institution were studied with the help of the historical method. The system-structural method made it possible to formulate the general structure of the study, and the dialectical one – to analyze first of all legislative provisions and jurisprudence on the possibility of using the «success fee» as a way to calculate the lawyer's fee. Using a comparative legal method, the legislation of foreign countries was analyzed, which provided an opportunity to use their positive experience in terms of calculating the amount of attorney's fees.
 This article discloses the scientific approaches of researchers to determine the nature of the expenses on legal assistance primarily concerning the nature of the «success fee», its positive and negative features, as well as analyzes the provisions of domestic and foreign legislators on the possibility of consolidating in the contract for legal assistance a condition that indicates such a way of calculating the amount of wages of a lawyer as a «fee for success». Significant part of the work is devoted to the analysis of the law enforcement practice of Ukrainian courts and the European Court of Human Rights, both in general as to the possibility and expediency of the existence of certain criteria for limiting its size.
 It is noted that a significant number of foreign countries do not prohibit the possibility of using the «success fee», taking into account the existence of certain restrictions concerning the categories of cases, or the perception of it as an additional reward.
 This article discloses the scientific approaches of researchers to determine the nature of the expenses on legal assistance primarily concerning the nature of the «success fee», its positive and negative features, as well as analyzes the provisions of domestic and foreign legislators on the possibility of consolidating in the contract for legal assistance a condition that indicates such a way of calculating the amount of wages of a lawyer as a «fee for success». Significant part of the work is devoted to the analysis of the law enforcement practice of Ukrainian courts and the European Court of Human Rights, both in general as to the possibility and expediency of the existence of certain criteria for limiting its size. It is noted that a significant number of foreign countries do not prohibit the possibility of using the «success fee», taking into account the existence of certain restrictions concerning the categories of cases, or the perception of it as an additional reward.

Does legal representation increase investment? Evidence from a field experiment in Kenya

The legal system enforces contracts and secures property rights, thereby increasing the incentives to exert effort, invest, access credit, and grow. Yet, the high costs of access to the legal system may prevent these gains from taking place. This paper presents the results of a randomized intervention offering the services of a free lawyer for 2 years in a rural setting with prohibitive lawyer fees and numerous land disputes. Not all cases were fully resolved after 2 years, but legal representation increased the security of property rights, which translated into greater investment and access to credit.

The impact of lawyer fees on lawyer partisanship: the reciprocity norm may matter

ABSTRACT Do lawyer fees influence lawyer behavior? The impact of lawyer fees on lawyer behavior has been discussed theoretically and anecdotally, mostly from an aspect of economic incentives. Yet little research has empirically examined this issue. This article aims to add one empirical study. I conducted a vignette experiment with 206 Japanese divorce lawyers. Scenarios of divorce disputes involving certain ethical dilemmas were used to measure partisanship. The description of fee arrangement in the scenarios varied to compare three conditions: (a) no specific description of lawyer fee (the control condition), (b) JPY 300 thousand retainer with additional JPY 300 thousand contingency (a typical fee arrangement in Japan), and (c) JPY 450 thousand retainer with no contingency (a lump-sum prepaid arrangement). I found that partisanship of lawyers became higher in conditions with fee descriptions, when they were conscious of (the existence of) the fee. This phenomenon was observed in condition (c) of a lump-sum prepaid fee arrangement as well as in condition (b) of a typical fee arrangement combining a retainer and contingency. The findings indicate that the reciprocity norm, rather than economic incentives, may have a power on the relationship between lawyer fees and lawyer behavior.

The fight for “success fee” in Russian Jurisprudence

The article deals with the admissibility of success fees for lawyers in Russian law. The reason for the article are recent changes in the Russian federal law on lawyers, which make this form of fee now possible. The author describes the basic problems of lawyer’s remuneration. She explains the development of the legal institution of success fees in Russia. In doing so, she discusses the decision of the Constitutional Court of 2007 as well as the practical aspects of the institute, which is actually popular with lawyers. The law and the explanations provided by the Federal Bar Association raise further questions. The matter of success fees in Russia therefore remains an exciting one.

Merck to pay Gilead’s lawyer fees

A California federal judge has ordered Merck & Co. to pay Gilead Sciences $14 million in attorney fees in a case involving Gilead’s Sovaldi and Harvoni hepatitis C virus treatments. In June 2016, the judge overturned a $200 million jury award Merck had won in a patent infringement dispute involving sofosbuvir, an active ingredient in both drugs, after she determined Merck had lied. In December 2016, Merck won a $2.5 billion jury award from Gilead in a separate patent dispute involving the hepatitis C drugs.

Corporate Litigation in Specialized Business Courts

In US derivative cases, plaintiffs’ lawyer fees and monetary awards have a distorting effect on shareholder value. We evaluate the benefits of corporate litigation without these externalities using a dataset for the Netherlands between 2002 and 2013. We find significant abnormal returns within a short timespan surrounding the filing and resolution of M&A-related lawsuits. Over longer horizons, we document that resolutions have little impact on shareholder value. Moreover, our findings suggest that longer waiting times for court resolutions are costly. The evidence from the Netherlands supports the view that, in settings without strong distortions, derivative style litigation may enhance firm value.

Third-Party Financing of Litigation: Legal Approaches and a Formal Model

In the article, we discuss the phenomenon of third-party financing of lawsuits, which has been subject to intense debate from a legal as well as from an economic point of view. Drawing on the examples of Germany, Australia, and the United States, we show in Part I that different legal systems still take different approaches to third-party financing and its economic implications. In Part II, we introduce a stylized model that abstracts from the peculiarities of specific legal systems and in which we compare third-party financing of lawsuits with incentive fees for lawyers. We conclude that a combination of contingency fees and third-party financing may be the best way to overcome agency problems and financial constraints of would-be plaintiffs who would like to pursue meritorious claims. (JEL codes: K41)

Different Rules of Legal-Cost Allocation and Patent Hold-Up

We study how different rules for allocating litigation costs impact on royalty negotiation in an environment such as the information technology sector where patent hold-up is possible. We first consider the American system, where each party bears its own costs, and the British system, where the loser incurs all costs. We show that in the assumed context it is not possible to decide which of these two “normal” systems is preferable. In particular, under flat lawyer fees the British system proves to be more effective in counteracting hold-up if the patent at issue is relatively weak, while for relatively strong patent the opposite is true. Under contingency-fee arrangements, where lawyer fees are determined by the success of the claim, the American system is preferable whatever the patent strength. These conflicting results have lead us to consider a less usual system for allocating litigation costs, namely the system favoring the defendant, where the defendant pays its own costs if it loses and nothing otherwise. This system proves to be an interesting alternative whatever the patent strength and the lawyer-fee arrangement.

Road Dogsby Elmore Leonard; New York, HarperCollins, 2009, 288 pages, $26.99 hardcover, $13.99 softcover

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessRoad DogsWesley Sowers M.D.Wesley Sowers M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2010https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2010.61.12.1268AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The book Road Dogs is the most recent crime novel by Elmore Leonard. Mr. Leonard is a prolific writer in this genre and focuses on criminals as opposed to crime. This was my first experience with his work, and it was entertaining and engaging. Mr. Leonard draws us into a world that is governed by rules and values that are alien to most of our own. The story begins in a Florida prison, where the protagonist, Jack Foley, develops a relationship with the Cuban criminal Cundo, who arrived in the United States via the Mariel Boatlift and made and protected a small fortune through some criminal activities and vaguely legal investments. Here they became "road dogs," or inmates paired up to watch each other's backs. Cundo hooks Foley up to his lawyer, who manages to get his sentence for bank robbery reduced from 30 years to a little more than time served (about three years!). Cundo pays all the lawyer's fees, leaving Foley in his debt to the tune of $30,000, which he insists Foley does not need to repay because "We friends Jack, you the only one I can talk to." This sets the stage for a story about friendship, trust, ambiguity, and betrayal in the obscurely menacing world of criminal society in Los Angeles, where the two rendezvous after their proximate release from prison.Cundo's beguiling "wife," Dawn, leads a cast of characters focused on fulfilling their own needs and desires, with little concern for those they use or trample in the process. The relationships of power, risk, cunning, and treachery play out as various plans are hatched and alliances formed in attempts to relieve Cundo of his fortune.Jack Foley, who is charming, crafty, and agile, is a strange resident of this world, moving through it skillfully, outsmarting or outmaneuvering those who would make him a casualty of their plans. One wonders why such a likeable, bright, and ultimately ethical character has chosen a life of crime and what magic he possesses to allow him to survive and thrive in this criminal world. As unlikely as this seems, we find ourselves genuinely delighted by his progress toward triumph, which seems inevitable. Although this book adds little insight to our understanding of sociopathy, it allows us to observe this version of it without feeling unsettled.Dr. Sowers is director of the Center for Public Service Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 61Issue 12 December, 2010Pages 1268-1268PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2010 Volume 61 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2010 Published in print 1 December 2010

Road Dogs

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessRoad DogsWesley Sowers M.D.Wesley Sowers M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2010https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2010.61.12.1268AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The book Road Dogs is the most recent crime novel by Elmore Leonard. Mr. Leonard is a prolific writer in this genre and focuses on criminals as opposed to crime. This was my first experience with his work, and it was entertaining and engaging. Mr. Leonard draws us into a world that is governed by rules and values that are alien to most of our own. The story begins in a Florida prison, where the protagonist, Jack Foley, develops a relationship with the Cuban criminal Cundo, who arrived in the United States via the Mariel Boatlift and made and protected a small fortune through some criminal activities and vaguely legal investments. Here they became "road dogs," or inmates paired up to watch each other's backs. Cundo hooks Foley up to his lawyer, who manages to get his sentence for bank robbery reduced from 30 years to a little more than time served (about three years!). Cundo pays all the lawyer's fees, leaving Foley in his debt to the tune of $30,000, which he insists Foley does not need to repay because "We friends Jack, you the only one I can talk to." This sets the stage for a story about friendship, trust, ambiguity, and betrayal in the obscurely menacing world of criminal society in Los Angeles, where the two rendezvous after their proximate release from prison.Cundo's beguiling "wife," Dawn, leads a cast of characters focused on fulfilling their own needs and desires, with little concern for those they use or trample in the process. The relationships of power, risk, cunning, and treachery play out as various plans are hatched and alliances formed in attempts to relieve Cundo of his fortune.Jack Foley, who is charming, crafty, and agile, is a strange resident of this world, moving through it skillfully, outsmarting or outmaneuvering those who would make him a casualty of their plans. One wonders why such a likeable, bright, and ultimately ethical character has chosen a life of crime and what magic he possesses to allow him to survive and thrive in this criminal world. As unlikely as this seems, we find ourselves genuinely delighted by his progress toward triumph, which seems inevitable. Although this book adds little insight to our understanding of sociopathy, it allows us to observe this version of it without feeling unsettled.Dr. Sowers is director of the Center for Public Service Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 61Issue 12 December, 2010Pages 1268-1268PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2010 Volume 61 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2010 Published in print 1 December 2010

Incentives, criminal defence lawyers and plea bargaining

Plea bargaining has become a central feature of criminal procedure in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions. This paper explores an area seldom discussed in the economic literature on plea bargaining: the influence of the defence lawyer's fee contract on the terms of the bargain. In particular, it uses data from one jurisdiction of the impact on case trajectories of changes in publicly funded defence lawyers’ contracts to test the proposition that the nature of the lawyer's contract influences how cases are managed. An event study methodology on a pooled time-series cross-section data set of case trajectories before and after the change in the nature of the contract is used to examine whether the new payment regime significantly changed the trajectories of cases through the summary criminal justice system. Overall the results seem to suggest that the behaviour of defence lawyers may be influenced by financial incentives. This implies that the terms of plea bargains reached between prosecution and defence lawyers may be affected by the defence lawyer's remuneration contract. Consequently, the authors conclude that the role of defence lawyers has been under-researched in the literature on the economics of plea bargaining.

Good Law & Economics Needs Suitable Microeconomic Models: The Case Against the Application of Standard Agency Models to the Professions

Notwithstanding its widespread acceptance, agency theory could not be the most suitable microeconomic modeling for designing efficient and fair economic transactions. The case against the standard principal-agent modeling is made about liberalizations of professional services that introduced schemes of professionals' remuneration on outcomes - i.e. contingent for lawyers. If the relationship between the professional and clients is seen according to the principal-agent model, contingency fees can be an efficient incentive for the professional's effort. The case is quite different, however, if the situation is seen as one of bounded rationality and unforeseen and asymmetrically gathered events. In these contexts they can generate pathological incentives. The professional relationship is an relationship based of contractual incompleteness, which requires the reliance on trustworthiness of the position's holder. Hence I propose a model for understanding the professional relationship which extends the formal vs. real authority model proposed by Aghion and Tirole (1997). This leads to underline the essential role played by behavioral hypothesis on professionals' endogenous adherence to ethical standards that induces the professional's identification with her clients' interests. A game theoretical thought experiment is then carried out. It shows that (i) in the case of a self-interested lawyer fees lead to not respecting the fiduciary obligations with at least one client for only the ex post mostly remunerative cases are litigated. (ii) In the case of the lawyer's willingness to comply with deontology standards, fees lead nevertheless to neutralization of the deontological motivation and to a loss of efficiency. A Pareto optimal, impartial, as well as efficient, arrangement aimed at maximizing the total volume of damage compensation is then considered. Nevertheless under a fees contract, even if these motivations were available, the professional could not carry out them because of the logic of the contract.

Access to Justice in Italy

This article examines the present situation of access to justice in Italy, trying to highlight the most important trends concerning lawyer fees and legal aid, as well as the structure of civil procedure, including the operation of the justices of the peace and ADR developments. What becomes immediately apparent is a deep crisis which is centered on delay, whereas the costs of justice are substantially lower in Italy than in most other European countries.

Factors Likely to Influence Tort Litigation in the European Union

As the European Union moves towards harmonization in a variety of business, political, and regulatory settings, an opportunity exists to influence the form of tort liability found in these nations. The opportunity should not be missed, with rising concern that U.S. influences will set into motion costly litigiousness, particularly as EU member nations pull back on the level of social programmes available to cover costs typically included in tort claims. To assist policymakers in their deliberations about European Union tort directives, this paper provides discussion of the frequently cited key differences between the U.S. tort systems and what is found in most EU member nations. The discussion is focused on available evidence regarding the influences of these differences as well as important areas of future research. The most important areas seem to be (1) the need to enforce European Law when no defined regulatory body exists for this purpose; (2) the connection between government social programmes and the need for tort liability compensation; (3) and the influence of rules governing payment of legal costs and lawyer fees.

Who Should Regulate Class Action Lawyers?

Ethical issues arise frequently in class action litigation. These issues include conflicts of interest, solicitation, application of the no-contact rule, the reasonableness of attorneys' fees, and the attorney-witness rule. There has been considerable difficulty applying existing rules of conduct to these situations, partly because of confusion regarding the relationship among class counsel, the named class representatives and absent members of the class. Thus as to conflicts of interest - perhaps the most pressing problem facing class action lawyers - it has been said that a strict of the conflict of interest rules in class actions should be tempered, because the very nature of a class action is to combine many divergent interests. Despite the frequency with which the propriety of lawyers' conduct is litigated in class action lawsuits, the Ethics 2000 Commission - which recently proposed comprehensive amendments to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct - declined either to adopt a separate class action rule or to add extensive commentary addressing the application of the rules to class action lawsuits. The purpose of this article is to explain and defend the Commission's decision, focusing on the issue that dominates many discussions of ethics and class actions - the difficulty of applying current conflict-of-interest rules to the myriad of conflicting interests that commonly arise in these lawsuits, including conflicts among class members, as well as between the lawyer and the class and between the class and third persons. Parts I and II of the article demonstrate that the scope of the problem is not nearly as large as it is commonly thought to be. Part I argues that the class should be viewed as an entity client, in which case it becomes clear that conflict of interest rules simply do not apply to conflicts within a class. Part II eliminates from consideration those conflicts - like conflicts arising from the size of the lawyer's fee - that are not addressed by conflict-of-interest doctrine because they are not unique to particular lawyers but are rather a type of agency problem that is endemic to legal practice. Parts III and IV of the article then turn to the types of conflicts that would be addressed by a strict reading of the conflict-of-interest rules. These conflicts include those arising from the lawyer's duties to other current clients, both inside and outside the class, as well as former clients. Part III argues that from the point of view of the non-class client, there is no reason to relax the current conflict rules. These clients are entitled to full disclosure of the conflict and an opportunity to find independent counsel. Part IV addresses these conflicts from the point of view of the class itself. Here it is argued that relaxation (or special application) of the conflict rules may be warranted in some cases, but that it makes sense to leave these issues to be resolved under class action law - under the rubric of a further elaboration of the adequacy of representation requirement of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure - rather than by amendments to the rules of professional conduct.