Problems with one's own lawyer are infinite and formidable. Lawyers are used to defrauding their own customers. Highly aggrieved, profoundly damaged, sometimes ruined customers usually let it happen.
Law is one of the two great intimidatory, obfuscatory professions (the other is medicine). There are no fables, maxims, platitudes or parables about the Good Lawyer.
The generality of lawyers — any lawyer who has done nothing to distinguish and differentiate himself — are not very bright, not psychologically normal, nor in any relevant way able or functional. They must be treated with the very greatest caution if they cannot be avoided altogether.
I've seen highly disturbing routine misbehavior from English barristers and solicitors and Canadian, American, French and Swiss lawyers, including:-
pre-hire non-disclosure and misrepresentation especially about expertise and experience
secret billing targets
fabricated, imposisble-to-verify timesheets
obfuscated bills, billing narratives, billing summaries
false accounts
pretending to have read and understood the customer's file
pillage of client money
sabotage and vandalism of client business and personal affairs
catastrophic incompetence, recklessness, dereliction, pretense
fomenting, nurturing disputes with the other side
comprehensive dishonesty including churning, padding, concealment, other lying
incoherent illiterate incomprehensible meaningless communications
sham internal complaints procedure
criminal conflicts
… and there are so many others behind that fake persona and the silly walk.
I've seen all of them. I know how lawyers pull rackets and get away with them. I know how to examine, evaluate, value, articulate, expose and pursue the problems.
YOU REALLY MUST HAVE A LAWYER? REALLY? I'm here to tell you that with MrRigorous.pro in your camp you might not need a lawyer at all, and to talk you through some options if you absolutely categorically unavoidably must hire a lawyer (I can't think of many reasons):-
One of those options is 'execution only':-
you and I do all the work, generate all the letters and draft documents, and if that work ought to be or simply must be sent out to the other side by a lawyer, then your instruction to the (very carefully chosen) lawyer is 'execution only': "You, the lawyer, will do, for a fee fixed in advance in writing, exactly and only what I properly tell you to do, and stay in your box at all times. I will not pay for any of your drafting services or legal advice."
there is absolutely nothing objectionable in an 'execution only' setup: the lawyer takes dictation, and writes to the other side, "I am instructed to write to you as follows." And letters and contracts 'settled by counsel' — dictation by a barrister — are irrefutably established professional practice. The recipient gets the message that the missive has been written by the customer
of course the 'execution only' stricture doesn't appeal to the "I'm not a post box" racketeering self-important fifth-rate lawyer interested to churn the work, pad the file, impress his gauche ineffectuality on the case and disorient the weakened billing-targeted customer prior to hosing him financially, morally and intellectually. We'll need to find a real-deal lawyer who does get it.
MrRigorous.pro is here to assist, guide and protect you throughout.
Here's a detailed discussion of some things to think about if you don't want to get hosed by the world's second oldest profession.
IF YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST HIRE A LAWYER: Correctly calibrated without compromise, MrRigorous.pro is here to help protect the upright, sensible customer from getting hosed by candidate and hired lawyers. This seems to be a unique and unprecedented service. I will never hesitate to tell you that your lawyer is full of it (lawyers are never entitled to claim or be given the benefit of any relevant doubt), and precisely how. I will explain exactly how he does it.
THE RIGHT LAWYER: If you're thinking rationally about rationally hiring a genuinely necessary lawyer, I can help all the way, including with:-
ascertaining, sorting out, logging, archiving and readying your entire relevant file
compiling a preliminary exploratory explanatory no-obligation-on-either-side free-everything pre-hire dossier of basic documents
drafting the detailed job description. I can put the whole thing together for you using language that a lawyer will understand
search: We all know that sometimes there is no Mr Exactly Right, but we're intent on finding the closest real-deal specialist available. Finding candidates and making the choice are up to you: even in the most exceptional circumstances, I will never suggest or recommend any lawyer, participate executively in any decision-making process, or endorse your choice
in relation to candidate lawyers meriting more than superficial inquiry (and who don't photograph with 'Do Not Touch!' signs such as fake grins, fake frowns, head on one side, folded arms, scowl, etc.), deep due diligence, including a psychiatric assessment and critically considering and contacting all his genuine referees (you do always ask for genuine references — don't you?) We must penetrate the authentic peculiarities, the fake peculiarities, the scripts, trappings, costumes, makeup, props and scenery, and detect in advance the twitching, fidgeting, wobbling, smirking, growling, officious, rigid, passive-aggressive, predatory, parasitic imbecile who is going to mess up you, your finances and your affairs
written questionnaires: "Have you ever lied to a prospective or actual customer about your knowledge, expertise, experience, suitability, etc.? ever messed up an assignment in any way? ever used secret billing targets? do you know what churning is? ever done it? ever faked or fabricated anything? ever made a material or immaterial false entry in a timesheet, bill narrative or other record? ever padded a bill? and then given a 'discount'? ever hidden a material fact from a customer? ever made a false statement to a prospective and or actual customer? exactly and precisely how do you run the fine detail of all aspects of your practice? are any of your colleagues crooked? are you considered by an appropriate observer to be in good mental health? why do you think we have no right to ask these questions?", etc.
interviews, especially re exactly how — procedurally and substantively — each candidate lawyer proposes to help you, and at what gross and net cost, worth, value and price. Each candidate must draw — that's right, draw! — a detailed costed staged (and obviously strictly preliminary and provisional) activity tree and timeline of exactly what he proposes to do for you as the matter proceeds and evolves (if we get "Well I've never been asked…", you know what to do)
presentation: in all its currently apprehended general and technical aspects, I can present and advocate your matter to candidate lawyers (the dud candidate will give himself away in the first few minutes)
proposed set-up, including micro-dissecting each candidate lawyer's proposed take-it-or-leave-it terms of business (if ever of any interest), and formulating and negotiating your terms of business ("I will never pay a bill I'm not expecting. I will never pay for anything in relation to which I haven't given clear prior genuinely fully informed costed timed written instructions. I shall never ratify any of your blunders. Don't churn anything. Don't delegate anything. Make whole-truth genuinely full disclosure to me contemporaneously of all relevant secret billing targets. Make sure I can verify in real time every relevant timesheet entry. If you do a 'so busy, other clients' disappearing act, or if you fall behind by 24 hours in your real-time genuinely full whole-truth disclosure obligations to me, or if I catch you lying to me or screwing up, I shall fire you instantly", etc. Elementary, no?)
SET-UP, SCRUTINISING: If you then rationally decide to rationally hire or have already rationally hired an honest, genuinely competent, genuinely suitable lawyer, I can assist with:-
setting you up with the necessary real-time log, ledger, diary, archive and issue-, money-, performance- and people-specific MrRigorous.proTrack™ tools and techniques. Now you're in control
planning, modeling, simulating, monitoring, evaluating, valuing and costing the whole situation
the sign-up process
drafting, organising, compiling and presenting to the lawyer your detailed instructions and supporting material
investigating facts, situations and people
drafting emails, letters, statements of facts, witness statements, affidavits, etc. and compiling exhibits
supervising, scrutinising, analysing, critiquing, evaluating, and gross- and net-valuing the lawyer's every move, especially exactly how he complies procedurally, substantively and financially (or not) with your instructions, how he utilises (or not) your data, and how he advances (or not) your relevant interests on every issue and holistically
translating, deciphering and decoding anything (especially if not accompanied by a graphic) that is not instantly clear — not just on its face but in all its senses, meanings, interations and applications. Not every well-intentioned specialist has the gift of pellucidity. He can tie you up in knots not only in what he says but how he says it. Some lawyers make a career out of being unclear, especially where the customer is a pretentious coward wearing a 'Please Defraud Me' sandwich board and pretending to understand what the lawyer knows is pure nonsense. We want the lawyer to provide true complete legible copies of all his source material, plus graphics, plus up-to-date detailed costed flowcharts, timelines, models and other appropriate aids to multi-dimensional comprehension. No pretending on either side
laser-scrutinising all billing targets, timesheets, billing, bills, bill narratives, bill summaries, and everything underlying and overlying (and lying). The only time-based lawyer bill you will ever pay on my watch is a verifiable micro-detailed bill that the lawyer will have previously submitted to you in draft only for previously expressly agreed, timed, costed, modeled services, and that, genuinely fully informed at all relevant times, you will have fully and properly considered and freely agreed
evaluating the whole "We are where we are" relationship. Where is it going, why, how, and how far do you still want to go?
AVOIDING THE FRIGHTENERS: With a torrent of elaborate lies, including about 'liability' etc., a dishonest deadbeat lawyer will put the frighteners on you for even thinking of protecting yourself on these lines. He wishes to be free to screw you to death all the way to his bank and get away with it.
THE REAL DEAL: The real-deal lawyer — if you can find one — will welcome my participation. It will greatly facilitate and expedite his work. He will enjoy healthy, efficient, explicit relations with the customer; have someone sensible with whom to talk the same simple language on technical detail; generate sound, coherent, rational, intelligible, interactive work product (anything else to be rejected on sight); make genuinely full whole-truth disclosure in real time; work less and bill less; and know that his sensible, vigilant, down-to-earth, no-nonsense customer is taking elementary steps to continually safeguard his position, his interests, his affairs and his money.
PRECAUTIONARY: To be successfully conducted, intricate cases demand intimate intellectual partnership between the real-deal lawyer and a customer made of the right stuff, and their joint and several determination to make that partnership work at ground level. High-flying lawyers and intelligent customers who miss each other crash in flames. MrRigorous.pro can act openly as a precautionary resource to stop that happening.
If you prefer, I can work undisclosed in the background.
Of course, if you already have a problem with a dishonest lawyer, MrRigorous.pro would be very keen to help you sort it out.
SUMMING UP: To sum up: the responsible, sensible, organised, good-faith customer — the type who doesn't mess about — is always the boss and must keep it that way. It's always the customer's show, never the lawyer's. The customer is always in proactive, self-assertive control of his own affairs. (Which raises important points about the customer-lawyer relationship in general. For example, there's the lawyer racket about customer-lawyer confidentiality and confidentiality-type privilege. Contrary to lore, customer-lawyer confidentiality is always at the customer's option, never the lawyer's. And the one about the unimpressive customer taking orders from an alpha-male baboon of a lawyer. Nothing elicits and emboldens the pompous, patronising, pontificating predator in a lawyer, however eminent and apparently well-intentioned, surer than a patently vulnerable customer. MrRigorous.pro can provide the robust procedural and substantive interface required to protect you.)
THE PROBLEM: A for-profit insurer (cf. a mutual) will rarely if ever be wholly focused on fair claims handling or claims paying: it has too many vested interests, including shareholders, public stock markets, craven board members and excessively paid executives. Often overlooked: problems with insurance brokers, even if not tied and especially if they act for both sides.
FAMILIAR: As a lawyer, I was directly involved against some very large insurers and their claims mishandling rackets, including their robotic impenetrable carbon units. I've seen some colossal institutionalised international claims mishandling scams, and a lot of criminal collusion between insurers, the victims' own idiot lawyers, regulators and judges. Don't like it. Tied brokers were a big part of the problem.
CLAIMS RACKETS: There are plenty of horror stories about insurers' internal claims-mishandling manuals, and algorithms, and 'dials', and claims managers directing claims clerks (nowadays claims machines) to delay and deny valid claims. If you refuse to give up, the case then goes to the dishonest insurer's expensive dishonest lawyers for more dishonest delay, dishonest arguing and disputing, all to confuse, distract, demoralise, demean, depress and exhaust you. Good luck with your broker.
Life is too short to waste on these malicious idiots.
MrRigorous.pro SERVICES: My services here are directed to simply cutting through insurer bad behavior and getting you what is due. I can help with (among other things):-
insurer search, evaluation and selection (unless you're very fortunate, the right insurer is at the bottom of the pile), especially critically reviewing sales talk and policy wordings
pre-placing and placing, including negotiating with brokers and underwriters on coverage
proper legitimate claims, claiming and claims disputes.
A BIG THING FOR ME: Inheritance is another of my particular interests. I run a consultancy specialising in inheritance crime: there is much detail on its website, InheritanceCrime.com. One could write volumes…
PROBLEMS: The variety of before-death and after-death inheritance situations and problems is infinite: wills, codicils, intestacy, mental capacity, undue influence, dishonest lawyers on all sides, dishonest heirs, dishonest executors and administrators, dishonest debtors and creditors, dishonest family and 'friends', dishonest guardians and carers, misconduct of the deceased's unfinished front-office business, hiding, lying, fabricating, falsifying, forging, false accounting, theft, money laundering, asset laundering, situation laundering, perjury, tax evasion — to name only a few categories.
Inheritance tends to bring out the worst in some people, including lawyers and judges.
MrRigorous.pro SERVICES: If ever a professional helping hand were needed for eufunctional testators, innocent heirs, ingenuous, inexperienced executors and administrators, naïve pretentious craven lawyers, inexperienced accountants — among so many others — it's in inheritance, especially to:-
predict, deter and prevent inheritance misconduct and dishonesty
detect, identify and examine inheritance problems if you consult me too late
exercise micro-vigilance to monitor, anatomise, examine, analyse, evaluate, value, supervise, scrutinise etc every particle of every relevant financial, legal, procedural and other activity and inactivity.
INNOCENT: And of course there are also relatively innocent situations that — the parties willing — need clarifying, evaluating, valuing, defusing and managing, including emotional family misunderstandings and disputes nearly or already out of hand.
This is my field.
FOR EXAMPLE:-
improper classification of an account as 'dormant' or 'abandoned'
illegal confiscation of customer money
dishonest claims to have lost relevant data
improper closure of an account
impossibility of contacting a real person (the bank designedly does not provide name, email address, phone number or physical address of a relevant person or department)
sub-idiotic incoherent illiterate communications from bank employees
failure of bank employees to reply fully responsively or at all
futile complaints and surreal complaints handling (ending in taunting the victim to complain to an ombudsman)
inaccurate, incomplete, misleading statements
failure to make timely refunds
breach of confidentiality: deliberate improper disclosure of customer data (eg in a transfer)
failure to correctly or timeously execute clear proper instructions resulting in material loss
failure to timeously close the account of a dead customer
failure to check identity in a deposit or withdrawal transaction
participating in internal and external money laundering
collusion in financial crime by executors, administrators, lawyers.
MrRigorous.pro SERVICES: For example:-
examining, analysing, elucidating and exposing particular bank rackets — the incriminating plans, practices, policies, procedures, strategies, tactics, paper trails, etc.
identifying, exposing and pursuing culpable bank individuals from bank clerk to CEO: investigating individual incompetence, neglect, stupidity, cowardice; the absence of any sense of personal culpability, responsibility, accountability, liability; criminal liability
assisting generally: culpable bank individuals (often hiding in 'teams') expect — in some cases not unrealistically — that you will abandon hope, lose interest in your own money, lose confidence in your own critical faculties, and just go away. They have already marked you. MrRigorous.pro does not have a fatigue or boredom threshold. I can't be worn down. I am not concerned at how properly annoying I become to banks behaving badly. Much front-office pressurising can be set to {[periodicity] + automatic + systematic + particularised + relentless + annoying + indefinitely} until we achieve the desired result
ombudsman, other complaints, other recourse: I can draft highly particularised complaints, compile logs and ledgers, and assemble dossiers of evidence. You will find that my packages are compelling.
FOR EXAMPLE:-
not getting paid by your employer or other debtor
personal and corporate insolvency
charges on houses
debt collectors
false accounts and false accounting (by a spouse, a business partner, a lawyer, an accountant, etc.)
tax investigations
investment managers: non-disclosure, misrepresentation, mis-management, loss
trust capital and income.
I have direct personal experience of all these situations and know what to do to help you.
SCOPE, RANGE: MrRigorous.pro's global offering includes (for example) reviewing, investigating, examining, analysing, evaluating, valuing and elucidating:-
chronic and current financial, business and other disclosure and non-disclosure, representations and misrepresentations
tax filings, other filings, business accounts
the manipulative 'allowance': the alpha male deigning to bestow on his compliant complicit partner an allowance of her own money (she co-owns, co-runs and co-controls the joint business): reconstructing and valuing the disempowered submissive partner's stake in and contribution to the joint business, etc.
known and concealed bank and investment accounts, deposit locations
the conduct of co-owned bank accounts
relevant tax issues
legitimate, phoney, suspicious personal and business assets, liabilities, situations, relationships, transactions
multiple lives, multiple identities, multiple personalities, false names, false addresses, fronts, nominees, agents, proxies, false personal and business data, hidden businesses, distanced assets, money laundering, asset laundering, situation laundering etc.
MrRigorous.pro SERVICES: For example:-
technical reports for courts, negotiations, law enforcement etc.
technical support for local, international and multinational search, seizure, freezing etc.
negotiations, draft settlement agreements: supervision, scrutiny, assistance, quantification, valuation, strategy etc.