Bare Doctor Blog: Lubell & Rosen Law Firm

The easiest way to understand the business strategy of a plaintiff’s attorney is to liken it to a stock portfolio.

A typical portfolio contains several kinds of stocks—some are good performers, and some are not. To make a healthy profit, the attorney must keep the cash cows, cut losses on weak holdings, and try not to throw good money after bad. Ditto for the attorney’s portfolio of cases—some are possible winners, and some are probable losers. But unlike publicly traded stock that can be sold easily on the open market, a judgment awarded after trial is hardly liquid. Rather, a judgment is simply a piece of paper noting a judicially recognized debt that is subject to execution and garnishment. Turning that paper into cash is not easy and is more art than science. Accordingly, just as you should cut your losses in the stock market, attorneys must cut their potential losses by avoiding unprofitable cases. They must instead spend their time and effort on cases wherein collectibility is assured (such as in insurance-covered claims). Therefore, one of the best and most basic strategies for protecting your assets is to be perceived as a loser in a plaintiff attorney’s eyes. In other words, you want to appear to be judgment-proof or, at least, judgment-resistant.

But even if you don’t appear as such, plaintiff attorneys might still see you as a loser. Here’s why: In Florida, a judgment is valid for twenty years. That’s because collecting upon it can be very difficult and time-consuming. Medical malpractice attorneys who win their cases ultimately become collections attorneys in search of assets. The collections process can be a real grind, even sleazy, however—quite a departure from the pin-striped world most plaintiff attorneys inhabit. Searching for bank accounts, making harassing phone calls, sending innumerable letters, repossessing cars—all these efforts take time. Time, of course, is money. The longer the collection process drags out, the more money spent and the less money available to litigate other (more lucrative) cases. And so, unless attorneys add to their practices a collections department, they are uninterested in hard-to-collect cases, like those involving bare doctors.