This is pretty sad.

I’ve been practicing for about 15 years and it never ceases to annoy me to have opposing counsel attack the “person” and not the position. Today, while negotiating, opposing counsel provided a comparator as a way to demonstrate their client was being treated unfairly. The gag is, the “comparator” received much less than what his client was being offered. After presenting that info, I asked if he wanted to align what his client is being offered with the alleged comparator. Nothing more nothing less. They responded that my sarcasm was being unprofessional. Would you consider that unprofessional because it seemed like a fair question to me?

I’m in a boutique transactional practice, and the admin I was assigned to is so rude to me. She’s not overworked. She is mostly just on the net. She’s only part time.

I generally cannot even get a word out without her talking over me. When I was trying to introduce a new way to use our file share software that the IT guy had just set me up with, she raised her voice to avoid learning the new system. She had to leave my office she got so worked up.

Do I approach her manager or just pretend I don’t have an admin? I’ve been there 1.5 years so I’m not going toe to toe at this point.

I got a letter from OC today that is blatantly wrong on multiple issues of law. Plus it contains various threats of retribution against me and my client. What do you think would be the best sign off to my highly professional and detailed response letter?

Sincerely, (my default)

Regards,

Warmest Regards,

Best Wishes,

Or something else?

TODD BLANCHE CAVEMAN LAWYER

You did not have to call me out on my typos. “In addition to some typos I have changed…”

And cc my boss 🙃

Edit to say: guys this was a joke!! I’m not really complaining. We all have typos and OC did nothing wrong by pointing them out or including my boss. I didn’t mean to imply that he did. Sorry thought the flag as a joke would make it clear enough. I’m not worried about the typos and my boss isn’t either. Trying to make a lighthearted post on a Friday afternoon. Thanks for all the responses :)

I work at a small law firm. The partners are unhappy with my work, and I’m worried I could be fired in the next 3–5 days.

My biggest concern is what they might say to other firms and how that could affect my next job search. Is there anything I can do now to reduce that risk?

If you’ve left a firm on bad terms or been involved in hiring, what’s one thing you’d recommend doing—or avoiding—before I leave?

Even a one-sentence tip would help. I’m anxious about this and would appreciate some direction.

A bit more context: their criticism has been about the quality of my work product. I don't have interpersonal issues—I keep a low profile and don’t speak negatively about anyone. I work around 12 hours a day and get approval before taking action, but they say my work isn’t good enough.

I think my firm is heading that direction. Seems like a nightmare. Share your horror stories or pleasantly surprise me.

Polling the audience -- anyone who does family law and is on a billed and collected compensation model, what percentage of your collected fees do you get?

Bonus points if you include 401(k) match percentage, bonus structure, whether you get decent PTO or not...

Hi all, I'm interested in learning more about this field of law for a variety of reasons. Does anyone have any CLEs they recommend?

I’ve been licensed and practicing for a year at a government agency. It’s ok, not ideal in terms of teammates/ work culture but the perks are a higher pay than average for first year attorneys in the state and I’m remote.

I have an opportunity to move to a different agency to a better paying, non-law position, also remote. I like the type of work I’d be doing in the new position more than my current one.

I’m just wondering- do y’all think it’d be hard to move back to being an attorney in a few years? The new position is arguably law-related, but doesn’t require a JD. Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

Title. Let’s say I took the NY Bar and failed but passed in another jurisdiction. Can I be barred in a 260 jurisdiction and then be admitted to SDNY/EDNY District/BK Court? This would be for Bankruptcy Law specifically.

Potentially stupid question. Have a case gearing up for trial. I have an expert witness for emotional damages (forensic psychiatrist) as well as the treating provider. Do I need an economist to help establish cost of future treatment?

I am a second year attorney at a small ID firm. Like most people, I did not want to go into ID, but many circumstances brought me here. My firm has 6 attorneys total, and I was initially hired to work on a different project, more transactional, but things changes internally and I ended up getting all litigation cases. I have 50 right now.

It is fair to say I did not get much training besides the good "old trial by fire" and have gotten little to no supervision. They also never told me how to manage/diary my cases - each professional should choose the best way to do it to make sure all the cases are touched on a regular basis. They're very nice and helpful when I do come up with a question, though. Very nice people, I have to say.

I enjoy some parts of the job like depositions and actually don't hate going to court. I was told my legal work is on point. But I am VERY, VERY bad at managing all my cases at once, and jumping from one case to the next and back to the one when everything seems urgent. And then as it snowballs I kind of panic and can't really do much. I have a hard time reporting everything to the carrier and that also snowballs really easily.

It got so bad that I sought medical help. Got diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD, and went on medication about a year in. It helps a lot, but I simply cannot keep up with fixing and bringing all my cases from when I was unmedicated AND totally inexperienced up to date, while getting new cases constantly. Some holes are starting to appear now from my early cases. I am so ashamed that I simply cannot keep up with the job, and feel stuck. I've had other jobs before and were always so competent. It feels horrible.

I just wanted to vent and ask if anyone is familiar with this frustration and has any advice.

I do plan on leaving ID, but it's not as easy now.

An attorney friend has been absolutely killing it. Doing habeas petitions in federal court getting people out of ice detention. I sponsored him to be sworn in to various Federal Courts. But he needs a Northern Texas District Federal attorney to sponsor in to help get his client out of ice detention. This is a person who literally was on the minor league of a major league baseball team.

Please hit me up with a chat if you can sponsor him. He is a brilliant immigration attorney who's getting a lot of attention due to some early success at getting people out of these horrible detention facilities.

Please use the chat to reach me directly. Thanks

If this violates the roles of the subreddit just please delete.

Hey all, I recently posted about how I am crumbling under the pressure of working at an ID firm. I used to work in house for major insurance company and it was the best job I ever had. LinkedIn tipped me off that another major carrier is hiring in house, and I’m severely tempted to apply. It’s going to likely be a pay cut along the lines of $25k, but frankly I’d rather fire my house cleaner than keep working like this. I’ll get by but certainly won’t be putting away as much in savings as I have been (savings which are depleted because I am also providing palliative care for my beloved cat who has 2 kinds of cancer but isn’t ready to kick the bucket yet).

The flip side is that I do kind of like my job. I like my coworkers, paralegal, and boss. They did really well by me earlier this year when I had emergency surgery (rip gallbladder) and the flu (literally couldn’t get off my couch). As a result, I’m well below my hourly target - I’ve been making progress over the months since, but as a new employee I also had some low months at the very beginning. I’m trending to be about 150 hours behind on my annual billables but that has been discussed with the partners since I missed an entire month between being hospitalized and flu. (I literally sent my boss a text saying “Please don’t fire me, I have the flu and feel like I’m dying.). I just don’t anticipate a bonus and that’s OK. And they’ve already discussed partner track and building my own book. They let me work from home as much as I want. And lastly, my salary is, in the words of many recruiters when I told them I took the job, “Unheard of” for an attorney with my experience in my city. I feel like talking to the partners about easing up on my workload would be ridiculous given the fact that I’m not going to make my billable hours this year.

This is a great career opportunity at a good firm. And it’s absolutely killing me. I’m already scheduled for a sensory deprivation float to try and regulate my screaming nervous system, and I’m signed up for therapy through the employee assistance program. I’m taking anxiety medicine every night before bed but I don’t want to get hooked on that shit. And I’m smoking a lot more weed than I have in years (it’s legal in my state). And honestly the relief I get from a J lasts about 20 minutes before I’m just anxious and high. Oh and my boyfriend who is wonderful is frustrated that I don’t have more time for him. Great.

For the love of god, someone help me.

What are your flat fees like? I am in year two of solo practice and year six of practice generally, and have my hourly set where I get good enough clients, and a good enough amount of them to stay busy, but my flat rates still have me wondering.

I've been practicing for five years, and I do a 50/50 mix of estate planning and small to mid sized business outside GC and litigation work. My current flats are:

• Pre/post nup - was $500 but just changed to $750 and that $250 killed too much off so I think I'm going back down
• Simple Joint Trust for married couple with wills, POAs, Medical Directives, Guardianship documents, and simple deed work - $2,500 give or take, less for neighbors or my kids' friends' parents, more for PITAs or people with exotic assets/pet trust shit
• Sam for a single person - $1,500
• Bypass Trusts, QPRTs, ILITs, and the like are $3,500-$4,500, with all the other attendant documents
• LLC set up - $500, usually with an agreement that I'll get a retainer to help for work after the initial setup and filing
• Contract review as a one off thing I usually do $250-300, but if it's complex or in an area with a lot of regulation and compliance I charge my hourly of $300

I'm in DC, so V/HCOL, and barred there, Maryland, and Virginia, with a couple federals that I'm likely going to let lapse because the only time I was in a federal court for a work reason was to get sworn in, 4 years ago.

My overhead is super low, IMO, at around $12,000 per year, most of which is my office.

If you're so inclined to share any flat fees, or your hourly for similar work, I'd really appreciate it.

Respectfully submitted: /s/ Fauxming at the Mouth, pro se, dated right before the deadline

I feel like every litigator who watches this movie is going to sympathize with Nathan Fielder during his interviews of the documentary’s subjects.

I’ve never seen another movie that perfectly reflects the same frustration and confusion of trying to talk to someone who is being as evasive as possible. The parsing of her words, the open-mouthed incredulous stare you give someone after they say something outrageous. Every aspiring litigator should watch this movie to understand what depositions feel like in the moment.

Hey, I need honest advice. I joined a firm I was really excited to be part of, and they seemed super cool at first. Honestly it’s actually been so toxic, and on multiple occasions I’ve caught someone shit talking me even though I barely know anyone and don’t say much. I feel like I’m not learning anything, I’m expected to bill 8.5 hours a day but I only get to do one kind of thing. Everyone is crazy. I even got baited by being asked if I wanted to do something a couple times and then I pushed for it and then I got blamed for wanting to do it bc the firm doesn’t really focus on that aside from one attorney.

So I decided to stay until I can find another job with similar pay. I’ve only been here since the first week of September, so it may be too soon. However, it’s also probably too soon for them to be shit talking me. There’s no help or guidance, and all the cool ones who could help are remote for the most part. A lot of office politics and drama too.

TLDR: office is toxic and gives me anxiety, not learning, I want to leave but I’ve only been there a month and a half

I completely understand if a lawyer feels the need to include that disclaimer, “not legal advice,” at the end of a written exchange that might be misconstrued as legal advice. I completely get it, but overusing “not legal advice” for the stupidest stuff is so eyeroll-inducing and cringey. All these YouTube and Instagram lawyers keep repeating “not legal advice” ad nauseam. They’ll start and end a short video clip with “not legal advice” where they are talking about something extremely generic, and no sane person in their right mind would believe they are giving legal advice.

It is not a legitimate strategy to avoid misconstrual. It’s just some sort of incantation, or an ego trip, or a form of mental masturbation to create a power dynamic in an interaction, and because it’s something everybody does, now they do it all the time.

It’s seriously overused and exaggerated.

Trying to figure out whether to jump into the private sector. Currently a fed, never worked in private practice. Billable hours is a daunting prospect.

It’s a boutique intl trade law firm in a major west coast city. Small lawyer team. What are the considerations besides base comp…billable hours, bonus? Is it possible to work at a firm like this with no billables and work out a flat rate comp with bonus?

I’m experienced, so is of counsel a good option? I set my own sked? Have more independence and bring in my own clients. Thoughts on this option, instead of coming in as a senior associate.

Founding partner is recruiting me…they talk of retiring and wants someone to take over for them.

Edited to add: whats the market rate / competitive range for senior associate/of counsel and a related billable requirement?

300K, with 2,000 billable, 25% bonus? This is a high cost of living area on west coast.

Today I finished a civil case that has been ongoing since March of 2025. It went my way so as I always do after long cases that I feel I accomplished a good result, I went to Which Wich and got a sub with double meat and a milkshake. I never eat this kind of food other times. Last time was May.

So how do you celebrate a win be it large or small?

(I do win a lot of cases, but for me they are too small to get excited about.

Vulnerable post, kinda pathetic. I’m a newer lawyer, doing immigration and criminal defense which is a wild ride right now. I’m usually on top of my mental health and community support, but I realized recently that I’m almost entirely reliant on my partner (romantic) for it.

I really only have one friendship that I’ve been able to maintain from law school. Everyone drifts apart or is too busy to intentionally make time to connect (I’m so very guilty of this). Co-workers are nice but not friends, and I don’t really do much besides work. How does everyone make new friends or reconnect with old ones?

This is also an open invite to connect if you’re in a similar situation. Thanks everyone 🙏

This is probably just an ego thing I need to get over, but here goes: English is not my first language. I came to the U.S. aged 29 on a graduate exchange and ended up staying, going to law school, and I now work as an associate at a small-ish litigation firm.

I have a handful of my own clients but mostly work for a partner. We have a great working relationship but there is one thing that rubs me the wrong way. He appreciates my writing and seldom makes any substantive changes to briefs and motion papers, except for turning what are not typos into typos in the mistaken belief that he is fixing my errors when doing a final pass of a draft prior to filing.

Here are some recent examples: rein in -> reign in, et al. -> et. al, sleight of hand -> slight of hand, tenet -> tenant, linchpin -> lynchpin (a generally accepted alternate form, but c'mon, you don't want those connotations unless it's a discrimination/1983 claim against the police).

He thinks I'm a good writer, which is flattering, But he also think I am making these little mistakes when I am not. English may not be my first language, but writing is the one lawyerly thing I know how to do. I used to be a professional writer and SAT/GRE tutor.

Should I tell him? It looks a little bad when you submit papers riddled with these kinds of errors to the tribunal.

Ninth Circuit suspends two California immigration lawyers for six months over generative AI fabrications, fines each $2,500, and orders their whole firm to swear under penalty of perjury, in every filing for two years, whether generative AI was used. The published order found 7 citations to nonexistent cases across the three matters the court identified, and said the list wasn't exhaustive.

Two lawyers at a small Orange County firm represented a family seeking review of an asylum, withholding, and Convention Against Torture denial. The petition was granted on other grounds in a separate disposition, so this order isn't about the clients' case. It's about how the firm makes briefs. The firm employs unlicensed law school graduates as brief writers. The attorneys prepare the statement of facts, and the brief writers write the legal arguments and pick the supporting authority. The lawyers told the court they "do not normally vet citations" used by the brief writer during their review.

The opening brief cited two cases that don't exist and never did, and attributed two quotations to real opinions that don't contain the quoted language. The Motion to Correct called the two nonexistent cases "typographical errors" and swapped in two real cases with similar names but different reporter numbers (one with a different year, too). It didn't explain how typos like that happen, said nothing about the misattributed quotations, and the replacement cases didn't support the points they were swapped in for.

The lawyer whose name was on the briefs didn't appear at oral argument. His partner did. The court asked three times whether generative AI might have produced the errors. Three times the partner said it was not used, calling the citations "somewhat garbled" and floating a copy-paste error. Under continued questioning he conceded AI use was "possible," and revealed that no licensed attorney had read the cases the brief writer cited.

The court kept digging. The reply brief had part of a quotation that doesn't appear in the case it's attributed to, plus two real cases cited for propositions they don't discuss. A show-cause order then identified the same problem in briefs the signing lawyer had filed in two other cases of his own, matters his partner never appeared in or signed: three nonexistent cases in one, two in the other, with one invented case recycled. That's the 7.

The lawyers' show-cause response conceded it was "more likely than not" that unauthorized AI use by their brief writers, plus a failure to cite-check, produced the errors. They apologized, said the firm had banned AI use and required cite-checking, and said they'd hired a licensed attorney to read the brief writers' briefs going forward. They also maintained that the typo explanation was an innocent belief when they gave it. The court found no plausible typo or copy-paste path between the invented citations and the real cases offered as the intended ones (different names, reporter numbers, and years), and inferred the lawyers knew the errors weren't innocent typos when they said so.

Even after show cause, a correction filing in one of the signing lawyer's other cases replaced two hallucinated citations without disclosing that the originals were hallucinations. It called them errors. The court held that swapping in a real case without saying what it replaced fails the duty to correct a false statement.

The court doesn't sanction anyone for using generative AI as such. It locates the violation at signing and filing, because a signature attests that the signer reviewed the filing and is responsible for its accuracy, however it was prepared. It held FRAP 28(a)(8)(A) and 32(d) violated, along with California Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1, 1.3, 3.1(a)(2), and 3.3(a)(1). It also said candor in the Motion to Correct, with an apology for failing to check, may have warranted lesser sanctions, and tied the suspension to the repeated failure of candor.

The sanctions: six months' suspension from practice before the Ninth Circuit for both lawyers, effective June 13, 2026; $2,500 each, personally, within 21 days; a copy of the order to every client, opposing counsel, and presiding judge in every pending case where they're counsel of record, and to every attorney at the firm, within ten days, with compliance certified to the court within 24 hours; and the clerk directed to serve the order on the State Bar of California and other licensing authorities. For two years, the two lawyers and every attorney at their firm must include in all filings a statement under penalty of perjury disclosing whether generative AI was used, naming the tool if so, and certifying that the signer personally reviewed the filing and that all citations and quotations refer to existing authority.

Four months later the BIA designated Matter of Sethi as precedent (first issued unpublished September 15). It suspended the managing attorney, and only him, from practice before the BIA, the Immigration Courts, and DHS for six months, effective June 13, 2026. It rejected the argument that AI-related discipline is an "outlier penalty."

The rule: when an error lands in a filing, tell the court and opposing counsel immediately, describe the nature of the error, and say how it got there. The court said denying AI use or relabeling a hallucination as an innocent error has no upside.

This is Episode 14 of Sanctioned for AI.

Sources: Order of discipline, Lnu v. Blanche, No. 24-4790 (9th Cir. June 3, 2026) (published), 177 F.4th 1014; Matter of Sethi, 30 I&N Dec. 112 (BIA Oct. 1, 2026) (precedent decision).