New Lawyers and their Transition into the Marketplace
by Thomas F. Liotti
[continued from prior page]
Q - Mr. DaSilva, you have told us what is involved to a certain extent in the practice of matrimonial law. I would ask you to step back a little bit looking back on your years of practice now, and tell us, if you would, what it is like to set up a matrimonial law practice and how difficult it is to do so.
A - It is not easy. In fact, I can honestly say that I am a matrimonial attorney because of the Long Island Rail Road. I had been commuting into the City for a number of years to work, which I did at that time primarily in the corporate field, and then I got so fed up with commuting.
I had commuted for 20 years, college, law school, practice, and I said I was not going to ride this train anymore, so I came out to the Island. I have always lived in Long Island, and at that point you could not advertise, you could not solicit business or do anything, so how do you hang up a shingle. You could solicit only from other lawyers.
I went around to all the lawyers I knew in Nassau County and I asked were there any cases they didn't want to handle. At that time the only grounds for divorce was adultery, which made it a messy business, and they didn't want to handle the matrimonials, and I said I would take them. That's how I got into the business.
Later, the law changed in 1966 to enlarge the grounds for divorce, and then in 1980 we had equitable distribution and it built up, but I was already in the field.
In more recent years the Supreme Court has authorized advertising, which to me was the death of the law practice as a profession and it became a crass commercial business. With advertising it became relatively easy to get clients.
I have never advertised. I have always avoided advertising. If a client says he saw my name in the Yellow Pages, I know they are lying. It is just not so. What you get out of the Yellow Pages or the PennySaver is the low end client. The low end clients are the ones who give you the most trouble. They usually don't have the wherewithal, the funding to pay for what they want. Matrimonial cases are very, very expensive, because of the basic nature. If you do a good job, that is. Most people cannot afford it and that's why I settle most of my cases. I explain to the people that they cannot afford to pay for the litigation. I will explain that the litigation costs $50,000 to $60,000 or whatever the case may be, and I said,
"Wouldn't you like to use that money to pay for your son's college education," and we begin to settle the case at that point.
These low end cases are the most troublesome ones. That's why I have studiously avoided them.
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Q - Troublesome in what respect?
A - The clients don't have the financial ability to pay. That's number one. Yet, their problems are the same problems that a millionaire would have. If there is a custody problem, it is the same whether the father is earning $30,000 a year or $300,000 a year or $1 million a year. The basic problems are the same. The issues generally are the same.
You can have a marital residence which is worth $180,000 that is in dispute and one party will say it is worth $300,000, you fight over the value of the house. It is the same fight as a fight over a house that is worth $1 million or $2 million. You do the same work. What is different is the decimal point in the numbers.
The work is the same that you have to do, but you can't get paid because the people simply cannot afford to handle it. As a result, you take the case as a young lawyer or an inexperienced lawyer, and you find soon that you can't handle it. In order to have a cash flow, you take more cases. Now you have more cases than you have a right to handle perhaps, and you spread yourself too thin.
When advertising first came into vogue, I am sure the judge will remember, there were ads in the classifieds, "uncontested divorces for $100," and I said I would sit back and wait to see what happened. It was a matter of time until they stopped. They got so much business they were losing money. They could not make their overhead.
That's the problem. Young lawyers can get clients very readily, but they are not the clients who can pay, but their demands and their problems are the same. This is the vicious problem that has been created. I think it was created by advertising. There used to be a sort of a mentor system. They still have it in medicine, not in law, where you would work with a lawyer and get your feet wet. You don't have to do that anymore. You can come out of law school and advertise and have people come in.
If you need funding, you have to make a living, it is very enticing. You do the best you can, but what happens is when you have all of these cases and time constraints and an inability to do everything you want to do, it now affects you emotionally, and I think a great many of these young lawyers, if they don't have a mentor, somebody to go back to, somebody to help out, that they break under the strain. It is not unreasonable to think that would happen.
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