The Insurance Journal reports a rise in legal malpractice claims. Incredibly, there has been no hand wringing about increased malpractice rates for lawyers or fears that lawyers will no longer be able to keep their practices open as their insurance rates rise. We have never had a legal malpractice claim yet our rates continue to increase. No one cries for us.

A part of the rise in the number of legal malpractice claims is countersuits against lawyers who are suing their clients to pay their bill. But I think the larger problem is what the article calls "door law," a phrase I have never heard before but I really like. Door law is when lawyers take any client who walks through the door who might generate a fee. When law firms step outside their areas of expertise, bad things are going to happen.

A big part of what my law firm does is handle large personal injury cases for lawyers who do not have the resources or experience to handle complex personal injury cases. It is not that they are not good lawyers.
(Quick digression: I sat through criminal court all morning yesterday, monitoring the defendant's traffic court trial in a car accident wrongful death case I am handling. Driver pled not guilty, six witnesses were called, and maybe the best testimony for the prosecution was the Defendant's direct examination. It was pathetic. It reminded me of murder trials you hear about where a plea would be worthless because the guy is doing life anyway so they go through the motions of having a trial. In closing, his lawyer said he had suffered as much as anyone has in all of this. He killed a young woman standing on the sidewalk, he denies liability and has suffered as much as anyone. It was surreal.)

Anyway, back to my point. I'm a good lawyer but I would be lost handling a criminal case, a domestic case or anything that was not a personal injury case. (Ah, I could do a contracts case, too. But that is it.) But in 2010, with criminal and domestic cases drying up, a lot of lawyers who would be intimidated handling a serious personal injury case are saying, "I need more revenue, I'll give this a shot myself. It is just a car accident. How hard can it be?" And it often ends in disaster because, too often, it is a lot harder than you think to maximize the value of a case.

As I have always said, the biggest personal injury cases typically come not to personal injury lawyers but to domestic, workers comp, and criminal lawyers. Why? Because everyone's got a "guy" when there is a catastrophic injury case. Because of the nature of these areas of practice, these lawyers see a higher volume of clients than personal injury attorneys who are only handling serious cases.

The smart play for these lawyers – and, believe me, I get that this is self serving, but stay with me – is to refer the case out to someone who knows how to handle the case. The fee splitting rules we have in Maryland make great sense for everyone. Serious injury victims get directed to the best personal injury lawyer (the referring attorney is selfishly motivated to find the victims quality counsel) and the referring lawyer is able to remain in the case and, let's face it because it is important, collect a fee.

Why doesn't this happen more often? A lot of criminal and domestic lawyers don't understand this paradigm. You can't refer out a criminal or domestic case and stay on as co-counsel and get a fee (I don't think you can, anyway). So the door lawyer's mentality is I have to take this case myself or I will lose my fee. Again, this is shameless self promotion but, look, we frequently give referring lawyers a larger fee than they would have gotten if they had handled the case themselves. It is better for the referring lawyer and better for the client.

There are a lot of personal injury lawyers who can handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases. But, honestly, only a small minority of personal injury lawyers are equipped to handle serious cases with large damages, no matter how simple the accident or malpractice is to understand. So if not many personal injury lawyers can do it well, the percentage of domestic and criminal lawyers that can is vanquishing low.

We get a number of personal injury clients from our blogs and website. But our target audience is clearly referring lawyers with serious injury or wrongful death car and truck accidents and medical malpractice cases. We reach out to you so indirectly. Today, I'm reaching out directly. If you are a lawyer with one of these types of serious personal injury cases, call or contact us. Call some others that you think might be the top personal injury lawyers in Maryland. Then make what you think is the best call for your client.

If you drink and drive, even if you're lucky enough not to cause a car accident, you still risk severe damage to your financial security. Most people are unaware that the cost of being arrested and convicted of driving under the influence can range from nearly $7,000 to nearly $40,000 depending on where you are apprehended and what it takes to deal with the aftermath.

Just being arrested for DUI can cost from $350 to more than $3,600, for bail and for having your vehicle towed and impounded. If you can't afford to recover your car quickly enough, it may be sold at auction, and you could still owe money if the proceeds don't cover the impound fee.

Legal Defense of DUI Case Can Reach $25,000

The next expense is legal fees, which can start at $250 just for having an attorney enter a guilty plea, and go as high as $25,000 to defend a plea of not guilty. Besides a qualified attorney, you may need an investigator, to gather information in your defense, and an expert witness, to address the issues surrounding the use of sobriety tests.

If you are convicted of DUI, you'll have to pay fines, which can range from $300 to $1,200. You may also be sentenced to alcohol education and treatment, for an additional $150 to $2,000. When that's finished, if the state is willing to reinstate your driver's license, the fee for that may be as much as $250.

Some jurisdictions have additional penalties, which may include a jail filing fee and payments to various victims' and law enforcement assistance funds. These could total nearly $250.

DUI Offenders Pay Higher Insurance Rates

When the legal system is finished with you, the insurance industry will take a turn. Your insurance company may raise your premiums, or simply drop your coverage. In the latter case, you may have to turn to a company that specializes in DUI offenders. Of course, because of the high risk potential, the rates will be high. You could pay up to $1,500 more per year for three to five years, assuming a spotless driving record.

There are other penalties that are hard to put a price on, such as lost wages, a ruined reputation, and even the possibility of lost career opportunities.

If you're arrested for drunk driving, contact an experienced DUI attorney. The cost of legal fees to defend yourself may be more than paying the initial penalties for pleading guilty, but the chances are that it will be less than the cost to your future if you are convicted.

An Illinois court awarded $2.5 million in a lawsuit against a truck driver who admittedly (1) crossed the median strip and hit the Plaintiff and (2) had been driving for 19 hours that day.

Obviously, and the result underscores this point, this is a tough case to defend on liability. If you are Defendants' truck accident lawyer, what kind of defense do you muster in a case like this? Oh, they always have something it seems. In this case, they went for the "everything and the kitchen sink" defense. First, they claimed his vision was impaired due to diabetes. This is a lot better defense in a passenger car case than it is in a truck accident case. If you are a truck driver driving a big rig truck, we expect you to have your diabetes under control or don't get behind the wheel of the dangerous weapon that is a truck. Second, and even more improbable, the defendants' truck accident lawyer also argued that the accident occurred because the truck driver's tire exploded.

We don't know the facts of the case. Certainly, it is undeniable that there are circumstances where a condition like diabetes can cause an accident that is not the fault of the driver. Certainly, if you have a heart attack while you are driving, no one can blame you for that. But the problem with the "kitchen sink" defense is that it diminishes credibility for all defenses. Okay, so diabetes and exploding tires caused the truck accident. Anything else? It has a "you don't believe this one, let's try that one" quality to it.

This bleeds into damages. Every argument Defendants' lawyer makes gets viewed through the "this lawyer would say anything" prism. I'm sure there was some debate over the extent and scope of the injuries. Again, we don't know the facts but I would not be surprised if those debates were resolved in favor of the Plaintiff because the Defendants' lawyer had lost all credibility.

I'm not saying I have never taken a position in the alternative with a jury that diminished my credibility. Sometimes lawyers do this because they have no alternative: the claim or defense is just not good and, for whatever reason, the case did not settle for the true value. But if you have a decent case or valid defenses to a case, you are better served by playing it more conservatively.

For personal injury lawyers, a perfect example of this is a multiple injury case with varying degrees of linkage to the accident. Let's say you have a shoulder surgery from a rotator cuff injury that is clearly related to the accident and a knee injury that is more of a complicated "maybe it was exacerbated, maybe it was not" type thing. As a lawyer, you have to make a call as to whether you go for damages on the knee. Because if you do, you might compromise your credibility with the jury on the shoulder.

Every case is different. But I think juries are almost invariably smarter than lawyers think they are and a trial is not a long term relationship. When a lawyer loses credibility with a jury, it is hard to get it back.

It is worth pointing out again: I'm assuming the facts of this Illinois truck accident case and using them to illustrate a point that I want to make. It could be both the diabetes defense and the tires blew up defense were both legitimate and the real damages in the case were over $5 million and the truck accident defense lawyer's strategy actually worked. But I, and every accident lawyer reading this post, suspects otherwise.