Top 10 Tips to Avoid Fee Disputes, with Carl Mueller

Every attorney has felt the concern over a growing receivable, and the frustration of a nonpaying client. In the continuation of our discussion in the last episode, Carl Mueller shares his top 10 tips to avoid them and win them. The tips include:

• See a “red flag”? Trust your gut, and run.
• Check your retainer agreements for compliance with Business and Professions Code sections 6146, 6147, and 6148. And fully describe your financial arrangement, including rate increases and trial deposits.
• Did you make important case disclosures to the client on a phone call? Put that in your billing statement. The client will be deemed to have acknowledged you made the disclosures.
• Before sending you the fee arb notice, be aware of the one-year malpractice statute of limitations!

Carl I. S. Mueller’s biography, LinkedIn profile.

Appellate Specialist Jeff Lewis' biography, LinkedIn profile, and Twitter feed.

Appellate Specialist Tim Kowal's biography, LinkedIn profile, Twitter feed, and YouTube page.

Sign up for Not To Be Published, Tim Kowal’s weekly legal update, or view his blog of recent cases.

The California Appellate Law Podcast thanks Casetext for sponsoring the podcast. Listeners receive a discount on Casetext Basic Research at casetext.com/CALP. The co-hosts, Jeff and Tim, were also invited to try Casetext’s newest technology, CoCounsel, the world’s first AI legal assistant. You can discover CoCounsel for yourself with a demo and free trial at casetext.com/CoCounsel.

Other items discussed in the episode:

• Videos from this episode will be posted at Tim Kowal’s YouTube channel.

Transcript

Announcer  0:00 
Jeff, welcome to the California appellate podcast, a discussion of timely trial tips and the latest cases and news coming from the California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court. And now your hosts, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis,

Jeff Lewis  0:17  
welcome everyone. I am Jeff Lewis

Tim Kowal  0:19 
and I'm Tim kowal. Both Jeff and I are certified appellate specialists, and as uncertified podcast co host, we try to bring our audience of trial and appellate attorneys some legal news and perspectives they can use in their practice as always. If you find this podcast useful, please recommend it to a colleague. Yeah.

Jeff Lewis  0:33 
If you don't like it, email Fran Campbell to complain. Okay. Today, we

Tim Kowal  0:38  
are continuing our conversation with Carl Miller, if you missed last episode, Carl is a trial attorney focusing his practice on business litigation and disputes between attorneys or accountants and their clients, including claims of malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and disputes over legal fees and that those were the subjects that we talked about last time we were setting the table for The big reveal this episode, which will include Carl's top 10 tips to avoid billing disputes. I know that's what our listeners are tuning in for this time, if we're not thinking about it every day, about how to avoid billing disputes. Now that this episode has crossed your desk, you want to make sure to tune in and make sure that your your billing practices are up to snuff sometimes, as Carl ended our discussion last time, as attorneys, we need to make sure that we we are every now and then reviewing the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Business and Professions codes. Remind us those sections of the Business and Professions Code again, Carl so we can write them down and make sure to look them up after we finish listening.

Carl Mueller  1:39 
6146 6147 6140 6148

Tim Kowal  1:43  
Okay, so that's that's your homework after this episode. But we're going to be talking about a top 10 list, but before we get into the top 10 list, just in also, by way of recap, in the last episode, we talked about the 2021 case, Pesh versus Morgan, which talked about a the standard that courts will use to decide the reasonableness of the hourly rate and the hours incurred, including a multi factor test. And Carl talked about how important it is to get an expert right. Otherwise, it's kind of hard to ask a jury to to decide these, these issues free, yeah. And

Carl Mueller  2:21  
if you're, if you're representing the client, as opposed to the attorney, you're not even going to get to the jury if you don't

Tim Kowal  2:27  
have an expert. So yeah, yeah. And are most of the problems you see in your cases Carl have to do with hourly billing, for example. Do you see any, any issues that come up with like flat fee billing or contingency matters, or they all hourly

Carl Mueller  2:44  
contingency? Yeah, we

definitely have litigated issues on contingency fee. Generally speaking, the issues on contingency come up when it's determining what is the basis, and you'll see lawyers essentially try and overreach, you know, claiming they should get, you know, negative contingencies, what it's sometimes called, you know, on claims defeated, they should get a percentage. Or if, you know, there's the case got settled because an asset was awarded, as opposed to monetary value. But the agreement, effectively, in each case, doesn't clearly set out how they're going to calculate that contingency or the resolution was based on, you know, some sort of transaction that wasn't anticipated by the contingency fee agreement. That's usually where we see those disputes.

Tim Kowal  3:37 
Yeah, and what about flat fees? One of the things that that's usually in the that usually can be set for flat fees, is that clients tend to like them, because they know exactly what they're getting into, at least they know exactly how much you're going to pay for the services. Or do you see any downsides to flat fee in your practice, in getting involved in these billing disputes?

Carl Mueller  3:58 
Yeah, I hate flat fees. Someone's someone's getting the short end of that stick. Like, how often is it? Oh, this worked out just right for everybody, right? It never happens. The issue with flat fees, though, is, you know, usually that there's not a dispute that people can afford to litigate over, you know, because the money's already changed hands, A, B, what are you going to litigate? And you know, because it's there in the contract and see if there is an issue, it's usually because the flat fee wasn't handled in accordance to the rules of professional conduct. And that's such a slam dunk with such high stakes for the lawyer that you're going to get a very quick settlement, and if not, that lawyer is just an absolute idiot counsel. Yeah, it could be that too.

Tim Kowal  4:46 
Yeah. So, so the flat fee method is not even immune from billing disputes, huh? Carl,

Carl Mueller  4:52  
you know it's, I'm sure it's not. I haven't had to deal with it in my memory. That's not true. Actually, I. Yeah, I can remember a case where there were flat fee issues, one really rare one. But I think the issue was they kept changing the flat fee as time went on. So if you do that, of course, you're going to have issues, because there's questions of you know, is there actual additional consideration? Are you actually meeting your requirements under Rule of Professional Conduct, 1.8 in terms of arm's length versus Yeah, yeah. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Don't do it. Avoid flat fees.

Tim Kowal  5:28  
Yeah. Okay, okay. So without further ado, let's get to the top 10 list to avoid billing disputes. And let's just get right to and you've divided them up into into a few categories, client intake, engagement, agreement, relationship, management and collection practices. So let's start with, with client intake, with Tip number 10, which is, meet your client. It sounds simple, elaborate on that for us. Carl,

Carl Mueller  5:55  
well, I mean, it just happens less and less these days, people never meet their clients in the age of working from home, remote, everything. Meet your client, if you can, in person, and if not, by zoom. One, you want to know who the client is. Two, especially in areas of probate, family law, whatever. You need to know if this person's independent. You need to know if there's outside influence, and then a big part of it is understanding what you're getting into. And spending time in a meeting is really important there, because a lot of people aren't linear storytellers. You need to go around and around the issue multiple times to really get an understanding of what it is. We all have our very first duty rule of professional conduct 1.1 is, be competent. Know what you're getting into so that either you can do it, you can refer it out whatever. And that's part of this. Meet your client. You got to understand at the outset, if you can do it. I don't know if you guys can hear that my son's getting a bath in the next room and he's not happy about it.

Jeff Lewis  7:05 
Yeah, yeah, we can hear it. But you know, another part of meeting your client is feeling out or gaging whether or not the client has reasonable expectations about the outcome of the case and whether or not you can deliver those expectations,

Carl Mueller  7:20 
right, right? And that that's 1.1 that's 1.4 you're required to communicate, and we'll talk about expectation settings and surprise a little bit later. But everything in this is based on this first issue. If you don't meet your client and establish a relationship with your client and understand what you're doing. You're not gonna be able to do any of these next things well. And you know, I said this in the last episode, that every single time there's been a fee dispute where I'm representing a law firm, there's a point in the narrative where they say, and this red flag came up during intake. That's where you find the red flags? Yeah, which leads us to the next

Tim Kowal  8:03 
item. That's that's number nine, say no to red flags. So give us some examples of these, of these red flags that come up and we need to say no to. Well, the

Carl Mueller  8:12  
first thing is trust your gut if, even if it's just a bad feeling, trust that bad feeling. Because, you know, hopefully you've been doing this long enough that your gut is at least a little bit educated, and you know there's even if you can't identify what it is in the moment, you probably will in my office, 18 months later, have figured out what it is that's giving you that bad feeling. But then there's just a series of things that are red flags. Someone asking you for the friends and family rate. They're not going to value your time. Okay, so you don't want that relationship. Someone's saying something like, you know, I don't care how much it costs. I'd rather pay you than them. All these things mean they don't really want to pay anybody anything. And then, you know, weird after the fact, negotiations say, you know, you've told them what your rate is. You've told them what the retainer deposits going to be. You send them the engagement agreement, and then they come back and say, I actually, you know, let's do a $5,000 instead of a $10,000 deposit. If they have a problem paying your deposit at the outset, what's going to change where they're going to be able to pay your fees as things get more expensive later. So all of these things are little red flags that come up that, you know, be aware of and just walk away.

Tim Kowal  9:25 
What do you think is this a red flag when, when clients are just talkers, you know, they like to talk a lot. They like to call on the phone a lot and ask a lot of questions. You know, it's, it's fine, you know, it's, it's they different people communicate different ways and in a different amounts. But sometimes at the beginning of the case, I think, Okay, this is going to be, you know, the estimate is about this much. And then a few days later, and a dozen phone calls later, I realize I'm going to wind up billing a heck of a lot more, because this person needs a lot more hand holding. Is that a red flag, or is that just something I need to adjust their expectations on. Look, you. You call me this much, I'm going to have to bill you this much more. So

Carl Mueller  10:03 
I'm going to answer your either or question with a yes, because when as soon as you figure out that this is the case with this client, you then need to adjust their expectations, or just tell them what's going to happen and see how they react. If they react by saying, Well, don't charge me for that time. Well, then there you go. They don't understand how an attorney client relationship works, and don't respect the business model, which probably means they're not a good client for you. And then also, you've got to understand who you as a lawyer do and don't work well with you know, there are just some lawyers out there who don't like having conversations with clients, and if their client calls them a bunch of times, that's going to result in a breakdown of the relationship, because that lawyer just gets pissed. And you got to know who you are, because, you know, there's, you know, other let's take family law. You know that entire business model is predicated on a lot of hand holding and back and forth with the clients, because that's what that's what they're doing. They're they're walking clients through the worst time in their lives. And there's this emotional part of it that you know assumes that back and forth is going to occur, yeah,

Tim Kowal  11:18 
okay, tip number eight on your list is no conflict. Now it seems fairly obvious. We know, and you know there can't be any conflict of interest. Or if there are, you have to have conflict waivers. Is it as simple as that, or is there something more lurking under your no conflict vice? So

Carl Mueller  11:34  
this isn't a cliche, but it's just my personal terrible joke which is the the only qualification that you really need to be inside Ethics Council for an am law top 100 is the inability to spot a conflict that interferes with cash flow. And yeah, it just comes from a repeated witnessing of situations where a big law firm will say, Okay, we see there might be a client or a conflict here, but we know we're going to make a lot of money from this. We're going to say it's resolved. And wink wink, move on. And you know, a lot of firms work in a way where there's ethics counsel and the only thing they do with conflicts is spot the conflict and then send it back down to the originating lawyer to kind of work it out. And you know that is because a lot of conflicts have to do with this language in the rules professional conduct, whether or not the referee to representations or CO representations, whatever are derived from the same, or substantially the same, transactions, occurrences, facts, whatever. So what you'll get is the originating attorney thinking the ethics lawyers handling it, and the ethics lawyer thinking the originating or the Yes. So both just point the finger at the other, and nobody does anything. And yeah, and that happens a lot, but then more than that, in the small firm, small firm setting, you get these really personal relationships with your clients, and you think you can overlook situations where you know you're representing a family business and the husband and wife go through a divorce. There's something else going on these, you know, where you're their friends, and you think you can do it, you're just putting yourself in harm's way later on, don't do it. Refer it out. Get your friends involved that are attorneys to take things on, and you're doing everybody

Tim Kowal  13:33  
a favor. Yeah, yeah. Keep it clean. Keep it simple. It's, it's kind of like the same rule for why it's best to tell the truth, because there's less to remember. You know, yeah, right, right. You know less, fewer conflicts. Mean, you know the litigation doesn't have to be as complex as it does, especially when you keep trying to change hats throughout the litigation. Okay, all right, let's get to tip number seven, and now we're under the subheading engagement, agreement and relationship management under the Carl's top 10 tips to avoid billing disputes, number seven, read the relevant business and profession code sections and make sure that you comply. So tell us more about that. What are, what are some of these? These, these basics. Under the Business and Professions Code section, there's there. They're so basic that we never even bother reading them. We all know, know them intuitively, but obviously we don't. I

Carl Mueller  14:24  
mean, the first is, it's got to be signed, which is such a low bar, but you'd be shocked at how often it comes up and it's the first part of each 6147 and 6148 so both contingency and hourly arrangements, it's got to be signed and the client has to have a copy of the document that contains both the client and the attorney signatures, and especially attorneys who like to do things in person and get wedding signatures, they will often forget to give their. Client a copy that has the attorney signature on it, and the language is such that the requirement is that the agreement fully executed is given to the client at the outset. So even if you try and say, Oh, I gave it to him six months later, you get really strict, and a lot of judges will be under the statute, you've essentially created a voidable fee agreement by not giving that right away. And why? Why is that important? And the the whole point of this seven is you don't want to give your client, you know, ammunition to go fight you with something. Because when they go and talk to a lawyer like me, I'm going to tell them, If I can't find any reason not to pay the bill. And the violation of 6147 a, whatever it is that the thing be signed and in writing, is a really good reason not to pay the bill, because you have, you know, a right, right, you know, right away you've got a good argument to knock down what the total bill is going to be. Substantially,

Tim Kowal  15:58  
one thing that gives me peace of mind using with Clio, for example. I'm sure a lot of other practice management softwares are like this with with the esign retainer agreements, as soon as you know the client signs, I get a notification that I need to sign it, and as soon as i e sign it, it automatically beams it back to the client. And so I know that I don't even have to, you know, check because it's, it's automatic,

Carl Mueller  16:20 
yeah, or, you know, ask them to email you back that you're doing it by email, which is, think I almost always do that, but you email them the document signed by you already, so that, to accept it, they have to email you back the signed document. Well, they already have a copy. It's in their outbox so, you know, it's covered, yeah, you know, there's a couple other provisions that are really just low hanging fruit to you know, kind of hit the headlines on 6147 contingency fee agreements has to include the language in substance that the rate is not set by law, but is negotiable between the attorney and the client. If you don't have that in there, even if everything else is perfect, the client can say, I'm voiding this hourly or this contingency fee agreement, and you are left with a claim for quantum merit that that can be a killer on a big case, and it's something that I have used to a client's benefit on many occasions. And in addition to that, a case law says that any amendment to the agreement, if it's a contingency fee agreement, also has to include this negotiability language, even if that is not the provision that's being amended. So for instance, say you have a contingency fee agreement and you want to amendment, amend it because, you know, trying to think of something weird, like, say you change how costs are handled, say you change

Jeff Lewis  17:51  
raising your hourly rates.

Carl Mueller  17:53  
Yeah, any anything could be anything, but if you have any amendment to that agreement, but fail to include this language, this very specific language about whether it's negotiable. You have created a voidable fee agreement so you could be knocking out your contingency fee. That's a big one. So those are probably the two easiest things that I see screwed up the most frankly,

Tim Kowal  18:17 
okay, and that takes us to number six, ensure that every aspect of the financial arrangement is in the engagement agreed agreement. So you covered some, some things along those lines. What else? What else about the financial arrangement between the attorney and client need to, needs to be in the engagement agreement. Yeah.

Carl Mueller  18:35 
So this is actually also in the Business and Professions Code, but obviously the standard I like to see is higher than what the law calls for. Obviously the best practice is often higher than what the law cost calls for. So one, make the hourly rates absolutely clear. You know, don't just give broad ranges. Make sure the client knows what they're getting into. Make it absolutely clear how costs are going to be covered if you've got a contingency fee, is the contingency on the net or on the gross? So is it on the contingency before the costs come out or after the costs come out? And whose portion does do the costs come out of? What costs will be forwarded or advanced? You know, for instance, there's some people kind of how they treat secretaries and legal staff. Is that billable time. There's authority out that there that says, if it's a true Secretary task that should be overhead, therefore not reflected in the as a separate line item in the bills, but included in the hourly rate charged by the attorney. So if you're going to do something different than that, right? That's got to be in your fee agreement, otherwise you're going to run into a problem with that Pesh standard that we were talking about. Other things you want in your fee agreement are how you're going to deal with annual rate increases. A good thing to do. You know, I I put right in there what the range of rate increases are going to be, put when they're going to be done, and put whether and what form notice of the rate agreement will be in. You don't you can say, for instance, the only notice you're going to get is in the February invoice. It's going to show that the January rate increase. There's nothing wrong with that. The client may not like it particularly, and you got some back and forth, but it's there in the agreement. Talk about fee deposits, cost deposits. Your right to increase the fee deposit, pre trial deposits are a big one. Put your right to a pre trial deposit in there. Because, you know, especially if it's a case you might lose, you might want to get paid a good portion of that. What it takes to go to trial upfront. And then, you know, what are you what's, do you have the right to fire them if they don't pay the trial deposit? That's, you know, give yourself enough time so that if they don't pay the trial deposit, you know, say we're going to make the trial deposit due three months before trials. That gives you time to tell the court they breached the agreement. I need out. Yeah, that's,

Tim Kowal  21:08 
that's a big one. That's a, you know, trial prep is a huge checkpoint, and so that, I think that's great advice to make sure you're giving yourself plenty of time to make sure that that relationship and the financial arrangement with the client is still healthy well in advance of trial. Okay, then that takes us to tip number five, have ongoing and clear communication with the client so that the client is not getting a surprise. And that's kind of along the lines what we've been talking about. Is there anything else you have in mind with tip number five there about having ongoing and clear communications to prevent the client from becoming surprised? Yeah,

Carl Mueller  21:40  
there things you can do there. Be transparent about who's working on the case, so that you don't get objections later on. Why is this associate doing this? You don't want high turnaround on a case either. That leads to a lot of challenges to fees. If you got over the course of a one year matter, you've got eight different associates checking in on the case you want if, for instance, you've got a lot of things happening in one month. Think about sending, let's back up. Assume you're sending monthly bills. You've got one month you got just a ton going on. Think about sending bimonthly bills, or semi monthly, whatever it is,

Jeff Lewis  22:27 
or a pre bill, just a drop bill, so the client can see the work that's being done

Carl Mueller  22:31 
exactly you just you don't want them to see a big number that gives them sticker shock. And then any time that either a new risk has appeared in the case that you weren't aware of, or there's a motion pending, or something happens where there could be something that really affects the case. You'd have a forthright conversation with the client so they know it's coming and what the possible bad news could be. Okay.

Tim Kowal  22:58  
Now we're on to the final stretch here, we're talking about collection practices. Tip number four, clear billing entries that describe what you're doing. And cya tell us about that. Yeah.

Carl Mueller  23:10 
So billing is as much for you as it is for the client. You know, there's a lot of literature out there about block billing versus task billing versus, you know, something in between. I'm not as concerned with that stuff as does the bill allow the client to know what you did. That's really what matters. And then if there are moments where you disclose something important to the client, especially if you did it during a conversation, make sure that disclosure appears in the bill, because that does two things. One, obviously, it allows the client to see it and allows you to point back to it and say, Look, this is what happens, right? It gives you this narrative of what's going on in the case. Two, if your engagement letter and generally, there's also just the common law presumption that people have read the stuff you send them. If your engagement letter says something on the long lines, you have this long to object but you didn't whatever's in that bill. If they didn't object to it, right? They're deemed to have at least seen it, if not in the language of the contract accepted it. So if you can say, I disclosed to you this risk and that's in the invoice, you then create this defense for yourself. And it's it's something I really try and do, because, you know, essentially, not only did I disclose this risk and then re putting it back for you in this invoice, so I can later say, you know, you've gotten this disclosed to you multiple times. You can't now say you never forgot it. Yeah, and then, obviously,

Tim Kowal  24:45 
the only thing I'm concerned about is that my own personal policy is to avoid putting attorney client communications in my billing descriptions, just so it makes it easier to if I ever need to produce them in a attorney fee motion, I don't have to redact them things like that.

Carl Mueller  24:59  
I think it's it's worth having to redact a little bit. Oh, Jeff,

Tim Kowal  25:03  
you're muted. Let

Jeff Lewis  25:04  
me say this, in terms of redaction, I do a lot of anti slap motions with fee requests, and I find a lot easier the redaction task to make sure your billing entries follow a common structure, legal research, Ray, and then everything the ray is blacked out, or telephone call with client Ray, and everything after the ray, if all your entries and your staff are following the same kind of format, makes redaction very easy. That's a very good point.

Tim Kowal  25:27 
That's good tip. I like that all right. Now I'm officially changing my my practice on billing entries. I think those are, those are both great tips. Okay? Tip number three, issue bills promptly, regularly and make them easy to pay. What do you mean by that? Carl,

Carl Mueller  25:43  
this is lying fruit. Guys get your bills out right away at the beginning of the month. Give your clients a way to click through to pay them by credit card or bank transfer. It's very straightforward. And then have reminders. You know, you mentioned Clio, most of this billing software can set essentially, it's not technically a reissue of the invoice, but it's, you know, a two week reminder. And because everyone's bills come out, you know, whatever, the end of the month, so your clients are going to get deluged with a bunch of bills. But if you have this reminder come out two weeks later, it's going to increase your collection rate, and you would just be shocked at how many people don't send out their bills right away. And first of all, I have had judges say that the failure to comply with a commitment in your fee agreement to issue monthly bills is a breach of that agreement, which, like that, is a pretty, pretty tough position for a judge to take. But at the same time, I've seen really egregious things, like bills not being issued for, you know, an entire year of a representation so like, you know, there's, there's extremes on all sides here, but just be aware that there, I have seen judges do it when, you know the situation was that in one year, the law firm only issued seven bills. That means, you know, a couple months just got lumped together. You know, they only did that a handful of times, but the judge said that's enough. You've reached the agreement. So we're going to knock you down to quantum Maryland, which is, in my mind, I don't think that's appropriate, but this judge did. And you got to remember, most of your judges don't have any experience in invoicing on an hourly rate basis. Most of them were das or public defenders, or if they were civil, you know, they're they're probably not dealing with their invoicing as much they're at a big firm, and somebody was taking care of it for them. So you know that you got to keep that in mind that the judges looking over this stuff probably don't have a ton of you know, actual experience doing these

Tim Kowal  27:54 
things. Tip number two, be willing to negotiate an overdue receivable or grant a discount in return for partial payments or releases. And this is something I wanted to ask you about even in our last session. Carl about how these cases, how do they get to the point of litigation, I would think that the attorney would be willing to just take a partial payment do a partial reduction. So elaborate on that. Tip number two, about negotiating and accepting it in offering a discount rather than maybe litigating, yeah, I

Carl Mueller  28:24  
would say, as a group, lawyers can be, you know, a little stubborn and prickly, and so you get a lot of folks out there who think, you know, I'm going to stand on principle on this one, not going to let this punk bully me around On this receivable. I can guarantee you, by the time that matter wakes it makes its way through superior court, you will change your mind, yeah, you will think back, I should have negotiated that invoice. It's

Tim Kowal  28:54 
kind of like that red flag you talked about earlier, that when a client says, I don't care about about paying. It's the principle of the thing,

Carl Mueller  29:01 
yeah, yeah. It's very much like that with lawyers. The biggest difference there is by the time they've finished sitting through their deposition, if they get deposed, and have done all the Depo prep, have done all the discovery and then reviewed all their discovery responses in preparation for the deposition. Think about all the money they've lost because they couldn't bill for that time. And then, God, if you got to sit through trial, you're talking about a full, you know, at least it's a jury trial week, no matter how short it is with a jury trial, you're talking a week that they are effectively not able

Tim Kowal  29:38  
to bill. Yeah, yeah. It's like the opportunity cost is as much as the real cost.

Carl Mueller  29:44  
So it's just very, very difficult

for a fee dispute to be a good business decision. It's gotta be a big, big fee dispute for it to be a good business decision if it, if it's got a shot of going the distance. So yeah, the only principal that should manage. To you, earns interest. Okay,

Tim Kowal  30:01  
all right. And finally, tip number one, to avoid billing disputes, be aware of the One Year malpractice statute of limitations. Tell us how to do that and all of its nuances,

Carl Mueller  30:15  
all of its nuances, is a law school course.

Jeff Lewis  30:19  
That's a separate episode. Yeah,

Carl Mueller  30:21 
I do love that statute in terms of just sheer nerdery in all of the various ways that you can try and toll that thing out. But yeah, it's one year statute limitation versus four one year for the malpractice four for the breach of contract. So take your time before you send out that notice of clients right to VR. I know I've seen firms who then quickly stop doing this, who send out the notice of client's right to fee ARB. You know, with that invoice, after they've terminated the relationship, the problem they've created for themselves is, if the client then exercises their right to fee ARB, they are forcing a fee lawsuit and legal malpractice claim. They're essentially making it happen because either both sides are going to accept this non binding fee ARB, or one side has to file a lawsuit, and you've told the statute of limitations while this non binding fee ARB is pending, and you know that's a compulsory cross complaint to a fee dispute is the malpractice claim, so you're forcing this client to sue you for malpractice. So just wait. Just sit on it and wait. You got time. And you'd be shocked at how often lawyers don't know that it's this different statute of limitations, or, you know, secondarily, just get too caught up in the moment. And, you know, meet that cliche again, of, you know, making their own decisions, not talking to a lawyer, and therefore have a fool for a client. You know, think I did nothing wrong, they can't sue me for malpractice. You know, what's the first rule of the United States of America? You can sue anybody for anything at any time. And yeah,

Tim Kowal  32:18 
if attorneys listening to this are are now suddenly very worried about some of their billing practices and and they want to talk to you or somebody about getting their practices up to snuff. Do you take calls on that? Or where should attorneys turn to if they want to make sure they kind of want an audit of their procedures and make sure that they get up to snuff with the BNP code? Well, the

Carl Mueller  32:39 
first thing is read the code. You know, I do have a healthy amount of experience here, so yeah, I will take a call and walk someone through my thoughts. But the biggest thing is just read the code section, because usually the errors are from a lack of knowledge and just not following the clear Black Letter rule, not including the language that's necessary there, and then, you know, the rest of it is, a lot of times there's just never a dispute, you know, people just most. Most of these conflicts just go away. People settle,

Tim Kowal  33:13 
yeah, all right. And how do people get in contact with you? Carl,

Carl Mueller  33:17 
so my email is cmueller@mclitigation.com check out the Web. Web, website, MC litigation.com Miller Christianson, okay,

Tim Kowal  33:29 
and obviously that contact information will be in the show notes. All right. Any other parting thoughts before we sign off?

Carl Mueller  33:35  
You know, just don't be a jerk. That's probably the best way to avoid fetus.

Tim Kowal  33:40 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be direct with your with your clients, honest with your clients, make sure that they they know what they're getting into. Yeah, I think we covered some great tips today. Jeff, do you have anything else before we sign off here? No, thanks, Carl, I

Jeff Lewis  33:55  
learned something interesting. So thank you.

Carl Mueller  33:57 
Okay, yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I

Tim Kowal  33:59  
really appreciate it. All right. So Jeff, that's gonna wrap up this episode.

Jeff Lewis  34:03 
Yeah, if you have suggestions for us for future episodes, go ahead and email us at info@calpodcast.com and in the future, look for tips on laying the groundwork for successful appeal. All right, see

Tim Kowal  34:13 
you next time. Thanks again. Carl.

Announcer  34:15 
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