Employment Law Cases

The benefits will assist secondarily affected workers with job retraining and health care premium payments.

Around the internet, you will read advice that tells you to negotiate attorney fees with your attorney, or to inquire about alternate billing methods to save you money in your federal disability retirement application or appeal. Usually, however, the article stops there. Here is a summary of some of the different types of fee structures that are available. Before starting, however, it is helpful to understand that certain fee structures may not be appropriate for your case and may end up costing you more than you expect. Other fee structures might be unlawful (in Texas, for example, it is illegal to charge a contingency rate for a criminal law case).

1) Consultation Fee: This is the first fee that you might run across as you look for a federal or postal disability retirement lawyer. Most Firms that charge this fee do so to cover the costs and time involved in evaluating your case. Not every firm does charge a consultation fee, however. If you are not paying a consultation fee, you are probably not getting any specific legal advice about your situation; you are probably getting a cookie-cutter type analysis meant to help the attorney or Firm assess if they want to go further. This isn’t a bad thing - certain types of cases lend themselves well to such an approach.

2) Contingency Fee: This type of fee arrangement occurs where the law firm agrees to represent you, in exchange for a percentage of any recovery. Usually, that percentage will range from 20% to 45%. If it is any lower, you should be suspicious: this amount would usually not be enough to fairly compensate an attorney for his or her time on a case, so you should be wary of the old adage that you get what you pay for. If it is any higher than 45%, you should be extremely suspicious - I have only heard of contingency arrangements higher than 45% of the award in a select few cases. Read the language on a contingency fee contract carefully. While not having to pay costs up front, you will likely have to pay costs out of your share of the award. Be wary of firms that charge you a percentage of your future disability retirement benefits - this is an unusual practice and hamstrings the federal retiree on a fixed income.

3) Fixed Fees: Some attorneys will agree to represent you in your MSPB appeal or application to OPM for a fixed fee. This type of fee is a one-time fee that you pay to the attorney in exchange for legal representation. The attorney’s representation is strictly limited, in terms of time or scope. For example, a Federal Disability Retirement lawyer may charge a federal employee or postal worker a fixed fee for the first application for federal disability retirement. Once the application is filed, the representation is over, unless you agree to something different. The fixed fee can be a monthly fee for each month that your case goes on, or one fee for the whole application, or one fee for the MSPB appeal: there are unlimited ways that a fixed-fee approach can be structured to help fit your budget needs and the attorneys need to run a business. The nice thing about a fixed-fee is that it fixes your legal costs to a known dollar amount. The down side? Fixed fees can, in complex cases, be somewhat high, as the attorney or law firm does not want to run the risk that they will put more time and costs into the case than they can recover with a fixed fee.

4) Retainers and Hourly Billing: This is the most traditional method that attorneys use to charge for their services. You pay a sum, called a retainer, to the attorney. That retainer is held in a Trust Account (in Texas, they are called IOLTA accounts). Periodically, the attorney takes money out of the trust account for hours worked and fees expended. The amount that the attorney takes out is based on the number of hours worked in that period times the hourly rate that you and the federal disability retirement lawyer agreed to. If your retainer runs low, or reaches an agreed on thresh-hold, you will have to replenish the retainer. Many Firms are moving to what is called the “evergreen retainer”, where the client is required to automatically replenish the retainer to a certain dollar amount any time it reaches a certain dollar amount. The plus side of an hourly fee arrangement is that if the attorney doesn’t spend all of the retainer, the federal employee or postal worker client will receive a refund of the unused portion. The down side is that these types of fees are usually unpredictable, and can get quite expensive, particularly when an attorney has a higher hourly rate.

A word about hourly rates: hourly rates are set by an attorney or a firm based on its own internal calculations and policies. The hourly rate can vary drastically from city to city.

For example, the hourly rate at my firm is generally computed by totaling the costs of running the law office (hiring staff, equipment, office space, storage space, copiers, computers, fax machines, insurance, etc.) divided by the number of hours the Firm needs to be open for clients. Because it is cheaper to run a law office in Dallas, Texas than in Washington, D.C., the average hourly rate of an attorney in Dallas should be lower than a similar attorney in Washington, D.C. Many attorneys are maligned for high hourly fees - the greater public thinks we get rich off our hourly rates - not true. I agree that some of the big firms tend to have unusually high or exorbitant hourly rates; for most small law firms, boutique or niche practices, or solo practitioners, the hourly rate is just enough to keep the power on and the phones ringing.

5) Engagement Retainers: More and more law firms are using engagement retainers. This type of retainer, also called a True Retainer, is a one-time payment to a firm or attorney which enables them to make time available to represent you (and not some other client). The Firm and the client anticipate getting attorney fees paid later (usually through some sort of fee-shifting provision), and so the Engagement Retainer is a payment that is consideration for keeping the time open to be available to work a case.

6) Blended Arrangements: Any one or more of the above approaches can be blended together. At my Firm, for example, we charge Federal employees and postal workers a fixed fee for the first application for disability retirement, and other fees for the MSPB appeal phase (depending on the client’s needs, ability to pay, and the facts and complexity of the particular case, etc.) Blended arrangements are more and more common - attorneys as an industry are striving to find a balance between affordable legal representation and covering the high costs associate with a law practice.

Susan Harthill has published her article entitled A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Whether Traditional Trust Law “Make-Whole” Relief is Available Under ERISA Section 502 , 61 Okla.

For the small business owner, hiring manager or human resources personnel manager screening resumes of potential employees is a hard task when you consider the following statistics; studies have found that 75 percent of resumes have been falsified in some way and 89 percent are fully misleading in the information they provide.

These numbers alone make a good case for resume verification and pro-active background checks but as is often the case many employers forgo screening prospective employees. This lack of foresight can come back and bite them in the butt in the form of liability for negligent hiring and employee retention practices.

This can also lead to public relations problems no matter the size of the business or institution. In the not to distant past a well known university came under fire when it was found out that their admissions officer had lied about her education on her resume and had never earned the degrees she said she had. In the worst cases violence in the work place has lead to the loss of innocent lives.

Using background checks as part of pre-employment screening is part of proving due diligence that can help prevent negligent hiring lawsuits. Unqualified applicants can also be screened out saving time and money that employers would have wasted recruiting, hiring, and training new employees. Verifying information on resumes can also help prevent wrongful termination lawsuits.

The way a company or institution goes about screening potential employees is dependent upon the type of services or industry doing the hiring. In the health care industry for example a typical background check will include a state and federal criminal report, social security number verification, verification of education, previous employment report, professional license check, medical abuse report, and a sexual offenses report.

When selecting a company or service to do pre-employment background screenings look for a well established company that has experience doing the type of checks needed for your specific situation. They should employ licensed investigators and guarantee confidentiality. You will also want a service that does checks both domestically and internationally as well as hands on court report searches in the United States.

Background checks should be a set part of any pre-employment hiring screening. Protecting your business and current employees from potential workplace problems and lawsuits will give you peace of mind during the hiring process.

Federal prosecutors say eight people in Colorado Springs posed as veterans to collect fraudulent unemployment benefits.

The state Department of Labor says Idaho’s population growth slowed considerably during a one-year period that ended in July, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released this week.

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