Let me make one thing very clear: I am not a fan of lawyers.
In my experience, they use up precious funds to provide vacuous information. It’s never a full recommendation (eg. “you should do X”), it’s usually just options (eg. “you can do X or you can do Y”), and heaven forbid you end up in a situation where there’s no legal precedent.
Worse still: you end up in situations where you need to pay up front without any promise of actual result, or a sizeable percentage of the settlement (hence the multi-million dollar lawsuits). And don’t get me started on American lawsuits where there’s no penalty at all for people bringing scurrilous suits that almost never have hopes of winning but are filed to obtain out-of-court settlements.
And then there’s the copyright matters. I digress.
It’s been 3 days since I was fired/laid off/dismissed without case (take your pick). I received a severance letter shortly afterwards. Details? No. This is not the place for that sort of thing.
However…
I talk to my peers, some of whom have been through this before and have some practical guidance. Some of that was: talk to a lawyer, make sure I’m not getting entirely screwed. (I return to a statement I made in my previous post, which is that I’m old and work in the technology field. It’s not a great combination.)
On a recommendation, I went to Bow River Law, which claims to specialize in employment law. I will point out that I took the recommendation from a friend who was dismissed without any damned reason and had to go through a lawyer because of how his dismissal was handled. So I had some level of confidence that I would get good advice.
I should have known better. And again, I point out to the notes above: lawyers don’t make recommendations. They earn money. $350 an hour, it seems.
It’s not that I have issues with the rate per se (I was charged out at $250/hour before being released), it’s that I expect a certain level of direction for a fee that high. I have worked in hourly rates for over a quarter century – I had to come to the table with specifics, or I wasn’t of use. I struggle to understand why lawyers can charge more and give less.
And yes, I did my comparisons. There were firms that claimed I could get over 4 months of severance (one even claimed a year, which even I had serious issues with), but a lot of that would hinge greatly on existing case law, common law, and my employment agreement. (I should also add that I never signed the updated employment agreement, because I fundamentally disagreed with it.)
So $420 later (I’ll let you make that joke), I find myself slightly less lighter in the wallet and no further ahead. It’s not a recommendation, it’s a “well, maybe if you pay us another $2,500”. Nearly $3,000 for a maybe on a dismissal without cause is pretty weak. Apparently being old in an ageist industry has little value. Which means … I’m in trouble.
I have to sign off on the papers on Monday. I don’t have a choice. Either I accept the terms, or … actually, I don’t know what would happen. My family takes precedence over my own ego, though – I have to watch out for them. I have to do whatever it takes to keep a roof over our heads, food on our plates.
If you’re looking for me, I’ll be looking in a mirror, practicing “Do you want fries with that” and trying not to cry.
