Partners Against the Grain: Lawyers Suing Lawyers

Katya Valasek:

We're joined today by Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter of Bland Richter, a small but noisy law firm in South Carolina focused on legal and medical malpractice.

Malpractice work wins you few friends. Some professional medical organizations have even gone so far as to discourage their members from testifying against their peers. Opinions of legal malpractice lawyers are probably a bit more mixed, but can still leave lawyers filing these cases feeling isolated. Luckily for you two, you found each other.

Before we get into a discussion of lawyers suing lawyers, let's talk about your partnership. On the show, we talk a lot about the practice of law and a lot of elements of the business of law, but haven't really talked through what it means to be a partner to someone else. Today, you're in year 26 of an “unexpected partnership” because of how different you are from each other. Eric, can you describe Ronnie?

Eric Bland:

Significantly intelligent, rightfully measured. One of the best orators I've come across in the legal profession. He is dedicated and he's extremely ethical.

Katya Valasek:

And Ronnie, how would you describe Eric?

Ronnie Richter:

Eric is a street tough kid from Philadelphia. He's immature in the best sense of the word. Fart jokes are still funny. Cohen movies are funny, which is a great thing about him. He's extremely well-read. He's extremely well-informed on matters of politics and the law.

And he's a passionate guy. He's your best friend in the foxhole and he's your worst enemy on the battlefield.

Katya Valasek:

Would two Ronnies or two Erics work in a partnership?

Eric Bland:

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Ronnie Richter:

Dear Lord.

Eric Bland:

We would have either killed each other or been out of business. I have the bad quality of letting my mouth get ahead of my brain and my mouth is my best weapon. Words are my currency. But without Ronnie having a leash around my neck, pulling me back, I would have either been disbarred or, you know, got our firm sued so many times we would be out of business.

Katya Valasek:

Ronnie, you had just as an immediate reaction as Eric. Why wouldn't two Ronnies work?

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, two Ronnies probably wouldn't go anywhere. Two Ronnies would probably be lost in some analytical fog. The view is great from the top of the mountain, but I don't know that I would go there if I didn't go there kicking and screaming a little bit. Eric takes me places I probably wouldn't otherwise visit, but I'm there to make sure we then don't go over the cliff. I think that's the tension; to get to the mountaintop, but not go over.

Eric Bland:

I like living out of my comfort zone and I like tension and discord and I like to get as close to the flame as possible. Ronnie doesn't like tension and discord. He likes to be analytical and if he makes a strike, he wants to make sure that strike kills. So he hunts with a single shot. I hunt with bombs and shotguns.

Katya Valasek:

So with these differences then, what brings you together?

Eric Bland:

A common purpose of righting wrongs. That's number one. Number two, we've always been outsiders. I've been an outsider just because of my personality, coming from Philadelphia to South Carolina. Ronnie came from a blue-collar background. We were never part of the country club crowd. They would have never let us even in the parking lot, let alone to get inside. We hate bullies, although I'm called a bully. I bully because I don't like other people bullying our clients.

So our uniform purpose together is exactly the same. We're not lawyers that shy away from controversial cases. We kind of gravitate towards them or people send them our way. We have so many battle scars from suing people that you should have never sued that we're almost immunized from. And it's nothing that bothers us. It's the case. It's the client first for us. And that's the common thread that we have that has kept us together for 26 years.

Ronnie Richter:

When you look at the veneers, they look quite different. But if you peel a layer back and get down to the hardwood, it's exactly the same. We both have this, I don't know, blue collar, middle America chip on our shoulder. I mean, we have a very simplistic view of right and wrong that is informed, I think, from a childhood that didn't come from much privilege. My family wasn't poor when we grew up, but we didn't have money. And I think Eric and I came from kind of that same background where, to his point, we would have been excluded from many of the things we're now invited to.

And for me and Eric, I grew up in the South in the 70s and 80s, not to date myself, but to me growing up then, Eric was a Yankee. I mean, and it was a very unlikely pairing, but to have met one another, to have worked with one another, to get past that initial reaction that, “hey, he's a lot different than me,” and to take the time to realize, “no, he's exactly like me,” I think that's really been the glue.

Katya Valasek:

So you just mentioned these differences, Ronnie. It's great that you have these shared beliefs and this common driving force that's moving you forward in the work you do, but differences can cause tension. So Ronnie, where do you see tension bubbling in your partnership with Eric?

Ronnie Richter:

You'd be surprised. There's such a mutual respect and affection for one another that, I mean, it is a relationship. We have our moments like any relationship does, but the guy is just, he's tough and ballsy in ways that I never was. And I respect and admire that about him. And then I think I bring skills to the field that he doesn't really have. So you got to have more than one tool in the shed.

We keep a jury excited because they're anxious to see that new energy each time. When Eric takes the floor, it's a different energy. Now, if it was all Eric all the time, it would wear you out. If it was all Ronnie all the time, you'd probably go to sleep. But that yin and yang is very effective.

Katya Valasek:

What about internal tension? Eric, are you ever worried? You know, you're about to get up and say something. Are you ever worried like, “oh God, Ronnie, forgive me for this?”

Eric Bland:

Yeah. Every time I write an email and every time I stand up in front of a judge or, you know, in a client conversation, I'll say something that is so coarse and off color. What's on my heart is on my tongue. The other thing is my sense of urgency is different than Ronnie's. Ronnie's, again, analytical and measured, and he would rather choose all the perfect words. For me, I don't care if some of my words are wrong. The message needs to get out.

And so if we have any differences, it's I drive him crazy with pestering. Hey, did you get this out? Get out. "Did you send the email? Yeah, I'll send the email. Did you send the email? I'm thinking about it. Well, don't think about it. Send it. So if our tension, if we have tension, it's on the speed of which we do things. Now we finish each other's tasks.

He doesn't have to say, you're doing this, I'm doing that. You do this, I'm doing that. It just happens organically. It's crazy. We never step over each other. We very rarely write the same email. Like if something comes in and it needs a real-time response, I'll do it. He won't see 10 seconds later. Ronnie had done it. He'll know in his head, “boy, Eric's going to respond to this.” Or I'll know in my head, “Ronnie's going to respond to this”. It's really weird the way we don't step over each other in emails and responses.

Wouldn't you say, Ronnie?

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, I would say that. Yeah. If there's tension, if there's anxiety or agita that I experience, it's the, “oh my God, he didn't just say that” moment. There's been a few. And it's not that what was said was wrong, but maybe I just would have said it a little differently.

Katya Valasek:

So one of the tools in your toolkit or weapons in your arsenal, I guess, is a better analogy based on the conversation, is the media. Can you talk about how that works for your cases? How do you leverage the media?

Eric Bland:

Whether it's the press or it's television, journalists, or media personalities, we have found that if you respect each other and you're truthful with each other, you both benefit from each other. Look, they use us and we use them. It's a mutual use. Everybody puts it right out in the open. We have found that pressure breaks pipes. And what litigants can't handle is the pressure of the media.

So we've built relationships with journalists. We've built relationships with people who are podcasters, people who do the news. And I think the philosophy of our firm has always been we hit first. So when we sue you, it's not just a normal complaint, it's a tooth-jarring complaint. It is so factually driven. Now we make sure we confirm our facts before we put them out there. But in everything we do, we don't stab you in the back, we stab you from the front. So you know what the battle's going to look like from the start.

We give you the opportunity to settle a case in pursuit of mediation. And when we go to mediation, we do a very extensive PowerPoint and we tell them, “look, we're not impervious to new facts, but you're not going to like us at the end of this opening statement.” But that's not what is important. What is important is you see what this case is going to be like, and it's only going to get worse from today forward.

Now Ronnie, again, is measured, is reserved, is very mindful of a lawyer's duties of pre-trial publicity and what you can and cannot do. I, on the other hand, again, get very close to the line. Sometimes I cross it on purpose because I think that the matter is of such public concern.

We represented Ric Flair and that was fun and that got in the papers, in the national papers, but we had a shooting case in 2017, which put us on the national stage. And quite frankly, almost every case that we file or defending ends up in the newspaper. And I would say 90% of the time, the media benefited us more than the other side.

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah. It's a tricky tool. It's tricky for me. Eric is better at it than I am. I find it tricky because the control freak in me does not like the idea that I don't get to ultimately deliver the message. Now, having said that, we have cases that I would call sunlight cases. There's compelling need for the public to be informed. It's really the only safe environment in which to try some of these cases, safe for us professionally. Whoever it is, the object is dangerous. These are hard targets. And some of these matters are best litigated in the wide open with the lights on and they don't like it. It may be uncomfortable, but you got to do it.

Katya Valasek:

Yeah. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Eric Bland:

It is the best disinfectant, but it's also the best intangible weapon you have on your battlefield because we operate in the sun and we operate under pressure. And a lot of defendants don't like that kind of scrutiny, that public scrutiny.

Ronnie Richter:

Now, let me say too about the technical rule of this 3.6 and pretrial publicity. Respectfully, I think it's antiquated. I think it has no application in a social media world. I mean, for a rule to say, “a lawyer shall not say publicly in a pretrial setting that which they reasonably believe would materially prejudice the proceedings.” I mean, come on, what can anybody say anymore that would reasonably materially prejudice a proceeding? I mean, there's so much white noise out there and cases take forever to try.

I think the rule needs significant revisiting and revision. It doesn't keep up with the speed of modern communication. If you're going to have a concern that something that's being said will materially prejudice a proceeding, there should first be some proximity to the proceeding. So, if we file a lawsuit today in South Carolina, it's not going to be tried for two years. To think something we're going to say today is going to prejudice a jury from two years from now is ridiculous. And if you want to make like a blackout zone within 30 days of the call of the case or something, maybe that makes some sense. But I think it would be hard to put fence posts around the First Amendment on this subject matter, especially with modern communication.

Eric Bland:

We kind of subscribe to the Lee Atwood way of practicing law. It's real-time and it's real-time response. So, if something is filed publicly and the case already is being discussed, we will then send out a press release based on a filing. You know, that's what you do in politics, but lawyers aren't used to that. Their clients certainly aren't used to that.

Ronnie Richter:

I mean, to Eric's point, an exception to the rule is we are permitted to say publicly that which is necessary to correct a false narrative. Well, again, it's an antiquated rule. Everything we do as lawyers is a false narrative. If I'm the plaintiff and you're the defendant, you're not agreeing with my narrative. And so, literally everything we say in our filings, the other side can criticize as a false narrative to create the need to address or correct that false narrative.

Katya Valasek:

So, with these real-time responses, there's sometimes risk. Have any of you ever said anything, gotten ahead of yourself, and then later regretted it?

Eric Bland:

Well, I don't know whether I've regretted it, but I've gotten bar complaints in real-time. You know, we had in the Murdaugh case a situation where a non-party to our settlement, one of our settlements and resolutions on a confession of judgment that was given to us by Alex Murdaugh, we had a non-party file a complaint against us – or against me – because I went to the newspaper right away and said, “this is insane. We have a non-party who was objecting to us getting a confession of judgment by Alex Murdaugh.” And I named that party and that party said that I was trying to affect ongoing proceedings and I violated Rule 3.6.

And you know, when we have a case that's in the press, Ronnie literally wakes up every morning and with trepidation turns on the computer to find out, okay, what happened last night? Because during the Murdaugh case, I was on TV, sometimes three different shows a night, plus getting quoted in the newspaper. And so is Ronnie, he's doing his interviews in the Low Country. I had more national exposure than Ronnie did. And, you know, hopefully we're saying the same message kind of that, that's how fast paced it gets.

Katya Valasek:

Ronnie, what about you? You're a little more measured.

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, I am measured. I, you know, and that's not a, it's not a bad thing to be measured by the way. Okay.

Eric Bland:

It's a good badge of honor to wear.

Ronnie Richter:

It's a good thing. But you know, with regard to the press in this issue, I don't want to create the impression that we flaunt the rule. We very much do not flaunt the rule. But again, if the rule is we're not to say that which we reasonably believe would materially prejudice, that is, I have never done that. I don't believe Eric has ever done that. I don't reasonably believe that anything I have to say moves the needle anywhere.

I mean, it's just, especially in a situation like where there's literally thousands and thousands of articles written and pundit after pundit after pundit. I mean, it would be an act of sheer ego to believe that it was the thing that I said, or that Eric said that somehow materially prejudiced the entire proceeding. That's preposterous.

Eric Bland:

It is preposterous. You know, there were 6,000 articles written about Alex Murdaugh. Not one was positive. We said probably less than what New York Post writers were writing about him. And for us to get singled out, yeah, it's a compliment, but it was ridiculous.

Katya Valasek:

So I will out myself as a fan of your firm from my following of that particular trial. If I can hazard my own uninformed, anecdotal opinion, the difference between what you were saying and what the New York Post was saying is you always seem to get it right, right? Your responses seem to be more in line with reality of what was going on during that proceeding. And there were wild conspiracies and wild stories going around.

Eric Bland:

We understand the soil. You know, this case was about the soil of South Carolina. We understand what would resonate with the jurors. And a lot of the national journalists and pundits really didn't understand that. But we understood this was not the flamboyant lawyer case. This was a case about Alex Murdaugh. And those facts were so devastating to the ordinary person. It was going to be a guilty verdict regardless because the facts are the facts. And we understood the facts and we understood the soil.

Katya Valasek:

I want to talk now a little bit about how it actually works between you two in your practice. You two are the only partners, but you've hired some staff. So that includes an associate, some paralegals, and IT. But what do your interactions look like on a daily basis?

Ronnie Richter:

Anything from we're traveling together to we talk multiple, multiple times a day or countless text traffic and email traffic. Eric said it earlier, and I don't know, I think organic is the best word, that we know what has to be done. And we're both about the job of getting it done. Depositions need to be taken. Discovery needs to be done. I mean, it's getting done.

And who runs point on what issue, that's kind of a toss-up at mid-court a lot of times. And we just figure it out and you take this one, I got that one. But we're trying to match personalities and skill sets to individual tasks as it's indicated.

Eric Bland:

Ronnie's a better writer. Ronnie makes the better legal arguments. Ronnie's the better appellate court arguer. He takes the better expert deposition. I am better if it's a really tough deposition and I got to beat somebody up to get them to the point that they need to get to a mediation table. That's my strength. I love facts. I love facts more than I love reading law. Ronnie likes reading law more than he likes reading juicy facts.

So that's a great combination. If you do a good job preparing for mediation or preparing for settlement, you're going to get an offer that it's very difficult for you to tell a client to not take. We're not lawyers that ask for continuances. Nobody has to keep asking us time and time again, “can I have a deposition date?” We are not a volume shop. We made that decision early on.

We made the decision that we can make more money and do better for our clients to take fewer cases and work them to death than to have 200 cases and when they come up you just settle them for whatever's being offered. Prolific serial emailer. It'll drive anybody crazy. I do them at night, I do them on the weekend, I do them in the morning, multiple times a day. I follow up on the follow-up and that's because we don't have volume cases to focus on. Hopefully we've taken the right ones.

Most of the time we're good at screening a case and bringing in the right one that we can work on. Some of them require Ronnie and I to work on them together, some we work separately. Some cases Ronnie brings in, I don't even meet the client. He litigates it from start to finish and there's the result. On other cases, they're hiring both of us for our personalities.

Katya Valasek:

So you tag team in court. Ronnie, do you tag team in running the business as well?

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, sure. People would look at our firm and say, “oh, it's just a three-person firm.” And our joke is we'd be smaller but somebody has to quit. The idea of growing some big firm and feeding some big machine and babysitting young lawyers, it's just never appealed to us. We could have been a big shop a long time ago. We don't want to be. We're doing exactly what we want to do. But more importantly, we're not doing what we don't want to do. And our structure gives us the luxury to say no, which is fantastic.

We're still skinny after all these years. I mean, it's great. It's a great feeling of freedom. And a lot of the malpractice cases that we do see, I think are a byproduct of the economic pressure of you have to take everything and you have lawyers who are dabbling outside of their comfort zone and making mistakes in areas of law that they never should have touched in the first place. And so I love our structure and the way the business works.

Katya Valasek:

So part of the reason you're able to stay lean is because you have developed that balance of knowing where each other's strengths are and who should take point on the different tasks. How long did it take for you to figure that out?

Eric Bland:

I think we had it when we started because, for four or five years before we solidified a partnership, we worked together on cases. He was with a different firm and we worked together. So we knew each other's qualities and habits even before we came in a partnership. It wasn't just that we started cold.

Ronnie Richter:

I've said to my son and more times than I can count, I'm sure he could recite this quote for you, but the world needs really smart people and the world needs really hardworking people. The world does not need smart, lazy people. So in Eric, what did I see and what do we have in common? We were workers. I think if you want a skill in a partner that you're looking at, you want hustle. Trust is essential. But if you're looking at a partner and they appear very talented, but lazy, unmotivated, I'd run for the exits.

Eric Bland:

Yeah. I don't think we've ever drafted a lazy complaint or wrote a lazy letter or sent a lazy email just to get it out. Ronnie may not like what I wrote in the email, but it's comprehensive. And there's a message to be sent there. I think it's important that you work hard. Life is about work.

I have a podcast called Good Skill. We don't believe in luck. Don't wish us good luck. Wish us good skill. Let our talents help us practicing luck. If you're waiting for luck, you're reactive.

We're proactive. We live outside the box. We don't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel. We go grab that son of a gun. I think if you do that, your clients will notice the difference. Our clients never have to worry about what we're doing because they're copied on everything.

You could say, well, you're covering your ass with how you write emails to your clients, letting them know so that they don't ever grieve you. Well, we sue other lawyers, so we better do a better job than the lawyers that we're suing. Or that could be a problem. I think practicing law is a privilege and it's a service business. My clients don't work for me. I work for my clients.

And if I'm not serving them, there's other people that will pump their gas and clean their windshield. You can't have a law practice without clients. So for me, I learned early on how to ask for business and how to close. And the other thing that I think that I'm good at is I know how to quote a fee and I know how to collect a fee.

Katya Valasek:

I want to turn back the clock now to 1998. Eric, you're about 10 years into your law career. Ronnie, you're about five years in. And this is when you take your first legal malpractice case. Ronnie, tell us about the dispute and how you ended up representing a plaintiff who was suing a large, well-connected and well-heeled law firm in South Carolina.

Ronnie Richter:

Well, a guy named Jimmy Meyer called Eric. As we understand it, he'd probably been to 20 other lawyers who all told him the same thing. We don't sue lawyers, and especially not this particular law firm. He told this story, and I'll give you this shortest version of it that I possibly can.

But he was developing a piece of waterfront property in Charleston. It was a $12 million acquisition. He was about $500,000 into his due diligence. He had a non-monetary technical default on his contract when the county denied his development plans. His law firm, Blue Chip Law Firm, was appealing the Charleston County denial when he learned that that very same law firm took his competitor under contract and closed on the same piece of property. That's a true story.

Katya Valasek:

Oh my gosh.

Ronnie Richter:

And so when he told that story to us, we were like, well, that sucks. Yeah, we'll sue them. Now, we were too young and stupid and broke, but we were principled. Stupid and principled is not a bad way to live life, but yeah, we'll sue them. That's awful. And in that lawsuit, the defense of the lawsuit to us was worse than the offense that led to the lawsuit. And we felt like we were treated badly. We were disrespected. We felt it. Now, whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it was a tick on a hound. The more that they pushed us like that, the more they just inspired us to fight. And we got a great result, and the phone started to ring.

Eric Bland:

Yeah, we never set out to be legal malpractice lawyers. To sue lawyers in our state, it may be common in an urban, big urban metropolitan city, but when we started doing it, it was unheard of. It was unseemly. Judges didn't like it. Other lawyers were offended by it. Even clients were surprised when we started marketing ourselves in that particular niche. It was just a shock to everyone. It was not a shock to us because we're a self-policing profession.

Lawyers don't have problems suing a backer, a doctor, an accountant, or an engineer. Why should lawyers have special license? But it was under fire all the time, under scrutiny all the time, mocked that this is how we had to make a large part of our living for a lot of years suing lawyers.

Somehow, we couldn't do anything else that this was the way that we had to make our ways. A proctologist can't be a heart surgeon, so he becomes a proctologist. Well, that's kind of the default that we fell into in some people's eyes. Well, you can't be real lawyers, so you have to sue lawyers.

But the thing that's been most difficult for us is we've always operated on the outside, like Eminem says, around the outside, around the outside. And that was comfortable for us. Since the Murdaugh case, we're on the inside now. Attorneys that used to hate us because we sued attorneys or sued their doctor clients now look at us differently and say, wow, you did a great job. Federal judges asked me to go to the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference. Other judges wrote the bar and said that we should get awards. It's surreal for us.

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, it really is.

Katya Valasek:

So let's fast forward now. It's been some time since 1998. You've built your practice. What are some common claims that you see your clients making against our lawyers?

Eric Bland:

That's easy. Like Ronnie said, dabblers. They want the client, so they're going to tell the client that they have the experience in a particular matter. You'll never see Ronnie and I draft a trust, give tax advice, or deal with the risks of claims. It's not going to happen. The other component are, just like Ronnie said, the lazy lawyers that let a deadline slip, whether it's a statute of limitations or it's a 40-J, didn't restore a case in time. Then you have competency issues on drafting documents wrong, drafting a provision that hurts your client in a way. And then we have the garden variety stealing cases, where they steal from a client, pay lie to a client.

We were always taught the three holiest sins that you can't do: Have sex with your client, steal from your client, lie for your client. You do that, you lose your ticket. Well, unfortunately, we're not seeing that totally enforced every single day.

Ronnie Richter:

Oh, yeah, yeah. And sometimes with the laziness or the calendaring errors, maybe there's some underlying issue. Maybe there's some depression or substance issues or something else. It's a tough profession. So sometimes it's secondary to something else that's going on.

One thing I do from time to time is I speak to 3Ls graduating from law school, and just kind of a transition speech. And what I say to them every time I talk to them is that all lawyers are incompetent in most areas of the law. And I think lawyers hate hearing that statement, but it's a fact. Because when you get out into practice, you kind of find your lane, whether it's domestic or whether it's tax or worker's comp. But as you sharpen your tool in that area, your other tools get a little dull. And Eric and I see that.

But that economic pressure of, wow, that's a great case. I'm going to take that. A lot of times that's a boomerang and it comes back to haunt you. But what I try to tell the three Ls is, embrace the ignorance. Just associate good lawyers in those fields if you get a good case like that. But don't let the pressure of the moment make you make a bad decision and make a mistake.

Katya Valasek:

Yeah. It's like you crawled right inside my head and saw what my next question was going to be, because I wanted to ask you both. People graduate from law school and they don't necessarily already know what they need to know in order to practice law competently. And studying for the bar doesn't necessarily help. What is the ethical way you'd expect someone to learn to practice competently with a law license but minimal experience?

Eric Bland:

Go get mentors. Make relationships with people like Ronnie. Draw on them. We get calls all the time from other lawyers who ask us questions, and we're not afraid to call lawyers. I just called about a grievance that somebody got. But I had a question that I didn't have on the tip of my tongue. And what better source than to go to somebody I know? So you learn to make relationships with people that you trust. And it's okay to call somebody on the phone and say, “I have a question.”

You're not letting your guard down. That person is not going to run on the street and say, “you can't believe what Eric Bland has called me on the phone to ask. He's been a lawyer for 36 years. He should know that. And it's embarrassing. And he goes across on TV like he knows everything. And he really doesn't.” We don't know everything. And you get yourself in trouble when you act like you do. It's okay, like Ronnie says, to be ignorant. I'll tell a client, I don't know that, but I can assure you, if you hire me, I will learn what it takes and I will hire the right expert.

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah. For the young lawyers, the three words that will set you free in your practice: “I. Don't. Know.” And it's so counterintuitive to everything at law school. You're shamed and embarrassed. You're called on cold in class. You're expected to know the answer to every question. But if you can have the courage and the integrity in a client setting, when somebody's going to pay you money to answer the question, “I don't know, but I'll find out.” I mean, now you're on the right path.

And associate, associate, associate, especially when you're young. Are you going to split a fee with somebody? You're going to learn tenfold the value you're going to get for the fee split by associating a lawyer who's been there and done that is invaluable. And so how do you ethically take a case when you recognize your own incompetence? You associate competent counsel and don't feel like you got to grab the whole fee.

I mean, I think a client would respect you. You're out of law school for a year and you get a question from a client that sounds like a law school exam. And the temptation is to say to the client that which you think they want to hear in order to secure the work and pay the fee. And that is the wrong answer. The answer is I don't know, but I'm dedicated to finding out the right answer for you.

Katya Valasek:

It's interesting. It's been a while since I've been in law school, but I feel like the training was you answer questions with “it depends.” There wasn't much discussion of how to answer something when the answer truly is “I don't know.” So I think that's a really important perspective for people to have in mind in practice, honestly, regardless of how long they've been in practice.

Eric Bland:

It's always a good answer. I find that lawyers have difficulty actually making decisions and clients would want you to make decisions they want. Even if it's a wrong decision, they're happy about it. They don't like indecision. That's what you learn over 36 years. You learn to service the client.

One thing that we're good at is we set goals for the client. We want to find out what their goal is and we write it down. And we often remind them as the case has gone on, “look, you came to us and this was your goal and this is what we're working to. Now you're kind of veering away from the goal.” And we point that out.

And one thing we learned early on is if somebody's going to offer you money, take it. Don't act like you think you're that good that you're going to triple it, quadruple it, double it. If that's enough money to calm the waters and solve the problem for the client, take it. Because you'll get in more trouble by passing up good money if you're a plaintiff. And if you're the defendant, you have an opportunity to get out of a case on your own terms without 12 jurors making a decision.

Katya Valasek:

So that's interesting. A lot of malpractice cases do end up in mediation rather than full blown trials. Is that part of the reason why?

Eric Bland:

Yeah. I mean, we've learned that we'd rather take control of our case than let a judge or somebody else take it. Now you can't just walk in without preparation. We prepare our cases for mediation. We just had a mediation last Friday where we had a very big PowerPoint. I went through about an hour opening statement. The other attorney had four of his clients there, four representatives, corporate representatives, and he didn't do a PowerPoint. He didn't go into a long detail thing. And I sat there thinking to myself, “I wonder if the clients are thinking, well, wait a minute, this plaintiff's lawyer did all this work.” We didn't do that. And the mediator was moved.

It turned out when I talked to the attorney later on in the weekend, after we settled the case last week, he said, “you know what? Your PowerPoint really moved our client.” So we prepare. If it's a pre-suit mediation, we will do a tremendous amount of free discovery, whether it's FOIA or sending investigators out, and we will put on a presentation as if we're trying the case. Because that's where we end up trying our case. Because 90% of them settle on mediation.

Katya Valasek:

Yeah. So with all of this work that you do to prepare for mediation, Ronnie, how do you divide up who does what?

Ronnie Richter:

It's a full team effort to kind of do the spade work. It literally, if I showed you the process, it's literally spreading every piece of paper you have out across a conference room. And then it's a process of reduction. So you boil the sauce down and boil the sauce down until you get to the essence. And that's what you go with. And this is more mediation strategy, but we hear lawyers say, I'm going to save that for later.Well, this is your time to get paid for the good stuff. So we're not saving the good stuff. We're featuring it. We're blowing it up.

No, I mean, that's a crazy strategy if you ask me. I mean, here's the time and place to get paid for the goods. So why would you not show the good stuff? For defense lawyers defending at a mediation, well, I'm going to hold this fact back or that fact back. No, no. We're there to trade value for value. And so if you're not putting all your value on the table, you're not getting full value for the case.

Eric Bland:

Ronnie and Scott and our paralegal Larry do all the PowerPoints. I'm not good at that. They do it all. They refine it. They work on it. And then they deliver it. I think our PowerPoints are extremely effective and they're not PowerPoints the way you think they are. It's not just showing a case site, Richter versus the Naval shipyard in the site. And there'll be a blur.

Ronnie Richter:

It's not a teleprompter.

Eric Bland:

We dive deep into the defense's website. We go to all of their marketing materials and they're going to say things in there like, “we give the best service” or “our products never fail,” or “we stand behind our warranty.” And we pull that out. And then if it's a defense where they're trying to avoid potholes to fall in, we show a car animated driving around potholes and it's really effective. And then the red light goes up, they hit the wall. It's a lot of animation. It's not your traditional kind of PowerPoint.

Ronnie Richter:

In that setting, it's your only chance to talk directly to the other side without a filter. And you want to set up your chair directly across from the person that you want to talk to. I mean, you want to take it straight to them and not have your message delivered through the lawyer who's paid on the other side.

I think it's a huge miss not to maximize your chance to talk to someone directly like that.

Eric Bland:

At any chance you can hear your adversary speak, your opposition, you take any meeting they want to have. And they want to tell you about their case. We listen. You want to have a meeting with me and tell me I suck. I'm stupid. Call me stupid all you want. As long as your mouth is moving, I'm learning. And like Ronnie said, I'll never have the chance in court to tell you “I'm going to be so far up your ass. When you brush your teeth, you're going to be brushing mine.” I'll get sanctioned, but I can say it in a mediation setting.

Katya Valasek:

So other than watching what you say, are there any other differences if you're preparing for a trial versus a mediation?

Ronnie Richter:

Not much. I tell you, the mediation prep is so thorough that it turns into the trial notebook. You are preparing for trial when you're preparing for the mediation if you're doing it properly.

Eric Bland:

We take video depositions of the right witnesses and invariably their video ends up in the PowerPoint. It'll be an answer that absolutely kills them. And you play it and they see it and the mediator sees it. You can just feel the air on their side of the table just go out. And so our PowerPoints are like trials. The guy's going to see what it sounds like when he tries to get up on the stand and spit out of what he said in a deposition.

Katya Valasek:

So in South Carolina, like about a dozen other states, you have a civility oath as a member of the bar. How do you balance that oath with holding your fellow members of the bar accountable?

Eric Bland:

I have difficulty with that because the way I interact with people is how I grew up. And in Philadelphia, we say what's on our heart. We say it to your face. And we may say it in a way that is coarse and offensive, but it's out. And I don't hold grudges. It's out. It's over with. But I talk like I was before I was a lawyer. I don't talk like a lawyer. And there's lawyer talk and there's different talk in the way I talk and offend people. So I get accused of violating the civility oath. I wouldn't say frequently, but once, twice a year.

Katya Valasek:

Ronnie, what about you?

Ronnie Richter:

Yeah, I don't get the same accusations. Obviously, our speech is different. You can tell it just in this interview. But sometimes there's not a nice way to tell a dishonest person that they're dishonest. Sometimes there's not a nice way to call a crook a crook. And there's no apologies.

So it is what it is. And if that results in hurt feelings or bruised egos or whatever it might be, and it often does, it just kind of is what it is. Was there a nice, was there a civil way to address Alex Murdaugh for all that he had done to his victims? Is there a nice way to characterize that man? So, I don't know. Civility, I think it would be uncivil to his victims to grant too much civility to a man like that.