Representing Celebrity Clients, Get the Money in Front

Over the years I have moved from envy of lawyers who represent, and can brag about being the lawyers for, celebrity clients, to happiness that I rarely represent celebrity clients. It is the nature of the celebrity client that accounts for this difference.

I learnt early on that celebrity clients believe that they are doing you a favor and elevating your standing in the community by allowing you to represent them. Accordingly, you should be grateful and not be persnickety about being paid. It is as true in franchising as it is in any other context.

For the trial lawyer, in business as in other litigation, your favorite client profile is extremely limited. You target two categories of extremely wealthy clients – clients who are outrageously angry, and clients who are terrified that the hot poker is about to be shoved where the sun rarely shines.

Many lawyers lose sight of why these folks are your target clientele. The only reason to represent them is that they are capable of paying their bills. No lawyer (except maybe some in very large firms that can subsidize loss leader cases for reputational enhancement consideration)can survive on the resource consuming litigation that the wealthy get embroiled in without access to adequate resources. Amazingly, so many law firms feel that they have just scored a great coup by being retained by the rich and famous that they fail too obtain financial resources adequate to the scope of the work.

And so, the two ways I began to learn about high profile client representation at the outset were from the bar room braggadocio “guess who we now represent”, and, later, from the lament about the difficulty getting paid by high profile clients. In one spectacular instance it was lamented that the franchisor client had signed a retainer agreement, refusing to pay a retainer at all, and then refused to pay because the case had been lost. In the interim, this dead beat client had always been delinquent, having his surrogate tell the lawyers that “Mr. ___ has decided not to pay any lawyers this quarter”.

High profile clients are the world’s biggest dead beats. They extol their own rectitude while chiseling everyone they deal with whenever they can get away with it, which is very often. Lawyers are amongst their biggest suckers.

Eventually it came to be my chance to represent some of them. The lessons learnt at the bar served me well. I would rather do something else than work my butt off for someone who can afford to pay for the effort but rejoices in non payment. It’s a game with them. They love it when they can brag that they just outsmarted some dumb ass lawyer who all day long masturbates his Phi Beta Kappa key on his key chain, but lacks sufficient snap to get paid. I decided that I wouldn’t play that game, and that if that meant that I don’t get to represent the world’s biggest dead beats, so be it.

But I didn’t learn the lesson well enough until I had to deal with being the chump of the month for a smooth bore Texas slime bag. Fortunately, I was not lead counsel on the case. The case was venued in Detroit, and a friend was lead counsel and asked me to be his local counsel, but without advance retainer. I envisioned little work, all of which I could foist upon a very junior associate. The whole matter was expected to be over within a month or so, as everything turned on a preliminary injunction hearing. Thinking I had little exposure, I said sure.

The matter involved a Texas professional sports team trying to make a star player honor a contract to play for them according to a disadvantageous contract, rather than stay with his present team under better terms. The player’s agent was also a principal of the Texas team, which presented a very juicy conflict of interest issue. The player was represented by A Michigan lawyer named Elbert Hatchett who did the best job I have ever seen done on short notice, or without a short notice problem for that matter. My side’s lead counsel was also a famous business trial lawyer, but Hatchett, who usually did not do business litigation, mopped the floor with him and destroyed every single position that our side took.

Unfortunately for our side, justice was done, and the player got to remain with his then current team while the slimy agent was sent packing back to Texas.

Unfortunately, our side started to go south before the trial. In trial prep, our principal witness, slime ball, turned out to be a really lousy witness, and would have been a lousy witness even is his mother had not been there feeding him tranquilizers by the spoonful. I was asked to help prepare him to testify and managed to do so with only liminal success, achieved by my holding a loaded 9 mm pistol to his head and asking him whether he would rather I shoot him now or that he be killed on the witness stand because he was a terrible witness. In the end, this shock treatment failed to work. His mother sat in the first row behind counsel table and continued to feed him tranquilizers, so much that he went under – literally – while sitting there in court.

We lost!

My bill went unpaid. I asked my friend who had been chief counsel to help me get paid, but was told that he couldn’t come between me and his client, and that I was on my own. I sent my “I’m gonna sue your ass off” letter, which was not replied to. I sued in the same court in which the trial had been held. The judge knew me from many cases I had had in his court, so I had credibility working for me. This was especially helpful since the client stated that he had never heard of me, much less hired me, and that I was suing him for a non existent debt. The trial had been high profile in the local and national press because of all the celebrities involved in the dispute, so the press picked up the lawsuit for legal fees and made a new story out of that. The press had seen me in court every day. So when he claimed he didn’t know me and that I had not been involved in the case, it was a real hoot, for the press as well as for the judge. Suffice to say that I won and, after some back and forth in court in Texas and in the press, enforced the judgment. I have a firm rule that I violated in this instance. I normally will never sue a client for fees. First, I don’t have to because I get paid in front. When you sue for fees you tell the world hat you aren’t smart enough to get paid properly and that you have t earn your fees twice to get paid once – a very stupid position to be in. I made an exception here only because the client’s behavior was so outrageous that I simply couldn’t resist the temptation. That was the graduation ceremony on my appreciation of what it is like to represent celebrity clients.

From time to time prospective clients can’t imagine that a lawyer would turn down business because he refuses to carry unfunded receivables. They think that lawyers will do anything in order to be able to send a bill, and that if it gets paid, why that’s just a pleasant surprise. I know firms that have to borrow money to finance their aging accounts receivable. They can’t make it month to month on a cash basis. That costs money. No thanks.

In business litigation, especially if you are not talking about a long time steady client with whom you have a solid relationship, not getting enough in front to stay ahead of the monthly bills means you have the matter on a de facto contingent fee, or at the very least, a steep discount when the time comes to settle up and there is a big amount yet unpaid. Other lawyers tell me that their clients accuse them of padding bills and doing all sorts of other inappropriate things in order to avoid settling up that last bill. They’re welcome to all that bullshit.

I know I could be working night and day seven days a week if I handled my accounts the way they do. I guess if you have to do that to get business, that’s just your tough luck.

Maybe it’s in part because I don’t have that many regular clients – I usually get called in when it’s bet the company time and then they go back to their normal law firms for their green eye shade work. When the client isn’t a long time relationship, you are nuts if you don’t anticipate getting ripped for not getting paid in front in desperate situations. They didn’t get into trouble for being boy scouts in the first place.

Accounts receivable have the glide path of a brick. Sixty days out they are already becoming bloody worthless. If the clients can skate on having an investment in the relationship, they will do it almost every time. Celebrities are the worst!