11 14 2015 PI Lawyer Price Fixing

1

A Personal Injury Lawyer’s Explanation of

How and Why U.S. Personal Injury Lawyers

Encourage the Nation-wide Practice of Price-fixing

At a “Standard 1/3 Minimum Contingent Fee”

a/k/a the “1/3 Standard Fee”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And

How America’s Personal Injury Lawyers’

“1/3 Standard Fee” Price-fixing Inter-relates

With a Unique and Long-standing Economic Anomaly,

“The Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Legal Services”,

Which Combine To Create Increasingly Inferior Results For

U.S. Personal Injury Claimants and Their Injured Families,

For U.S. Healthcare Institutions and For U.S. Taxpayers

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And

Why Search Engines, High Litigation Financing Interest Rates

And Large-Net Personal Injury Lawyer Advertising Campaigns,

Combining with Lawyer Price-fixing, Are Making

Serious Problems Worse for Injured U.S. Families ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By: Mark B. Moran, Esq.*

All copyright, patent and trademark rights reserved, Mark Moran 2015

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTICE: This paper is still in a Draft Stage and therefore it is not fully edited and

proofed. Please ask the author for permission before citing to it.

2



IMPORTANT NOTICE TO INJURED PERSONS! If you are an injured person looking

for a personal injury (PI) lawyer, always make sure that you are not exceeding the time

allowed to bring your claim. The time within which to properly file or make a claim for

your injury is called the “statute of limitations” and it varies from state to state. Consult a

lawyer for information regarding the time period in which you must successfully bring

your injury claim. Nothing in this paper should be construed as offering legal advice or

counseling. Always consult a lawyer from your local jurisdiction immediately if you need

legal counsel or representation.

NOTICE: The opinions contained in this report are just opinions; they are not facts. Any

reference to the possible commission of price fixing or other crime or unethical behavior is

not related to, in reference to, or directed at any person or firm in particular and any

connection or inference that may be made thereto is purely coincidence.


Dedication and Thanks

A special thanks and love to my wonderful and supportive wife, Kim, and our three daughters.

Without their eternal patience and faith, this project, movement and entrepreneurial mission

would not have existed very long. They have sacrificed so very much and I owe it to them to see

this through to a new, higher plateau of consumer family expectations. America should enjoy a

better quality of fairness and a much improved standard of living for its most vulnerable citizens

and families, the injured persons who require personal injury legal services. Thanks to those who

have helped with their valuable support. You will remain un-named for now. Thank all of you

for listening and your substantial assistance. It will bring the results America needs. Together we

will prevail by organizing the people, for the fairness deserved by the people and for the benefit

of all the American people. I am especially thankful for God blessing me and my family for the

privilege of getting to live in these United States of America.

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Purpose: A Call to Action, p. 4

II. The Author’s Personal Statement, p. 6

III. A Request for Assistance, p. 8

IV. Introduction and Overview, p. 12

V. Simplified Math Results for Comparison of 1/3 Price-fixed PI Settlement, p. 16

VI. The Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Legal Services, p. 18

VII. How PI Lawyer Price-fixing Hurts the U.S. Healthcare Industry, p. 22

VIII. Question Answered, p. 26

IX. Summary of Answers, #’s 1 through 17, p. 26

X. Answers and Analysis, #’s 1 through 17, p. 28

XI. Chronology of a Price-fixed PI Case (Cause and Effect), p. 78

XII. Recommendations for Correcting the PI Lawyer

“Standard 1/3 Minimum Contingent Fee” Price-fixing, p. 80

XIII. Bonus Section: The 4 biggest surprises I discovered in my

5 years of research and development regarding PI lawyers’ referral

fees and PI lawyers price-fixing at 1/3 contingent fees, p. 82

XIV. Reality Check for the Whistleblowers: Is this Goodbye? p. 85

XV. Conclusion; pp. 87

XVI. Sources, pp. 92

XVII. Appendix, pp. 118

A. Goldfarb 1969 Minimum Fee Schedule Report (Re: 33 1/3% Price-fixing), p. 119

B. Price-fixing Complaint letter to USAG Holder March 8, 2015, p. 122

C. Price-fixing Complaint letter to ILAG September 18, 2015, p. 147

D. Price-fixing Complaint letter to MOAG September 18, 2015, p. 150

XVIII. WARNINGS AND PUBLIC NOTICES, p. 154

Author: Mark Moran, CEO and GC, GoldenRuleLaw.org and GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com

Email: [email protected]


4

I. Purpose

This informal draft paper and book outline, generated by Mark Moran, Esq., reflects over five

years of focused and persistent research and development into isolating and correcting the

extremely questionable personal injury (PI) lawyer price-fixed “standard 1/3 minimum

contingent fee” a/k/a the “1/3 standard fee” and the accompanying “referral fee” practices of

Personal Injury (PI) lawyers in America. This draft of a report was generated at the request

of journalists and non-lawyers who needed to better understand how and why Personal

Injury lawyers commit anti-trust price-fixing, in the context of the official complaint letters

I sent to the USAG, ILAG and MOAG .which may be referenced in the appendix hereto.

The further purpose(s) of this report/paper is to reveal to the American public information about

some of the ongoing corruption in the PI legal services industry. This corruption is harming

injured Americans and their families every day. Approximately 20 Million people per year are

members of a family that has at least one of its members who has been injured and has a pending

injury claim. Over the past sixteen years, this injury corruption of price-fixing and referral fees

has affected approximately 320 Million Americans, which is generally the population of all of

the United States.

The money, which has been denied to innocent injured Americans and their families, amounts to

approximately $24 Billion per year for improper referral fees monies withheld from clients and

an additional $30 billion withheld due to Anti-trust non-competition for PI lawyer price/rates.

Collectively, we will group these sums together and conservatively sum them up at $50 Billion

per year. Therefore, 20 Million innocent Americans are shorted $50 Billion per year. That is

enough people to fill Yankee stadium every day and charge each man woman and child about

$2,500 per person. Every day. Every single day. Every single damn day. On average.

This is a very real problem affecting real people every day. It must stop now. But how can we

Americans stop something PI lawyers have been doing for the past 80 years? Simple. Go back to

the basics that founded the United States. We must use the power of The People to conduct

economic sanctions, in the form of boycotts against unscrupulous lawyer fee practices.

There is no better time to launch an economic campaign against unfair, socially irresponsible PI

lawyer fees than the present date because there is an over-supply of approximately 250,000 to

300,000 lawyers in the U.S. and it is growing. PI Lawyers are easily trained and can work with

very little overhead and clerical staff given our advanced office technologies. I know this

because I have done it and I served on the ISBA Committee on Legal Technology for several

years and I have earned a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems.

A boycott against socially irresponsible lawyer fees will save Americans hundreds of billions of

dollars in unnecessary PI lawyer fees over the next five years. However, even more important,

saving that much money for injured families might or could help prevent the affected “injury

families” from suffering separations, divorces and suicides that might be attributable to the

depression that closely trails those who have lost large sums of irreplaceable money.

5

We can save a lot of lives and families, if we act swiftly and courageously, as did the colonists

who conducted the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. The People must send a message

that our great constitution reads, “We the People…not we the lawyers.” For it is The People who

have granted to the lawyers the rights to earn a fee in return for fair representation.

Accordingly, the cry of the colonists at the Boston Tea Party “No taxation without

representation!” still rings true today in relation to PI lawyers taxing the American public with

recurring, non-transparent, price-fixed fees charged for their handling of PI matters the great

majority of which are non-contested regarding liability or fault.

The time for the American people to act is now. Do not wait another 80 years to see if the PI

lawyers will do the right thing on their own accord. Take back your country Americans. Be swift

and sure. Is it your money or is it not? Claim your money due to you to be given to you as surely

as though it was any other transaction at a store or a restaurant. Or see it slip away like the

trillions of dollars that have quietly been denied the resting place of the purses and wallets and

bank accounts of their rightful owners – the injured families.

This paper was created to introduce the non-lawyer to the business practices of American

personal injury lawyers, who in the author’s opinion have been price-fixing at a “standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee” for the past eighty (80) years in the face of existing antitrust laws that

prohibit such conduct. In 2015 valued US Dollars, the combined price tag that America’s injured

families and taxpayers have suffered “Taxation Without Representation” by PI lawyer’s price-

fixing at a minimum 1/3 standard fee, over the past fifty (50) years, is approximately $2 Trillion.

“The Trillion $ Tax.”

The prolonged price-fixing at the “1/3 standard fee” conducted by PI lawyers has done

irreparable damage to PI injured families and to the United States’ economy. Therefore, it is my

sincere opinion that PI lawyer price-fixing must be ended as soon as possible for the sake of

innocent, injured Americans and their families, for healthcare facilities and for the taxpayers.

These are the innocent people and businesses that get stuck with the bill when injured PI lawyer

clients cannot pay their future medical bills due to their own settlement money being funneled to

pay for unnecessary lawyer advertising fees that total over $24 Billion per year. The American

people are encouraged to consider boycotting the “1/3 standard fee” as a means to take action to

stop the price-fixing that the government has condoned for decades.

As one old-timer lawyer told me, as a reference to the shadow market of referral fees, with which

he did not approve, ~“The personal injury lawyers have been selling their clients a sandwich, but

they have been making them pay for steak and lobster.”

Information is power. We help people find the information they need so that they are not at a

disadvantage, ignorant and powerless, when dealing with lawyers. Power belongs to The People.

God Bless America.

6

II. The Author’s Personal Statement

In my personal, professional and conservative estimation, after researching this topic of personal

injury PI lawyer price-fixing for over five years, and by developing an online system to decrease

lawyer price-fixing, based on an open marketplace for legal services, and practicing law and

discussing this issue with many lawyers in professional and casual settings for over 27 years, I

believe that at least Ninety Percent (90%) [18 of every 20 PI lawyers] of America’s (PI)

lawyers require their clients to sign contracts for personal injury legal services representation that

include a “standard 1/3 (33.3%) minimum contingent fee.” Some researchers have assessed the

“puzzling price uniformity”, at 1/3, to be prevalent in approximately 88% of PI cases involving

flat fees. Please be assured that due to “puzzling price uniformity” a/k/a price-fixing, “The

conventional flat CF [Personal Injury Contingent Fee] rate in the United States is one-third of the

recovery.” i

Whether or not it might ever be proven 100% of the time, in thousands of trials in America’s

courts of law, for the one-million+ price-fixed, PI case contracts signed each year, the common

man would probably say that this is obvious price-fixing, by a troubling number of PI lawyers, in

violation of state and federal antitrust laws.

For instance, a man or woman does not need to know if a particular drug is illegal in order to

decide that they do not want to use it in any manner whatsoever. They just use their common

experiences and knowledge to decide what is fair for them because what is fair for them does not

have to be what the majority of the population thinks is fair. The common person has the right to

walk past the fruit stand and decide not to buy at a price everyone told him was fair the day

before. The common woman has the right to try to strike a good deal on her terms, without

constraints of price-fixing. Open and transparent markets afford people with these rights. The

following language from a learned paper adds some validity to the assertion that PI lawyer 1/3

price-fixing is wide-spread in the USA,

“The prevailing uniformity of CF rates, across both cases and quality of lawyers—

and across cases involving fee splitting [a/k/a referral fees] and those that do not—is

often regarded as strong, perhaps conclusive, evidence that the market for legal services

is noncompetitive (Brickman 1989, 2003b; Drummonds 1993, p. 891 n.123; Painter

1995; Hadfield 2000, p. 979; Fisch 2002, pp. 670-71). It is claimed that the market is

not competitive, due to clients’ acute information problems (regarding such aspects

as the expected recovery, the risk involved in the suit, the quality of legal services

provided, and the time required to handle the case), clients’ prohibitive search costs,

and various means devised by lawyers to inhibit competition (Brickman [1994,

2003b]; Painter 1995; Gross 2006). These means include uniform pricing practices,

the absence of price advertisements, and the prohibitions against the purchase of

tort claims and against brokerage of lawyers’ services (Brickman 2003b).

Indeed, the process of hiring a lawyer, especially when the client is a single-shot

player who lacks legal expertise (as most tort plaintiffs are), is characterized by

asymmetric information. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how hundreds of thousands

7

of lawyers manage to coordinate and enforce relatively uniform CF rates to the

detriment of clients without any formal prohibitions on deviations from the standard

CF rate.” (See footnote i, at p. 5.) [Emphasis added]

The reader should know that America’s lawyers, which now number in excess of 1.2 Million, in

a country of about 316 Million people, have been organized, in their professional associations

and government condoned monopolies for over two-hundred years. During that time, the

common-folk (non-lawyers) had no corresponding organization with which to voice their

complaints or input regarding the prices lawyers charge for the hundreds of areas of law

practiced, with “personal injury law” being the present flagship of the common persons’ legal

remedies. The non-lawyers have previously enjoyed no formal or informal organization, until we

founded the American Clients Association and the Center for Socially Responsible Lawyer Fees.

The PI lawyers forget that The People do not need a court’s formal opinion to tell The People

how to make their subjective, informal opinions about how to spend their money, or who to trust,

or what is or is not price-fixing for purposes of their own pocketbook. The People do not need a

weatherman to tell them which way the wind is blowing.

The People must correct this problem of PI lawyer price-fixing on their own, without relying on

a deadlocked Congress, without relying on hollow promises from politicians, more blathering

from blathering bureaucrats, or from an enlightened judiciary who collectively supervise and

regulate the practice of law in the individual states. The People must correct this ongoing pillage

of the common man’s finances, as an organized group, collectively united, with a common voice.

There is strength in numbers.

There are real, human faces behind the high numbers of those adversely affected by PI lawyer

price-fixing. Be it known that PI lawyer price-fixing is progressively destroying American

families by the hundreds of thousands each year. We, as Americans, all have a duty to see that

this wide-spread abuse of power, by PI lawyers and the lawyers who assist them in their referral

fee networks, with no realistic or effective checks or balances, is ended quickly for the

betterment of our great country, the United States of America, and its hard working people.

Please help us by spreading the word. Freeze the Fee!; “Just Say No! It’s My Dough!” The

American Clients Association, ~ 200 Years is too long - The time to organize is now; and the

Center for Socially Responsible Lawyer Fees, Never a vote, but now a voice; and a copy of our

twenty-three (23) page letter to the United States Attorney General, may be found at our website,

GoldenRuleLaw.org “If justice is not affordable, there is no justice.”;

GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com “Humane. Transparent. Now!

8

III. A Request for Assistance

Injured Americans need your assistance to “get the word out” about the potential for price-fixing

in PI legal services. The economic survival of their families depends on it. In response to the PI

bar persisting in price-fixing at a minimum 1/3 contingent fee, we recommend that Americans

consider boycotting lawyers who charge a minimum 1/3 contingent fee for PI legal services, in

order to convince the PI bar that The People no longer need to pay “the standard fee.”

By injured Americans boycotting personal injury lawyers who charge “The Standard 1/3

Minimum Contingent Fee”, we will help to correct an ongoing personal injury (PI) lawyer price-

fixing problem that impacts injured people and their families, medical care facilities and

taxpayers throughout America. Through informational websites such as ours and mass media, we

Americans will be able to help approximately 20 Million innocent, injured Americans and their

family members annually to avoid “The $Trillion Tax Trap.”

Every day in America, on average, over 50,000 people are victimized to the extent of over

$50,000,000 that is “taxed” away, by PI lawyers, from the injured families’ unique budgets for

medical bills and critical needs. These PI tax revenues are collected by PI lawyers merely to pay

for the “wholesale advertising” referral fee costs of PI lawyers and to underwrite the costs that PI

lawyers claim they are due for fighting for different injured clients under the excuse of “just

causes.”

By Americans staying silent and inactive for decades, and not demanding competitive rates from

PI lawyers, it has encouraged personal injury (PI) lawyers to charge a price-fixed “standard

minimum 1/3 contingent fee” a/k/a “The Standard 1/3 Fee.” The non-competitive sums collected

by these over-reaching PI lawyers, amount to over $1 Trillion, just for referral fee rate mark-ups

over the past fifty (50) years. It is “The $Trillion Tax Trap.”

The “standard 1/3 fee” has allowed PI lawyers to use suspicious “referral fees” to funnel massive

amounts of non-competitive, unnecessary contingent fee monies out of the purses of

misinformed, injured clients and into the bank accounts of all types of lawyers and lawyer

politicians from all political parties, with no appreciable, corresponding added value received by

the injured clients and their families in return. The clients are getting a horrible, price-fixed deal.

Frankly, the regulatory Bar Associations in each state in America, do not have the resources to

supervise every PI client-lawyer contract that gets signed by ill-informed and trusting consumers

who are relying on the legal opinion of the conflicted lawyer who submitted the “standard

minimum 1/3 contingent fee” contract to them. Therefore, The People must regulate the lawyers

by themselves. They can accomplish this by using a combination of boycotting and maximizing

transparency; by sharing related information via word of mouth, text, email, mass media outlets,

snail mail, radio, blogs and informational websites.

If the judicial system does not have enough resources to adequately regulate PI lawyers, we don’t

want to make government any larger. As a result, we think that The People would be able to

9

regulate “the bar” much easier and cheaper than would an army of Bar Association investigators

looking at every contract for compliance.

Another alternative is full deregulation, where the people regulate the lawyers through a

transparent marketplace, without any assistance from “the bar.” At this point, full deregulation

does not appear plausible for practical purposes that I will not discuss at this time.

In response to the unfair and socially irresponsible PI fees persisting in the face of antitrust laws

prohibiting price-fixing, we respectfully submit that these ancient practices by PI lawyers

amount to a very real “Taxation Without Representation” much like the similar Taxation

Without Representation endured by America’s colonists. Therefore, given the tremendous

successes enjoyed by Americans, in boycotting England’s tea, when American colonists

encountered and stood up to “Taxation Without Representation”, we recommend that prospective

clients boycott PI lawyers charging a “standard 1/3 fee”, in order to self-regulate the industry.

Organize! America’s injured, and other legal services recipients, need to organize, like their

counterparts, the Bar Associations, have been organized for the past 200 years. Organizing

themselves and standing together in solidarity, as a formidable economic block, will increase the

probability that they will obtain their capitalistic, client-centric demands:

(1) The People boycott “the standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee” and all other “standard fees”,

and

(2) For a free, open and 100% transparent marketplace for buying and selling legal services in all

areas of legal practice; and

(3) Injured people and their innocent family members will not be caused to suffer large financial

losses due to unnecessary and socially irresponsible lawyer fees.

(4) Demanding a competitive fee for businesses and individuals, in all areas of legal services; and

(5) Adopting a Client’s Bill of Rights.

(6) “Raising” $1,000,000, by the end of 2015, for injured families by encouraging at least 100

injured clients to “Just Say No! To the 1/3 fee and settle their PI claims for a fee rate without a

referral fee ~ 22%. Our 2016 goal is to raise $100,000,000 the same way, but all year long.

(7) Encouraging PI clients or prospective clients to boycott the “1/3 standard fee.” To

accomplish this they can:

(a) Shop for a lawyer if they have not yet hired one and Just Say No! To the 1/3 standard fee; or

Or

(b) If they have hired a lawyer and they are waiting on a settlement, simply ask their PI lawyers

to provide a written and signed explanation on their letterhead as to why they are being charged a

“standard fee.” And if the PI lawyer cannot answer the client’s humble questions, that the PI

lawyer should have explained when the contract for legal services was presented to and signed

by the client, to the subjective understanding of the client, the client may demand that the

10

contract be rescinded and/or reformed. This may include that the PI lawyer will receive a lower

gross contingent fee and/or that no referral fees shall be paid from client proceeds and the

savings from non-payment of referral fee shall accrue to the injured PI client.ii

The client may also request, in the contract, the application of ethics rules that favor the client

more than the ethics rules in the client’s state. The ABA Rules regarding lawyer fees, fee

splitting and referral fees may be consulted.iii

I am continually astounded that no jurisdiction requires the client to be advised of the size of the

fee they will ultimately owe their PI lawyer, or a referral fee written authorization, to require an

explanation in dollar amounts, and not just in fractions (1/3) or in percentages (33.3%). This is

especially alarming considering the relatively high portion of the American population who have

little grasp of how fractions and percentages are calculated and their enormous effect on their

pocket books.iv This sad fact, regarding the unfair omissions in PI contracts, reveals that

consumers have more rights to see the $0.89 charge for an ambiguous fee on their phone bills,

but they are not shown the specific dollar amounts of an $11,111 referral fee that was paid out of

their settlement proceeds, absolutely unknown to the client. Lawyers choose to not enforce rules.

For the client to have the right to choose the applicable rules applying to the legal services

rendered and charged for is common in legal services agreements between large corporations and

lawyers in the individual states. If it is good for the big corporations, it should be good for the

relatively small and unsophisticated injured person seeking a fair deal for PI legal services. In my

humble opinion as a lawyer who is trying to even the odds between lawyers and their clients, I

must advise the clients to not be intimidated because they can rewrite the rules of engagement.

The bargaining between lawyer and client is supposed to be competitive and adversarial, just like

the bartering and haggling that has gone on between buyers and sellers since the beginning of

time, whether or not the lawyers like to admit it. And now the clients have the upper hand

because there is an over-supply of lawyers in America. The clients should be able to avoid

expensive price-fixing “standard contracts” and obtain lower rates because normal forces of

supply and demand dictate a downward movement in price when supply far exceeds the demand

for lawyers.

It is now a buyer’s market for legal services. The clients presently have considerably more

leverage in dictating price for PI claims representation. This is especially true for “clear-fault”

cases that have a simplicity that approaches a no-brainer commodity. One of my law school

professors, Gerald Dunne, a prior General Counsel to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,

used to whack his cane on the lecture table and exclaim about the low level of skill he believed

was required to properly handle all but the most complicated of PI claims, “My Lord! You can

teach a damned chimpanzee to practice injury law!”v Perhaps as a result of that low IQ barrier, I

found myself in that field of law.

Please be assured that 99.9% of the PI services field has become a commodity. Sometimes it is a

very expensive commodity, but it is still a commodity. It has become common knowledge that

price-fixing, in commodities, is rather commonplace in marketplaces that have cartels, such as

OPEC, or a state-sponsored monopoly, such as an organized bar, protecting or fixing the price.

11

This is especially so for the non-complicated “clear-fault” tort cases that comprise the bulk of PI

claims. When you factor in the extended years that lawyers are now practicing law, along with

the rate of law school graduates still grossly exceeding demand, the market for PI legal services

probably will remain a buyer’s market until at least the year 2025. That means that, presently, the

normal PI client should be able to rewrite the rules of engaging a PI lawyer’s services, in order to

give the client a maximum value benefit and an optimal financial recovery (KIMP).vi

After years of intense research and a long career in practicing law, and as an officer of the

Illinois and Missouri courts, it is my solemn belief that the large financial losses experienced

annually by PI clients, in the form of excessive and irresponsible PI lawyer fees, unnecessarily

subject millions of innocent Americans to higher rates of depression, poverty, welfare, crime and

incarceration, bankruptcy, divorce and suicide. (See footnote xxxviii, “Prisons of Poverty”, et al)

America and Americans deserve better. They deserve more of their own money. Now. Their

justice must come quickly because over $50 Million per day is dropping off the tables of

America’s innocent injured as uncollectible due to relevant statutes of limitation time periods

expiring for claims asking to be reimbursed those funds.

Time is of the essence.

The American Fee Party is born and it is here to stay. One single issue comprises its humble

platform. Promoting socially responsible lawyer fees for American businesses and individuals.

Therefore, we need your assistance in sharing this information with as many people as you can

send it to. American families are depending on the success of this information campaign.

The conditions and the reasons for them described or mentioned herein, are not exhaustive. I

anticipate that they will be expanded and studied as America learns more about this problem.

If you could please help with some financial or labor contributions, we will greatly

appreciate it. We do need some volunteers in each state and county in the USA.

Please share some of our following slogans with PI injury victims whom you may know.

Freeze the Fee! ™

Just Say No! It’s My Dough! ™

Humane. Transparent. Now! ™

If justice is not affordable, there is no justice. ™

“We work for the working lawyers.” ™

12

IV. Introduction and Overview

After having practiced law for over 27 years, I have seen and heard about a lot of skullduggery in

the personal injury (PI) field of law, and how its most stellar practitioners attract injury clients. In

one particular criminal case, I donated over 4,000 hours pro bono, including practicing in the

United States Supreme Court on direct appeal, in my successful attempt to exonerate an innocent

union lawyer who just wanted to clean up the lawyering industry by telling the federal authorities

the truth about the lawyer corruption he observed in the railroad personal injury field (FELA).

That habeas corpus case, Waldemer v United States, 98 F3d 306 (7th Cir. 1997), was about my

client volunteering to testify at a grand jury that was supposedly empaneled to investigate alleged

PI lawyer corruption, involving referral fees and other allegations, in the personal injury FELA

area of law. However, it seems that the federal prosecutors were not very interested in cleaning

up the PI field because they did not ask my client the name of any allegedly corrupt lawyers

throughout his torrid, machine-gun style interrogation of 337 questions in 120 minutes that

required him to answer “yes” or “no’ with no opportunity to explain anything in his own words.

He was railroaded.

In the wake of that misguided prosecution, in which my innocent client ultimately prevailed, I

wrote and self-published a novel, “The Redeemer: It Is Written.” That novel was based, in a

large part, on the wide-spread corruption I had observed about PI lawyers brazenly and

unethically chasing PI client cases. I saw too many times the truth of the old lawyer saying, “It

does not matter how good of a lawyer you are, what matters is getting the most clients through

your door.” We PI lawyers tend to be a shameless bunch, and a troubling number of PI lawyers

seem to think that the rules of ethics only apply to the lawyers who do not get the clients.

In light of my numerous experiences as a lawyer, I believe that I know more than a little bit

about this area of the law, the sordid side of personal injury law you never hear about in law

school or in public. Accordingly, I am writing on the subject of personal injury lawyer

price-fixing to give an expanded understanding to the public about why I recently reported

personal injury lawyer price-fixing to the Illinois, Missouri and United States Attorneys

General. Copies of those letters are attached in the appendix hereto.

Ironically, I stumbled onto this subject of the social irresponsibility of PI lawyer referral fees,

after I had a PI lawyer referral fee stolen from me. Yes stolen. Without digressing into the details

of that pilfering, I offer the constructive side of my efforts thereafter. I, in response to the taking

of what I believed was my property, did a lot of legal research regarding referral fees. That lead

to other research and an observation that the majority of the fee structures underpinning the

entire personal injury field of law (~2.2% of U.S. GDP) is built like a house of cards upon an

unstable, main structural pillar of price-fixing.

My extensive research also lead me to an understanding that the PI referral fee that I had

believed was mine and wrongfully taken away, had never been mine in the first place. It was due

to the PI client since no lawyer had made any effort to properly advise the client that a referral

fee was going to be paid to another lawyer, what the fee’s exact $ amount was, and whether or

not the client had waived his constitutional right to not suffer conflicts of interest by a financially

interested lawyer to pay a huge chunk of the client’s money to another lawyer, and that the

13

payment of the money to the other lawyer for a courtesy fee was actually more in the nature of a

gift than a legal fee because the referring lawyer had not done any work to earn the legal fee.

After I discovered the untoward and stinky nature of referral fees, I was almost glad I had not

received the money that I believed had been stolen from me. I had been angered about a theft of

a legal fee when I had never had a strong legal claim to the fee money to begin with. I had

learned more than most lawyers about the less-than-legal nature of the majority of referral fees,

and that it was a $24 Billion dollar per year industry.

Then, I read Jim Clifton’s book “The Coming Jobs War”, and it made me think of how many PI

lawyer price-fixing and referral fee victims there were. That began my mission to help them

avoid losing their precious monies and dear families to a corrupt system of shady lawyer fees.

We are not the Robinhood of legal fees, not yet. There is much earnest work to be done on behalf

of innocent injured people who will unnecessarily lose billions to PI lawyers for no good reason.

We must act now.

As a result, the PI contingent fee and referral fee structures have relatively few published legal

rulings and even fewer formal, published regulations that regulate or control it, nor any approve

contingent fee forms for the clients to look at before they go to the lawyers’ offices in order to

keep the lawyers honest. PI lawyer referral fees are a $24B industry cloaked in lawyer-licensed

secrecy that is operated on: handshakes, loosely written ethics rules, even looser judicial

interpretations of ethics rules that are issued by self-serving fellow lawyers who hope to get a

juicy referral fee too, threats of violence, actual violence, quasi-laws applicable only during a

blue moon, unwritten rules, and a wink and a nod much like the justice system of the Wild West.

As an excoriating example of the specious logic supporting the shadowy PI lawyer referral

industry, please examine the brutally self-serving result obtained in one of America’s few

published opinions involving a lawsuit between a greedy “referral fee” lawyer and a grieving

widowed injury client regarding the propriety of a very large referral fee, in Corcoran v. Dowd.vii

If lawyering was a poker game, the PI lawyers’ price-fixing deck of cards would be stacked

against the PI injury clients. The dealer would be the clients’ PI lawyer who is passing aces

under the table to another player – the “referring lawyer.” Yes, I realize that, in reality, the

previous analogy might not be the best because, when lawyer and client are playing the PI game

of cards, the client cannot see the referring lawyer still sitting at the card table because the client

thinks “the referring lawyer” left early with no winnings at all. When in reality, the referring

lawyer is sitting at the table the whole time, invisible to the client.

As a matter of principle, I do not throw around allegations of price-fixing lightly. I argued and

won a rare habeas corpus claim for an innocent man, in front of one of the most conservative

courts in the land - the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I try to practice good law. However, to

put things in perspective, I have researched, investigated and developed systems for avoiding this

PI price-fixing issue much, much more than the four to five thousand hours I spent researching

and working on the Waldemer v. United States case for a worthy cause involving a friend.

I have far too much respect and love for our American system of justice to carelessly toss about

allegations such as those I have made regarding personal injury lawyers price-fixing without

having first performed an extensive and thorough investigation of my own.

14

Please know that my assertions of wide-spread lawyer wrong-doing, as outlandish as they may

seem, are made with all the sincerity and earnestness I can muster. They are painfully true. They

have pushed me beyond any limit I had ever reached before in my professional, spiritual or

personal existence. My wife and I sacrificed our home so that I could continue on in developing

a beneficial movement and a technological way to prevent the great number of victims that

lawyer price-fixing destroys every year. In this journey for justice for The People, I have relied

on my experience as a lawyer, my Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems, God and

a very trusting and loving wife, family and friends.

I hope that through the internet, the American people may finally see and understand the truth.

After they see the patterns of PI lawyer behavior in price-fixing, they will be able to make up

their minds, without a judge, a congressman or a government lawyer telling them what price-

fixing is. They will be able to decide, in an open marketplace, that if it looks, walks and quacks

like a duck, it is a duck. They will take their $100+ Billion amount of annual claims to the other

lawyers who do not price-fix nor pay unnecessary referral fees. Those consumers will be

organized. The American Clients Association has begun.

The People are allowed to be the judge, prosecutor and jury to cast their own vote regarding

whether or not what a PI lawyer might have just told them is price-fixing or not, by hiring her or

not. The consumer will be allowed to cast their vote with their purses and wallets to boycott and

shun the price-fixing lawyers and hire those lawyers whom they believe conduct themselves in a

more honest, transparent manner following “The Golden Rule.”

The future is here. Marshall McEwen taught us that, “The medium is the message.” For clients

wanting to obtain immediate truth and transparency regarding lawyer rates and quality, the

medium is the internet. Immediate transparency is the natural by-product of the expanding use of

the internet. Transparency will lead consumers to truth for the masses shopping for a good

lawyer at a good price. An open marketplace demands transparency. Denying transparency is a

well-worn tool of the oppressive.

Although Jordan Furlong did not focus on the practice of PI law, in his 5 part series regarding the

advancement of the practice of law in the past and into the foreseeable future, please see Mr.

Furlong’s insightful writings stating that we are in the middle of some very big changes in the

practice of law. We hope those changes will end the unfortunate and 100% unnecessary financial

damages done to injured PI clients by PI lawyer price-fixing.viii

Please forgive any editing mistakes I may have made in generating this explanation to the

question, “How and why does personal injury lawyer price-fixing happen?” I have tried to

be as brief as I can, while still giving you enough information to see that these allegations have

significant breadth and depth. This paper is only scratching the surface of the subject systems

because a reasonably thorough answer to the above question would require about five volumes.

Please note that I intend to self-publish a new volume each year for the next five years on the

above question.

Although it is subject to change by the time of press, I intend be using a working title for the first

version, “The Greediest Story Never Told, Part I”, in order to maximize the positive impact the

book(s) might have on society and its most fragile members. I intend to have experts from

various fields of study weigh in on the subjects surrounding the propriety of referral fees and PI

15

lawyer rate price-fixing: “How does the personal injury lawyer price-fixing happen? and How

does the personal injury price-fixing system affect Americans?”

The experts in fields from psychiatry to social sciences, and political science to anthropology

will wade in with their own essays or study results on the numerous topics and fields of study

that flow from this run amok industry of lawyering that has become an exception to the normal

checks and balances required throughout our American system of government.

There is a maxim in the law across America. We lawyers are fiduciaries of our clients. The

clients put absolute trust in us, so we must not put our financial interests ahead of our clients’

legal and financial interests. Clearly, price-fixing by PI lawyers, at a minimum “standard 1/3

contingent fee” violates our fiduciary duty to our PI clients. This is true because it costs our

clients much more money than necessary to accomplish the same result than if we had sent them

to a different lawyer who charged a significantly lower gross rate.

If we send them to a lawyer who does not charge for or pay unnecessary referral fees, the client

has a better chance to survive. But if the client goes to a “working lawyer” who silently passes

the actual cost of referral fees, onto the injured client and her family, that lawyer may not realize

that their client is going to be short on money critical to their survival. I hope that the following

little bit of math I offer below will go a long way in explaining the fundamentals of the impact of

price-fixing on injured clients and how it is accomplished.

16

V. Simplified Math Results for Comparison of 1/3 Price-fixed PI Settlement

The simple math works this way, in a $100,000 PI settlement with $40,000 in past medical bills

and $20,000 in future medical bills and necessary expenses:

The Same “Working Lawyer” Makes The Same Profits Without Price-fixing!

And the Client “Keeps More in My Purse” (KIMP)

Price-fixed 1/3 Fee W/Referral Fee No Price-fixing and No Referral Fee

$100,000 Injury Settlement $100,000 Injury Settlement

X _33.3% Attorney Fees X _ 22.2% Attorney Fees (33.3% Less 11.1 %)ix

$ 33,333 Attorney Fees $ 22,222 Low Attorney Fees

+ 60,000 Past and Future medical bills + 60,000 Past and Future medical bills

$93,333 total fees and medical bills $82,222 total fees and medical bills

$100,000 settlement $100,000 settlement

- 93,333 Deductions - 82,222 Deductions

$ 6,777 Left for client (KIMP) $ 17,778 Left for client (KIMP)

(Includes {1/3 of 1/3}, Referral Fee) (Same lawyer with No {1/3 of 1/3} Referral)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The focus point to the above calculations is that we lawyers are violating our fiduciary duties to

our injured clients by knowingly causing, permitting, suffering or allowing price-fixing at a

minimum 1/3 contingent fee price because that price-fixing supports existing PI referral

networks that are harmful to the financial interests of our clients, to their families, and to society

at large. As you may see, by we lawyers shopping for a PI lawyer who may pay out a higher

referral fee, or any referral fee, we are wrongfully considering how much we will receive.

This is no different than a stock broker investing his client’s monies in the investments that

pay the highest return for the stock broker and not necessarily the investment that, after

stock broker fees are paid, will produce the best financial result for the client. So, by

applying the stock broker analogy to us lawyers we may be able to better see the truth

about accepting referral fees paid out of our client’s settlement monies. It has very real

potential conflicts of interest.

17

By us lawyers seeking a referral fee higher than 1/3 of 1/3, eleven percent (11%), without a

relative, predictable increase in monies collected for the client by the “working lawyer” to

compensate the client for taking more money from their share for a word-of-mouth advertising

referral fee, there is a very good chance we PI lawyers are violating our fiduciary duties to our

clients. This is because the clients will receive less money in the end than they would had

received, if we had thought less of our own wallets and purses and referred the client to a lawyer

paying a lower referral fee rate or no referral fee at all and passed those savings onto the client.

After all, we lawyers exist to promote the legal interests of our clients first. The clients first,

lawyers second

18

VI. THE LAW OF INVERSE PRICING FOR

PERSONAL INJURY LEGAL SERVICES

Copyright 2015 Mark B. Moran

PI Clients’ Percentage Gross Rates and Net Rates Paid to PI Lawyers ~ 1935-2015**

*K.I.M.P.: Stands for “Keep In My Pocket”. It reflects the final amount of money that a Personal

Injury client has remaining after all PI lawyer fees and other deductions have been subtracted

from the clients’ settlement money.

**Based on 80 Years’ Experience of the Rates for PI “Working Lawyers” and Corresponding

Gross Fees Charged to Clients Who Were Outsourced/Referred to “Working Lawyers” with

“Referring Lawyers” Skimming-off a lucrative referral fee from the PI clients’ injury settlements

(Striped) ____ = Minimum of 33 1/3-50% gross fees; very low KIMP

_____ = “Standard Fee’s” Referral Price Range ~20-32%; low/medium KIMP

_____ = 10-22%; High to very high KIMP; this price range is where “Working Lawyer’s” profits

are still very high and clients receive Maximum KIMP. This is the “cost-saver/low-price” range

that PI consumers were never told about. These reduced rates, below 1/3, have been paid to

the PI “working lawyers” for the past 80 years with BETTER quality PI legal service

money results (KIMP) for PI clients. 22.2% is the PRICE-FIXING, secret, referral rate the

clients were really paying to almost all of the PI out-sourced, “working lawyers”, for the

past eighty (80) years. The clients were led to believe that they were paying 33 1/3%, or

higher, to the “working lawyer”, but that was not true. Business model premise: If PI clients

have been getting better price, quality and value results, at lower rates for 80 years, why do the

19

clients need to pay the middleman referring lawyer an additional 10%+ referral fee? Help the

clients’ families cut out middleman costs.

_____ = 0-10% rates; Medium to very high KIMP; Price range rates that PI lawyers charge for

friends, family and legal clinics (BTW, we have a lot more charts and graphs where this came

from.)

“The Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Lawyers” is a direct product of PI lawyer price

fixing at a minimum 1/3 “standard fee.” “The Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury

Lawyers” only makes sense when you are informed that PI lawyers have been price fixing for

decades. The information upon which the Law of Inverse Pricing is based has been time

tested for 80 years. A corrupt marketplace suspends the normal forces of supply and demand,

which dictate consumer pre, and post- settlement assessments for price, quality and value.

Therefore, the PI lawyer price fixing at a “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee” thwarts free-

market forces from effectively providing consumers a chance to obtain an optimal value

combination of price and quality.

The most probable result is that the PI lawyer price fixing manufactures a socialized marketplace

for legal services that provides diminished value for the individual clients. Such a closed,

corrupted marketplace may be so counter-productive to the clients’ interests that the price-fixed

PI legal services, raising price well above 1/3 and then combining with present market forces of

“litigation lending” and more efficient medical bills lien collections protocols may leave the PI

client in a worse situation than when she was trying to deal with the liability insurance company

to settle the claim by herself. In short, PI lawyers may be pricing themselves out of the

market for PI legal services. (End of Legend)

The “standard fee” penalizes the hapless clients who pay the price-fixed minimum 1/3 contingent

fee. Disgruntled ex-clients, wanting to get some of their fee money back, can contact the

relevant liability insurance companies that were involved with their PI claim to request a copy of

all correspondence between the insurance companies and their PI lawyer. These documents can

provide a brighter light, more specificity, regarding the representations their PI lawyer made as

to the nature of the client’s injuries and damages, the nature and extent of the PI lawyer’s fee,

and the corresponding amounts that were demanded as a settlement of the PI claim.

Truth is truth. Math is math. And numbers do not lie. Especially insurance company numbers, of

the “1/3 standard fee” rate charged by PI lawyers across America. Those “lien rate/amount

statements” are written into the “standard” “Attorney Lien Letter of Representation”, which is

sent out by PI lawyers almost immediately after they sign up a new PI client. The rates charged

for almost every PI claim made for the past 80 years are sitting in the databases of America’s

insurance companies. My professional opinion is that the insurance companies will fully

cooperate with states and other entities in making these documents available for the clients and

the lawyers wanting to prosecute unfair Anti-trust price fixing claims for PI clients against their

PI lawyers.

“Demand letters”, “Attorney lien letters” and other correspondence and communiques will state

the “1/3 fee” as the amount of the “lawyer’s lien” claimed on the proceeds of about 95% of the

PI claims. Lien letters, letters, faxes, emails, etc., and maybe some or all of the client’s medical

20

bills in the insurance companies files will round out the information obtained. These third-party

sources for proof of PI lawyers obtained to investigate PI client over-charging through price-

fixing, improperly charging a contingent fee on no-risk claims and for paying other lawyers (and

sometimes non-lawyers) unauthorized referral fees, will go a long way to determining how much

a PI lawyer may owe the ex-clients.

Will all of the PI ex-clients who seek records be successful in being paid back for the client’s

respective part of the approximate $24 Billion in improperly authorized referral fees paid to

unknown lawyers? No, but that does not mean they should not find out the truth in trying to be

paid back.

Besides, there will be plenty of aggressive lawyers who immediately develop a new type of law

that they practice, to wit: facilitating and settling price-fixing and “inadequate notice of referral

fee” claims. In order to do this, the lawyers representing the ex-clients/clients might be suing PI

“referring lawyers” and also any “referring lawyers’” deep-pocketed employers that, through

inadequate supervision, etc., may have caused, permitted, suffered or allowed the price-fixing or

referral fee activities to be conducted

A lot of money will exchange hands over this. Bright, new lawyers who do not have much or any

PI price-fixing liability may fill the vacuum of collection lawyers too squeamish to sue their own

brethren to make a living (but more likely they do not want others to find out their participation

in the price-fixing for collections lawyers’ claims sure to come. The established collection

lawyers might also “owe the clients.”

Any of these “owing the client” lawyers might be judges, politicians, bureaucrats and private

lawyers who just happened to be in the right place when an innocent, trusting person, a fellow

parishioner perhaps, approached them after church. The conversations might go something like

this, with the injury client saying, ~ “Do you know where I could find a good lawyer to help me

with my family’s injury case? We got T-boned by a drunk driver 6 months ago and we have a lot

of medical bills and we lived off all of our savings, but and the insurance company is saying they

want a statement before they pay anything. We don’t know what to do, and we don’t want to go

to those guys on TV because they just seem slimy. We are broke because both my husband and I

could not work for a while after the accident, so could you send me to a lawyer who you trust

who handles injury cases, please?”

The soon to be referring lawyer might say something like this, in response to that plea for the

favor of a professional referral, “Sure, I know just the right law firm. They don’t charge any up-

front fees, so it won’t cost you a penny. And they aren’t slimy. They won’t jip you by ripping

you off. There is a usual standard fee that you pay only if they collect something for you, and it

is just a “standard fee.” (Price-fixing, fee-bullying already!) So, they will just probably let you

just pay a “standard fee” like everyone else. (Price-fixing, fee-bullying already!) But let me call

them and check into it for you. If they are too busy I will definitely find a good PI lawyer for

you. (SOU- Sense of Urgency) I will get you set up with some top-notch injury lawyers. Maybe

you and I could talk a bit more so I can explain to them the nature and size of your claim. When

could we meet soon?”

The above conversation is of a type that is typically used to set the hook in a client to receive a

referral fee for a single claim. The above “single-claim referral fee fishing method” is the one

almost exclusively used by the PI industry from the late 1800’s until the U.S. Supreme Court

21

ruled in Bates v Arizona Bar Association, in 1977. In Bates, the Court ruled that lawyers have

the First Amendment right to free speech and that includes price, quality and value lawyer

advertising for clients through mass media.

After Bates, a troubling number of cunning and cold-blooded PI lawyers turned the practice of PI

law into a “referral factory”, a/k/a/ a “settlement mill” that relied on an increasingly growing in

size net to conduct “large-net” PI lawyer advertising campaigns to drag, reel and haul-in clients

by the hundreds, not just one at a time, like in the pre-Bates era of catching a PI client one at a

time.

In the PI lawyer “large-net” campaigns, the prospective PI clients chase after the “Free Initial

Consultation” bait and swim into the net by simply calling the TV- Internet Titan’s office, which

has a high probability of being a “referral factory.” At the in-office appointment, the “referral

factory” uses some very slick and coercive sales techniques on the large-netted prospect that are

discussed elsewhere herein. Soon the referral factory run by the PI lawyers signs up the client for

a price-fixe minimum 1/3 fee. Then they out-source the freshly “caught” client out the back

doors of their “referral factories” to a “working lawyer” who does great quality PI work and for a

heck of a lot less than what the client thought the “working lawyer was actually getting paid.

(22% instead of the 33% rate the client will end up paying)

The client is led to believe that the “working lawyer” is being paid a lot more, and she usually

does not know that she is paying a secret referral fee (a gift) to another lawyer. This is so because

the price number for the real “working lawyer’s” fee (22%) was not the same number the client

saw when she signed the PI legal services contract to begin her representation (33%) and it was

not the same number she saw in her settlement closing documents she signed (33%).

Nowhere in her documents was she informed that the referral from a “free initial consultation”

ended up costing her enough money to help her family survive the future money demands that

her PI injury and representation caused her to suffer. She deserves better from the American

system of justice. America’s PI “standard fee” victims do not need this brand of justice. They

need fairness.

22

VII. How PI Lawyer Price-fixing Hurts the U.S. Healthcare Industry

PI lawyer price-fixing and The Law of Inverse Pricing for U.S. Personal Injury Lawyers also

reflect the long-standing and very worthy, objection that healthcare providers are damaged by PI

lawyers elevating their fee structures up to a higher societal priority than the fiscal well-being of

the institutions who treat PI clients/patients. U.S. healthcare institutions, and individual

practitioners, that provide medical care for PI claimants are required, sometimes by statute, to

annually write-off $Billions of PI patients’ medical bills. Why may you ask?

The short answer is “To make it easier for PI lawyers to price-fix and maximize the fruits of

price-fixing.” When you do simple math, it becomes simple. The math shows that the healthcare

industry writes off massive amounts of PI medical bills as “uncollectible” in order to allow PI

lawyers to continue to price-fix at a minimum 1/3 fee, so they can pay 1/3 of 1/3 referral fees.

Lawyers charge a 1/3 fee of the total medical bills and lost wages, which are multiplied by 3 to

arrive at the settlement demand.

In order to isolate the effect of price-fixing on the healthcare industry, we must isolate the

medical bills, in our math. Therefore, remember – keep your eye on the 1/3 of 1/3 “ball” because

here come three fast strikes on the healthcare industry.

(STRIKE #1) No matter what the client’s settlement amount ends up being, due to the 1/3

standard fee, price-fixing PI lawyers take a minimum fee of 1/3 of the PI claim medical bills,

even though that resulting number is not isolated or labeled as such on PI settlement statements.

(STRIKE #2) There is only so much money in each respective “settlement bucket.” When the

settlement money is gone, the injured PI claimant cannot go back to some magic well that keeps

filling the bucket for her; the 1/3 of 1/3 of the settlement amount is as sure as the tides no matter

what size settlement.

(STRIKE #3) Therefore, requiring the healthcare industry to write-off 1/3 of its medical bills, as

a societal priority, means that the hospitals are directly underwriting the referral fees of 1/3 of

medical bills. In essence, this means that when you pay your sky-high hospital bill, you are

probably paying an extra amount to make up for the $24Billion in medical bills the healthcare

industry must lose so the PI claimants have enough money to pay the 1/3 standard fee out of

settlement proceeds.

Three strikes and you are out. These three strikes are one of the reasons why the healthcare

industry keeps “striking out” and raising the rates they charge non-PI and PI patients. They have

to make up for the PI strike-outs some way.

PI referral fees are usually 1/3 of 1/3 of whatever the settlement amount ends up being. And the

amount that the healthcare industry is required to write-off is usually, on average, at 1/3 of the PI

claimant’s medical bills. On average, the two amounts are very close, industry-wide.

23

Example: using $33,000 in medical bills and no lost wages (a retiree), and the PI claim

settles for $100,000. The PI lawyer’s “1/3 standard fee” is ~ $33,333. The PI “1/3 of 1/3

standard referral fee is 1/9 or ~ $11,111.

Now look at the required “1/3 standard write-off of the medical bills. 1/3 of the $33,000 medical

bills is $11,000. This shows that the unnecessary, windfall referral fee at $11,111, is amazingly

close to the amount the healthcare industry must write-off and forfeit at $11,000.

Sure, we are dealing with only one example, but if you track these respective numbers over many

claims, on average, you see a pattern emerge. The pattern is that, since there is always a finite

amount of money in the PI settlement amount, the referral fees are facilitated by a trade-off that

requires the healthcare institutions to cut revenues and forgive the amounts that they originally

earned. And the cuts the healthcare industry makes are very similar in the amounts of the referral

fees paid, on average. The absence of the forgone medical bills is filled by referral fees paid.

They make these huge cuts, in order to make the settlement palatable to the injured PI claimant

and to appease the PI lawyers’ need for an advertising fee to be paid to the referring lawyer. In

this simple example, you may see that the PI lawyers are getting their PI referral fees and

heightened 1/3 minimum fee underwritten by the healthcare industry forgiving valid charges that

they earned before they ever found out that their patient was going to make a PI claim.

Some observers compare the PI referral fee trade-off for the write-offs by the healthcare industry

and everyone forgetting about the client to the old-fashioned carnival “shell game.” Shell games

were usually run by hucksters who would place a pearl under one of three shells and then make a

participant bet that she could not guess which shell the pearl was under after the huckster

shuffled the shells around in front of the bettor. The huckster usually won because he cheated by

making the pearl fall into the pouch he was wearing. When the bettor picked a shell she thought

the pearl was under, it was never there because it was not under any of the shells.

It is a $24B/yr. “shell game” run by big PI lawyers lobbying legislatures to put the priority of

paying an under the table referral fee above the profitability of our US healthcare workers. One

physician told me that he looked at the PI price-fixing and its referral fee budgets as though they

were a fixed-results (cheating) carnival shell game. He offered by analogy that it runs like the

traditional huckstering as portrayed over the decades but with a couple of twists. We will use the

above $100,000 settlement to illustrate the huckstering that goes on with client PI settlement

monies.

Shell #1 is marked (underneath the shell) “1/3 of Medical Bills $11,000” because the PI client-

patient had to incur medical bills to make a traditional PI claim, and the hospital doctors and

nurses did all their work for the injured client before they ever discovered that their patient might

have a PI claim.

Shell #2 is marked “PI Injured Claimant’s Money” because when the money comes in, it all

belongs to the client-patient, until she signs the settlement papers.

Shell #3 is marked “Lawyer Advertising Referral Fee $11,111” because that is the 1/3 of 1/3 of

$100,000 settlement, ($11,111) that the client was charged for as a lump-sum price-fixed 1/3

minimum contingent fee to cover the lawyer’s advertising budget.

24

This awkward math is conducted by the PI lawyers even though the client was not told about the

referral fee. And even if there is no referral fee to be paid in the minority of situations where the

client goes straight to the “working lawyer” with no referral at all. In those circumstances, of no

referral, the “working lawyer” just pockets the extra 1/3 of 1/3 budgeted referral fee and does not

tell the client that he would have gladly given the client that money but the client did not ask.

And so our hypothetical $100,000 PI claim begins and the Client PI Medical Bills and Price-

fixing Referral fee shell game starts. When the settlement money comes in, the$11,111 (1/3 of

1/3) amount of the settlement is the pearl that is placed under shell #2 “PI Injured Client”

because it is her money until she signs the settlement documents.

Shell #2 is the shell to track as the carnival huckster switches, shuffles and moves the three PI

price-fixing shells around to make it confusing to follow which shell has the pearl of the 1/3 of

1/3 of $100,000, the $11,111 under it. When the client receives her settlement check, the $11,111

referral fee amount is not in the check amount, as it was “hidden” in the artificially high 1/3

price-fixed fee the huckster used to hide his sleight of hand.

The pearl of $11,111 is not under the shell #1 to pay the $11,000 the hospital is asked to cut their

bills by, at the insistence of the PI lawyer. It is puzzling how the pearl always ends up under shell

#3 for the lawyer’s referral fee budget.

This huckstering is what the PI price-fixing system does to the healthcare industry. The PI

lawyers charge the price-fixed 1/3 of the medical bills. Then they call up the hospitals and ask

them to cut 1/3 from their bills to make the settlement work, while claiming that the hospital

won’t get paid anything if the hospital does not forfeit collecting $11,000 that it earned. Then,

after the hospital cuts their bill by $11,000, the PI “working lawyer” turns around and pays the

“referring lawyer” $11,111 as a wholesale advertising referral fee.

I hope you may see that the healthcare industry must raise its charges by $24 billion per year to

make up for the shortfall caused by PI lawyers charging the price-fixed 1/3 fee that allows

payment of 1/3 of 1/3 referral fees.

As you may see, PI lawyer price-fixing has caused the healthcare industry to forfeit collecting at

least $24 Billion dollars per year. This forfeiture of revenues by the healthcare industry, is

required by the mega-powerful PI lawyer lobby so that the PI lawyers can keep the rate hiked up

to a minimum of 1/3. The high healthcare premiums and taxes cover the cost of the annual write-

off of over $24 Billion in legitimate medical bills incurred for the necessary treatment of PI

claimants across America.

If the subject $33,000 in PI medical bills were not necessary, they would not have been included

in the settlement demands sent to liability insurance carriers. And if they were not legitimate

medical bills, they would have not been compensated by the insurance claims departments as

medical bills proximately caused by the negligence of their insured.

The end result is that legitimate PI claimant medical services and medical billings go

uncompensated because a very similar amount of money is being paid as referral fees to

“referring lawyers” who bring very little, if any, value for the clients to the entire PI process in

this internet era. The transparency of the internet allows PI claimants to find a competent PI

“working lawyer” without an expensive referral fee. The internet is now the “middleman”

replacing the hyper-expensive traditional referral fees that are integral to 1/3 price fixing.

25

We will visit this very important subject of how the PI industry and its price-fixing hurts the

healthcare industry and its effect on healthcare and how it drives the cost up for innocent people,

in later writings and in the book series we will publish each year as we pursue our 2020 Vision:

Bridge To the Future campaign to make lawyer pricing 100% transparent by the end of the year

2020.

Please also see our Special Message to America’s Doctors and Healthcare Workers power point

at our website’s library at: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/blog/

PLEASE ALSO READ THE NOTICES TO THE PUBLIC FOUND THROUGHOUT

AND AT THE END OF THIS REPORT/PAPER.



26

VIII. Question Answered

How and why do U.S. personal injury (PI) lawyers commit price-fixing at a “standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee”?

IX. Summary of Answers

U.S. personal injury (PI) lawyers commit price-fixing at a “standard 1/3 minimum contingent

fee” a/k/a “The Standard Fee” a/k/a “The 1/3 Standard Fee” through various methods and for a

number of reasons, that are stated below as a partial, ongoing list:

1. A Bar Association approved “1/3 standard fee” is an old wives’ tale used by PI lawyers to

help them price-fix by intimidating clients into not trying to negotiate price

2. Price-fixing makes PI referral fees outrageously profitable for lawyers, and disastrous for

PI clients

3. Personal Injury lawyer price-fixing creates real victims, and victims, and victims

4. A profound lack of marketplace transparency regarding price, quality and value

information for consumers allows PI lawyers to flagrantly misrepresent to clients, behind

closed doors, that the bar requires/approves that the PI lawyer charge “the standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee”, which amounts to price-fixing and “fee-bullying” because it

severs the injured client’s ability to conduct any free-market, lawyer-client price

negotiations that would force the PI lawyers to compete on price, quality and value.

5. A lack of effective regulation of lawyers

6. Humans are naturally slothful and greedy. These DNA seeds did not miss highly

intelligent PI lawyers but found fertile soil in gardens tended, watered and weeded only

by lawyers who grow rare and exotic revenue-rich plants like “secret referral fees” and

“1/3 standard price-fixed PI contingent fees” found nowhere else on the landscape of the

American economy; a rare and lucrative crop indeed

7. I can get a good quality PI lawyer, at a greatly reduced price? – A no-brainer that every

PI lawyer feared for the past 80 years that the public would learn.

8. The annual payments of PI “referral fees” to thousands of public servants encourages and

perpetuates the non-competitive PI price-fixing

9. The staggering amount of money that accrues to PI lawyers due to price-fixing; greed,

money, power, repeat

10. The dramatic effectiveness of price-fixing’s “Fee-bullying” used by PI lawyers’ as sales

techniques on prospective personal injury clients

11. Due to PI lawyers using price-fixing, there is a very high closing ratio maintained by the

clients inability to shop for price when quality is competitive among PI lawyers; price-

fixing enabled sales techniques cause prospective clients to just give up in the lawyers’

offices and sit back in their chairs and say “OK sign me up” for the “1/3 minimum

standard fee”

12. Lack of law schools teaching proper fee practices for lawyers

27

13. Charging the 1/3 price-fix, as an industry minimum, encourages “working lawyers” to

raise the gross rates the clients are charged, up to rates higher than 1/3, in order to be able

to raise their rates for referral fees they pay to “referring lawyers”, in order to attract

more injury referrals.

14. For the past 20 years “standard 1/3 contingent fee” price-fixing has allowed PI lawyers to

spend outrageous amounts on search engine internet advertising in order to maintain and

build PI market share

15. Proof of the antitrust “per se” horizontal and monopolistic price-fixing by Bar

Association PI lawyers may be accomplished by aggrieved PI clients uploading the great

number of client contracts existing to date that include the “standard 1/3 contingent fee”

language combined with the clients’ willingness to share copies of those price-fixing

contracts with hopes to get all or part of their fee monies returned to them willingly or

through formal claims and litigation against PI lawyers.

16. PI Lawyers price-fix at 1/3 because 4 out of 5 clients do not understand basic math

17. Internet search engines enjoy world-record profits due in large part to PI lawyer price-

fixing that drives PI lawyer large-net advertising campaigns

The above factors combine to encourage America’s PI lawyers to persist in decade’s long

price-fixing to the detriment of consumers’ families, taxpayers and government

treasuries.



IMPORTANT NOTICE! If you are an injured person looking for a personal injury (PI)

lawyer, always make sure that you are not exceeding the time allowed to bring your claim.

The time within which to properly file or make a claim for your injury is called the “statute

of limitations” and it varies from state to state. Consult a lawyer for information regarding

the time period in which you must successfully bring your injury claim. Nothing in this

paper should be construed as offering legal advice or counseling. Always consult a lawyer

from your local jurisdiction immediately if you need legal counsel or representation. The

opinions contained in this report are just opinions; they are not facts. Any reference to the

possible commission of price fixing or other crime or unethical behavior is not related to, in

reference to, or directed at any person or firm in particular and any connection or

inference that may be made thereto is purely coincidence.

No knee-jerk conservatives or liberals were harmed in the creation of this report, as this

report is intended to be A-political. Both major political parties seem to participate in the

questioned conduct to varying degrees. Names were changed to protect the guilty and

innocent.

28

X. Answers and Analysis

How and why do U.S. personal injury (PI) lawyers commit price-fixing at a “standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee”?

1. A Bar Association approved “1/3 standard fee” is an old wives’ tale used by PI

lawyers to help them price-fix by intimidating clients into not trying to negotiate

price

Explanation

One of the most effective, and evil, propagandists in history, Joseph Goebbels, once said,

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe

it.”x That is the case with PI lawyers telling clients that there is a “standard fee” of 1/3.

Worse yet, the PI lawyers may tell you that they must charge 1/3 because that is what all

the other lawyers charge, or that they will get into trouble with “the bar” if they do not

charge “the standard fee”, or some variation of that stinky storyline. The fact is, it is not

true.

The fact is: there is no Boogey man; there is no extra luck you get when you throw salt

over your shoulder, after you have seen a black cat cross your path; cold water does not

come to a boil faster than hot water; and there is no PI “standard 1/3 fee” required by any

Bar Association in the United States of America.xi

The truth is that the law of the land is that “…the customary contingent fee is and should

be 33 1/3% …” was tossed out with a lot of other price-fixed lawyer rates when the U.S.

Supreme Court prohibited lawyer price-fixing and threw out the entire Virginia Bar’s

“Minimum Fee Schedule Report”, in Goldfarb v Virginia Bar, in 1975. Any other

representation regarding lawyer price-fixing rates is simply not true.

These repeated untruths, told by PI lawyers over and over again to innocent injured

people, are why we are recommending that PI claimants request their PI lawyers to write

to the client a signed letter on lawyer letterhead that gives that PI lawyers’ explanation of:

(1) how the 1/3 standard fee is approved, or condoned, or required by any Bar

Association; (2) why it is not price-fixing if “all the lawyers charge the same rate”; and

(3) if the lawyer cannot adequately explain 1 and 2 to the client’s subjective approval,

then the rate for the contract will drop to a much lower percent fee.

For far too many decades PI lawyers have played loose and fast with the facts regarding

the “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee.” Requiring them to put their words in writing

to their clients will make them write lies for which they can be formally disciplined and

sued for price-fixing or willfully drop their fees to levels that will be moving in the right

29

direction. Millions of innocent, injured people have suffered too much for too long at the

hands of stingy insurance companies on one side and greedy PI lawyers on the other side.

The injured get victimized 4 times when they get injured. Once, when they get injured.

Second, when they try to get a fair settlement with the liability insurance company

without hiring a PI lawyer. Third, when they are required to sign a price-fixed rate PI

lawyer contract when they hire a PI lawyer. Fourth, when they settle their case and they

are not told that a huge referral fee is being paid to another lawyer who did no work, just

a referral.

It is time for the innocent injured to receive the truth. It is time for America to enter a

new economy that is not laden down and held back by illegal price-fixing, in an industry

that comprises around two percent (2%) of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product.xii

My message to PI lawyers across America. Please stop misleading the clients to believe

that there is a “standard fee” required or approved by any Bar Association. And if by

strange chance, some Bar Association is not following the official law dictated by the

U.S. Supreme Court, please send me an email so we can warn the innocent injured

people. They deserve to keep more of their tax-free money.

2. Price-fixing makes PI referral fees outrageously profitable for lawyers, and

disastrous for PI clients

Explanation

One jurist chuckled and rolled his eyes when he told me, ~“Referral fees and the

‘standard fee’ are the crazy uncles personal injury lawyers never speak about in public

and keep locked in the attic.”

What is a PI referral fee? It is more or less a finder’s fee that is also referred to as a

“wholesale advertising fee”, a “split fee”, a “bird dog fee”, etc. How did I first find out

about referral fees, the topic they never teach in law school? I will never forget the

setting and response I received when I asked a very successful 40 year veteran of

personal injury legal practice, “How did they come up with 1/3 as the standard personal

injury contingent fee?” His prompt response was, “That is so you had enough money to

pay your referral fee.” In my 5+ years of researching the subject, I have never found a

better answer than that.

As you may discover, an understanding about referral fees is imperative to understanding

why and how lawyers are still price-fixing on personal injury contingent fees today, in

2015. I include herewith some ads by lawyers for case referrals taken from popular legal

services trade periodicals. They are doing this in the open legal community. The law

firms are directing the ads at lawyers, not injured clients. In the ads they are

advertising for injury client referrals from other lawyers. Some of the ads promise

“competitive rates” for the referral fees, but they do not promise any competitive

30

rates on the gross fee charged to the client. These law firms appear to be trying to

obtain PI or work comp cases. In the ads they point out how much money they have paid

in referral fees to other lawyers; the very same money that their clients need to pay their

future medical bills.

Referral fees used to make a smattering of economic sense in the pre-internet era. That is

because people needed a word-of-mouth referral to help the client shop for a PI lawyer.

But in the internet era that provides shoppers with immediate transparency, the PI referral

fee now has a usefulness that approaches zero. The client will be able to find plenty of

very qualified PI lawyers, with good track records, without a middleman lawyer taking

11-25% of the client’s precious injury money. (A basic rule of effective logistics is

“remove the middleman.”)

PI referral fees have outlived their usefulness to the clients. Clients do not need to pay a

referral fee to find a good PI lawyer at a good price anymore and they don’t need to pay

for horse feed for their horses any more to get to work because technology advancing

provides them cars to drive to work instead of riding horses. New technology disrupts

systems built on older technology. Internet replaces word-of-mouth, especially via text,

twitter, snapchat, emails and social media.

Technology has changed a lot of things for the lawyers and clients. Lawyers no longer

need to pay thousands of dollars per year for the law library space and books lawyers

needed to find legal reference materials that contained the right legal authority to win a

particular case. In the internet era, they now find that same case in an instant over the

internet, in a fraction of the time, space and cost of maintaining an office law library

before the internet era.

The same goes for consumers. They can use the same internet technology to find a good

number of qualified PI lawyers online at a good price without paying a large and

extremely unnecessary referral fee. However, PI lawyer price-fixing is still pushing the

referral fees and referral fees are pushing the price-fixing and the two combine to push

the injured client off of a foreseeable financial cliff.

Almost all PI lawyers will keep all of the referral fees for themselves in non-referral

cases where the client comes to the “working lawyer” without a referral cost. (A long

time ago, I did the same thing, but I tried to make sure that my client walked away with

more KIMP than me.) The other main reason why PI lawyers still price-fix at a minimum

1/3 is to ensure that on any given case, the price-fixing lawyer will have the extra gross

fee budgeted to pay a referral fee to a lawyer.

This is true because about ½ of all PI cases still come to PI lawyers by paid referrals.

Lawyer A still pays referral fees and price-fixes to allow him to have enough money to

get the PI case. Lawyer A knows that Lawyers B, C, D, etc. pay referral fees. So Lawyers

A and B and C and D, etc. must also price-fix to be able to vie for PI referrals and still

have a very good profit after the case settles. Preventative price-fixing.

31

The PI lawyers’ price-fixing system seems to enjoy what might look like a charmed life.

It produces enormous profits for PI lawyers through a system that suspends supply and

demand marketplace forces of price gravity, through a mysterious invisible hand that

controls a yin and yang, a giving and taking, from client to lawyer to lawyer (C2L2L),

with a type of synergy that appears to mysteriously energize itself like a perpetual motion

machine. However, like little dog Toto pulled back the curtain and revealed the real

Wizard of Oz, we are also pulling back the curtain to reveal the real black-ink magic

behind the PI price-fixing and referral fee system(s).

The casual observer of the prosperous PI lawyer contingent fee system does not realize

that it is all a price-fixing magic trick supported by the wide-spread financial misery of

the clients that pays for it all and makes the magic seem to work, in the short-term. Then,

the long-term future medical liabilities, and via client filed bankruptcies, clients’

predicted expense liabilities are dumped onto the taxpayers and innocent creditors, in

order to make the price-fixing system work in favor of PI lawyers’ bank accounts.

PI lawyers fix their contingent fee rates at a minimum of 1/3 in order to drive their injury

case referral fee system, and they use the referral fee system to stabilize rates artificially

high at a 1/3 minimum.xiii Like two roman soldiers back to back, one protects the other.

Please know this. PI lawyer price-fixing will persist as long as The People allow PI

lawyers to continue to pull the wool over innocent injured clients’ eyes about referral

fees. The People must consider boycotting the referral fees and the standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee. They must demand more price, quality and value

information transparency through the internet and other mass media outlets.

A free market is a transparent market. Price-fixing destroys the clients’ hopes for a free

market in the PI legal services area of the law, which touts itself as providing the injured

clients fairness in their settlements with insurance companies. (See footnote x)

3. Personal Injury lawyer price-fixing creates real victims, and victims, and victims

Explanation

I have met a good number of the injured people who are victims of PI lawyer price-

fixing. A troubling number of TV advertising lawyers, operating “settlement mills”,

target minorities and the poor. Stanford Law Professor, Nora Freeman Engstrom has

written extensively on the subject of PI lawyers and their business methods, including

targeting minorities and poor people. She observed,

“Yet, settlement mills overwhelmingly represent individuals who are poor,

uneducated, and/or who belong to historically disadvantaged ethnic and racial

minority groups. Given persistent social hierarchies, these clients are also

personally acquainted with few lawyers and know little about the civil justice

32

system generally. “[T]here are no lawyers in [my clients’] personal social circles,”

one settlement mill lawyer explained, while another recalled, “People didn’t know

what a real law firm was.” A third responded, when asked to describe his typical

client, “Working class. . . . People who don’t have any particular understanding of

the legal system, except what they’ve heard from television.”xiv

The minorities and poor have inadequate social nets with which to successfully survive

the financial losses from being a victim of PI lawyer price-fixing and referral fees. xv

These injured people all have their own unique tale about how they got injured and how

they suffered after the future medical bills settlement monies are gone. And they come

from all walks of life.

One such person wishes to remain anonymous. I refer to her as “Grandma Mary.”

Grandma Mary is a middle-aged grandmother, a U.S. Navy veteran and she works hard

as a registered nurse. Her job requires her to be on her feet most all of her days. She is

also a very active person who dotes on her family, as most grandmothers do.

Unfortunately, Grandma Mary lost one of her legs through no fault of her own, while

riding as a passenger in a vehicle involved in an auto accident. Grandma Mary’s PI

lawyer, told her that she had to pay a standard 1/3 fee, when he came to the hospital to

have Grandma Mary sign a “standard fee” contract, while Grandma Mary was sedated

with pain medication.

Grandma Mary’s PI lawyer (who we will refer to as “Price-fixing Pete”) put about 10-12

hours of lawyer time into her claim and charged Grandma Mary over $50,000 in fees at

the full “standard 1/3 minimum contingent rate.” “Price-fixing Pete” had zero risk in the

Grandma Mary’s file because: (1) Grandma Mary had no fault for her injury; and (2)

“Price-fixing Pete” only paid a few hundred bucks for Grandma Mary’s medical

records/bills and $5 for a copy of a police report.

Essentially, “Price-fixing Pete” charged Grandma Mary over $5,000 per hour, when he

was taking zero risk in fronting the couple hundred dollars in case costs to obtain

Grandma Mary’s medical records and a copy of the police report. Grandma Mary’s

problem is that she had some predicted future medical bills for which she received

settlement monies. Grandma Mary needs a new and more technologically advanced

prosthetic for her amputated leg that she suffered in the auto crash. She needs a new leg

that does not hurt her when she walks and stands on her feet for long periods of time. Is

that too much to ask from her PI settlement?

The next problem is that Grandma Mary’s PI lawyer, “Price-fixing Pete”, paid himself

$5,000 per hour by deducting a full “standard minimum 1/3 contingent fee” from

Grandma Mary’s future medical bills settlement monies. If “Price-fixing Pete” had not

charged her “the 1/3 standard fee”, but instead had been paid a generous $400 per hour

33

for his 10- 12 hours of shuffling papers and making a few phone calls in one of the many

“clear fault” [4 out of every 5 PI cases], then Grandma Mary would have paid “Price-

fixing Pete” about $4,000 to $5,000. This is called a “Billable Hour Contingent Fee”,

and they were fairly common during The Great Depression. (See its discussion on ~p. 75,

under footnote xxx)

She would have saved a whopping $45,000 that she could use to pay her future medical

bills just like she planned when she agreed to settle her case at a certain amount. But due

to “Price-fixing Pete’s” extremely expensive rate of pay, Grandma Mary does not have

the money necessary to get a new leg. If Grandma Mary had known that there is no

“standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee”, she could have negotiated the fee down to

something that was much fairer.

And Grandma Mary does not want to “stoop” to ask the taxpayers to pay for her new leg

through her VA benefits that she has as a Navy veteran. Grandma Mary exclaims, ~

“Why should the taxpayers pay the money that my lawyer took from my future medical

bills? I thought he was spending hundreds of hours really fighting for me. I should not

have to be on welfare or VA benefits to get a new leg. It’s not fair! I did not know it was

price-fixing or I would have demanded a lower fee!”

Sadly, what happened to Grandma Mary happens to about 2 Million non-work related

injured people per year in the United States. But you should include their family

members too who also suffer because the bankrupt injured people have to take money

from 401(k) plans or college funds, or the rent/mortgage payments because they do not

have enough future medical bills monies to pay for necessary medical care. And the PI

lawyers tell us that it is all perfectly legal according to the scant lawyer rules that are

written, interpreted and enforced by lawyers. No checks and balances are required for the

lawyers because you should trust them, right?

Grandma Mary is a new member of the informal, but quite vocal, American Fee Party.

She knows that what happened to her will happen to other innocent, misinformed, injured

people, if we Americans do not stand together as an economic block to regulate the fees

of America’s lawyers. “Grandma Mary says, “The Bar sure as hell won’t do it. We got to

do it ourselves. The lawyers just keep taking and taking and taking! They don’t want to

see me up there at the capitol! I promise you that! I’m not going to keep putting up with

their bull ____ !”

Due to PI lawyers’ price-fixing at the “standard 1/3 fee”, the Grandma Mary’s of

America have never had a right to vote on lawyer prices, but now they have a voice. We,

at GoldenRuleLaw.org, exist to give the Grandma Mary’s of America a strong and

effective voice.

34

4. A profound lack of marketplace transparency regarding price, quality and value

information for consumers allows PI lawyers to flagrantly misrepresent to clients,

behind closed doors, that the bar requires/approves that the PI lawyer charge “the

standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee”, which amounts to price-fixing and “fee-

bullying” because it severs the injured client’s ability to conduct any free-market,

lawyer-client price negotiations that would force the PI lawyers to compete on price,

quality and value.

Explanation

Lawyers do not have to work very hard at secrecy because society expects a shroud of

confidentiality around the dealings of lawyers and their clients. Accordingly, there is a

lack of transparency in the PI legal services markets that is not found in the markets for a

lot of other services. For instance, in the medical services field, there is privacy

expected, but the huge and sophisticated insurance company 3rd party payers usually

audit medical costs closely to ensure that there is no price-fixing. These types of audits

are also conducted on the billings of corporate and insurance defense law firms because

those bills are being paid by a sophisticated corporation or insurance company.

The opposite is the case in the PI legal services field, where there is almost nobody is

looking over your shoulder to make sure that you are not taking advantage of the party

paying for your legal services. The unfortunate injured PI clients are not expected to

audit their lawyers for “standard 1/3 contingent fee” price-fixing because they are

supposed to just take their lawyer’s word for it as a first and final explanation of how and

why they pay the same “standard fee” everyone else is supposedly paying. This is called

“fee-bullying” because it shoves the rate down the injured client’s throat and does not

allow price negotiations.

This lack of an open market in which to compare rates with other PI clients, of various

lawyers, allows PI lawyers to hide the price-fixing truth from their individual clients and

the public. It may be obvious that clients comparing prices and results is not encouraged,

but discouraged, by the secret nature of the legal profession. People demand privacy in

their dealings with lawyers.

That fact is relied on by the PI bar to assume that their clients will not be communicating

rate and results information with a lot of people, except those that give the same answer

to “How much did you pay?” Response: “You paid 1/3? So did I, but my lawyer said that

is the standard fee that he is required to charge.” Response: “Yeah, my lawyer told me

that too. Want another round?” The consumers assume that it cannot be price-fixing, if

the bar demands that everyone charge the same rate.

35

As you may see, PI legal representation produces an environment very conducive to

keeping the price-fixing unknown, due to the strong characteristic of human behavior

regarding the privacy people expect in their legal affairs coupled with the fact that the

lawyer is the one doing the accounting, auditing and escrowing of all PI settlement funds.

The fox is watching the henhouse.

Therefore, most people do not expect to know what other people are charged by different

lawyers. They do not realize that they need to know comparative price information in

order to survive. As result, the price-fixing PI lawyers have ill-informed, compliant

victims who have no idea that they deserve so much more of their own tax free PI

settlement money.xvi

5. A lack of effective regulation of lawyers

Explanation

The United States was founded on the belief that unchecked power will eventually

become corrupt and will unfairly dominate The People. The founders went to great

lengths to ensure that our government was based on a good system of checks and

balances.

Over the past 200+ years the checks and balances they put in place worked fairly well,

except for one area of government that escaped their construction of an effective check

and balance system. The judiciary. The lawyers. The lawyers have always regulated

themselves. Doctors, engineers, hairdressers and more are all regulated by a combination

of non-lawyers and lawyers. Not so for the lawyers. They are the only profession that

regulates and polices themselves. And they have taken advantage of that self-policing by

erecting a PI price-fixing system that is still going strong today, in 2015.

Simply put, there is no effective regulation of PI lawyer fees by any regulatory agencies.

This allows and encourages lawyers to price-fix at a minimum 1/3 contingent fee at their

whim and fancy.

As you may see, by reading the following excerpt from the dialogue of an interview

conducted by Stanford Law Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, of a PI lawyer, the

ineffectiveness of lawyers’ self-policing has encouraged too many PI lawyers to become

quite smug, as though their shenanigans of price-fixing at a “standard fee”, etc. are

invisible and that they are untouchable, “Let me tell you, so much goes on in a law

firm that settles cases, and it’s all out of the light of day. If you don’t have a moral

center, and you’re willing to slide and slip around, you can do all sorts of things

because you’re never going to be caught.”xvii

“Run-of-the-Mill Justice”, P 1514, THE

36

INVISIBILITY PROBLEM: “IT’S ALL OUT OF THE LIGHT OF DAY” note 191.

Telephone Interview with E.G. (Apr. 22, 2008)

As a seasoned veteran of PI legal practice, I do not approve of “sliding and slipping

around” regarding the settlement of cases for PI clients, but I regretfully agree with the

accuracy of the previous quote due to the number of lawyers I have spoken with who

have worked in “settlement mills.” I also believe that because that those sorts of law firm

atmospheres and untouchable attitudes are found throughout the PI bar, the

ineffectiveness of lawyers policing themselves encourages price-fixing by PI lawyers.

The ineffective self-regulation of lawyers, by lawyers, and for lawyers has led to a

consistently poor result for PI claimants over the past several decades.

There are two main thrusts on the issue that there is a lack of effective regulation of

lawyers and most specifically, PI lawyers.

First, lawyers are the only occupation that enjoys insulation from the foundation of

checks and balances that the U.S. and state governments is based on. Lawyers, because

of their unique position as the only occupation allowed exclusive control of one of the

three pillars of our system of government, the judiciary, enjoy exclusive self-regulation.

The supreme court of each state has ultimate authority to regulate the practice of law in

each state and all of those courts are manned only with lawyers. So, the lawyers are

allowed to write their own regulations, they get to interpret those regulations through

their courts and inferior committees appointed by the courts, and lawyers get the final

say-so on how those same regulations should be, or not be, enforced.

A comparison by analogy, between healthcare privacy and legal services privacy, yields

two different results in transparency and the service recipient’s ability to evaluate

professional advice, such as a PI lawyer telling a prospective client that he has no control

over the price he charges because the bar has set a “standard 1/3 minimum contingent

fee” for PI legal services.

When physicians evaluate and counsel a patient in a hospital, there are some practical

checks and balance to help prevent inaccurate medical counseling. For instance, if a

doctor told his patient that the patient must allow the doctor to drain out half of the

patient’s blood to cure the patients broken leg, an ancient practice known as blood-

letting, some practical checks and balances would probably prevent that quackery.

Several nurses and other doctors and the patient’s family would ask, “What was the

diagnosis and treatment plan is going to be?” When they found out that the original

doctor was using techniques from 100 years ago that had no bearing on the cure for the

patient, there would be a quick amendment to the patients treatment plan.

37

On the other hand, because “…it is all out of the light of day…” the recipient of PI legal

counseling does not enjoy the benefit of several “legal nurses” who would skeptically

review the legal services plan to drain away half of the client’s money. The legal client

would not be expected to share that his fee payment information with anyone except

perhaps her spouse.

Furthermore, the client who is the victim of inaccurate legal counselling about the

“standard 1/3 fee”, does not enjoy the legal services equivalent of other physicians and

nurses double-checking the clients chart regarding a treatment plan. In a contrast to the

protocols in the medical field, PI legal claimants do not have the benefit of so many

trained individuals reviewing the PI lawyer’s initial counseling of the client to make sure

the client was not mislead.

However, as a result of the lack of other professionals double-checking the accuracy of PI

lawyer advice, PI clients regularly walk out of PI lawyers’ offices terribly misinformed

by their lawyers that the 1/3 fee is “standard” and that it is approved or dictated by the

bar. In my professional opinion, PI lawyers misstating the law behind closed doors, is

probably how most PI lawyers are able to fix their rate at a minimum standard 1/3

contingent fee.

If a client hears “standard fee” from a PI lawyer, she should ask if the lawyer will waive

her referral fee. If the PI lawyer does not waive the referral fee and bring the rate down to

around 20% for beginning negotiations, and does not budge off of the “standard fee”

misstatement of the law, the client should probably look for the door no matter if her dad

recommended the lawyer.

The PI lawyers have unchecked power regarding PI client counseling due to the veil of

secrecy over all things involved in the practice of law. Unchecked power always corrupts

the holder of that power. So PI lawyers believe that they are untouchable because they

have an amazing degree of influence on the lawyers who comprise the state supreme

courts because they pay referral fees to those judges before, during and after those judges

took the bench.

I come from a family of lawyers, so I have had the privilege to hear the way things really

happen in the PI legal fee arena. When billions of dollars per year get doled out to

hundreds of thousands of lawyers as referral fees for PI cases, there are as many stories

about how the case came into the office and bore fruit. Many of the referral fees have

gone to judges, believe it or not folks! No matter what the rules of ethics say, many a

judge has accepted a referral fee. Sometimes they use a straw party, sometimes not. And

there are some mind-boggling sized referral fees out there for the accepting, through

legitimate means and not. Google it. So, why would a judge try to reform a system that

has been so very good to him/her?

38

The second reason why the 1/3 standard fee price-fixing is tacitly permitted, even in the

face of US Supreme Court rulings prohibiting lawyer fee price-fixing, is that the system

of lawyer self-regulation places an impossible burden on the victims of price-fixing, the

clients. Lawyers would not exist if there were no clients, but that does not mean that the

lawyers intend to be fair with the clients. The lawyers just have to tolerate the clients

while they milk the PI clients like dairy cows. Strong or harsh words? Not really. A cow

knows when it is being milked, but the clients do not.

This is because the regulatory and disciplinary system for lawyers requires the clients to

report lawyer wrong-doing. This is due to the impracticalities of having a compliance

investigator sitting in on every lawyer-client “free initial consultation”, when the PI

lawyer tells the prospective client that she/he charges a non-negotiable “standard 1/3 fee”

and that “it is the same fee all the PI lawyers charge.”

Relying on questionable and biased logic, and intoxicated by a price-fixed extra $24-43

Billion per year, the lawyer disciplinary process also assumes that the clients know the

law of price-fixing; and know that the client does not have to agree to a “standard 1/3

fee”; and know that she can and should negotiate, bargain for and “shop” the lawyers fee

(in an economy with far too many lawyers and too little work)xviii, and also assumes that

the client knows that not one single state’s bar has officially mandated or approved the

charging of a “standard 1/3 contingent fee”, since the State of Virginia did so and lost

unanimously in Goldfarb v. Virginia Bar, in 1975.

The lawyer regulatory authorities put the clients in an impossible situation. They expect

the clients to be in possession of information that the clients have never been given, and

have no duty to possess. It is the lawyers who have a duty to possess that price-fixing

prohibitory information and convey it to their clients and prospective clients as a

fiduciary, without misstating the law. However, they are telling people that they charge a

“bar approved” standard personal injury 1/3 minimum contingent fee, in their offices

behind closed doors.

As we embark on this five (5) year campaign to Freeze the Fee! ™, we anticipate that a

super-majority of participating clients will recall that their lawyer used some variation of

language to lead the prospective client to believe that the bar “approved”, “required”,

“condoned”, “encouraged”, “allowed” or “mandated” the charging of a 1/3 minimum PI

contingent fee.

Since the bar already presumes that the clients know as much law as the lawyers

regarding lawyer fees, we say, we will help the clients share that information about which

PI lawyers told them, an untruth, about the nature of the 1/3 contingent fee. The founders

of our great United States had incredible aforethought and conviction when they decided

to make the right to free speech the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Every

39

lawyer knows that every client has the right to put their entire legal services contract

online for the world to see. A little white-out or black-out, a 300dpi digital scan and the

upload of the lawyer-client agreement on the lawyer’s letterhead will be good enough for

the rest of the online community to see what they should have been seeing for the past 20

years – transparency in legal services rates, contractual terms, quality and value.

The right to free speech will allow The People to regulate lawyers through unfettered

communication. Instead of being unrealistic and expecting the bar to protect them in all

situations with lawyers in real time, The People will rely on the formal bar only when

they need some enforcement of a well-documented problem.

As a great change to the way lawyers have enjoyed secrecy in their billing practices for

the past 200+ years, a new wave of hope for the autonomy The People will prevail.

Finally, in a reversing, 180 degree, shift of power by the lawyers relinquishing price

information to The People, transparency and information sharing will command the free

market for legal services. This will bring a new prosperity to our citizens.

Our business model offers direct and effective regulation of lawyers, by The People

enforcing their rights in the context of the client- lawyer relationship. Instead of the

clients following the lawyers’ pricing models, the clients will set the rules that favor them

and provide a reasonable profit for the lawyers. Each client will be a unique case because

the perceived value associated with each client’s case results is subjective, not objective

like the “standard fee.”

There is no one-size-fits-all “bar approved”, “standard fee” pricing model that clients

should feel intimidated to accept. This is a corollary of the Unity of Ones economic

theory that I developed that is applicable to the legal services industry. The demand for

client value subjectivity drives the client’s demand for price, quality and value

transparency for legal services. It also drives the clients away from the objective price,

quality and value model of “1/3 (33.3%) standard fee.”

For more information on this topic, please see our presentations on these issues at our

online library located at GoldenRuleLaw.org, and especially our Power Point titled “The

Land of Three’s.”™ The “Land of Three’s”™ attempts to explain the “33.3% standard

PI fee” through a couples’ long journey with an analogy to the price of gasoline across

America, in relation to the fact the PI “1/3 standard fee” appears uniform across America.

(Please see footnote xiii regarding the definition of “uniform” PI lawyer rates at a

standard 1/3; “Since the uniformity of CF rates drives the referral system, and lawyers

benefit from the ability to transfer cases for referral fees, it is generally in the lawyers’

interest to maintain the standard rates.” {Emphasis added} [“Uniform” a/k/a “price-

fixing”])

40

6. Humans are naturally slothful and greedy. These DNA seeds did not miss highly

intelligent PI lawyers but found fertile soil in gardens tended, watered and weeded

only by lawyers who grow rare and exotic revenue-rich plants like “secret referral

fees” and “1/3 standard price-fixed PI contingent fees” found nowhere else on the

landscape of the American economy; a rare and lucrative crop indeed

Explanation

Being a PI lawyer, and having worked around a lot of PI lawyers, I believe that I am

qualified to make the following observation. Most PI lawyers want to avoid working

extra hard on the task of marketing themselves, by competing on price and quality

because they very much enjoy the predictable excessive profits and decreased amount of

marketing work and costs that price-fixing provides.

Don’t get me wrong. PI lawyers are some of the hardest working human beings on planet

Earth to ensure a high quality of legal services for their clients. But PI lawyers do not like

to work at competing on price and quality, so in that isolated activity they are smug and

lazy. I observed that these lazy PI lawyer attitudes existed in the typical PI lawyer my

entire legal career. The thinking went something like this. “Why compete on price when

you can play loose and fast with the facts about the non-existent “Bar

Approved/recommended 1/3 standard fee” in order to cause consumers and lawyers to

take a detour around the field of competition?”xix

These attitudes toward price-fixing and its protective characteristics persists to the

present date even in the face of a lawyer glut in the US. xx However, I have shared our

business model, which places the clients’ financial interests ahead of price-fixing, with a

number of established PI lawyers. Surprisingly, I have received a number of inquiries, by

angered or surprised PI lawyers, as to how much life insurance I have. They do not like

the idea of stopping their 1/3 minimum price-fixing and competing on price, quality and

value.

The reactions of my fellow lawyers have left me with some of the same type of “social

leper” feelings I believe Jim Bouton experienced after he wrote “Ball Four”, which was

an accurate expose’ of the inside workings of the business of baseball. However, Jim

Bouton did not recommend that baseball give up any secret source of massive, off-ledger

revenues. Our business model involves PI lawyers, the most litigious people on planet

Earth, to willfully quit their price-fixing ways in order to transfer $24-$43 Billion dollars

per year from their side of the balance sheet to their clients’ take home settlement

monies.

41

Range of financial damage to America’s injured families:

$12,290 - $21,495 monies overcharged due to PI price-fixing per injured family

The average benefit that would accrue to the average PI client, if America offered a

transparent and free market for consumers to shop for PI lawyers who would be

competing on price instead of price-fixing, at a “1/3 standard minimum contingent fee”,

would be in an approximate range of $12,290 - $21,495. These are monies that are

presently deducted from the PI client’s settlement share leaving the client’s family with

an absence of these future medical bills monies.

The absence of amounts that size, $12,290 - $21,495, from future medical bills and

necessary expenses monies needed by the average American family, will tend to cause

severe financial crisis and predictable depression and anxiety related behaviors in those

families because most families live paycheck to paycheck in today’s U.S. economy. In

short, “losing” that kind of money is crushing. But what may be worse is not knowing

that you were due that amount of money, while still being burdened with the future

medical bills debts. These “unknown reasons” for financial calamity will crush many

families sending them over the brink, into divorce, bankruptcy, drug and alcohol abuse,

welfare, crime and incarceration and suicide. xxi

I am also certain that the extremely wealthy and influential search engines are not too

keen on the idea of permanently losing the largest source for their biggest revenue

stream, which is click-through ads for PI lawyers. However, in an economic war where

the large-net marketing search engines’ most sought after audience, PI clients, start

exercising a boycott of PI price-fixing lawyers and a well-informed populous of PI price-

fixing victims, (due to GoldenRuleLaw.org informing them) and PI lawyers, my money

bet is that The People’s boycotts will prevail over the lawyers advertising enabled by

search engines. This is because The People will be shopping for a good lawyer at a good

price due to the price, quality and value transparency offered by an open marketplace for

legal services.xxii

However, the one response that most clearly indicated to me the degree of sloth and greed

of some of my PI brethren went something pretty close to the following monologue in the

response to me offering to a PI lawyer I had known for twenty years as to why we PI

lawyers should rethink price-fixing with a “standard 1/3 contingent fee.”

~ “Sure Mark, we all price-fix [on PI work]. You know that. Hell, you come from a

family of personal injury lawyers. But let me tell you what would happen if I had to

compete on price for personal injury work. It would be a race to the bottom. I would

have to sell my BMW and my wife would have to sell her Lexus. I would have to sell my

nice home in a real nice neighborhood here in _____ . [Illinois]. My children would no

42

longer go to private schools. We would have to sell our big second home in _______ ,

Florida. And I would have to get divorced. Now I know that price-fixing is wrong, but

God damn it I will just have to keep price-fixing until they catch me and everyone else

because everyone is charging the same damned price for basic PI work. You can’t throw

us all in prison!”

Please note that none of the price-fixing lawyers in Virginia who were price-fixing on

real estate title closing legal services, in the Goldfarb v. Virginia Bar, U.S. Supreme

Court case, went to jail for clearly violating the Sherman Act. But the entire Virginia Bar

was required to amend its ways instantly. If that sort of change occurred in the price-

fixing for PI legal services, the bar would adapt, survive and press on. The American

economy would receive a net positive boost.xxiii

7. I can get a good quality PI lawyer, at a greatly reduced price? – A no-brainer that

every PI lawyer feared for the past 80 years that the public would learn.

Explanation

The need that we fill, as for-profit and non-profit businesses, is that we provide

information critical to the clients’ survival after their PI case settles. The clients need to

know a certain fact about the PI industry; that any injury client can receive the

same quality of PI “working lawyers” for a much reduced price because those same

“working lawyers” are working for that exact same reduced price every day.

(Usually at 22% and not at 33%) Same quality of lawyer, but a reduced price – a no-

brainer.

The clients just do not know the truth about what goes on behind the closed doors of law

firms in every corner of America. It is time they learned the simple truth. The PI

“referring lawyers” and the “working lawyers” have been running a two-tiered system for

“same quality, different price” legal services since The Great Depression.

PI lawyers are afraid that, if rates that are now lower than 1/3 became public, there will

be a consumer reaction, like in an open marketplace, that will cause an immediate “race

to the bottom [rate].” It appears that price-fixing PI lawyers may prefer a socialist model

fee for PI legal services and PI lawyer fees, where the socialized price is fixed at a high

minimum that allows the private PI lawyer bar to reap big profits and requires the state to

pay for the future losses of unpaid medical bills.

I estimate that about ½ of all PI cases in the U.S. involve paying a referral fee. That

means that ½ of the PI cases in the U.S. are handled by PI “working lawyers” who have

been working for decades for a lot less money than the standard 1/3 fee and doing a

better KIMP job for the clients than those lawyers charging a 1/3 fee. The lesson learned

from this is that some very good PI law has been practiced for the past several decades at

43

a much reduced rate of pay with no difference in the amounts collected for the injured

clients, but a significant increase in the KIMP for the clients paying the lower PI rate.

Some PI lawyers are trying to keep the “standard 1/3 fee” price-fixing system going

because they believe that if there was a marketplace for real price competition for PI legal

services, they would be requested by their entire PI clientele to lower the rates in the PI

contracts they signed and were pending settlement.

Collectively, I have had such lawyers offer to me their rationale for perpetuating the 1/3

price-fix, ~ “I will have to discount my entire inventory of cases, Mark! And I have

mortgages and business loans and collateral counting on those [“standard 1/3 fee”]

revenues.” Or here is another response from an incredulous lawyer, ~ “If I am going to

compete on price, how the hell am I going to pay my referral fees? How am I going

to get clients, if I don’t pay referral fees? What, am I supposed to do, advertise on

TV like (a local TV Titan law firm)? I don’t have that kind of money.”

Isn’t the doomsday scenario that the above lawyers described sound a lot like a stock

market investor who decided to borrow a lot of money to buy stocks on a margin that is

leveraged out to a perilous degree? Aren’t market corrections a way of life for the entire

rest of the free market system selling goods and services? Should we exempt lawyers

from enduring the risk and pinch of a market downturn?

Should we continue to insulate PI lawyers from normal free-market forces and just let

them keep avoiding the risk by price-fixing so they can prop up an extravagant lifestyle

and a bulging 401(k) investment portfolio? The most honest answer would come from

informed clients who decide that they might just boycott the “standard 1/3 contingent

fee”, by refusing to sign settlement checks until they see a reasonable fee rate.

Who is picking up the tab for these risky business practices by PI lawyers? Some of the

ones who are paying for it are the injured client’s entire family, by suffering a lower

standard of living than they should have to suffer. The other innocent people paying for it

are the taxpayers who are asked to pay for medical services and welfare payments that

the client needs because a PI lawyer wanted to price-fix in a tort system that was

originally designed to make the client whole, not destitute. This smacks of socialism on a

very grand scale. Socialized drinking fountains and roadways are good for a partially

socialized society. But PI lawyers crossed the line from capitalism to socialism when they

were high on OPM – Other People’s Money – the innocent client’s money.

During America’s Great Depression, an era that also developed the subject PI ”standard

1/3 contingent fee”, fascist economic theories were taking root world-wide and it appears

that America’s PI fee system may have been significantly influenced by fascist socialistic

ideals. In 1936, historian Gaetano Salvemini offered that practicing fascism makes

taxpayers liable to pay for the economic mistakes of private enterprise. Salvemini wrote,

"…the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual.

Loss is public and social."xxiv

44

By PI lawyers taking such a large portion of PI claimants’ future medical bulls as their

contingent fee and referral fee, the PI lawyers are asking the state, the taxpayers, to pay

for their blunders. The PI lawyers want to play capitalism to allow them to keep their

fees, but they then want to switch to socialism to make the clients medical bills losses

public and social. The PI lawyers want to have their cake and eat it too by price-fixing to

push future client needs onto society in the future.

8. The annual payments of PI “referral fees” to thousands of public servants

encourages and perpetuates the non-competitive PI price-fixing.

Explanation

Starting from the 1920’s and then proceeding for about 60 years, until PI lawyer

advertising took off on TV and internet during the 1980’s and 1990’s, the vast majority of

PI cases made it into a PI lawyer’s office by client- to-lawyer-to-lawyer (C2L2L)

referrals. However, in present day practice, only about half of the PI cases involve a

C2L2L referral fee. The other ½ of PI cases come to PI lawyers, due to PI lawyers using

mass media advertising on the internet, TV and radio. This accomplishes a client-to-

lawyer (C2L) direct flow of injury cases to PI lawyers’ offices, as opposed to the

triangulated C2L2L referral method.

In those C2L non-referral scenarios, the working lawyer does not waive the referral fee to

give his client a price break; he just pockets the unpaid referral fee. The PI lawyer does

not tell his client that he is over-charging the client, by price-fixing at a minimum 1/3, so

he can perpetuate the ruse that there is a bar mandated “standard 1/3 fee”, whether or not

there is a C2L2L referral. The client is never told that the injured client is “paying”

for an unnecessary middleman. The injured client is “paying” the “working lawyer”

only 22%, when the client is actually paying a total of 33% of all her settlement monies

in order to give the middleman lawyer, the “referring lawyer” an 11% finder’s fee

(referral fee).

Sadly, yes, it is a ruse because the referring/middleman lawyer knows better or was so

inexperienced that he had not yet learned the truth about the true genesis for referral fees.

That there is no such thing as a bar approved “1/3 standard fee”, but if you keep saying

that such a thing exists, people who do not know any better keep believing it. (See

Footnote x)

Even the people who are trained to research the law, the lawyers, rarely understand what

actually happens in a PI referral situation because they just take other lawyers’ word for

how the system works. After they understand the basics, lawyers do not ask too many

questions to make sure the clients are not receiving a bad deal.

45

As you may discover, an understanding about referral fees is imperative to understanding

why and how lawyers are still price-fixing on personal injury contingent fees today in

2015. I include herewith some ads by lawyers for case referrals taken from legal services

periodicals. They are advertising for PI or worker compensation (WC) cases and pointing

out how much money they have paid in referral fees to other lawyers. That is the very

money that their clients need to pay their future medical bills expenses. xxv

However, the

clients never see or understand those referral fee ads, so the price-fixing referral fee

system keeps going.

One does not have to connect too many dots to figure out that the price-fixing is protected

from any meaningful scrutiny because the authorities who supervise the PI referral fee

systems in each state, have substantial stakes in the regulation of PI lawyer referral fees.

Mind you, I do not offer these sources to allege that any of these public figures are doing

anything illegal or unethical under the present regulations and the present interpretations

of PI referral fee ethics regulations.xxvi A person with a bit of common sense and who is

slightly curious, can see that there are way too many loose ends in the PI price-fixing

industry, and if they look much deeper, they will not like what they see. Most who see the

truth just keep their head down and keep shuffling away.

But does that make the payment of referral fees socially responsible, when similar acts of

even minor referral fees involving other licensed professionals such as doctors and stock

brokers end with a prison sentence? We think that the legal profession should be held to

the same standard as physicians and stock brokers regarding paying or receiving referral

fees. Criminalize it. A bit harsh? Yes. But if the other professions can curb such

practices, using the criminal laws, so can us PI lawyers. We are lawyers after all. If it

save lives and families, perhaps it should be criminalized just like wearing a seat belt is

criminalized.

That stories about PI referral fees being paid to public figures reaching print as news is

remarkable. I must say this, there is something terribly wrong with our system of justice’s

toleration of price-fixing’s progeny of referral fees, when I was counseled by very

competent and experienced PI lawyer mentors in the 1980’s, as to the fact that a troubling

number of public servants of all stripes, had participated in the shadowy referral fee

system through the help of straw parties. And it is still going on. 30 Years later and

nothing has changed.

I conservatively approximate the number of public servants who are paid PI referral fees

in 2015, at 20% - 30% of our entire population of public servants who also hold a license

to practice law. Some of the most honorable lawyers I ever knew taught me the inner-

workings of the referral fee system, in relation to how PI settlement monies get into the

wallets of public officials over thirty (30) years ago.

46

I am saddened that there have been countless miseries for families who needed those

billions of dollars of money that, instead, padded the wallets of politicians and public

employees. The long term effects of the referral fee system dictating that PI lawyers must

price-fix to maintain the referral fee system, is incalculable. Freeze The Fee! ™ Now

before even more families are hurt.

I approximate that between $500M-$1B per year is paid, straight or through straw parties,

to local, state and federal public officials through the PI referral fee system out of the

$24B+ amount of referral fees charged to injured PI clients. (About 2-5% of PI referral

fee monies each year.) This is a very serious affront to our beliefs that these people

should remain unbiased and: (1) Not be moon-lighting without disclosing who they are

partnering with to receive income, (2) Be avoiding conflicts of interest, (3) Not be taking

referral fees from lawyers when the clients were not fully advised about the payments,

and (4) Not be taking PI lawyer referral fees for not performing the work. Query: When

you refer someone to a good doctor, or a nice tailor, do you charge them a referral fee?

Could you imagine how expensive our medical system would be if the doctor you first

saw at the ER referred you to another doctor, who did all the work, and paid the first

doctor 1/3 of the profits from of all of the services the second doctor charged? That is

silly to even think of something so absurd, but that is our PI referral fee system that has a

terrible deficiency of checks and balances to prevent such results.

Our Freeze The Fee!™ challenge is a boycott of the “standard 1/3 fee” that is made

because our government officials are incapable of pressuring PI lawyers enough to force

them to stop price-fixing on PI rates. It follows that without a boycott of the “1/3 standard

fee” orchestrated by The People, how can the injured citizens expect any substantive

change in the price-fixing and associated referral fee systems that remove precious

money from their homes?

If the very officials who are supervising the drafting, interpretation and enforcement of

rules regarding the referral fee activity the public needs regulated, are the same officials

who enjoy large financial stakes in the matter being regulated, PI lawyer fees?

In Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat”, Friedman lists “10 Forces That Flatten

The World.” One of those forces is uploading content to the internet. Of all ten forces,

Friedman believes that the uploading phenomenon to be "the most disruptive force of

all."xxvii

The people should no longer tolerate the lawyers letting the foxes guard the henhouses

because the greed of public officials is a very real thing. Clients obtaining copies of their

PI files and referral fee checks issued and cashed by various public officials, and then

uploading that information to the internet will be the beginning of a movement where

citizens’ rights to First Amendment free speech will affect and drive the regulation of a

47

secret society - lawyers. Americans will be falling off of their chairs when they find out

who is actually promoting the price-fixing and the referral fee system. Billions of dollars

exchanged every year, behind closed doors and under tables and almost always behind

the clients’ backs, makes for some very surprising bedfellows, generates a lot of internet

traffic and sells a lot of newspapers.

Is it radical for The People, as PI clients, to demand a fair explanation of what happened

to their personal money? Or why they are being charged a standard fee that is not

required by the bar? Is it radical to boycott referral fees or the 1/3 fee that feeds the

referral fee tax, under a claim that it amounts to taxation without legal representation?

Are PI lawyers collecting secret taxes, as fees, perhaps in order to pay for the creation

and operation of their socialized entitlement program for Personal Injury lawyers?

It appears, prior to taking the bench, Supreme court Justice Louis Powell helped to

orchestrate the price fixing scheme/program/practice that was struck down as illegal in

Goldfarb v Virginia Bar. So we had a conservative justice who promoted socialized

price-fixing to create and maintain an elitist population of lawyers. Thank goodness the

rest of the eight justices had the courage to reel in price-fixing for their own profession.

We believe that it is not radical or improper to ask questions regarding the treatment and

allocation of your money. It is not improper to use economic boycotts to effect change for

matters affecting rights fundamental to the human experience, such as basic fairness and

affordable justice, when there is no immediate, or effective remedy offered by the

government.

We, at GoldenRuleLaw.org and GoodLawyerGoodPrice.comxxviii

, rely on capitalistic

economic models to conduct this movement by The People because we are dealing with a

demand of the people that they receive good value in legal services. The People have the

right to transparency of price and quality combined in a free and open marketplace. These

are the same basic economic rights people enjoy when they shop for ears of corn, or a

car, or a dentist. They are not radicals. They are citizens with rights regarding their

property.

9. The staggering amount of money that accrues to PI lawyers due to price-fixing;

greed, money, power, repeat

Explanation

Please keep in mind that a lawyer named Ted Olson, a highly skilled bankruptcy lawyer,

who represents the interests of some of the biggest governments and corporations in the

world, is the highest paid “billable hour” lawyer in America, earning $1,800 per hour.

48

Many other lawyers at the very top of their corporate law industry charge over $1,000 per

hour. xxix

Please also keep in mind that 4 out of every 5 PI cases are clear fault. So, 80% of the

time, the insurance company knows they have to pay the injured person money and the

only question is how much the insurance company will be required to pay in order to

settle the injury case. Keep those basic facts in mind in mind as we proceed.

After personally handling hundreds of personal injury claims as a plaintiff and an

insurance defense lawyer, including working as in-house corporate defense and trial

counsel, and having worked with many other skilled PI and claims lawyers and

personnel, and having analyzed a lot of the PI legal services and other lawyer tasks as a

member of the Illinois Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Technology, I have some

observations to make here regarding how much work is involved in handling 80% (4 out

of every 5) of PI claims, the “clear fault” cases. This may reflect to you as to how much

work PI lawyers do for the high compensation they charge by price-fixing at the “1/3

minimum standard fee.”

In my professional opinion, the typical “clear fault” PI case should only take a PI lawyer

about 10-12 hours of lawyer time to work up thoroughly for settlement, or trial if

necessary. This requires the PI lawyer to do four (4) things real well: (1) Get all of the

injured client’s medical records and bills associated with the injury; (2) Make sure the

injured client is treated respectfully by taking care of any questions or concerns she might

have; (3) Assess the case value and make an aggressive settlement demand for the proper

value of the case for settlement in a range of 2 – 4 times the addition of the injured

client’s medical bills, the incidental costs and the lost wages (the “special damages”); and

(4) be prepared to file suit or to try the case (or know a lawyer who will help you try the

case while you second-chair her), if the insurance company is being uncooperative as to

the realistic settlement value of the case.

It might surprise a lot of people, but by far, the most difficult and time consuming task is

#1, obtaining all the medical records and bills. After that, the rest of the case is on cruise

control because with a clear fault case you usually do not have to worry about the

client’s, the defendant’s or the doctor’s depositions. The insurance companies might try

to slow you out of some money, but on average, the typical case settles well if you treat

the insurance claims people with respect.

This talk you hear from TV Titan lawyer ads about them fighting with the insurance

companies is only accurate in about 1 of 10 cases. (The other 10% of cases in the not-

clear-fault category settle with some additional work of filing suit and conducting some

light discovery that is not difficult for the average PI practitioner.) The remaining 1 out of

10 cases are the high dollar and/or “questionable fault” contentious claims that require

some zealous lawyering.

49

While on the topic of zealous lawyering, it deserves to be mentioned that the most

common failure to fully compensate an injured client for all of her damages is not usually

because the PI lawyer was not good, but instead inadequate settlement results are

commonly due to inadequate amounts of insurance policies of the wrong-doer and the

injured. I have experienced far too many times when an injured person has such severe

injuries that they exceed the respective insurance policies.

In those situations, no amount of high-skilled or zealous lawyering will get the client any

more money. Accordingly, the client should not be agreeing to a 1/3 or higher PI standard

fee when the case involves clear fault and there is a relatively small insurance policy

from which the claim must be paid. Those types of claims are “slam dunks” that are

usually settled quickly for the full insurance policy limits, and a PI client should not have

to pay a referral fee to another non-working lawyer even if the “working lawyer”

voluntarily cuts his 1/3 fee down due to a quick settlement.

In these situations of inadequate insurance, the referral fee monies (that the client will

never see change hands) are even more important to PI claimants who have been short-

changed to begin with, by there not being a sufficient amount of insurance to pay for all

the past and future medical bills. But the PI price-fixing at 1/3 drove that case to the

“working lawyer’s” office on the assumption and agreement that there would be a 1/3 of

1/3 referral fee paid to the “referring lawyer”, when the case settled.

Do not expect the PI lawyers to do the right thing by forfeiting their referral fee or their

right to a 1/3 standard fee in those situations. History is full of examples where the PI

lawyer took much more than most would have believed. (See the Corcoran v Dowd case

at footnote #vii)

The TV Titans tout how good they are as PI lawyers. However, if they actually possess

superior lawyering skills, and they are not just quick “settlement mills”, they won’t be

able to get you more money if there is not enough insurance or corporate proceeds.

Therefore, in those very common situations, a less expensive rate for a lawyer who does

not have the posh office, will put more money in the client’s purse than will an expensive

rate PI lawyer. It is all about the KIMP for the clients. A PI lawyer should try to

maximize the KIMP, Keep In My Pocket for the client and not for the lawyer.

PI lawyer price-fixing, at a minimum 1/3 contingent fee, is very good to the TV Titans

who advertise in “large-net” TV and Internet campaigns because it allows the TV Titans

to net so many clients that the TV Titans must out-source 8 -9 out of every 10 clients

netted. The TV titans do not want big payrolls. They do not want to pay the overhead for

the number of lawyers, paralegals and administrative staff required to prepare all the

netted cases for settlement. There is a reason Stanford Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom

refers to these types of law firms as “settlement mills.” (See footnote ix)

50

In a typical $100,000 PI settlement, the “working lawyer” will be paid a minimum of 1/3,

which equals $33,333. Then the “working lawyer” will pay the “referring lawyer” 1/3 of

her fee of $33,333, which equals an $11,111 referral fee to the referring lawyer. xxx

In my professional estimation it takes, on average, a total of 10-12 “lawyer hours” to

work-up and finalize a typical “no-fault” PI claim. Dividing the $33,333 [1/3 fee] used in

this example, and applying a total of 12 hours required to work up the claim to fruition,

you produce a result of the PI lawyer taking $2,777 per hour as his fee. This is almost

$1,000 per hour higher than the record highest billable hour rate claimed by the highest

paid lawyer in America, Ted Olson, at $1,800 per hour.

To make this even more unfair, the PI lawyer took almost zero risk, but still charged an

inapplicable contingent percentage fee. Charging a percentage referral fee is supposed to

be prohibited, except for only the PI cases that present the most risk. But in dismaying

fashion over the years, beginning during the Great Depression, according to the self-

interested PI bar, any PI case eventually came under the “Rule of Risk” that allowed the

PI lawyer to not only charge a contingent fee, but a contingent fee that gobbled up a large

percentage/portion of the injured claimant’s settlement monies.

When you consider the above seminal facts, it appears that many of the “Average Jane”

PI claims generate effective hourly rates in excess of the highest paid, most talented

lawyers in the world. And these stellar rates are being charged in 4 out of 5 PI claims

where the fault is clear, the lawyer work is minimal and the lawyer risk is as close to zero

as can be.

These results cause the families of injured Americans to suffer far too much. Even if the

PI lawyer in the above example charged what the highest, most talented lawyer in the

U.S. is paid by the hour, this would only generate an $18,000 bill against the PI

settlement and not the $33,333 actually charged.

This reduced amount would save the innocent injured people $15,333 in the above

example of a very common settlement scenario. What family starving for money to pay

medical bills and grocery bills and the rent, would not like to have that extra $15,333?

Bankruptcies are regularly filed for deficiencies much less than that. How do PI lawyers

get away with charging these types of suspicious fees?

Greed, money, power, repeat.

51

10. The dramatic effectiveness of price-fixing’s “Fee-bullying” used by PI lawyers’ as

sales techniques on prospective personal injury clients

Explanation

Price-fixing by PI lawyers, at the “1/3 standard contingent fee”, allows the PI lawyers to

exercise an amazing amount of influence over prospective clients. This type of influence

is not available to many other professional, licensed, service providers in our U.S.

economy. In a usual scenario, a prospective client contacts a PI lawyer’s office to discuss

their injury case. The PI lawyer is careful to couch his statements to the prospect in order

to get her to come into his office, where he should experience a closing success well

above 90%. The high closing ratio is due in large part to the 1/3 price-fixing by a

troubling number of PI lawyers.

The prospect’s attempts at finding out the percentage rate that she will be charged are

usually neutralized by the PI lawyer telling her that the 1/3 rate is “standard” and that she

should not to expect anything lower by shopping around. We refer to this “take-it-or-

leave-it” price-fixing preservation technique used on prospective clients as “Fee-

bullying.”

The PI lawyers get away with telling the prospective PI clients this line of malarkey

because the clients do not know any better. There is no “Bar B-S Meter” that blinks

above the PI lawyer’s head when he tells the client that the “bar” sets the “standard fee.”

As you may deduce, a general reference to “the bar” is a pretty ambiguous term that has

endured the ages for a number of price-fixing reasons.

The conversation between price-fixing lawyer and prospective client might go like this

when a TV Titan, or his underling, receives a call from a prospective PI client. “TV Titan

PI Lawyer’s” voice: ~“How much do I charge? I have to hear all the facts of your case

and look at your accident pictures before I can say how good of a case you have, but the

standard fee for handling injury cases like yours is 1/3, (Fee-bullying) but it may be

higher, (Fee-bullying) if you have a problem with your case, (Fee-bullying) but I have

to meet you and interview you to determine that just like a physician must physically see

a patient to properly diagnose the patient. (Fee-bullying) Our 1/3 rate is the “standard

fee” same that the rest of the lawyers charge. (Fee-bullying) It has always been that way

in the ## years I have been practicing PI law. (Fee-bullying) (Lawyer changes the

subject) Whose fault was the accident? Where did you hear about us? You can’t

remember if your wife saw one of our TV commercials or she used a search engine and

saw us on the internet? Let’s set up a time to meet. I am looking forward to helping you

out…No, you do not have to pay me a penny because we give ‘free consultations’. Leave

your checkbook at home.”

52

The client fishing treble hook is now set because the client took the “free consultation”

bait and the PI lawyer’s canned and authoritative answers to the “1/3 standard fee.” Now

the TV Titan PI lawyer gets to use the extremely successful closing tool “standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee” that the price-fixing lawyer will use to get the prospective

client to sign the contract.

The unsuspecting client does not interview the PI lawyer over the phone to neutralize the

PI lawyer’s “home field advantage” of his office. She comes to the PI lawyer’s office

expecting no charges whatsoever for the initial consultation. The client does not know

that the TV Titan has already decided to refer the client to a “working lawyer” based on

facts gathered from a telephone interview of the client conducted by himself or more

probably a secretary or a paralegal working for the TV Titan law firm before the client

came into the office to sign papers. The lawyer has his “standard 1/3 contingent fee

minimum” contract typed up and printed out waiting in a nice looking professional file

just waiting for the right time to submit it to the client.

The interview between well-educated, experienced lawyer and untrained injured client

proceeds. After the client has had a sufficient time of talking with the lawyer to develop a

certain degree of comfort and trust, the lawyer recommends that she should get things

moving as soon as possible because there is a statute of limitations that could expire and

prevent her from ever getting any money. Or maybe PI lawyer tells her that the insurance

companies are investigating the client’s accident claim at that moment so she should

immediately hire a lawyer to help her avoid the insurance company getting an advantage

over her.

Here comes some more “fee-bullying” of the prospective client. The lawyer pushes the

contract with a “1/3 minimum and an increase to 40%, if an appeal is necessary”

language to the client to read and sign, while saying, ~“This is our standard fee

agreement. (Fee-bullying) ~”If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them.

Otherwise, just please read the agreement and sign it at the bottom.” The client sees that

she is being charged the lowest price on the contract, 1/3, so the client thinks the 1/3 rate

is relatively acceptable, (Fee-bullying) especially after she asked, ~“So this is a standard

rate? 1/3? Like for all the lawyers? But isn’t that a little high because the accident wasn’t

my fault?”

And she hears the PI lawyer say, ~“I understand your concerns. You will never touch

your wallet, if I am handling your case. (The “sleeper hold”)xxxi ~“It is 1/3 because we

are going to be paying for all your medical bills and if there is a trial, we will also pay the

cost of your doctor’s deposition. And oh boy! That could cost you thousands of dollars!

So, since we take a risk for you, lawyers charge a standard 1/3 fee.” (Fee-bullying)

53

(Fee-bullying) Every PI lawyer in town charges the same thing. (Fee-bullying) It is a

rate to protect the clients from some sleazy lawyer charging over half and ripping you off.

(Fee-bullying) So they just set a standard fee to protect you.” (Fee-bullying)

As you may see in the above hypothetical example, the clients are herded into a “contract

corral” very effectively by using the intimidation of cutting off the client’s desire to do

what she would do anywhere else – compare prices charged by other service providers

and maybe even negotiate. The lawyer established that he would not and could not adjust

the 1/3 rate, and that it was futile to shop around to check with other lawyers.

Psychologically, the client was disarmed and isolated, through the use of price-fixed fee-

bullying. After she had been sufficiently bullied, she became a docile and compliant as a

lamb. The lawyer could lead her anywhere he wanted after he used price-fixing to

achieve a dominant non-bargaining staff on her PI case.

Then, the client signs the contract and the medical records authorizations and the lawyer

has signed up another client whose case will pay him handsomely. The lawyer stretched

the truth about the riskiness of the client’s case because she was rear-ended by a drunk

driver with lots of insurance. Clear fault, almost zero risk for the lawyer and a very high

probability of profitable recovery for him.

If the lawyer had to compete on price, he would have had to explain how competitive his

price was and how much value the client would receive by choosing him. Some regular

price competition on a clear fault case may have landed the case at around a 10% rate.

Not the 33% rate price-fixing and fee-bullying provided for the PI lawyer.

As the injured client’s clear fault case gets worked up and investigated, the lawyer may

put only about 10-12 hours into the file, on average. Let’s say he finally settles the case

for $60,000. His 1/3 (33.3%) contingent fee is $20,000 giving him about $2,000 per hour

for his work on the client’s open and shut PI case. Price-fixing is very good to PI lawyers.

But if the PI lawyer had competed on the gross rate and the contract had been for 10%

instead of 33.3%, he still would have had a good payday. His 10% of $60,000 contingent

fee would be $6,000. And his effective rate per hour would be $600 per hour for his ten

hours of work. Ask anyone in the lower 98% of income in America if they want to make

$600 per hour sitting at a desk shuffling papers and making a few phone calls and see

what they say.

As you may see, the trick to succeeding in the PI business is maximizing the number of

clients who call and come to your office, where the PI lawyer can have the privacy

required to bend the truth to the prospective clients about the ”1/3 standard fee.” Fixing

rates at 1/3 helps PI lawyers to sign up clients like magic. If the PI lawyer can get the

client into his office to see the “standard 1/3 fee” contract, and then have the client hear

54

the untruths about the necessity of the price-fixed “standard 1/3 fee”, the PI lawyers can

fool people with price-fix magic like a Houdini.

Houdini once said, “Whatever the eyes see, and the ears hear, the mind believes.” Price-

fixing, with the illusion of a “standard 1/3 fee” for eight decades, is the PI lawyer’s best

magic trick. The PI lawyers have been price-fixing right out in front of the entire world

the same way Houdini performed his mind-boggling magic.

Like magicians, the PI lawyers present an illusion of good value because the prospective

clients see the posh lawyer’s office and the pictures on the walls about the firm’s big

verdicts the PI lawyer won and they hear that the PI lawyer will get them a lot more than

what the insurance company offered. But the PI lawyers do not reference the amount of

money the client will be left with in their pocket, by way of example, after the lawyer

finishes making deductions from the client’s settlement money.

Now we come back to where we started above quite some time ago, by observing that the

highest paid billable hour lawyer in America earns $1800 per hour. Is it fair to the injured

client for her PI lawyer to be charging her an effective rate per hour that is higher than the

highest paid lawyer in America? When the risk of loss was almost zero, what was the PI

lawyer doing charging a contingent fee in the first place, when use of contingent fees are

supposed to be confined to moderate to high risk PI cases? Isn’t $500-$600 per hour

enough? Shouldn’t the client decide the rate in a competitive free and open market? We

do.

11. The “Free Consultation” offered by PI lawyers allows the PI lawyers to put the PI

clients into a “sleeper hold” of trust and compliance with the PI lawyer’s “standard

1/3 minimum contingent fee” structure that relies heavily on the back-end referral

fees to make the “Free Consultation” very expensive for the PI client and very

lucrative for the “referring lawyer” and the “working lawyer.”

Explanation

Price-fixing at a minimum 1/3 standard fee and offering a “Free Initial Consultation”

gives PI lawyers a very unfair advantage over the uneducated and less sophisticated

prospective clients. It allows the PI lawyers to stick with the old storyline of the “standard

fee” as though “the bar” had approved a price-fixing exception for lawyers just like the

Virginia Bar did for decades before the Supreme Court struck down bar approved or

mandated price-fixing in Goldfarb v Virginia Bar.

The client trusts the lawyer because he is licensed by an official Bar Association. And

since she believes that the Bar Association is there to protect her from lawyers giving

inaccurate legal advice regarding fee structures, she believes the lawyer’s legal opinion,

55

that his 1/3 minimum PI fee is a “standard fee” that is honored throughout the entire bar.

The client simply does not know any better in that secluded lawyer’s office.

Having these sales techniques at his disposal would make Zig Ziglar think he had died

and had gone to salesmen’s heaven. However, I do not intend to malign Zig. I believe

that Mr. Ziglar would probably have more integrity and adherence to The Golden Rule to

not force-close sales using illegal price-fixing and terribly inaccurate advice regarding

1/3 being “a bar” approved “standard fee”, on injured human beings who have put all of

their trust in him. Mr. Ziglar has been quoted as having said, “If people like you, they

will listen to you, but if they trust you, they will do business with you.”

Although the client does not know it, the PI lawyer is putting “the sleeper hold” on the

prospective clients when they see the ads promising a “free consultation” and understand

that they have no duty to pay the PI lawyer, until the client has received money for their

injury.

The use of free consultation is misleading because the TV Titan lawyer may have no

intention of keeping the client, but plans on referring the client to a “working lawyer.”

The “working lawyer” will deduct a large referral fee from the client’s settlement

(usually unknown to the client) in order to pay for the “referring lawyer” giving the client

a “free” initial consultation. The “free consultation”, facilitated by a promised “referral

fee” ends up being anything but free.

These combined sales techniques are referred to by us at GoldenRuleLaw.org as “the

sleeper hold” to illustrate how it is misleading for the PI lawyer to refer to the “free”

initial consultation, when the “referring lawyer” is expecting to be paid big bucks for that

consultation when the client’s case settles. The price-fixing of a trusty “standard”,

implicitly bar approved 1/3 fee, combined with the “free consultation” and the “You

never pay us until you collect” technique lull the clients into submitting and agreeing to a

huge balloon payment at the end of the case for the ability to hire a lawyer for free at the

”free initial consultation.” (The clients should be warned that they are going to pay

dearly, far into the future, for the “free initial consultation.”)

These refined and well-orchestrated sales techniques for closing prospective PI clients, in

lawyers’ offices, has been performed on millions of unsuspecting injured persons over

the past decades because they work. It is an extremely effective use of postponing the

gravity of an oppressive, non-competitive price-fixed 1/3 minimum fee.

In the hands of an experienced PI lawyer, the client has no idea she just agreed to a fee

structure that raises the probability that she will file bankruptcy and/or get divorced after

the case settles. And she does not realize that the PI lawyer might make more deductions

from her settlement than the “company store” used to deduct from coal miners’ pay.

56

Those unfortunate coal miners and their families, of years long past, had something in

common with today’s personal injury victims. They were both hammered with price-

fixing. Both groups of victims suffered through an absence of competitive pricing in their

respective purchasing needs for things that are essential to the human experience.

12. Lack of law schools teaching proper fee practices for lawyers

Explanation

What Is a PI Lawyer Referral Fee? Law schools do not teach you the answer to that very

important question about one of the most pervasive practices in the American legal

system. A PI referral fee is more or less a finder’s fee. They have also been referred to

over the years and in different jurisdictions, as a “wholesale advertising fee”, a “split

fee”, a “bird dog fee”, etc.

How did I first find out about referral fees, the topic they never teach in law school?

I will never forget the setting and response I received when I came home from law school

one day and asked the one man I knew who would give me a straight answer, my father,

Glennon T. Moran, Sr. Dad had been a very successful PI lawyer, a retired USAFNG

Brigadier General, a WWII P-51 triple-ace pilot and a D-Day first wave participant. He

was a straight shooter when it came to advising his children. I asked, “How did they

come up with 1/3 as the standard fee for tort cases?” His no prompt response was,

“That is so you have enough money to pay your referral fee.” In my 5+ years of

researching the subject, I have never found a better answer than that.

My father explained to me that day that referral fees were the original reason why

lawyers started price-fixing at a minimum of 1/3, back in the 1920’s. The price-fixing

fluctuated but then stabilized at a “1/3 standard fee” in the 1930’s, when my other mentor

in the law, my uncle, the Hon. George J. Moran, Sr., began practicing PI law in Madison

County, IL. [As you may recall, President George W. Bush referred to Madison County,

Illinois as the “Judicial hell Hole of the United States”, when he visited Madison County

to sign the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), in 2005.]

It is indicative of the mysterious and secretive nature of referral fees that I had to learn

about referral fees from my lawyer father using a legal pad and a pencil at the kitchen

table because my law school did not teach us anything about referral fees. I do not know

of any law schools who do teach anything about PI lawyer to lawyer referral fees.

Doesn’t that speak reams about how suspect referral fees are?

I believe referral fees are so lacking in logic and pro-consumer interests that law schools

do not want to have them in their regular curriculums. Referral fees’ budgets exceed

57

$24billion per year. Furthermore, they comprise what could arguably be considered the

largest reservoir of funds from which political campaign contributions have been paid

from over the past 50 years ~ $1Trillion.xxxii

They make the Citizens United corporate-type contributors seem relatively small in the

number of contributors and in the collective size of political contributions. And the PI

funds collected by contributors to both major political parties are coming from the very

same types of people who the opponents of Citizen United contributors say are being

disenfranchised by billionaire’s buying political offices.

I am no politician, but my guess is that the injured families who are shorted ~ $24- $43

Billion per year due to PI lawyer price-fixing and referral fees would gladly suffer

whatever calamitous plight that comes with billionaires buying votes just to pay the

mortgage and their future medical bills with the portion taken from them due to price-

fixing. But that is just a guess.

I will wait for some political science and social science types to analyze my Citizens

United approximations and give me their various opinions which will probably make

their way into future editions of my book(s). (What should I be the most worried about;

billionaires buying votes or food on my family’s kitchen table, my medical treatment and

a roof over our heads?) Let the talking heads on TV and radio tussle with that one during

our five (5) year-long, 2020 Vision - A Bridge To the Future™ challenge to make PI

lawyer fees 100% transparent by the end of the year 2020.

If referral fees are that big of a revenue source for politicians and lawyers retirement

funds, why are PI referral fees not taught in America’s halls of academia and

intellectualism? Law schools are where the propriety of price-fixing, that foments

referral fees in order to maximize the number of new clients and applicable business

methods and ethics, can be held up to the light of free and open debate and scrutiny.

If we tested the social responsibility of referral fees in law schools, it would immediately

wilt in that bright light. Then, how would lawyers get clients into their offices? Through

mass media advertising and word of mouth, unpaid referrals. But that would upset the

status quo in the PI field of law.

TIME OUT! Let’s Look At a Different Perspective on What PI Lawyers Do

It is always nice to get the different perspective from people who have never

encountered the issues you are juggling at the time. Some “new eyes” many times

give us a different angle from which to view an old problem. I once explained the PI

lawyer’s referral fee system to a pharmacist. She was surprised that in a troubling

number of PI cases across America, the client has no idea that a very large portion

of clients’ settlement monies are “withheld” from the clients’ settlement payout,

58

without the clients’ specific approval. And that the “withheld” amount is paid to a

“non-working lawyer” as a referral/finder’s fee. She was amazed that lawyers would

allow such a thing, since she informed me that in her field a pharmacist would go to

prison for doing similar conduct.

The pharmacist analogized the PI referral system’s secret referral fees paid to a

non-working lawyer to the way of a pharmacist who secretly dilutes the strength of

a cancer drug, when filling the prescriptions for cancer patients. By diluting the

very expensive cancer drug, the pharmacist can fill more cancer drug prescriptions

and make a lot more in profits. The problem is, the patient needs that drug to stay

alive and diluting it makes the patient’s chances of survival go way down, even

though diluting it made the pharmacist’s profits go way up.

Wow! The pharmacist’s analogy was pretty close to explaining how PI referral fees,

paid out of a PI client’s future medical bills settlement money, makes the chances go

up that the injured PI client and her family will go bankrupt and not survive, much

like the cancer patient relying on all of the “full-dose” medicine the doctor

prescribed in order to stay alive. Nonetheless, the PI referral fee system continues

to rake in over $24 Billion per year as additional profits secretly paid to lawyers for

“diluting” the money the civil justice system prescribed to help the injured client

and her family survive.

Very much like the cancer patient whose “expected” chances of survival are

permanently dashed when the prescribed, but secretly diluted, cancer medicine does

not work, because it was diluted, the PI client whose settlement monies were

“diluted” by price-fixing and secret referral fees, has her hopes for the survival of

her family dashed because she cannot pay her “expected” future medical bills and

critical expenses. In one scenario the consumer dies and in the other scenario the

consumer’s family “dies” a bankruptcy and divorce death. Both “deaths” were

probably avoidable.

Maybe pharmacists should be writing the rules that dictate how lawyers treat their

PI clients. Please see our “A Message to America’s Doctors and Healthcare

Workers” Power Point at the following link: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/a-special-

message-to-americas-doctors-and-healthcare-workers/

Don’t you think that it would be more socially responsible for PI lawyers to provide their

clients with written, signed and dated letters of opinion explaining why the price they

quoted as a “standard fee” that “all the lawyers charge” is not price-fixing? I have never

ever seen or heard of a lawyer giving his client a written explanation of why the client is

required to pay a “standard 1/3 contingent fee” as a minimum or not. There have been

some postulations in some innocuous law review articles Pre and Post-Goldfarb decision,

giving weak reasons in support for minimum rate 1/3 price-fixing.

http://goldenrulelaw.org/a-special-message-to-americas-doctors-and-healthcare-workers/

http://goldenrulelaw.org/a-special-message-to-americas-doctors-and-healthcare-workers/

59

There is a reason why the client is not handed a neat little pamphlet printed by “the bar”,

explaining 1/3 minimum rate price-fixing and why the lawyers are allowed to practice 1/3

minimum rate price-fixing. It is because the PI lawyers know that “the standard 1/3 fee”

is not the law. PI lawyers know that keeping price-fixing in the shadows allows for all

sorts of misrepresentations about “standard fees” in their repertoire of “smoke and

mirrors” tools to secure PI cases.

Although it may sound contradictory, I was lucky, in that honorable men taught me about

PI price-fixing and referral fees. They taught me that it had limits, that if it was exceeded

it would harm the PI clients. That the client always had to receive more than you or you

were not giving your client good value legal services. However, many PI lawyers learned

their price-fixing and referral fee lessons from some unsavory types of lawyers. By

teaching law students how to avoid price-fixing behaviors would tend to diminish price-

fixing and the destructive effects improper referral fees cause to America’s families.

And by not teaching about the PI price-fixing environment, in law school, it is causing

new lawyers to learn the price-fixing and referral fee systems from the unscrupulous PI

price-fixing lawyers as “business as usual.” Learning from the price-fixing bar, instead of

from a law professor, is like getting advice on how to treat a lady from the guys in the

locker room, instead of from your rabbi/pastor/priest.

As a side note that I believe needs to be shared, I have found a surprising absence of

women lawyers’ price-fixing and participating in TV Titan advertising ethics that drive

TV Titan “referral factories” and “settlement mills.”

It deserves more study, but I believe that women PI lawyers tend to not gouge their

clients with PI lawyer sales techniques “settlement mill” and “referral mill” tactics as

much as men do. Perhaps this, if true, is due to their maternal instincts acting as a hedge

against selling bad deals to injured people. Women, much better than men, instinctively

know how bad PI 1/3 price-fixing and the resulting referral fees are for the injured

person’s family. Most women will not knowingly allow someone to do something that

has a high probability of hurting a client’s family and future.

13. Charging the 1/3 price-fix, as an industry minimum, encourages “working lawyers”

to raise the gross rates the clients are charged, up to rates higher than 1/3, in order

to be able to raise their rates for referral fees they pay to “referring lawyers”, in

order to attract more injury referrals.

60

Explanation

The PI base minimum referral fee is usually 11.1%. However, the money I would receive

for referring a client to a “working lawyer” who pays more of a referral fee jumps up (by

a relative 44%) from 11.1 to 16% (16%/11.1% = 44% increase) to attract referring

lawyers whose clients will be charged a 40% contingent fee. Whereas, the 50% of gross

fees referral fee paid to the referring lawyer generates a net 25% of the total gross

settlement fee referral fee, which is more than double the amount received by the lawyer

referring a case to a working lawyer who charges a 1/3 minimum price-fixed contingent

fee. Who is paying for the (11, 16 and 25%) ever larger referral fees? The Clients.xxxiii

Please see copies of sample ads of PI lawyers who think they should compete on the rates

they pay to other lawyers by raising those rates, while the same lawyers enjoy a price-

fixed “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee.”xxxiv Due to technical difficulties, the bodies

of the subject ad could not be incorporated herein, but the approximated text is offered in

the Appendix hereto.

In short, the injured clients are penalized harshly for the referring lawyer referring the

client to a “working lawyer” who charges the client a higher gross fee that enables the

working lawyer to attract more case referrals because she/he pays significantly higher

referral fees (from 11% up to 16% and up to 25%of gross settlement proceeds), under the

assumption that the higher priced “working lawyer” will collect much more money than a

lower 1/3 minimum priced lawyer would collect for the client. This violates the Law of

Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Legal Services, but the clients do not know that.

The devil is in the details. PI lawyers have long known how to use the secrecy mandated

by the PI legal system’s rules, to allow “working lawyers” and “referring lawyers” to

quietly and politely violate the fiduciary duties they owe to their clients requiring them to

set aside their own financial interests in their handling of legal matters for their clients.

Standard minimum 1/3 (33.3%) price-fixed cont. fee (33.3% referral fee of 33.3% gross fee)

33.3% Minimum Gross Contingent Fee – 11.1% Ref. Fee = 22.2% Net Fee To Working Lawyer

Increase Above minimum 1/3 (33.3%) price-fixed cont. Fee (40% referral of 40% gross Fee)

40.0% Increased Gross Contingent Fee – 16.0% Ref. Fee = 24.0% Net Fee To Working Lawyer

Increase Above minimum 1/3 (33.3%) price-fixed cont. Fee (50% ref. fee of 50% gross fee)

50.0% Increased Gross Contingent Fee – 25.0% Ref. Fee = 25.0% Net Fee To Working Lawyer

61

You may be able to see that there is a very large difference between gross fees charged to

the client’s settlement monies:

50.0% highest above price-fixed minimum gross fee

- 33.3% lowest price-fixed minimum fee

16.7%

We now calculate the relative increase in the gross amount that the injured client pays:

16.7% Increase from 33 to 50% = 50.1% Increase in gross fees charged to the client,

33.3% Min. rate

But is there a guaranteed 50.1% increase in client’s KIMP money? NO.

Now look at the relatively slight difference in the Net contingent fee rates the “working

lawyer” are actually working for (22.2%, 24.0% and 25.0%):

25.0% Highest Net Rate for working lawyer

- 22.2% Lowest Net Rate for price-fixed 1/3 minimum contingent fee rate

2.8% Diff. between the actual amounts for alleged best and worst “working lawyers”

_2.8% = 12.6% higher net rate for the lawyer who charges the highest rates.

22.2%

Is there a guaranteed 12.6% or 50.1% increase in client’s KIMP money? No. So why

refer the injured clients to the lawyers who charge higher gross fee rates? Because the

higher the gross fee rate, the higher the referral fee rate paid to the “referring

lawyer.” Competitively higher gross fees charged to the client puts more money in

the “referring lawyer’s” pocket, but it takes money out of the client’s pocket.

Numbers don’t lie.

Regretfully, many PI lawyers compete for referrals by raising the gross rates charged to

the clients, in order to raise the referral rates paid to referring lawyers.xxxv Raising gross

fee rates on the injured client decreases the amount the client has to pay her future

medical bills and necessary expenses needed to survive.

The above math illustrates that by PI “working lawyers” price-fixing at a minimum of

1/3, they can improperly enjoy exaggerated, non-competitive profits. Thus, minimum 1/3

rates ensure the “working lawyers” the ability to raise rates, never downward, from the

base-line of 1/3. They can raise the rates for higher referral fees from 11% by charging

the injured client a 33% gross fee; up to 16 % by charging the client a gross fee of 40%;

62

or up to as high as 25% by charging the client a 50% gross fee of the client’s settlement

money.

However, these higher gross fees lower the recoveries by the PI client’s in clear fault

cases, which leaves the clients in worse financial condition than if they had gone to a less

expensive PI lawyer who got them just as much money or maybe even 10-20% less. It is

my experience that the PI lawyer who charges less for the gross fee works harder and

obtains MORE money than the higher priced PI lawyer because the higher price lawyer

doesn’t have to work as hard to make a good fee on a given “settlement ceiling.”

Remember that the PI lawyers who do a great job and work for less are inventions of the

“referring lawyers” who charge the higher rate and then skim off a sweet referral fee for

doing no work. The “referring lawyers” know that the lawyers who charge less, the

“working lawyers”, will probably do a better job than the referring lawyer, and will

generate a bigger final share of the settlement proceeds for the “referring lawyer” than if

the referring lawyer handled the claim by herself. It is hard to convince most consumers

that by them paying a lawyer more of a fee, that they will receive less of a money result

for themselves.

They think like most people, who apply standard economic theories. That, if you

pay more you will receive more, or better quality of legal services, but the reverse is

usually true when dealing with referral fee, price-fixing PI lawyers. I realize it is a

bit confusing, but the PI field is a place on earth that the saying, “you get what you

pay for” is not true very often, unless you are refusing to pay a price-fixed fee or a

referral fee. This is so because there is no guarantee of any corresponding increase

in how much the client gets to keep in her purse for the higher gross fee that she is

paying. These are axioms to the Law of Inverse Pricing For Personal Injury Legal

Services.

Paying your PI lawyer a higher gross fee does not guarantee anything good for the

client. It only guarantees that the lawyers will take more of your tax-free money at

any given settlement amount.

It will help your purse a lot, if you think of your contract rights and rates with a PI lawyer

as the rights you would want when dealing with a casino. Just like dealing with a casino,

the odds are stacked against the clients unless they get organized. Organization will help

them share notes with other clients in order to learn the PI lawyers’ fast dealing casino

tricks and slick methods. Then the clients need to be organized to know how they might

want to rewrite the rules of the casino’s poker table.

If this is wrong for stock brokers to put their fee interests ahead of their clients’, you

would think that it would be wrong for lawyers to do it too. Sending the client to a lawyer

who pays a higher referral fee without a corresponding increase in client recovery

63

guaranteed appears imprudent and self-serving by the referring lawyer. It may also

violate the lawyer’s fiduciary duty to her client. However, this price-fixing area of lawyer

regarding referral fees is not presently regulated. Shouldn’t the client know the dealers’

cards, if the dealer has a duty to show the client everything? Write your own rules of

engagement.

14. For the past 20 years “standard 1/3 contingent fee” price-fixing has allowed PI

lawyers to spend outrageous amounts on search engine internet advertising in order

to maintain and build PI market share

Explanation

PI lawyer price-fixing has had almost as much to do with the meteoric success of search

engines as has algorithms. The “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee” price-fixing has

created a vast ocean of profits for PI lawyers to use to spend on “first page search results”

bidding wars against other PI lawyers. In short, it is much easier to pay for expensive

click-through search engine advertising with the profits from charging clients 33.3% than

it is from the reduced profits from charging PI clients 20% or 10%.

Search engine companies know exactly who has been buttering their bread with lavish

profits since the time the search engines opened their doors in the 1990’s. Without price-

fixing at a minimum 1/3 contingent fee, the search engines would have collected billions

of dollars less in lawyer advertising revenues. The price-fixing PI lawyers have some

very wealthy and powerful friends in the internet marketplace in the form of search

engines.

If left solely to the short-term profit hounds of Wall Street, the search engines will do

what they can to keep up those crazy high PI lawyer ad rates. At this time, I am uncertain

if the search engines’ leadership will listen to profit crazed stockholders and try to keep

the PI lawyer price-fixing business-as-usual, or if the search engines will do what is in the

best interests of the injured families. Let’s see if the search engines can avoid knowingly

doing evil when it involves their lead source of revenue.

The futures of millions of families depend on how the search engines address this very

serious problem price-fixing problem. Those injured families are being fleeced by over-

aggressive PI lawyers who are using search engine “large-net” lawyer advertising

campaigns that increase the harmful effects of unnecessary referral fees. We hope that the

search engines will work with us, at GoldenRuleLaw.org, to arrive at a multi-year plan

that reduces the financially harmful effects of referral fees and PI 1/3 standard fee price-

fixing on the backs of innocent injured people seeking legal representation for their

PI/tort or worker compensation injuries.

64

15. Proof of the antitrust “per se” horizontal and monopolistic price-fixing by Bar

Association PI lawyers may be accomplished by aggrieved PI clients uploading the

great number of client contracts existing to date that include the “standard 1/3

contingent fee” language combined with the clients’ willingness to share copies of

those price-fixing contracts with hopes to get all or part of their fee monies returned

to them willingly or through formal claims and litigation against PI lawyers.

Explanation

My father, a trial lawyer, taught me that juries do not like a trial-party personally suing or

being sued, who is a lawyer. He was right. In trials involving the issue of who to believe,

the innocent client or the sharp-dealing PI lawyer, who drafted the price-fixed contract

the client signed to her damage, the jurors will overwhelmingly side with the innocent,

injured plaintiffs. Enough said about the jury deciding whom it should believe.

The legal proof of the “per se” horizontal and monopolistic price-fixing by Bar

Association PI lawyers may be gathered through clients uploading. Given the great

number of client contracts existing that include the “standard 1/3 contingent fee”

language, and the clients’ willingness to share copies of those price-fixing contracts and

corresponding referral fees with hopes to get all or part of their fee monies returned to

them, there will be overwhelming evidence that PI lawyers have been committing

“horizontal price-fixing” among each other.

NOTICE OF CENTRALIZED RECORDS RECORDING PI LAWYER RATES

The proof of 1/3 price-fixing is also sitting in the liability insurance companies’

databases that hold copies of the millions of “attorney lien letters.” Those lien letters

state the 1/3 rate that they are charging their clients. Insurance companies are

usually very cooperative in their compliance with subpoenas. (Especially if you cut

them an immunity deal in the governmental class action cases because some

insurance companies may have used the PI lawyer1/3 price-fixing as a factor in their

settlement offer algorithms as a way to save some money.) Redacting (blacking or

whiting out) the names from the subject lien letters, while leaving the information in

the lawyers’ letterheads, is easy to facilitate to ensure the privacy of the respective

claimants. The lien letters will also serve as s great database “thread” to double-

check on the respective claim numbers and settlement amounts. The evidence is all

sitting in some very safe and accessible sources for a zealous, justice-for-the-people

attorney general who brings to America a new way of thinking. An attorney general

who wants to obtain justice for her constituents, for The People, instead of the status

quo financial interests of price fixing lawyers. Even if there are no public servants

who want to do the right thing to bring suits to collect price-fixed fee monies, the

proof for PI lawyer price-fixing is all in a bunch of neat little data packets sitting on

65

the computers for insurance companies. It is just waiting for individual lawyers to

access it to be shown as proof for clients who want their money back.

One thing is for sure. The clients will want their money back. Jurors will love sitting on

panels for trials involving lawyers taking money from innocent, injured clients. Class

actions will spring up like tulips in Holland. In some venues there might be filed at least

one class action for every lawyer who had more than a handful of PI clients who she

charged the “standard 1/3 contingent fee.” New lawyers will immediately sharpen their

understanding of antitrust laws and partner up with trial experienced lawyers. Together,

they will be filing antitrust and wrongful referral fee claims and settling price-fixing

cases in the millions.

If you think that the future I am painting for PI lawyers is too outlandish, please read

Jordan Furlong’s sobering outlook for the futures of corporate and non-PI legal services.

(See footnote viii) Please see also a legal brief for a nation-wide class action, “IN RE

ELECTRONIC BOOKS ANTITRUST LITIGATION”, southern district of New York

case # 11-md-02293 (DLC) involving Apple’s alleged liability in price-fixing for e-

books that has some issues somewhat similar to PI lawyers’ price fixing across America,

at LINK: http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3942459/apple-ebooks-damages.pdf . This is

just a brief and not a court ruling, but it indicates some standard ways we can approach

the systemic price-fixing by U.S. PI lawyers.

There will be a search for “deep pockets” by plaintiff lawyers representing injured clients

who are demanding their absented money back. One of the primary theories the injured

clients will use against their price-fixing and under-the-table referral fee paying lawyers

is Respondeat Superior.

Respondeat superior allows injured parties to sue the employer or managing party of

another defendant because the employer knew or should have known that its lawyer

employee was accepting referral fees from lawyers who did not have proper authorization

from their injured clients or were price-fixing or both.

Theories of recovery will abound but I think that the main ones will center around the

most grievous facts: that referral fees had been paid to referring lawyers without proper

and knowing waivers signed by the client, and lawyers may also be liable for monies due

the client as treble damages for committing price-fixing at the clients’ expense;

irreconcilable conflicts of interest giving the lawyers an unfair advantage over their

clients in a scheme to commit price-fixing because the clients signed the settlement

documents to appease lawyers who had substantial conflicts-of-interest opposite their

trusting PI clients.

Although it may sound comical, a high number of lawyers will errantly think that the

price-fixing defense they have used in their minds in the past will work against formal

price-fixing charges, to wit, “Well I didn’t charge anything different from what all the

other lawyers were charging!”

http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3942459/apple-ebooks-damages.pdf

66

You would be surprised about how many lawyers mistakenly think that there is strength

in numbers in antitrust allegations. “Well, everyone else was price-fixing, so you can’t

sue me successfully!” Sure they can. One claim at a time. If you testify that “all the

lawyers were charging 1/3”, so you decided to charge 1/3 too”, then you just made the

case for the client suing you.

Third-party defendants will probably be joined in the consumer lawsuits to get

contribution from the “deep pockets” corporations and governmental entities that

employed the lawyers who received billions in referral fees, in order to pay back the

referral fees that the lawyers somehow can no longer find in their bank accounts. There

will be more than one PI lawyer who transfers her/his assets to a spouse.

The applicable antitrust laws are relatively simple and very one-sided in favor of the

clients. I can expound on how the law will provide a very good remedy for injury clients

victimized by price-fixing, but then this paper would be much longer. So please consult

these sources that lay out the law in a cogent, abbreviated manner.xxxvi

16. PI Lawyers are able to price-fix at 1/3 more easily because 4 out of 5 clients do not

understand basic math

Explanation

The most obvious explanation for how PI Lawyers price-fix at a “standard 1/3 minimum

contingent fee” is that their prospective clients do not understand the basic math that is

printed in ALL PI legal services client contracts. The clients’ lack of basic math skills

gives the PI lawyers an unfair advantage in negotiating/establishing contingent fee rate

because the clients do not know math well enough to ask questions about rates much less

price-fixing. (See footnote # iv)

It is simple. The PI lawyers’ price-fix using simple math. No logarithmic mathematics or

algebra or calculus is required. Almost all of their clients do not understand simple math.

The clients’ lack of understanding simple math minimizes the clients asking tough

questions about price. Especially when the clients who do understand math are told that

the simple math they see in a complicated legal services contract is just a “standard fee.”

Therefore, the client’s lack of understanding helps to perpetuate the “standard 1/3

minimum contingent fee” price-fixing.

Given the fact that only 1 out of 5 adults might understand the math references of

fractions (1/3 of what?) or percentages (33.3% of what? Or 40% of what?). But math is

found in 100% of PI legal services contracts. That means that about 1.6 million out of the

annual 2 million injured PI clients had no hope of fully comprehending the math referred

to in their individual PI legal services contracts. This glaring fact indicates that there are

predictable contractual ambiguities in the typical PI legal services contract that can cause

a basic break-down in communication between the lawyers and clients across the U.S.

67

A good lawyer representing the clients against their lawyers for negligently failing to

adequately explain the math in their contracts might make the argument that the PI

lawyers were negligent in not making an accommodation for their prospective client’s

probable math disability. And that they should have discovered the math disability

through the exercise of reasonable care by knowing that only 1 out of 5 has a chance of

fully understanding the contract’s math terms and then being mathematically adept

enough to extrapolate a probable, projected settlement recovery based on fractions or

percentages or decimals that they did not fully understand when they “read” the contract

before signing it. Maybe the client cannot read and does not understand basic math.

Or maybe the clients just signed the intimidating agreement after the PI lawyer told them,

~ “Here is our ‘standard agreement’ with the ‘standard fee.’ You can just sign at the

bottom.” Either way, the client did not have a meeting of the minds with the lawyer and

the contracts might be rescinded and reformed in favor of the clients.

To look at this in the light most favorable to the clients, the PI lawyer should provide the

prospective client with a “math interpreter”, no differently than if the PI lawyer knew of a

high probability the client did not speak/read English. If the prospective client did not

speak or read English, the PI lawyer would have arraigned for a document written in the

prospect’s native tongue or provided an interpreter to explain the contract to the prospect.

For worker compensation claims, for criminal representation and for personal injury

claims legal services, I have had to use an interpreter, in similar situations where

prospective clients did not speak English. If I knew that the super-majority of the

population of the prospective clients that I am going to counsel, did not understand math,

then I would be assuming that I probably was dealing with a client who needed a lot more

explanation about the math in the contract and treating the math communication problem

like a foreign language barrier.

Math is the core of the PI lawyer-client relationship because without it, there is no fee

and no objective for the legal services the contract is securing with the hopes of the

lawyers collecting an amount of money for the client. The lawyers should accommodate

the client’s needs and disabilities, always.

The PI lawyers know or should know that their clients will not ask questions about the

math in the price-fixing PI contracts because the clients are too embarrassed to admit that

they do not understand basic math. Since only 1 out of 5 clients understand simple math,

it is not hard to pull the wool over the eyes of those 1 out every 5 clients regarding the

“standard fee.”

Knowing that the chances are that the clients you meet will not understand the math

terms in the PI legal services contracts, begs the question(s): Are 4 out of 5 (80% or 4/5)

68

of those contracts void because the client did not understand the math allowing the parties

to never have a “meeting of the minds? Were the contracts between parties of disparately

different levels of education? Did the lawyer have a financial interest in the outcome of

the contract, which would normally cause an inherent (patent) conflict of interest? Etc.

PI lawyer price-fixing is simple, like simple math. And its simplicity is how it is carried

out by PI lawyers who are not usually known as math geniuses. It is simple enough that

PI lawyers can stick to the basics of a simple “standard 1/3 fee” and not screw up the

price-fixing system. The simplest magic tricks work for the most magicians because they

are simple. Price-fixing by PI lawyers is a simple system based on simple math. It runs

itself as long as the PI lawyers can use “1/3 of 1/3 referral fees” and the “standard 1/3

fee” as marked cards in a deck stacked against the PI clients.

17. Internet search engines enjoy world-record profits due in large part to PI lawyer

price-fixing that drives PI lawyer “large-net” advertising campaigns

Explanation

Fact: the revenues that search engines accrue are led by the prices that PI lawyers pay for

consumer searches for PI lawyers. This may be evidenced by looking at the facts. Back in

2011, Google’s queries for lawyers were: “Attorney” was the 4th highest revenue

generating word queried on Google; “Lawyer” was #6 in revenue generation; and “claim”

(as in PI claim) was ranked #10. Together, they combined their query numbers to produce

a leading source of revenue for Google – people shopping for a PI lawyer. However, in

2015, Bing revealed that the Top five most queried words in Bing searches were all law

related, with 4 of the 5 arguably related to PI claims. xxxvii

PI lawyers pay top dollar for internet advertising because it is less expensive than

wholesale advertising (referral fees) that must be employed to conduct ”large-net” PI

advertising campaigns. Otherwise, the PI lawyer running a high volume “settlement mill”

would have to pay a referral fee to the lawyer he received the case from and provide a

high enough gross fee to the PI lawyer that he referred the case on to, which would leave

little margin for the TV/Internet Titan law firm. Instead, PI lawyers use large-net ads.

As you may see, search engines enjoy elevated profits from PI lawyer revenues directly

due to PI lawyer’s price-fixing at minimum a 1/3fee. The minimum 1/3 fee elevates the

“bottom” (minimum) price for search engine click through pricing, which raises PI

lawyer market share and profits. This is because, by obtaining part of their cases through

internet advertising, the PI lawyers do not have to pay the referral fee, wholesale

advertising fees that are actually much more expensive than paying for hundreds of high

price search engine click through ads. The PI lawyers then spend generous portions of

69

those excess profits in their bidding to obtain the top spots in the organic search results

for people searching for a PI lawyer.

Please know that “large-net lawyer advertising is used almost exclusively in PI and

Worker Compensation law because those are the only areas of law that the lawyers are

still, consistently price-fixing and using expensive and unnecessary referral fees to get

more clients. However, the clients should know what is happening to them when they

respond to a TV/Internet Titan Ad.

The PI lawyer may use a search engine large-net ad system to do the following:

a. The PI clients respond to the ad and go to the PI lawyer’s website where she is asked

to “chat” with someone associated with the lawyer’s office online;

b. The prospective client either chats online or calls into a PI lawyers large-net

switchboards, in high volumes of cases;

c. The prospective client sets an appointment to meet a representative of the large-net

law firm;

d. The client meets with someone, usually not a lawyer on the first information

gathering visit, and the client signs a “standard 13 minimum contingent fee” contract

he does not understand, since he does not understand basic math;

e. TV Titan lawyer staff decides that the client’s case is not high dollar enough or easy

enough to warrant keeping so the client gets referred to a “working lawyer” over the

telephone with a follow-up letter usually under some excuse that the client’s case is

not within the optimal characteristics of cases they retain or some other lame excuse

to treat them like an odd-sized fish they found in their large-net system;

f. Then the PI case gets referred by the TV Titan onto a “working lawyer” who does the

work for a rate that is much less than the one the 1/3 (33%) that the client agreed to

pay. (And the client is not usually informed that the “working lawyers” have

been doing a good job for ~ 22% for the past 80 years.) There is a written

agreement between the working lawyer and the TV Titan but the client usually knows

nothing about a kickback referral fee that the working lawyer will pay to the TV titan

when the case settles.

g. When the case settles, the “working lawyer” pays a referral fee to the “referring

lawyer” who hawked the PI client into his office with an internet click-through ad.

The quality of the PI legal services provided by the out-sourced “working lawyer” is just

as good, or better, than if the TV Titan’s law firm handled the claim. So if the quality is

the same, or better, why are the clients being required to pay gross fees that are higher

than the price/rate that the “working lawyers” have been performing really good quality

work for?

The fact is that since the Great Depression, the “working lawyers” have never expected to

make more than 20-25% for doing all the work on the PI clients claim; even though the

70

client is paying the “working lawyer” 33%, 40% and 50%. I bet that no lawyer will be

able to disprove that statement, in writing. And if they do not agree with that statement,

please ask him to put it into writing, sign and date it and we will post it on the internet. If

he won’t put it into writing, then he is just slinging mud.

Then, how is this fair to the client who thinks he is getting a lot more quality (the full

gross fee quality) from the working lawyer, when the working lawyer got very little of

the increase in gross rate? When the client receives a settlement that is lacking in enough

money, it is usually more due to inadequate insurance policy values, than it might be

from the client not paying the higher fee, under the mistaken assumption that he will get a

higher quality of PI lawyer.

The TV Titans hire the best “working lawyers” they can find because, the more

money the “working lawyers” settle the referral case, the more the TV Titans make

in bigger referral fees. So, why shouldn’t the clients cut out the middleman and go

straight to “working lawyers” who do a great job and charge a lot less? We offer

“working lawyers” because we care about the injured clients and their families

surviving the strenuous PI claims process. “We work for the working lawyers.”™

It may be apparent to the reader that the search engines have a vested interest in PI

lawyers continuing to price-fix at a minimum 1/3 contingent fee. The PI lawyers and

search engines making each other wealthy appears to be a natural progression of the

price-fixing “referral fee” system that took form during the Great Depression. Therefore,

I will give you a brief history of the lawyer’s search engine powered, large-net

advertising, by taking a flight.

The evolution of large-net PI lawyer advertising, enhanced by leveraging the 1/3

minimum price-fixing with increasingly efficient mass marketing, may be understood by

analogizing the progression and increased use of large-net lawyer ads, by high-volume PI

“settlement mills”, to the to the evolution of man’s flight to the stars and PI lawyers’ and

search engines’ profits starting low and taking off to altitudes past our earth’s

stratosphere. However, these marketing systems make the clients settle their cases and

jump-out with increasingly inadequate financial parachutes.

PI Lawyers’ “Glider Era” ~1700’s - 1908

Flying gliders involves relatively low altitude, wind and gravity powered flying. It is

based on fortuitous meetings between the glider and the natural the forces of gravity,

wind and lift from warm up-drafts.

This “Glider Era” of PI marketing would be the beginning of the “Practicing Law as a

Profession Era” that ran from before our nation’s founding until 1907. Like flying a

glider, the lawyers in this era did not specialize a lot so there were not many PI lawyers.

In this era, a lawyer took in new clients as a glider pilot would find upward wind drafts,

71

by chance. Large-net advertising was not capable of being conducted because lawyer

advertising was prohibited.

Clients presented themselves into the lawyers’ offices at irregular times, and practicing

law was a profession and not a business. This was the beginning of PI law when a lawyer

just received PI cases by face to face meetings, or having an office by the courthouse or

the most common method, by word-of-mouth C2L2L referrals.

The body of precedent setting tort/PI law was unsettled and still evolving as our country’s

borders continued to expand. No mass media advertisements were allowed for various

reasons, which prevented advertising prices for legal services in public. PI contingent fee

price-fixing maintained a minimum airspeed that will not let the plane/price come down.

However the 1/3 minimum standard fee had not taken hold because contingent fees were

not yet allowed to be charged as they were necessary evils that might end up costing the

clients much more than necessary. That would change in the following era, and change

the standing between PI lawyer and client for the next 100 years.

Large-Net PI Lawyers’ “Propeller-Powered Era” ~ 1908 - 1976

These airplanes are powered by internal combustion engines driving great propellers

churning out tremendous wind force that greatly increased lift, altitude, airspeed and

range. Flying prop planes involved the ability to reach higher altitudes than gliders as

high as the propellers could find air thick enough to provide oxygen to the engine and

thrust for lifting the aircraft higher. The advent of contingent fees for lawyers can be

analogized to the introduction of man-powered flight. Both provided a strong driving

force to reach higher altitudes and higher lawyer client counts and revenues.

In 1908 the ABA finally agreed to allow contingent fees to be charged for PI cases where

the PI lawyer took high risks in fronting the costs needed to prosecute the action for the

injured client. 1908 was also the time when railroad personal injury lawyers were allowed

to chase (run after) railroad workers’ personal injury cases. The railroads were some of

the deepest pockets in America, and there were several men being killed every day

working for the railroads. As a result, the ABA allowed a loosening of the constraints that

had forbidden PI contingent fees for decades.

The “standard fee” began to be standardized across America, as a “standard 1/3 minimum

contingent fee” contract for PI legal services. And the 1/3 of 1/3 referral fee also became

standard.

Mass media advertising for lawyers was still forbidden by the Bar Associations.

72

The advent of the “standardized policy of liability insurance” occurred around the mid-

1950’s and did not get into top gear until the early to mid-1960’s. The influence of this

one development on personal injury law and PI lawyering’s subsequent advancement

cannot be over-stated. The standardized policy of insurance made auto and home owner

liability insurance affordable for almost everyone. These policies became so popular that

the treasuries of the insurance companies began to hold billions of dollars when not many

people knew what “billion” meant.

This created huge reservoirs of money for artful PI lawyers to make claims against for

their injured clients. Now the PI lawyers would have no trouble convincing clients that

the standard fee was good for them because the clients. PI lawyers still did not tell the

clients that a referral fee was paid behind their backs. The PI lawyers were super-charged

by money, oceans of money.

However, the more brazen PI lawyers began to appeal to the masses by employing lawyer

and non-lawyer “runners” to increase client volume by running around the countryside

locating injured people who the runners would bring to the PI “working lawyers”, in

return for a percentage/fraction of the gross fee. PI lawyers began toying with the High-

volume “settlement mill” large-net advertising and referral fee marketing systems and

business models that dominate mass media today.

(See also non-lawyers getting fees illegally; see the US v. Boyd FELA PI organized

crime ring prosecuted in Houston, TX by US Attorney Michael Shelby; See Houston,

TX, District Court case number H-03-362-SS, September 13, 2005 court order,

Document 306)

The U.S. Supreme Court decided that lawyers were not allowed to price-fix for any

purpose, in Goldfarb v Virginia State Bar, 421 US 773 (1975). However, PI lawyers kept

the throttle at full steam and disregarded that ruling, and price-fixed at 1/3 for the next 40

years. The PI lawyers were able to figuratively thumb their noses at the Supreme Court

because the Supreme Court has zero enforcement capability.

The local and state Bar Associations would be required to enforce the price-fixing

prohibitions against highly influential PI lawyers. In turn, local Bar Associations swept

the rancid 1/3 price-fixing mess under the carpet and held their noses. The “zone of

danger” included way too many established lawyers who had received referral fees made

possible by the 1/3 price fixing. Perhaps they knew that the PI lawyers would have been

sued by ex-clients for a return of the over-charged amounts like it happened in the

Goldfarb case, when the general population learned that they had been victimized by

lawyer price-fixing for real estate title inspection legal services. They did nothing about

1/3 price-fixing in order to postpone the inevitable.

73

Large-Net Lawyer’s Jet-Powered Era ~ 1977 - 2000

The jet airplane is powered by forcing air through a turbine that ignites with high octane

fuel and causes a controlled explosion that jets out the back of the airplane as thrust to

push the airplane very fast, sometimes beyond the speed of sound. The exploding fuel

gives the jet enough power to fly much faster and at higher altitudes than propeller

planes.

Like a jet reaches higher altitude than a prop plane, this era brought higher profits to

lawyers who used mass media (primarily TV) to advertise for PI cases. The mass media

provided thrust of clients through the front doors of “settlement mills” and “referral

factories” and thrust them out the back doors to “working lawyers.” This additional

thrust, of tremendous increases in the number of referred cases, provided record high

profits for the settlement mills that out-sourced more PI clients than it handled itself.

However, the increased speed and volume of clients coming into the “referral factories”

developed a trend to outsource and settle the claims faster and cheaper than in previous

eras. This new trend in PI law begat the term “settlement mills.” The clients were getting

hurt financially due to the faster and cheaper settlements documented by Nora Engstrom.

This was the beginning of large-net advertising by PI lawyers. This was also the

beginning of the era when practicing law became less of a profession and more of a cut-

throat business that was ruled like most businesses. The victor is the lawyer with the most

clients who garner him the most income and profits. Pro bono work for indigent clients

and ensuring that the client receives more than the lawyer became an afterthought for

large-net lawyers.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977),

which allowed mass media advertising. The case began by two Arizona licensed lawyers

having the gall to print their prices for a low-priced legal clinic for poor and indigent

people needing a lawyer, in a small newspaper. This ruling by the Supreme Court

opened the flood gates to the fish/case hatcheries and for lawyers to begin using the

“large-net” lawyer advertising business model to catch PI cases in high volumes that is

still in use today.

The large-net PI lawyer advertising model is found only in PI legal services because

price-fixing is not practiced in any other major area of law practice. Large-net

advertising systems involve PI lawyers using mass media to hawk in PI clients through

the front door of their offices. Then, the large-net fishing lawyers “cherry-pick” out the

easiest and most lucrative cases for themselves. Then they refer (out-source) the super-

majority of those injured clients PI clients out their offices’ back doors to the “working

lawyers.”

74

The “working lawyers” then work on the PI cases and settled them. They then pay a

referral fee to the TV Titan lawyers. The TV Titan lawyers are more marketers than

lawyers and are making tremendous profits. The non-TV advertising lawyers could not

compete with the aggressive marketing by TV Titans who were getting a relatively very

large market share of the local PI clients. The business model for “large-net” advertising

progressed until the Internet Era gave it even more speed and altitude - more clients and

profits.

Large-Net PI Lawyer’s Rocket Powered Era ~ 2001 – 2015

Rockets use highly volatile “rocket fuel” and burn it in a manner that far exceeds the

thrust provided to jet engines. This allows rockets to travel at almost unbelievable speeds

and reach altitudes beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Presently, this is the highest technology

we have for air flight, in this Internet Era of 2015.

The internet search engines have given us a new business model, based primarily on

advertising revenues. The search engine companies, have rocketed upward to become

some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world. Internet search engines

use PI lawyer large-net advertising as their highest octane, most profitable fuel. It is the

most profitable fuel because the PI lawyers are continuing to price-fix at a minimum 1/3

even though their advertising costs have dropped dramatically due to the internet. When

PI lawyer fee price stays constant at 1/3, or rises, and advertising costs go down, TV-

Internet Titans’ profits go up, up, up.

Around 2001, the internet search engines got their algorithm act together enough to allow

PI lawyers to attract consumers needing a PI lawyer to respond by a “click through ad”

offered by a search engine, which will lead the consumer to a telephone call center,

where the prospective client could be interviewed in the privacy dictated by lawyers’

rules of ethics.

This was the beginning of a new era for PI lawyer large-net advertising. Now the PI

lawyers could attract a much bigger volume of callers who need a PI lawyer. Sadly, the

TV/Internet Titans do not warn the prospective clients that there is a high probability that

the lawyer in the mass media ad will not be the one “fighting the big insurance company”

for the client.

With the internet comes instant transparency and access to the totality of the mankind’s

knowledge. This also includes knowing where to find a PI lawyer. The internet has

allowed TV-Internet Titan lawyers to reach an even larger audience. With that additional

volume in clients brings bigger profits.

75

The practice of PI law has become much more of a business than a profession. The law of

PI is settled much more now than it was 50 years past. The legal services required for the

typical PI claim are uniform to the point where they are commodities. The PI clients are

attracted to TV and Internet ads that funnel them through large-net advertising programs

like sheep through the shoot of a corral.

PI lawyers’ rocketing use of internet mass media ads and TV/cable make a new industry

of “search engines” reap profits up past the moon to their highest altitude yet. They bring

consistent, sky-high profits, up with the stars, for the large-net advertising industry

through the internet and TV, which have now converged as a synergistic medium.

SPECIAL NOTICE! THE INCREASING USE OF “LARGE-NET” PI LAWYER

ADVERTISING HAS BEEN GETTING PROGRESSIVELY WORSE FOR THE

CLIENTS. PI LAWYER LARGE-NET ADVERTISING BUSINESS MODELS

NOW PAY CONSISTENTLY MORE INSURANCE PROCEEDS MONEY TO

THE PI LAWYERS USING LARGE-NET AD CAMPAIGNS AND TO THE MASS

MEDIA OUTLETS THE PI LAWYERS USE, THAN IT IS PAYING TO THE

CLIENTS WHO STILL NEED TO PAY THEIR FUTURE MEDICAL BILLS.

The problem with all this is that large-net advertising marketing is bad for the consumers’

purses because it encourages price-fixing which discourages meaningful competition

between PI lawyers. With the TV Titans netting potential clients in large numbers, the

small or solo PI law firms cannot compete with their initial offer to prospective clients

because the small and solo law forms cannot afford to pay for expensive mass media

advertising.

The small and solo law firms cannot even get their “price, quality and value” message in

front of the prospective clients given the size of the mass media nets used by TV Titan

lawyers. The absence of meaningful competition between PI lawyers is bad for the

consumer who needs to be able to shop for a lawyer on price, quality and value.

Large-net advertising was super-charged by mass-media marketing and price-fixing at the

“standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee” just like an airplane has a minimum airspeed

required to keep the airplane aloft. So, the large-net ad industry adopted and enforced the

1/3 minimum standard fee as the “minimum speed” required to keep their profits airplane

aloft with higher and higher altitude/profits.

The TV Titans did not invent anything new. They just improved an existing out-sourcing

system, that used secretly paid referral fees that had existed for decades and had been

getting higher and higher profits for the lawyers. The old-fashioned, PI 1/3 price-fixed

“referral fee” system coupled-up with the mass media enabled large-net system. Then,

that large-net system was joined with the converging internet and TV mass media found

76

in every adults pocket-phone and that rocketed the out-source volume and profits through

the upper stratosphere.

This has produced goliath search engine corporations that rule the internet. It has also

required injured humans to get sent through the large-net systems like fish in a large net

and subsequent fish/claim processing centers, settlement mills. They are processed in

high volume and speed to maximize law firm profits to the financial damage of the

injured clients. Please see the bar graph attached hereto that indicates the woeful

progression of less and less money accruing to the injured clients over the past 50 years.

(Bar graph is not attached but may be viewed on our website in the near future.)

1/3 is the minimum airspeed required to keep the large-net ad systems air-born. Any

reduction in gross fee below 1/3 creates less profit margins for out-sourcing/referring

lawyers because an artificially supported high 1/3 gross fee charged to the clients allows

the “working lawyers” to be paid enough money to pay high enough, competitive

enough, referral fees to attract the most referrals from referring lawyers who shop for the

“working lawyer” with the highest referral rate.

The option to not over-pay the PI lawyers and to object to signing a contract for the 1/3

standard fee has always been available for the clients to receive, but they never demanded

it. This is much like leaving money on the table when you purposefully over-pay in your

purchase of a car or a home. Wouldn’t you offer the lowest price to the seller that he has

in his head, if you knew that price? Of course you would.

Now you may see the low prices (~22%) that the “working lawyers” will accept and still

to do real good work for you. We bring you the future of legal representation by knowing

the industry and revealing secrets that the search engines do not want you to know.

Large-net fishing is bad for the dolphins and whales because it keeps them underwater so

long that they cannot come up for air and they drown. In a similar fashion, large-net

lawyer ad systems are bad for America families because they require 33% minimum rates

and they take too much of the settlement monies as unnecessary fees. This price-fixing

and rate gouging is injurious to the clients and their families and causes them to drown in

bankruptcy.

Large-net lawyer advertising systems allow PI lawyers to practice price-fixing. The

search engine companies laugh all the way to the bank by charging price-fixing PI

lawyers search engine advertising rates that can only be paid consistently, over the long

period of time required to build a brand, by lawyers who have excess profits due to price-

fixing. Therefore, search engines might be inadvertently helping price-fixing PI lawyers

in their running a system that violates antitrust and other consumer protection laws.

77

Internet search engines are marvelous inventions. They have given our open market

society access to an almost infinite number of sources for finding the information

consumers need. However, it appears that some PI lawyers are gaming the system and

using the search engines in a manner that the search engines may not realize is actually

causing millions of Americans significant harm every year.

Hopefully, we can get some cooperation from the search engine companies to minimize

the adverse impact of large-net and other PI lawyer advertising on the internet. However,

we do know that PI lawyer price-fixing at the “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee”

must stop now. The People will have to stand up to the search engines and “Just Say No!”

78

XI. Chronology of a Price-fixed PI Case (Cause and Effect)

1. Prospective PI client approaches a “referring lawyer” or sees a TV Titan TV or Internet

ad promising a “Free Initial Consultation”;

2. Injured Client is signed up as a client by a “referring lawyer”, a TV Titan;

3. Chances are that the “referring lawyer” refers the client to a “working lawyer” in

response to the “working lawyer” promising to pay the “referring lawyer” a portion of the

final PI settlement, as a “referral fee.” This referral fee agreement is usually done without

any knowledge by the client knowing that the initial consultation was not actually “free”

but a quite costly future fee she will be required to pay. The PI client will usually not ever

know anything about the referral fee because the referring lawyer is not “waiving” his

referral fee for sending the client to a “working lawyer.” The referring lawyer is

expecting a windfall referral fee of at least 1/3 of the price-fixed 1/3 of the gross

contingent fee charged to the PI client by the “working lawyer.”(~11%)

4. Personal Injury (PI) “working lawyer” agrees to represent injured client for a price-fixed

1/3 (33.3%) fee contingent on the receipt of settlement monies to pay for the injured

clients necessary expenses primarily including past and future medical bills the client will

be responsible for due to the clients injury.

5. “Working Lawyer” gathers the medical bills and records of the injured client and mails

them to the insurance company of the party who was clearly at fault for causing the

injured client’s injuries with a demand for the policy limits of $100,000.

6. Insurance company pays reasonably accurate amount (if sufficient insurance is available)

to injured client to pay for past medical bills and the reasonable future medical bills.

(Example: $100,000 settlement). Note: PI lawyer’s name is also on the settlement check

as a 1/3rd (or higher) lienholder ~ the ”working lawyer” gets paid, and clients’ past

medical bills get paid before the client sees a penny. Settlement check is signed by client

and working lawyer and placed in the working lawyer’s trust account. The referring

lawyer’s name is usually not included on the settlement check.

7. The omission of the referring lawyers name from the settlement check presented to the

client for signature, helps to keep the client ill-informed about secret referral fees paid out

of the working lawyers’ 1/3 share of the proceeds. The referral fee is usually errantly

treated by almost all PI lawyers as a separate agreement unrelated to the client’s money

or attention. This is in direct violation of ethics rules in most if not all states, that require

that the client be advised of every single payment, especially referral fees, made from the

proceeds of her settlement. It is further required that the client authorize all referral fees

in writing after being advised in writing what the dollar amount of the referral fee or fee

split is.

8. PI lawyer (the “working lawyer” who, when a case is referred to her, never expects to

receive more than 22.2%, $22,222) practices price-fixing to allow her to charge her

injured client an additional 50% (up from $22,222 + $11,111 = $33,333) to cover the 1/3

79

advertising fee ($11,111 referral fee) to the referring lawyer. Note: When there is no L2L

referral, the PI lawyer just pockets the unnecessary referral fee, as a windfall.

9. Referring lawyer is paid 11.1% of the reasonable future medical bills = $11,111.

(Because the past medical bills are paid out of working lawyer’s trust account before

the client gets paid) The referral fee payment is usually made without the client’s

adequate notice or approval. It is paid right out of the working lawyer’s trust account, but

it is usually not listed as an item paid out of settlement proceeds on the settlement

approval presented to the injured client. Only the $33,333 gross PI lawyer fee is listed.

10. Injured client eventually runs out of money to pay future medical bills because the

lawyers’ fees deducted the working lawyer’s fee 22.2% ($22,222) and the advertising fee

of 11.1% ($11,111) for a total of $33,333 paid to lawyers as transaction fees. (The injured

client/person will run out of future medical bills money $33,333 early) It follows that the

absence of settlement money from homes that are already struggling would have a direct

effect on the rate of crime and incarceration in the U.S. given numerous studies showing

a causal relationship between low-income/poverty/bankruptcy and crime.xxxviii

11. In the distant future, taxpayers end up paying the 33.3% ($33,333) that is missing from

the client’s future medical care treatment funds. (Out of sight, out of mind; as to recent

medical costs paid.)

12. American taxpayers are underwriting the payment of 2 different fees that can be

decreased:

a. The working lawyer’s fee is usually able to be adjusted downward to reflect that the

fault for the accident is clear and the necessity of the medical bills is clear in 80% of

injury cases.

b. The advertising fee (Referral Fee) paid to the referring lawyer is 100% avoidable.

13. Charging the price-fixed “standard 1/3 minimum fee” has the effect of allowing the PI

lawyers to transfer the cost of future medical treatment to taxpayers and insurance

company premium payers in order to allow the payment of lawyer advertising fees and

inflated legal services in the super-majority of injury cases.

14. Taxpayers and innocent injured persons and their families pay an unnecessary $24B-

$50B to fill the economic vacuum caused by PI lawyer price-fixing.

80

XI. Recommendations for Correcting the PI Lawyer “Standard 1/3 Contingent Fee”

Price-fixing

A. Push our consumer awareness, Freeze The Fee! ™ campaign; Get the word out!

B. Get It In Writing! Clients should ask their PI lawyers to give to the client a more

thorough and written explanation of why the injured client is being charged 1/3. The

explanation is expected to be in a signed letter from PI lawyer to client without revealing

case facts, explaining exactly why the client is treated like everyone else by being

required to pay a “standard 1/3 contingent fee” including:

1. Why the 1/3 is not price-fixing;

2. Whether the client was at fault in getting injured and how;

3. The names of the lawyers who the PI lawyer says also charge 1/3.;

4. From whom did the PI lawyer learn to charge 1/3? If the explanation is not sufficient,

the client expects her fee to be adjusted to a non-price-fixed level as if the referral fee had

been waive not to exceed 22%. If the lawyer refuses to provide the client a written,

signed and dated explanation on PI lawyer letterhead, the client will proceed to ask the

Bar Association’s Fee Dispute Resolution system to help or the client may take her

business to another PI lawyer. Notice to PI lawyer that the letter might be posted online

but the clients name will be redacted before posting.

C. Just Say No! It’s Our Dough! ™ The advantage is always with the client in fee disputes.

So boycott any 1/3 or higher PI lawyer fee associated with a case of clear fault.

D. Transparency, transparency, transparency!

E. Ensure that there are a majority of non-lawyers on the committees authorized to write,

interpret and enforce the rules regulating the practice of law. Let the State Supreme

Courts iron out any wrinkles.

F. Boycotts of socially irresponsible lawyer fees.

G. Work with bar officials to help the lawyers understand the impact their fees have on

American families.

H. If you have some ideas that are not in this draft, please email them to me at:

[email protected]

I. Executive Orders. The mayors, governors, the CEO’s and presidents of any organization

or governmental unit should issue executive orders that:

1. The standard fee is presumed improper in that jurisdiction;

2. That they will not allow abatement of the standard fee 1/3 for Medicare, Medicaid

and other healthcare insurance subrogation reimbursements so that the reimbursement

rate is much higher (this will save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of $ per year);

3. That the lawyers who draw any type of pay/income from the respective organization,

must sign pledges that they will not accept referral fees while employed.

4. That the lawyers who draw any type of pay/income from the respective organization,

must sign pledges that they have honestly listed all the referral fees that they have

mailto:[email protected]

81

received because they are “mini-partnerships” and therefore create irreconcilable

conflicts of interest and potential liabilities to the organization that has hired the

lawyer.

82

XIII. Bonus Section

The 4 biggest surprises I discovered in my 5 years of research and development

regarding PI lawyers referral fees and PI lawyers price-fixing at 1/3 contingent

fees

1. How insensitive a troubling number of young and old PI lawyers are to the terrible

effects that price-fixing and its bastard children, referral fees, cause for America’s

families. Anecdote: One PI lawyer, who does not seem to understand what constitutes

price-fixing told me, “Fu__ the clients! I’m not price-fixing! I’m not charging them

any more than what every other lawyer is!” (BTW, Referral fees are the bastard

children of the union of PI lawyers and price-fixing because no lawyer admits in

public to having spawned them or to even being related to them.)

2. That a very troubling number of lawyers, of all types and manner of employment, the

in-house corporate lawyers, the Big Law firms and the tort reform lawyers, public

defenders and prosecuting attorneys, all levels of government and institutional

lawyers are taking huge payments of referral fees on the side and under the table.

However they are not telling stockholders, taxpayers, their bosses or clients about

their conflicts of interest. This is results in a ticking bomb of corporate and

governmental pending respondeat superior liabilities for repaying to clients the

billions of dollars of referral fees that their supposedly loyal in-house lawyers have

been accepting on the sly every year. Discovering this was not just stunning, but

rather totally numbing to me when I fully realized it. It was a sick surprise with no

funny “ha-ha.”

[The American people will fall off their chairs when they find out the unlikely names

of government lawyers, judges, politicians and bureaucrats who are on the take of PI

referral fees that will be revealed by The People simply asking for that information

associated with their PI files. The PI clients have every right to that information

regarding their PI claim. Any lawyer who refuses to give his client that information,

when requested properly, will have to answer to the bar disciplinary authorities as to

why the requested documents have not been provided to the clients.]

3. That the search engines owe so much of their early and continued stellar success to PI

lawyers’ devilish “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee”, 1/3 price-fixing, secret

referral fees and “large-net” advertising, it is almost inexplicable, and almost as

though the search engines “made a deal with the devil”…. and when you think about

it ….

83

4. This one is a great storyline for my next novel. I call first dibs on it because the truth

is stranger than fiction. How is it that in the Goldfarb v Virginia Bar ruling by the

U.S. Supreme Court that the entire “Minimum Fee Schedule Report” containing all of

the hundreds of different fees for different legal services were considered illegal

price-fixing in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act but that fact was never

promoted to the public? For some strange reason the Virginia Bar and the ABA only

reported that the Supreme Court prohibited lawyers from price-fixing on “real estate

title inspection closing fees” (not a huge money maker like the PI industry that

comprises over 2% of America’s economy), that are listed on page 11 of the illegal

“Minimum Fee Schedule Report.”

What is most odd is why did none of the respective Bar Associations report anything

to the public about the “33 1/3%” rate for personal injury claims also being illegal

price-fixing and forbidden? Why didn’t the Virginia Bar and the ABA and all the

other Bar Associations in America distribute copies of the multi-page lists of

“forbidden fees” to consumer interest groups around the country so that consumers

would know that the standard or “customary” 1/3 (33 1/3%) minimum contingent fee

had been ruled price-fixing by the U.S. Supreme Court?

Was it just a careless oversight or a “conspiracy of silence” to not distribute copies of

the “Minimum Fee Schedule Report?” Doesn’t a consumer protection entity like a

Bar Association have a continuing and non-delegable duty to make sure that

information critical to the consumers’ purses is distributed, in broadcast fashion as

soon as possible, to ensure exposure to as many consumers as possible?

I will briefly delve into the role of a Devil’s advocate. Self-serving conduct, by an

amorphous ethereal entity, “the bar”, would help to ensure a number of things

springing from advantageous non-transparency, to wit, Bar associations’ preventing

the public from discovering about specific, forbidden referral fees and illegal price-

fixed 33 1/3% lawyer fees, in the wake of Goldfarb, some of which appear obvious in

our present day litigious climate:

(1) America’s PI lawyers would not get sued for all of the PI 1/3, (33 1/3%) price-

fixed fees they had charged in the past; and

(2) Non-transparency would make sure PI lawyers were able to continue to charge

1/3 (33 1/3%) in the future; and

(3) Price-fixing at 1/3 would allow the PI and “referring lawyers” and “working

lawyers” to exchange those “perpetually pending referral fees” in order remain

wealthy; and

(4) Allow the politicians/bureaucrats/ judges/lawyers/public servant “lawyers” to

continue to receive their under-the-table-referral-fees to make sure any price-fixing

reforms die in some innocuous sub-committee of a quasi-regulatory agency of “the

bar.”; and

84

(5) For “the bar” to stay wealthy, like Justice Powell supported price-fixing because

he envisioned that “the bar” should remain an elite, wealthy class (at least I Virginia);

and not just comfortably wealthy, but wealthy enough in order to finance political

campaigns with hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 40 years? Hmmm. I

hope it was all just “careless oversight” that caused the full spectrum of the Goldfarb

price-fixing prohibitions to never be seen by the public consumer watch-dogs.

After the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to prohibit all price-fixing by lawyers,

was there a conspiracy carried out by the Virginia Bar to “bury” the full “Minimum

Fee Schedule Report” in order to keep the #1 most lucrative area of legal practice, PI

law, still #1? Did you know that the Virginia Bar’s ex-president, Supreme Court

Justice, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., was sitting on the Supreme Court, but was disqualified

to vote on the Court’s Goldfarb decision?

Justice, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an ex-President of the Virginia Bar Association, had

personally assisted with the price-fixing policies of the Virginia Bar as its president. It

is further recorded that he was somewhat of an elitist in that he was a staunch believer

in price-fixing for lawyers’ fees. Allegedly, Powell believed it was necessary to price-

fix in order to ensure that lawyers enjoyed a good income so they would never be

pushed out of leadership roles in society for lack of income.

The conclusion to this non-final draft of a partial outline of full book(s) that I intend to

write and publish in the future, as a supplement to the messages we advertise in promoting

our non-profit and for-profit companies, GoldenRuleLaw.org and

GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com. I do not recall ever reading about how Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos

or Steve Jobs were confronted with markedly corrupt markets for their initial target

markets as we have endured in the PI transparent advertising market. Therefore, we must

try to clean up the market in order to create the market for transparency in PI and other

legal services. This paper is not exhaustive regarding the issues it has addressed. It is

copyright protected.

85

XIV. Reality Check for the Whistleblowers: Is this Goodbye?

This is in no way an attempt to be cute with the legal system, but I spent over 4,000 pro

bono hours defending a lawyer who stuck his neck out to try to reveal corruption in the

PI legal services industry. He was railroaded into trumped up charges and railroaded

through a sham of a trial. His appeal went through the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond,

to Habeas Corpus, where justice was finally done. But a good man had been destroyed by

the big money interests in American PI legal services along the way.

I know that the PI big money interests, and their paid-for politicians and bureaucrats, will

come after me because I am simply telling the truth about a corrupt system that holds

itself up to be a protector of the truth and the common person’s interests in life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness. I am simply telling the truth about a massive breach in the

ethics and revenue sources for our American system of justice and fairness, just like my

client offered to tell to the government 23 years ago, and just like Professor Lieberman

told 38 years ago, just like Professor Brickman has told for decades, and just like the

Goldfarbs told before that. Accordingly, I have requested “whistleblower protection.”

The PI lawyers do not want to be sued by clients and ex-clients for a collective amount of

billions for the price-fixing problem they have been sweeping under the carpet for

decades trying to stay one or two steps ahead of the truth being told, until after they

retire.

I know that PI law comprises over 2% of America’s economy. So, I realize that the bar

authorities will probably try to yank my law licenses because I am telling the truth about

the way things are really done down in the hold and the engine room of the flagship of

the legal services navy, the USS Personal Injury Law. However, the truth must be told

because The People deserve it.

There are actual families, like Grandma Mary’s that are suffering, 100% unnecessarily,

every single day because the government won’t require our nation’s largest campaign

contributors to mend their ways. Which, of course, would mean that the rivers and

oceans-sized political contributions would turn into trickles and mud puddles.

The People are provided relatively little transparency for price, quality and value

considerations for legal services, when these very services are essential to the human

experience. Too many families have fragmented apart, without knowing why they did not

have the money to help them stay together. We lawyers, each and every one of us owe a

sincere apology to the American public for not doing the right thing decades earlier, like

Professor Jethro Lieberman tried to do in 1978.)xxxix America has a long history of

treating those, the “whistle blowers”, who reveal the truth about the status quo terribly

badly. Legislatures should pass laws with heightened protections for “whistle blowers”,

even if it means The People will have a better chance of finding out the legislative truths.

86

XV. Conclusion

The ancient Greeks taught us that “the only constant is change.” Change comes slowly in

the American legal system founded on precedent. Our fine legal system, flawed here and

there, as it is, uses a capitalist system to provide lawyer advertising, legal services and the

processes people use to find someone, a lawyer, to help them with important legal

problems that are common to the human experience.

Harvard Professor of Economics and Nobel Laureate, Joseph Schumpeter offered to us

his Theory of Creative Destruction and with it a 50 year recurring cycle of reformation

and destruction because the changes in how we conduct capitalistic commerce have

historically required reformations. This enables innovation to advance technology and

efficiency, which dictates, in some ways destruction of entire systems, civilizations,

manners of thinking, which are replaced by new ways of approaching old problems in

capitalist economies.

I submit to you that Schumpeter’s 50 year cycle of “creative destruction” has arrived for

reforming and disrupting the non-transparent system for PI and other lawyers’ price,

quality and value representations and assessments by buyers of legal services. The

technology of the transparency enabling internet is here to stay. Furthermore, it has been

approximately 50 years since the PI business became flush with cash provided by

tremendously large amounts of liability insurance premiums for a relatively new type of

insurance; a “standardized policy of insurance.”

This increased “PI claims money” linked with a PI 1/3 fee price-fixing procedure, in an

industry that enjoyed a government protected monopoly of lawyer licensure, and which

has always been cloaked in government mandated secrecy in order to protect the clients

and the lawyer’s business dealings, made for the longest running fleecing of America’s

citizens in history.

Regretfully, I participated in it, until I started to smell something very fishy in Denmark.

From 1965 to 2015 the personal injury industry has experienced amazing revenues. It has

made a large impact on America’s macro-economy as it is over 2% of America’s GDP

and the entire legal services industry is approximately 5% of GDP. {One dollar ($1) out

of every Twenty Dollars ($20) spent in the US economy is paid for legal services or

services directly supporting those legal services.}

But the impact on the micro-economies of individual families and healthcare facilities,

are affected even more so because socially irresponsible lawyer fees can literally destroy

a family from the inside outward by charging for referral fees and artificially high 1/3

minimum percentage fees.

87

Henry ford’s assembly lines’ mass-producing automobiles reformed the way people

traveled and made blacksmithing and livery almost forgotten trades. Microsoft and Apple

and HP have made type-writers, filing cabinets and formal offices increasingly obsolete

in the wake of electronic storage, cell phone, mobile business text, audio and video

communications and the clerical personnel who worked in supporting those ways of

conducting yesterday’s business.

Sometimes merely looking at a problem from a different angle creates the change;

sometimes the natural laws of physics and the environment demand immediate change;

and in our modern society change, reformation and destruction are prompted by

improvements in technology. These changes are coming at us at the speed of light.

The advancement of the internet has provided some new “truth transparency technology”

to correct an anomaly, the Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Legal Services that

has existed for over 80 years, in our nation’s capitalist system for buying and selling PI

legal services.

The existence of wide-spread, “government socialism”, monopoly-fostered, price-fixing

and inverse-pricing for eight decades is a testament as to how little price and quality

transparency the buyers, injured Americans, were provided in the past and how much

such transparency will be demanded in the coming decades, as use of the internet

advances.

Life and the universe seem to have a cycle of power that recharges itself. Change begets

change. We must correct our system of PI claims to save American families. Demanding

change from America’s PI lawyers through earnest boycotting of “Standard fees” is a

good place to start for those whose survival depends on receiving fairness in their

pending settlements now.

We had to put down our golden retriever Penny, this past week. It was a tough decision,

but not nearly as tough as deciding that there is no turning back in my decision to tell

America the truth about PI lawyer price-fixing and its horrible effects on consumers’

families. There is a finality to life that makes a person want to get it right because God

won’t give me a second chance to do the right thing for hundreds of millions of people

who have no idea they are getting milked and sent to the processing plant like cattle.

I was taught that to perform well, when it matters the most, that I must do my homework

very thoroughly and recheck it many times. Then, proceed with vigor. This is some of

the advice my father, the record setting trial lawyer; the nation-wide, movement-creating

public servant; and the highly decorated fighter pilot gave to me about causing positive

change in the face of much better financed and organized opposition. “If you have a good

cause, then you are going to have to attack because your opponents will be fortified with

money and politicians. So you better do your homework to know your strengths and your

opponents’ weaknesses. Watch your timing closely. Use your best weapons first, and

bounce ‘em hard. Then, do it again, if you have to. Having a good wingman helps a hell

of a lot.”

88

We can learn from another giants who went before us to teach us that persistence and

determination and communication of the truth will prevail if handled properly.

We can learn about evoking positive change in our economies by communicating the

truth to as many people as possible who then act on that information. One historical

figure, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, might have saved tens of thousands of lives, if the

internet had been available to him, when he made some discoveries about the connection

between healthcare workers cleansing their hands and infection rates.

Dr. Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician of German extraction who pioneered

antiseptic procedures. He lived from July 1818 – 13 August 1865. “Semmelweis

discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could

be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. (And) Despite

various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%,

Semmelweis' observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions

of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community.”

“Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and

Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.

Semmelweis’ practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when

Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French

microbiologist's research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great

success.”

“Some accounts emphasize that Semmelweis refused to communicate his method

officially to the learned circles of Vienna, [13]:37 nor was he eager to explain it on

paper.” LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

I believe that, if Dr. Simmelweiss had the benefit of using the internet to warn people to

not allow healthcare workers to treat them with unwashed hands, it would have saved a

lot of lives. I believe this to be true even though many patients would have been laughed

at by egotistical physicians who were probably the patients’ “best option”, at the time

because physicians were not grossly over-abundant in number at the time.

Therefore, the positive change in healthcare professionals’ hand-washing behavior might

have occurred much more rapidly, and probably would have become a universal protocol

during Dr. Simmelweiss’ lifetime had the public been made the target of the critical

hygiene information.

We offer a similar fact scenario, but with a different profession and in the Internet-era.

However, today in America we have a gross over-supply of competent PI lawyers as

opposed to the opposite during Dr. Simmelweiss’ time with doctors not having an over-

supply.

Not only is America’s supply of lawyers excessive, we also have the empirical data

from eighty (80) years of competent PI lawyers, “working lawyers”, performing the

majority of all of the PI work for injured clients over the past 80 years, and doing a

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

89

real good quality job that offered much higher KIMP at the much reduced rate of

22%, not at the adhesion rate of 33% and above. (Please see the above chart that

accompanies the Law of Inverse Pricing for Personal Injury Legal Services.)

The point that I offer is that Simmelweiss would have been much more successful in the

medical community rapidly adopting his information that pleural fever infections were

increased substantially from unclean hands, if Simmelweiss had made the public, the

patients, and not the doctors his intended audience for causing change.

We at GoldenRuleLaw.org are targeting the public, the people losing their billions of tax-

free dollars every year and suffering unnecessary, 100% avoidable loss of their money

which cause divorce and bankruptcy “infections”, because they don’t know that they

should simply ask their lawyers to not charge a “standard 1/3 fee” and waive any referral

fees.

We believe that by making the buyers the information targets, we will save more families

and spread the word faster than if we tried to convince lawyers to mend their ways when

they have been enjoying a great party for 80 years and the clients’ have been picking up

the tab. Why change?

This approach would be much like, if the Simmelweiss group of mothers, who got

infected by a lack of simple, uncomplicated hand-washing, instead simply asked the

nurse at the front of the doctor’s office if the doctor washed his hands between patients. If

“NO” was the answer, there would be no haggling needed in a high doctor supply

economy because the mother would just “GO” to a doctor who washed his hands.

In a similar fashion, considering that there is a gross over-supply of competent PI

lawyers, the present day consumers can just go to the next PI lawyer on the list, if the

previous one offered the 1/3 minimum PI contingent fee on a “take-it-or-leave-it” basis.

(Doctor/Lawyer says NO, I GO.)

To help us in spreading the word to the public, we enjoy communication tools and a legal

services economic environment that is in favor of “the buyers”, not like it has been in

favor of the PI lawyers “the sellers” for eighty (80) years. Coupled with the over-

whelming track record of “working lawyers” quality and rate combination at 22% and

lower, we have the luxury of the internet to use to inform and warn the public.

With the powers of the internet, we can warn the injured Americans looking for a PI

lawyer to consider boycotting “the 1/3 standard fee.” They can also refuse to sign a

standard fee contract much like a patient demanding a doctor first wash her hands. She

would do this because she knows there will be a terrible cause and effect to herself and

her family if she does not demand more fair PI lawyer rates. She will discover this

information from GoldenRuleLaw.org. Then, the client can and will share that

information with others online to improve the market-wide rate, quality, value collective

information like people have done in marketplaces since the beginning of time, by word

of mouth.

90

I believe that PI price-fixing destroys hundreds of thousands of American families every

year because:

1. Losing big sums of money makes people depressed;

2. Having big medical bills that you cannot pay makes you depressed;

3. Being poor and filing bankruptcy makes you depressed;

4. Depression and bankruptcy leads to higher rates of divorces:

5. Washing PI lawyers’ hands of the price-fixing and referral fees will increase survival

rates for PI lawyer fee affected families;

6. Do you really need me to give you all of the studies that link increased depression with

increased rates of divorce, anxiety and suicide?

There are a plethora of such reputable studies that discuss these matters in depth. I will

hold off on citing those “losing money causes depression” and “depression causes higher

incidence rates of a whole slew of human miseries” for now.

The public must keep its mind open to new discoveries like PI lawyer price-fixing, no

differently than the public and doctors who would have kept an open mind to hand-

washing. Simmelweis was considered an idiot by the best doctors in the world for quite a

while, until The People, patients and nurses, demanded that their doctors wash their

hands before treating them.

If the American public could have avoided paying the extra 11% (1/3 of 1/3) for the past

80 years, in 2015 dollars, and enjoyed competitive rates for “clear fault” PI claims, they

might have avoided paying over $3 Trillion dollars on unnecessary PI lawyer fees. Would

that have created a few more jobs in the healthcare industry and its supporting industries?

You can answer that as we move toward the year 2020 and GoldenRuleLaw.org

challenges America to become 100% transparent in the price, quality and value

information for PI lawyers in America.

Please remember our holiday campaign slogans to help injured American families keep

their own money. Freeze The Fee! ™; The Reverse Charity ™; Help Santa Help Injured

Families! ™; Give The Injured Their Money! ™

In order to meet our GoldenRuleLaw.org “reverse charity” goal to raise $1 Million

dollars for injured families by the end of 2015, we only need 100 injured families to be

given their PI referral fees. And nobody has to donate a penny! So, please share this

information with injured people hoping for a settlement before the end of 2015.

God Bless America.

91







from your local jurisdiction immediately if you need legal counsel or representation.

92

XVI. SOURCES

Sources as Endnotes

i For a general sampling of the truth about PI lawyers’ price-fixing (wide-spread, recurrent,

price/rate uniformity) “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fees” for PI legal services please see:

THE PUZZLING UNIFORMITY OF LAWYERS’ CONTINGENT FEE RATES: AN

ASSORTATIVE MATCHING SOLUTION; by: Eyal Zamir, Barak Medina, and Uzi Segal;

Jan 17, 2012

Excerpt: pp. 4-5

“The conventional flat CF rate in the United States is one-third of the recovery.

According to Kritzer (2002), about two-thirds of the cases (excluding those governed

by special regulation) involve a fixed percentage (“flat fee”); in 88% of these cases,

the CF is 33% of the recovery. In the cases employing a variable percentage rather

then a flat fee, the attorney will commonly charge 25% of the recovery if the case

does not go to trial or does not involve substantial trial preparations; 33% if the case

goes beyond this point and ends at the trial-court decision; and 40% to 50% if the case

results in an appeal (see also Brickman 2003a, p. 657; Kritzer 2004, pp. 42-43;

Engstrom 2011, p. 845).4

In a competitive market, one would presumably expect CF rates to vary, as cases

differ in terms of the costs of providing the legal services (particularly the expected

amount of work and the attorney’s opportunity costs) and the expected value of the

fee, determined by the size of the claim and the prospects of winning it. It would seem

that in a competitive market plaintiff lawyers would not charge the same CF rate in

small and large cases, and that top lawyers would charge higher rates than less

qualified ones (Painter 1995; Brickman 2003b, pp. 78-88; cf. Chen and Ritter 2000, p.

1106). One could also expect that clients’ and attorneys’ private information would

induce varying CF rates since the fee can serve as a mechanism to reliably convey

such private information to the other party (Rubinfeld & Scotchmer 1993).

Another feature of the CF market is the prevalence of cases referred from one

lawyer to another. Often, such referrals are remunerated by a referral fee paid by the

handling lawyer, usually one-third or one-half of the fee paid by the client (Spurr

1988, pp. 100-02; Brickman 1989, p. 109). If clients always pay the same CF rate,

then the handling lawyer’s net fee in cases she obtains directly is much higher than in

cases referred to her by another lawyer. One could therefore expect lawyers to charge

93

considerably lower CF rates in “direct cases,” where she retains the entire fee

(Brickman [1989, p. 109; 2003b, pp. 88-89]; Engstrom 2011, p. 865 n.286).

The prevailing uniformity of CF rates, across both cases and quality of lawyers—

and across cases involving fee splitting and those that do not—is often regarded as

strong, perhaps conclusive, evidence that the market for legal services is noncompetitive

(Brickman 1989, 2003b; Drummonds 1993, p. 891 n.123; Painter 1995;

Hadfield 2000, p. 979; Fisch 2002, pp. 670-71). It is claimed that the market is not

competitive, due to clients’ acute information problems (regarding such aspects as the

expected recovery, the risk involved in the suit, the quality of legal services provided,

and the time required to handle the case), clients’ prohibitive search costs, and various

means devised by lawyers to inhibit competition (Brickman [1994, 2003b]; Painter

1995; Gross 2006). These means include uniform pricing practices, the absence of

price advertisements, and the prohibitions against the purchase of tort claims and

against brokerage of lawyers’ services (Brickman 2003b).

Indeed, the process of hiring a lawyer, especially when the client is a single-shot

player who lacks legal expertise (as most tort plaintiffs are), is characterized by

asymmetric information. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how hundreds of thousands

of lawyers manage to coordinate and enforce relatively uniform CF rates to the

detriment of clients without any formal prohibitions on deviations from the standard

CF rate.” (Emphasis added)

Authors’ bloghttp://www.thecontingency.com/2015/07/high-rates-and-better-outcomes/

And see

“There is no such thing as a "standard fee."” At LINK: http://www.nolo.com/legal-

encyclopedia/attorneys-fees-basics-30196.html

And See

California Bar Association (~2015)

“Contingency fee agreements must state, among other things, whether you will be required to

pay the lawyer for related matters (matters not specifically covered in the written fee agreement)

that might come up as a result of your case. In many cases, the agreement also must note that

the attorney’s fee is set by the attorney and the client — not by any legal statute or law LINK: http://www.calbar.ca.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=yLMgdI1DRF4%3D&tabid=1362

Which seems to be a reversal from its past official stance on ‘standard 1/3 minimum contingency

fees”;

But see California’s earlier stance ~2006. Is California seeing that PI lawyer price-fixing is very

real?

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/attorneys-fees-basics-30196.html


http://www.calbar.ca.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=yLMgdI1DRF4%3D&tabid=1362

94

“California: The Consumer Attorneys of California trial lawyer association states: “Rather than

charging for legal services by the hour, an attorney agrees to accept a portion of any recovery in

the case, usually one-third.’” (A Harvard Law Blog)

At LINK: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/contingency-fees-pt-3-do-standard-fees-exist/

And see

At LINK: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/2007/08/29/why-do-lawyers-lie-about-

contingency-fees/

See also: Montana Bar Assn... Q&A #10: “There is no such thing as a "standard fee" for a

particular type of case.” LINK:

http://www.montanaodc.org/nbspnbspnbspfrequentlybraskedquestions/tabid/1211/default.aspx

ii Encouraging PI clients to simply ask their PI lawyers to provide a written and signed

explanation on their letterhead, to wit:

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR STATE’S BAR ASSOCIATION AND ASK THEM IF A

CLIENT IS ALLOWED TO: (1) ASK THEIR LAWYER TO EXPLAIN, IN A SIGNED

WRITING, WHY THEIR “STANDARD 1/3 MINIMUM CONTINGENT FEE” IS NOT

PRICE-FIXING; AND IF IT CANNOT BE ADEQUATELY EXPLAINED, THAT THE

CONTRACT BE TERMINATED OR RENEGOTIATED.

Dear PI Lawyer Name,

I am participating in a boycott of the personal injury lawyer’s “standard 1/3 fee.”

In that regard, please provide to me written and signed answers, on your lawyer letterhead, to the

following questions.

(1) Why is the “standard 1/3 fee” that ‘all the lawyers charge’ not price-fixing, if all the lawyers

are charging the same rate, 1/3?

(2) Why should I pay a price-fixed fee of 1/3?

(3) Please give me the names and phone numbers of the lawyers who you know who are still

charging a “standard 1/3 PI contingent fee”?

(4) Please quote your Bar Association’s attorney disciplinary authority’s written regulations that

approves, requires or encourages you to charge me a “standard fee” or a “standard 1/3 fee” or a

“standard minimum 1/3 contingent fee” or a “1/3 fee” for my personal injury case?

(5) Why am I being charged a contingent fee if my injury was not my fault, and the insurance

company admitted fault, and there was little chance of me losing?; and

(6) Please know that, if you cannot provide me written and signed answers to the above

questions, I expect you to reduce my contingent fee from 1/3 (33/3%) to ____ %.

(7) NOTICE: If I do not receive the written answers I have requested, I will assume that our

contract has been rescinded and that I will be allowed to do either of the following at my sole

discretion:

(A) Seek a new lawyer and you waive any fee whatsoever from the proceeds of my

settlement monies, or

http://www.caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=feekey

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/contingency-fees-pt-3-do-standard-fees-exist/

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/2007/08/29/why-do-lawyers-lie-about-contingency-fees/

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/2007/08/29/why-do-lawyers-lie-about-contingency-fees/

http://www.montanaodc.org/nbspnbspnbspfrequentlybraskedquestions/tabid/1211/default.aspx

95

(B)You will remain my lawyer and I will show up at the appropriate date and time for

signing my settlement papers and there will not be any referral fees paid out of my settlement

money proceeds, and I will be charged a gross fee of ____________ percent (_____ %) gross

rate in addition to the other non-contingent fee costs/deductions for litigation/claim cost provided

in our contract.;

(8) I require a written and signed answer(s), as requested above, within fourteen (14) days from

the date of the post mark of this certified letter.

Sincerely,

PI Client name/signature iii Rule 1.5: Fees; Client-Lawyer Relationship

LINK:

http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_pro

fessional_conduct/rule_1_5_fees.html iv (4 0ut of 5 American adults do not understand fractions) LINK: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/everybody-is-stupid-except-you/201211/us-math-achievement-how-bad-is-it : and “Bridging the gap: Fraction understanding is central to mathematics achievement in students from three different continents” by Joke Torbeyns, Michael Schneider, Ziqiang Xin, and Robert S. Siegler; “Numerical understanding and arithmetic skills are easier to acquire for whole numbers than fractions.”, P. 1; LINK: http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/Torbeyns-etal15.pdf ; and It gets worse: LINK: http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/; and LINK: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/14/opinion/granderson-dumb-america/ ; and LINK: http://qz.com/133024/americans-are-dumber-than-average-at-math-vocabulary-and-technology/

Note: I believe the suggested language in the sample California legal services contracts at the

following link are an attempt to move in the right direction to help math challenged PI clients

make a knowing and intelligent agreement with the PI lawyer on the math terms drafted by the

PI lawyer. However, the offered language still does not adequately address the inability of at

least one of the parties to the lawyer- client contract having the ability to understand the math

references and terms found in ALL PI contingent fee contracts.

LINK (See Appendix B, pp. 21-25): http://www.calbar.ca.gov/portals/0/documents/mfa/1998-

03_Determination-of-a-Reasonable-Fee_r.pdf

Please also see the case of AVIS RENT CAR SYSTEMS INC v. HEILMAN as one in a long

line of examples of liability for contract ambiguities on a large scale; LINK:

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/al-supreme-court/1223413.html v “SHOULD FIRMS FOCUS ON “COMMODITY” SERVICES OR HIGHER VALUE

WORK?” ; LINK: http://www.legalinkmagazine.com/2014/06/should-firms-focus-on-

commodity-services-or-higher-value-work/ ;

And

“Avoiding the Commoditization of Your Law Practice” LINK: http://www.lawyer-

coach.com/index.php/2007/08/15/avoiding-the-commoditization-of-your-law-practice-2/ ;

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/everybody-is-stupid-except-you/201211/us-math-achievement-how-bad-is-it

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/everybody-is-stupid-except-you/201211/us-math-achievement-how-bad-is-it

http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/Torbeyns-etal15.pdf

http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/14/opinion/granderson-dumb-america/

http://qz.com/133024/americans-are-dumber-than-average-at-math-vocabulary-and-technology/

http://www.calbar.ca.gov/portals/0/documents/mfa/1998-03_Determination-of-a-Reasonable-Fee_r.pdf

http://www.calbar.ca.gov/portals/0/documents/mfa/1998-03_Determination-of-a-Reasonable-Fee_r.pdf

http://www.legalinkmagazine.com/2014/06/should-firms-focus-on-commodity-services-or-higher-value-work/

http://www.legalinkmagazine.com/2014/06/should-firms-focus-on-commodity-services-or-higher-value-work/

http://www.lawyer-coach.com/index.php/2007/08/15/avoiding-the-commoditization-of-your-law-practice-2/

http://www.lawyer-coach.com/index.php/2007/08/15/avoiding-the-commoditization-of-your-law-practice-2/

96

“What are commodity legal services? Generally legal services that involve routine and

predictable legal issues that can be systematized into forms and processes. They don’t involve

complex legal issues, or the issues have already been addressed with such frequency and

regularity that they have become routine. Often each individual claim or matter involves a

relatively small amount of money at risk, necessitating an inexpensive process or the economies

of large volume. Through the use of questionnaires, checklists, decision trees, step-by-step

instructions, standard processes and similar methods, technology enables rapid and cheap

production of the relevant legal advice and documentation.

Examples of types of legal work that have already become commoditized in many respects

include: mortgage lending, wills and trusts, incorporations, uncontested divorces, debt collection,

consumer bankruptcies, loan documentation, equipment leasing, bond offerings, regulatory

approvals, workers compensation claims, tenant leasing and eviction, foreclosures,

immigration, patent prosecution, contract review, product liability litigation, slip and fall

personal injury litigation, insurance defense, and certain misdemeanor criminal cases.”

(Emphasis added)

I would add auto vehicle accident claims to the list of legal services that have become

commodities of services.

And

American Bar Association website; “The Future of American Law in a Global Village”; Volume

40 Number 4; by: Dan Pinnington; “Grocery store” law has arrived thanks to Co-operative Legal

Services, part of the Co-op Group, the U.K.’s largest mutual business. Its businesses include,

among others, a national chain of food stores, banking, insurance, pharmacy and funeral services.

The Co-op Group operates more than 4,500 retail outlets and employs nearly 90,000 people. As

an ABS, Co-operative Legal Services currently provides fixed fee legal services in

conveyancing, family, wills and probate, personal injury and employment law by telephone,

online and in person at many of its stores.”

LINK: http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2014/july-august/the-

future-of-american-law-in-a-global-village.html

vi “US legal bubble can’t pop soon enough”; Poston globe; by Jeff Jacoby; May 9, 2014;

LINK: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops-not-moment-

too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html

(See also the Jordan Furlong series of 5 essays found at footnote # viii) vii Corcoran v Dowd was a special FELA work-injury claim that involved application of a special

25% PI contingent fee.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-08-08/news/0408080356_1_referral-fees-exorbitant-

fees-personal-injury-lawyer

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2014/july-august/the-future-of-american-law-in-a-global-village.html

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2014/july-august/the-future-of-american-law-in-a-global-village.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops-not-moment-too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops-not-moment-too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-08-08/news/0408080356_1_referral-fees-exorbitant-fees-personal-injury-lawyer

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-08-08/news/0408080356_1_referral-fees-exorbitant-fees-personal-injury-lawyer

97

Corcoran v. Dowd, original opinion link:

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2003/1stdistrict/december/html/1021516.h

tm

Corcoran Legal Malpractice Claim

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2005/2nddistrict/november/html/2050100.

htm

Corcoran Google Query Link

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-

8#q=corcoran%20v%20dowd%20%22referral%20fee%22

Please note that this case involved a special FELA worker-compensation, work –injury type of

personal injury claim. As a result of it being a work-related claim, the legal fee in Corcoran was

at the worker compensation Twenty-Five Percent “25% standard fee” for FELA work injury

claims, at the time of the Corcoran contract. FELA PI claims, although extremely lucrative,

account for less than one percent (1%) of the number of all PI claims in the US. However, the

basic principles regarding the payment of specious C2L2L PI referral fees remain the same in the

Corcoran v Dowd case.

The Corcoran I decision, although it involved a special FELA worker injury PI claim and it was

subject to the work-related “25% standard fee”, is a very good example of how a sympathetic

judiciary can issue punishing opinions regarding referral fees that have very little to do with

logic or the law, but that illustrate the ancient observation, “The law is an ass.” Opinions such as

Corcoran I seem to deny what is fair for the injured claimant in order to perpetuate an archaic PI

referral fee system, even though the opinions state some officious sounding legal theories to the

non-lawyer victims. Certainly the Corcoran I and II panels of judges did nothing illegal or

unethical in issuing their opinion, and perhaps they were constrained by bad lawyering on behalf

of Widow Corcoran. Who knows?

Everyone knows the result in Corcoran I was not fair because Dowd got something for nothing,

which is an over-riding complaint about PI referral fees. But that has not stopped their wide-

spread use by an industry steeped in secrecy whose faceless butler seems to just conveniently

sweep the lamentations of unfairness under the rugs of wealthy lawyers, while exclaiming, ~

“Oh, too bad the result. Nope, it’s not fair. But you can’t help that because bad facts make bad

law.” The common folk prefer plain speaking and a plain explanation for the words lawyers use.

The common folk, the everyday people, the folks who make our economy hum with their hard

work. These are the majority of our target market, at GoodlawyerGoodPrice.com and

GoldenRuleLaw.org. The common fold prefer to use the word “Fairness” more than the word

“Justice” in their everyday activities.

Perhaps “Fairness” is the word that better describes what the common folk expect, and are due at

the hands of their lawyers, than is the exalted word that is on the front of all our courthouses,

“Justice.” “Justice” seems a bit too vague and out-of-reach, whereas “Fairness” is more practical,

more probable, in its universal applications.

People just want lawyers to be fair to them by applying the Judeo-Christian principle “The

Golden Rule” to the way they treat their clients. People simply expect and deserve their lawyers

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2003/1stdistrict/december/html/1021516.htm

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2003/1stdistrict/december/html/1021516.htm

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2005/2nddistrict/november/html/2050100.htm

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/opinions/appellatecourt/2005/2nddistrict/november/html/2050100.htm

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=corcoran%20v%20dowd%20%22referral%20fee%22

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=corcoran%20v%20dowd%20%22referral%20fee%22

98

to treat them as the lawyer would want to be treated as if the lawyer was in the same position as

their clients. Nothing unreasonable granted to the clients, just what is fair.

By the way, it makes for a good jury argument in a case involving lawyer price-fixing. WWJD?

What Would a Jury Do? A jury will probably do what is fair to the client and the lawyer.

Accordingly, our non-profit organization’s name reflects this simple request by America’s

clients, GolenRuleLaw.org.

However, aside from the minute behind-the-scenes details in the Corcoran case, the reader may

find that many a moonlighting, “unbiased” jurist has been made wealthy, through use of straw

parties, in order to accept lots of referral fees. And the jurists accomplish that feat all without

doing anything “illegal” or “unethical.”

Furthermore, jurists and lawyers who cannot explain the illogic of referral fees, can wash their

hands of its terrible results, under the ancient pigeon-hole category for derelict decisions, “Bad

facts make bad law.” That is minor consolation or justice for the injured PI claimants who suffer

all of the combinations of PI lawyer price-fixing such as Widow Corcoran who became a poster

child for the financial brutality caused by price-fixing’s progeny, referral fees.

The problem is that the laws and ethics rules, in their language, their tortured court

interpretations and lack of enforcement, crush the injured clients who are the one’s our society

has relegated to pay for the whole sordid referral fee system that is propped up by its main

structural support, the price-fixed “standard 1/3 contingent fee” that, in its regular practice,

clearly violates our nation’s and states’ antitrust laws.

viii Jordan Furlong’s the 5 Stages of the Practice of Law

Stage 1 (1700's - 2008)

LINK: http://www.law21.ca/2012/11/the-evolution-of-the-legal-services-market-stage-1/

Stage 2 (2008 - 2016 )


Stage 3 ( 2016- 2014 )


The evolution of the legal services market: Stage 3

By Jordan Furlong • Published: November 7th, 2012

Stage 4 ( 2019 - ? )


Stage 5 (Today’s final entry is kind of a postscript to Stage 4, and maybe something of a thought

experiment too.)


ix The 22.2% rate was used only as an example of a 1/3 referral fee of a 1/3 gross fee rate for

which the “working lawyer” usually gets paid after deducting the 1/3 of 1/3 referral fee from

http://www.law21.ca/2012/11/the-evolution-of-the-legal-services-market-stage-1/





99

gross fee proceeds. In the absence of price-fixing, price competition will produce some very

competitive PI rates from ~3% to 50% and some on a sliding scale similar to the sliding scales

used in calculating fees in wills and estates legal services.

The market will decide on a case by case basis. Therefore, after consumers refuse to pay 1/3

standard fee any more, rates are expected to fall to reasonable levels.

Therefore, the simple math shows how much injured consumers are financially hobbled by

lawyers charging a price-fixed 1/3 standard minimum contingent fee:

$ 33,333 Attorney Fees paid by Client under old system

- 22,222 Attorney Fees paid by Client without 1/3 price-fixed referral fee.

$ 11,111* Minimum amount client over-pays due to price-fixing

*Client saves a huge amount of tax-free money that can be used for the reason it was originally

paid to the client tax-free - for client injuries and medical bills, not for lawyers’ pockets!

x “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political,

economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State

to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by

extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s Chief

of Propaganda;

LINK: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbelslie.html

xi

“There is no such thing as a ‘standard fee.’" And “A contingency fee can be a bad idea.”

LINK: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/attorneys-fees-basics-30196.html;

xii U.S. TORT REFORM AND THE IMPLICATIONS ON INSURANCE RISKS WITHIN

THE U.S. MARKET, Presented to The Non-Life Insurance Institute The General Insurance

Association Of Japan Tokyo, Japan July 15, 2004

LINK: http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/Reports/Nicolaides%20Insurance%20Risks%207-

2004.pdf

xiii THE PUZZLING UNIFORMITY OF LAWYERS’ CONTINGENT FEE RATES: AN

ASSORTATIVE MATCHING SOLUTION

LINK: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986491

By Edal Samir, Barak Medina, and Uzi Segal;

(Page 7) “Lawyers’ adherence to uniform CF [contingent fee] rates can also be explained by its

role in facilitating paid-for referrals between lawyers. As will be discussed further in section 6,

many clients lack sufficient information about their cases and about the expertise and quality of

potential lawyers. These clients often find a lawyer through the referral system. Such referrals

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbelslie.html


http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/Reports/Nicolaides%20Insurance%20Risks%207-2004.pdf

http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/Reports/Nicolaides%20Insurance%20Risks%207-2004.pdf

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986491

100

are often paid for through a fee-splitting between the referring and handling lawyers. The

uniformity of CF rates facilitates these transfers because unsophisticated clients tend to assume

that they can only gain: paying the same fee to secure the services of a better lawyer …”

(And)

(Page 8) “Since the uniformity of CF rates drives the referral system, and lawyers benefit from

the ability to transfer cases for referral fees, it is generally in the lawyers’ interest to maintain the

standard rates.” [a/k/a price-fixing] xiv SUNLIGHT AND SETTLEMENT MILLS, New York University law School; Nora

Freeman Engstrom, P. 851-2; LINK:


xv Although the decided majority of PI price-fixing victims are Caucasian, the price-fixing of a

1/3 contingent fee hurts the minority families worse than the Caucasian families because they do

not have as many family or societal assets providing an adequate structure that will help their

families endure the financial losses secondary to PI lawyer price-fixing. In support of the theory

that minority households having less substantial support structures than non-minority families,

are therefore less able to endure financial hardships, when compared to the non-minority

families’ support structures. But TV Titans purposefully target the minorities and poor as

unsophisticated potential clients. This has a disparate impact on the minority and low-income

families even though the majority of the victims of PI lawyer price-fixing are Caucasians who

also suffer financial losses. I submit that the relatively high and racially disparate PI price-fixing

victim rates should be included in Prof. Rothstein’s observation on the impact of factors adding

to the minority family’s struggle against the out-going tide of economic forces “The toll on

children’s achievement from racially disparate foreclosure rates, rental evictions, loss of food

security, loss of access to continuous health care, and other effects of poverty is palpable.”; "For

Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since Education and the Unfinished March" 27,

2013;

LINK: http://www.epi.org/publication/unfinished-march-public-school-segregation/ ; by:

Professor Richard Rothstein, U-Cal Berkeley Law School

xvi The IRS has previously treated the proceeds of personal injury settlement monies received by

the injured client as non-taxable to the client. However, the lawyers’ fees are taxable income to

the respective lawyers.

xvii In support of our allegations that price-fixing, at a 1/3 “standard fee” allows PI lawyers to

spend mountains of money on wholesale advertising, in the form of referral fees, and mass media

advertising on the internet, TV and radio in order to generate high volumes of poor and minority

PI clients for a troubling number of TV Titan’s whom Professor Freeman Engstrom refers to as

“settlement mills.”


http://www.epi.org/publication/unfinished-march-public-school-segregation/

101

We also offer these fine works of scholarship, education, research and writing, by Professor Nora

Freeman Engstrom, in support of our position that these “settlement mills” target injured

minorities, uneducated and poor people and subsequently systematically violate those injured

person’s Civil Rights, we respectfully offer to you the enclosed trinity of extremely well

researched and documented law review articles authored by Nora Freemen Engstrom of Stanford

Law School:

“Run-of-the-Mill Justice”

[P 1514, THE INVISIBILITY PROBLEM: “IT’S ALL OUT OF THE LIGHT OF DAY”191,

note 191. Telephone Interview with E.G. (Apr. 22, 2008) (“Let me tell you, so much goes on in a

law firm that settles cases, and it’s all out of the light of day. If you don’t have a moral center,

and you’re willing to slide and slip around, you can do all sorts of things because you’re never

going to be caught.”).]

In-Depth Expose of “Settlement Mills” a/k/a “Referral Fee Factories”

(2009) “Run-of-the-Mill Justice”;

LINK: http://media.law.stanford.edu/publications/archive/pdf/Engstrom.pdf

“Legal Access and Attorney Advertising”

Great expose of how the poor and “non-whites” are targeted by TV Titan advertising lawyers;

(quoting Will Hornsby of the ABA’s Commission on Advertising: “If you look at who responds

to advertising, they are people who don’t otherwise know how to find a lawyer” and are

generally “newly relocated, low-income, undereducated, and minorities”)

(2011) “Legal Access and Attorney Advertising”;

LINK: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1535&context=jgspl

“Attorney Advertising and the Contingency Fee Cost Paradox”

This article supports my position, in numerous ways that price-fixing allows PI lawyers to spend

millions on all types of advertising, especially referral fee wholesale advertising, driving up the

cost of PI legal services, among other good points the author raises regarding the fees associated

with PI legal services industry;

[p. 674, note 214. See Witt, supra note 191, at 286 (“Many lawyers who advertise as personal

injury specialists are little more than referral mills. They serve as intake offices for claims that

they then farm out to specialized lawyers in return for a contingent referral fee.”);

Bill Rankin, Bar Takes Aim at Lawyers’ Ads: Court Battles Likely if Restrictions Are Adopted,

ATLANTA J.-CONST., June 17, 1994, at B10 (quoting lawyer Sam Engram, who supervised a

committee on attorney advertising for the Georgia State Bar, as stating: “[M]any lawyers use

these ads for case-brokering. . . . They’re just running a factory, taking phone calls and directing

cases to other lawyers and taking a cut of the fee”)] Sokolove’s CEO, the firm.

http://media.law.stanford.edu/publications/archive/pdf/Engstrom.pdf

http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1535&context=jgspl

102

(2013) “Attorney Advertising and the Contingency Fee Cost Paradox.”

LINK: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/attorney-advertising-and-contingency-

fee-cost-paradox

Torts JOTWELL: Late Night Law Firms, by Nora Freeman Engstrom;

June 10th, 2013, Critique by: Scott Hershovitz;

LINK: http://torts.jotwell.com/late-night-law-firms/

(2011) “Sunlight and Settlement Mills”, New York University law School; Nora Freeman

Engstrom, P. 851-2; LINK: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1956718

List of other works by Nora Freeman Engstrom

LINK: http://law.stanford.edu/wp-

content/uploads/sites/default/files/person/166551/doc/slspublic/Nora%20Freeman%20Engstrom

%20CV%20-%202013.pdf

Please also see our online presentation regarding large-net lawyer advertising, Large Net Lawyer

Ads Fishing System – Traps injury clients into a system that pays lawyers over $23 Billion extra

per year for out-sourcing, found in our library at url:

http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/ .

xviii See attached Chicago Daily Law Bulletin May 12, 2015 ed., Headline, “Too Many Lawyers,

and Too Little Work”; see also “The Lawyer Bubble”, by Stephen Harper, who is a 30 veteran of

the trenches of Chicago litigation and is now serving as a professor of economics at

Northwestern University.

xix Please note that I took considerable heat from my brethren in the law, by giving discounts off

of the “1/3 standard fee” and the “maximum standard fees” for Illinois and Missouri worker

compensation cases, as far back as 1991. My brethren would belly-ache about my under-cutting

the “standard fee” and that I should be sure to not publicize the lower rates or there would be a

resulting lawyer fee price war, and a sure ”race to the bottom.” Typically, I offered those

discounts to blocks of potential claimants like veterans, union workers and the elderly, but that

did not matter to my “cut-throat profits at all costs” brethren.

They literally did not give a damn about the eventual plight of the clients a year or two after their

cases settled. They would usually rationalize the bad problems clients had in paying for future

medical bills with the same fractured logic. ~“Not my problem! All I am concerned with is if

http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/attorney-advertising-and-contingency-fee-cost-paradox


http://torts.jotwell.com/late-night-law-firms/


http://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/person/166551/doc/slspublic/Nora%20Freeman%20Engstrom%20CV%20-%202013.pdf



http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/

103

they believed it [the settlement] to be a good deal when they signed the [settlement] papers. After

that it is not my job.”

Although I did sign up my fair share of “standard 1/3 minimum contingent fee” contracts for

those whom I decided did not fall into a “standard fee” price-break category. Nonetheless, I

received more case referrals from the clients who appreciated me giving good legal services at a

good price. However, as a good sales tool for those referrals, I showed each client what they

would have had to pay had they hired a PI lawyer who had bullied them into paying “the

standard fee.”

I did not become a lawyer to become a gazillionaire. I became a lawyer to help people and make

a good profit helping people. My family owned some restaurants over the years, which dictated

that I learn at an early age how to wash piles of pots and dishes, clean latrines and do a myriad of

other required tasks to make the restaurant work properly. So at an early age, my mother taught

me that if we offered good food and good service at a good price, people would frequent our

places and the customers would advertise by word of mouth and we would make good profits.

I brought that business model to the practice of law, and it worked quite well. That is until I

crossed paths with an element of organized crime in the PI area of law. However, that is a whole

separate story handed down from father to son and was lived and relived by father and son. I

endured it through a multi-year mission to save a law school friend. That successful mission took

me through the United States Supreme Court and beyond. It left me with a much deeper

understanding of how the American PI system really works.

In response to learning much about the shadowy side of the practice of PI law, and criminal law

in the federal courts, and about our federal government, I wrote a novel involving crossing paths

with one of the organized crime elements of the American PI bar. I wrote that novel after I

decided I wanted out. (See “The Redeemer: It Is Written”, by: Mark Moran, Amazon.com, 2009;

self-published.)

I never promoted my novel much because right before I was going to push the book nation-wide,

I stumbled upon the dumb-founding illogical truth about PI referral fees and the size of the

industry and the shameful number of families it claims as victims. Since I also have a Master’s

Degree in Computer Information Systems, I developed a way that we could help hundreds of

thousands of American families every year from suffering terrible financial losses at the hands of

PI lawyers. I believed then and I believe even more so that we can do for society much more

good by developing our system for finding a good lawyer at a good price, than by educating

them about the corrupt parts of our legal system.

As a result of that revelation in 2010, I postponed the release and push of my novel until now,

2015, so as to coincide with our media campaign push for GoldenRuleLaw.org and

GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com. The novel will also add some background information about why

America must make big changes to its legal system, now not tomorrow, because it is

unnecessarily destroying a troubling number of families and businesses every single day of the

year.

104

xx LINK: “Crop of New Law Schools Opens Amid A lawyer Glut”, by Jennifer Smith, January

13, 2013; Wall Street Journal;

LINK: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323926104578276301888284108

xxi

The $24-$43B/yr. potential savings for the average PI client, is calculated as follows.

$17.5 T GDP x 2.2% (the size of tort/PI industry) = $385B/yr.;

PI lawyers earn ~ 19% of industry size;

$385B x 19% = $73.15B/yr. in PI lawyer gross fees;

Approximation: ON AVERAGE, PI standard fee is 1/3 of gross settlement amounts for

approximately $219B/yr. In medical bills and lost wages (special damages)* for the injured

clients; $219B/yr. x 33.3% = $73.15B/yr.

$73.15B gross PI lawyer fees x 33.3% “standard 1/3 fee” = $24.38B/yr. in referral fees budgeted;

Approximation: ~ 80% of PI cases are clear fault and therefore subject to price competition for

PI lawyer’s gross fee charged against the ; $24.38B/yr. in referral fee money deducted from

client settlements x 80% = $19.31B/yr.

plus

Approximation: ~ 100% of PI cases are subject to payment of the 1/3 of 1/3 (11.1%) “Standard”

referral fee. $73.15B x 1/3 = $24.38B/yr.

Add: $24.38B in 1/3 of 1/3 of gross settlement proceeds

+$19.31B in Competition on price savings for consumers (from 33.3% down to ~12%)

$43.89B/yr. in PI fee cost saving by offering transparency

$24.58B/yr./ 2Million PI clients per year = $12,290 MIN. average savings / injured family

$43.89B/yr. / 2Million PI clients per year = $21,495 Max. average savings / injured family

Range: $12,290 - $21,495 monies overcharged due to price-fixing per injured family

*Note: the $219B in annual injured client medical bills are not included in the tort

industry’s size even though the medical bills drive the PI/Tort industry.

xxii We expect that within a half of a decade, by the end of the year 2020, America’s open and

transparent legal services marketplace will be the manifesting the Unity of Ones™, A Theory

and Business Process of Lawyer Fee Transparency™ economic theory for legal services upon

which our business model is based. Unity of Ones Theory™ and Business Process of Lawyer

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323926104578276301888284108

105

Fee Transparency™ generally states that for every legal task, a lawyer and client will unite and

dis-unite after the task is completed.

In adversarial legal settings the individual lawyers will unite, in opposition, and dis-unite when

the legal task is completed. Unity of Ones™, A Theory and Business Process of Lawyer Fee

Transparency™ For every legal task there must exist: (1) A lawyer as an individually licensed

professional entity; (2) A client as a singular entity, whether they are a big corporation or an

individual; and (3) A defined task for the lawyer to perform for the client for a price at a certain

quality to combine and produce an ultimate value expectation between client and lawyer.

Through the Unity of Ones™ A Theory and Business Process of Lawyer Fee Transparency™,

the lawyers and clients will make increasingly efficient decisions for price/quality/value lawyer

offerings the more transparent their marketplace becomes. Singular/licensed lawyers will unite

and disunite with each other, as legal tasks are started and completed. Results for the legal tasks

will become known in the collective marketplace (subject to the clients’ choice, approval and

online ratings.)

Individual lawyers will make economic decisions regarding price based on the individual

lawyer’s personal preferential offerings for price/quality/value, while interfacing with potential

and existing clients who will express their own price/quality/value preferences for any given

legal service, in any given jurisdiction and venue. Increasing internet and in-person transparency,

the demand for legal services and a supply of lawyers willing to participate in an open

marketplace will drive the free and open marketplace for legal services. The Unity of Ones™ A

Theory and Business Model of Lawyer fee Transparency™ is a product of our research and

development. As such, its details are proprietary in nature.

An over-supply of licensed lawyers, who can be trained and re-trained in various legal tasks will

cause an acceleration of lawyers and clients adopting the Unity of Ones™, A Theory and

Business Process of Lawyer Fee Transparency™.

Please note that, presently, I estimate that there is an excess of 250,000 to 300,000 licensed

lawyers in the U.S. who will consider increasing their fee transparency and rate fluctuations, in

order to increase revenues. Please see footnote viii, along with numerous Wall Street Journal and

other respected periodicals publishing articles reporting that there is presently a growing glut of

lawyers in the U.S. LINK: “Crop of New Law Schools Opens Amid A lawyer Glut”, by Jennifer

Smith, January 13, 2013; LINK:


xxiii

However, there would also be a tremendous shift of monies to the injured clients and their

families. And the US economy would be stimulated because there would be about 20 times more

injured people spending those $ billions on medical services and other necessities than there are

lawyers spending it on luxury items and stashing it away in there 401(k)’s. This is based on a

20:1 spending ration above its present spend ration provided by lawyers whose family

populations are approximately 1M. Whereas, the injured PI clients’ family members number

around 20M per year. It may be clear to the reader how PI price-fixing may be holding back the

U.S. economy in a very big way.


106

xxiv

Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism ; citing Salvemini,

Gaetano. Under the Axe of Fascism 1936

xxv

To get a flavor for the worn out argument advocating referral fees are necessary but that does

not discuss their effect on the innocent clients, please see:

On The Legality of Referral Fees: The NJ Civil Rights Attorney’s Fee Fight

POSTED ON OCTOBER 29, 2012 BY MAX KENNERLY, ESQ. (FOR EDUCATIONAL

PURPOSES ONLY)

http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2012/10/articles/attorney/contingent-fee/nj-attorney-fee-

referral/

xxvi

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/05/pennsylvania-supreme-court-justices-wife-reportedly-

make-fortune-in-law-firm-referrals-in-addition-to-court-salary/ ; And

http://www.politicspa.com/inquirer-reveals-mccafferys-role-in-referral-fees/64467/ ; And

http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/7019314-74/federal-mccaffery-

charges#axzz3nuDQCVCv

xxvii

Author’s apology: I read Thomas Friedman’s entire book, “The World is Flat: A Brief

History of The Twenty-First Century”, several times, but since I could not find my copy to give

a page reference, I had to rely on the internet to give a source reference; BTW, there is a million

dollar idea on almost every page of the book;

LINK: http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_World_Is_Flat

xxviii GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com is a for profit entity. What began as earnest for-profit

objectives has become a rescue mission for millions of PI lawyer price-fixing victims every year.

Yes, we have temporarily slowed our progress towards entering the market, but only sufficient

time to allow for briefly educating the public regarding the price-fixing that is being conducted

in our target market, legal services.

We are in the advertising business and we refuse to assist PI lawyers in their price-fixing by

providing them a platform on which to conduct large-net advertising campaigns that depend of

price-fixing to make them economically feasible, such as the way they are presently conducted

by and through the use of internet search engines.

Obviously, you cannot conduct a “fair” marketplace for advertising “the truth”, in the middle of

a corrupted market that relies on smoke, mirrors and loose-and-fast misinformation to secure

clients. The marketplace for legal services must be cleaned up, by a well-informed populace, in

order to allow for non-corrupt market forces to work freely in a capitalistic business model.

Therefore, we are assisting innocent, injured PI legal services consumers, by providing them

information critical to their survival. As a coincidental by-product of this movement, we will

assist the cause of for-profit business models that are seeking a non-corrupt legal services

market. We accomplish these benefits for the public good through the public interest campaigns

of our non-profit organization, GoldenRuleLaw.org.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism

http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2012/10/articles/attorney/contingent-fee/nj-attorney-fee-referral/

http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2012/10/articles/attorney/contingent-fee/nj-attorney-fee-referral/

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/05/pennsylvania-supreme-court-justices-wife-reportedly-make-fortune-in-law-firm-referrals-in-addition-to-court-salary/

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/05/pennsylvania-supreme-court-justices-wife-reportedly-make-fortune-in-law-firm-referrals-in-addition-to-court-salary/

http://www.politicspa.com/inquirer-reveals-mccafferys-role-in-referral-fees/64467/

http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/7019314-74/federal-mccaffery-charges#axzz3nuDQCVCv

http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/7019314-74/federal-mccaffery-charges#axzz3nuDQCVCv

http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_World_Is_Flat

107

xxix

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/the-biglaw-firms-with-the-highest-partner-billing-rates-

2015/2/

And http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704071304576160362028728234

xxx In a related vein regarding the relation of how much money the PI lawyers make by price-

fixing, one should also consider the terrible financial position the 2015 era clients are left in after

settlement at price-fixed rates. Please see the attached PDF bar chart that reflects how the amount

of money the injured clients have been left with after their PI case settles from 1965, 1995 and

2015. In 1965 the client could expect to receive about 50% of his gross settlement after medical

bills and lawyer fees were paid.

Plainly, the PI lawyer price-fixing at a minimum 1/3 facilitates enough “fee collateral” for the PI

lawyers who use litigation loans for their own use. However, the minimum 1/3 fee leaves very

little for the client after she pays back usurious rate litigation loans that regularly exceed 100% of

principal. The price-fixed 1/3 minimum fee is a catalyst for litigation loan financing.

Due to advancements in IT and the outrageous rates charged to clients for “litigation lending”*

and PI lawyers raising their rates well above 33/3% to 40% and higher, the clients now can only

expect about 17% of their original, hypothetical $100,000 PI settlement. And they have to pay

future medical bills out of that 17 cents on the dollar when the 1965 client had almost 3 times as

much money to survive on. The picture is bleak for the 2015 settlement client-victims.

Accordingly, I agree with the author of: THE LITIGATION FINANCING INDUSTRY:

REGULATION TO PROTECT AND INFORM CONSUMERS; By: MARTIN ESTEVAO*

LINK: http://www.colorado.edu/law/sites/default/files/LitigationFinancing-2013.pdf

Mr. Estevao observes and concludes, at pp. 30-31,

“The marketplace would not only level the playing field between plaintiffs and LFCs, but would

organically stimulate market competition as well. Because company-specific rates would be

available to LFCs and consumers alike, companies would competitively lower rates and

additional players would be encouraged to enter the market. In its facilitation of communication

between plaintiffs and LFCs, a standardized application would also compel companies to directly

compete for a consumer’s business. As a result, interest rates would naturally decrease and access

to litigation financing might even extend to consumers with higher-risk claims. Ultimately,

plaintiffs with extremely low-risk lawsuits would enjoy very low rates, while those who were

previously unable to secure litigation financing may be able to finally seek its benefits. ALFA denies that LFC rates are unnecessarily high and claims that growing numbers of LFCs in

the marketplace, in addition to its own self-regulatory presence, are already sufficient for

competition to drive down the costs of litigation financing without government intervention.143

However, the sheer number of LFCs will not effectively drive down rates unless consumers are

able to efficiently compare LFCs. Without the capacity to efficiently ascertain their true options

for litigation financing, desperate and cash-strapped consumers will probably 143 See Frequently

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/the-biglaw-firms-with-the-highest-partner-billing-rates-2015/2/

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/the-biglaw-firms-with-the-highest-partner-billing-rates-2015/2/


http://www.colorado.edu/law/sites/default/files/LitigationFinancing-2013.pdf

108

Asked Questions, supra note 69. 31 not select the most cost-effective LFC. More importantly, if

consumers cannot even locate the most cost-effective option, competition will not work to

drive down interest rates. (Cont.)

CONCLUSION In order to prevent predatory LFC behavior and still provide access to litigation

financing, states must control this unique and beneficial practice through a multi-faceted

approach. Existing litigation financing laws do not adequately shield consumers from

unreasonable interest rates or provide them with clear options. On the other hand, given the

associated risks and operating costs that LFCs face, access to litigation financing may become

severely limited in states that regulate litigation financing agreements as traditional loans.144

Rather than forfeit the benefits of litigation financing or give LFCs the power to charge

unjustifiable rates, states should directly regulate the industry to protect and empower consumers.

Equitable interest rate ceilings based on objective case-risk factors would prohibit LFCs from

reaping unreasonable profits from desperate plaintiffs. In conjunction with a centralized LFC

marketplace that promotes consumer choice, expands access to litigation financing, and

stimulates competition, this legislative action would finally allow consumers to pursue

litigation financing at a fair price.” [Emphasis added]

See also the following footnote 10 referencing the inequitable high interest rates for low-risk

litigation (which the PI price-fixing encourages) from the above work by Estevao:

10 Jason Lyon, Revolution in Progress: Third-Party Funding of American Litigation, 58 UCLA

L. REV. 571, 575 (2010-2011); see also Echeverria v. Estate of Lindner, 2005 N.Y. Misc.

LEXIS 894, at *23–24 (N.Y. App. Div. Mar. 2 2005) (“[This] is a strict liability labor law case

where the plaintiff is almost guaranteed to recover. There is low, if any risk. This is

troubling considering the enormous profits that will be made from the rapidly accruing,

extremely high interest rates they are charging.”). [Emphasis added]

See also: “Payday loan case showcases brutal interest rates in an industry under fire”; BY

DUGAN ARNETT; Kansas City Star; JULY 12, 2014; Read more here: Imbedded Link:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article719247.html#storylink=cpy

LINK: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article719247.html

See also:

“Cash-now Promise of Lawsuit Loans Under Fire”; By: Martin Merzer; Published April 19,

2013; FoxBusiness; LINK: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/03/29/cash-now-

promise-lawsuit-loans-under-fire/

And

Legal financing industry; LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_financing_industry

[[* Please know that two entire books could be filled with the pros and cons of sky-high interest

rate PI “litigation lending.” As a relevant point hereto, I must point out the jagged inconsistency

of PI lawyers talking out of both sides of their mouth to the clients who deserve a reasonable fee

that is consistent with the actual level of risk the PI lawyer will assume by fronting the costs to

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article719247.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article719247.html

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/03/29/cash-now-promise-lawsuit-loans-under-fire/

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/03/29/cash-now-promise-lawsuit-loans-under-fire/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_financing_industry

109

work up the injury claim; and the lenders who want a low-risk, highly probability of a good

settlement amount that will pay off the loan(s) to the client and/or the PI lawyer. The client’s PI

settlement is the corpus from which the litigation loan will be repaid, via a lien claimed on the

proceeds of the settlement.

On one hand the PI lawyer tells his client implicitly, by charging a contingent percentage fee,

“You have a very risky PI case, so I am allowed to charge you a percentage of the recovery fee

that is contingent on my doing a tremendous job and taking on a high amount of risk for you in

this PI claim.” Then, the PI lawyer tells the litigation loan lender the exact opposite regarding

the risk of the client prevailing in her PI claim. Perhaps it would go like something close to this,

~ “Don’t worry about getting paid back because this claim has no risk at all since my client was

re-ended by a drunk driver and she was unconscious when she was taken away by ambulance,

and the police report that I sent to you verifies that. So you are guaranteed to be paid back.”

Based on that representation, the litigation lender makes a non-recourse loan to the client or the

PI lawyer that dictates that repayment of the extremely high interest rate loan will be forgiven, in

whole or in part, if the client does not receive a sufficient settlement. (*Continued)

(Continued) *Now, I submit to you, how can the PI lawyer make those two representations and

be truthful to both parties? I approximate the amount of litigation lending for both client and

lawyers to be in excess of $500M per year. That represents a lot of “no-risk” guarantees made to

lenders and a lot of contradictory corresponding “high-risk” assessment made to PI clients every

year. As usual, the clients unfairly pay too much because the client’s low-risk PI claim should

not have been coupled with a PI lawyer’s “percent of the settlement” contingent fee, if there was

little or no risk in the claim prevailing at a fair amount. Lawyers who practiced law during the

Great Depression explained to me that, “In the old days”, some general practitioner lawyers

handling a PI claim would take a “Billable Hour Contingent Fee.” In that situation, the lawyer

would keep track of his hours and when the PI case settled he would be paid a nice amount based

on his agreed rate per hour for all the time he spent working on the case. It was fair to both

parties. And the client could see the lawyer’s case-file written notes and typed documents and be

able to make a fair assessment of the lawyer’s time claimed. Please see the story of “Grandma

Mary”, discussed above in the Answer to Question 3, to understand the startling difference in

KIMP these two different contingent fee methods produce upon settlement. However, in today’s

PI practice too many (99.99%) PI lawyers are inaccurately assuming that all PI claims are risky

and charging a contingent percentage fee against the initial reasoning of the ABA when it first

allowed contingent percentage client billing in 1908. (100 years of over-billing) The clients do

not know these nuances in the law because that is why they hire a lawyer. Sadly, a surprising

number of PI lawyers do not know that you are not supposed to charge a percent of the

settlement contingent fee when there is very low risk of losing. I know that because I was one of

them. The clients need to organize to get better informed. ]]

As you may see, in the future, we at GoldenRuleLaw.org and GoodlawyerGoodPrice.com, will

be making tools available to the consumers to push their KIMP amount up to and beyond the

amounts enjoyed at the previous high water mark in 1965. By doing that, we will be helping

families stay together by helping PI clients keep much more of their own money. We focus on

costs because we care about the survival, the prosperity and the spiritual cohesiveness of the

innocent injured PI clients and their families.

110

xxxi We refer to the PI lawyer’s use of the standard price-fixed 1/3 fee in conjunction with the

continued reference to “free initial consultation”, lawyer price-fixing at 1/3 minimum and the

promise to postpone collecting the PI lawyer fee, until there is plenty of settlement money to pay

the lawyer (“You never pay us until you collect.”), as “the sleeper hold.” We gave it that tongue-

in-cheek professional wrestling term because these sales closing techniques are used in an

adversarial, pre-agreement, business transaction, whether the client knows that or not. Their

combination is very effective in lulling the client into a subdued, cooperative, bargaining

position almost as though the client had gone to sleep.

However, the disabling of the client’s resistance to paying such a high price-fixed standard 1/3

contingent fee is the most effective of the techniques. Price-fixing is the lever and fulcrum for

moving even the most cost-resistant client off of “no” and toward “yes” and signing at the

signature line. The other techniques are there only to assist in further disarming the client and

giving the client and S.O.U. – Sense of Urgency.

Once the client understands that price is not negotiable, and that she assumes that she will

receive good quality legal services, the client signs the contract expecting great value. That is

because the client knows that she will not be allowed to change the price through any amount of

negotiating or haggling she might be capable of with this or any other lawyer given that she now

believes that the price is a non-negotiable “standard 1/3 fee” throughout the entire PI bar.

The fact that you do not see the PI lawyer advertise the “standard 1/3 fee” in mass media is not

just because he wants to keep it secret that he is price-fixing. The lawyer also knows that the

element of surprise is very effective when the client is secluded in the lawyer’s office. The

lawyer’s office is the best place to stick to the price-fixing at 1/3 because it is a surprise that

takes the wind out of the client.

If a PI lawyer tells the client the price over the phone, the client can price shop. But if the client

first hears the price of 1/3 in the lawyer’s office, the chances of the client signing the contract

goes way up because most clients do not have the gumption to get up and walk out to shop some

more. They want the stressful lawyer shopping over with. PI lawyers usually learn from an early

stage of their careers that telling price to a client in public only encourages the client to shop

price, which increases the probability that the prospective client will end up in some other PI

lawyer’s office.

The other PI lawyer will probably be as skilled at closing the client to sign the contract at a price-

fixed 1/3 minimum, as is the lawyer who honestly and transparently gave the 1/3 price to the

client outside of the lawyer’s office This is because the techniques are so powerful they do not

require a high degree of salesmanship in order to herd the innocent, unsuspecting client into a

“contract corral.” The previously discussed sales techniques such as “fee-bullying” and “free

initial consultation” and “you never pay us until you collect money” combine into a logic lasso

that allows very few to escape its persuasive voice inside the client’s mind, “Sign the contract

immediately...it is futile to shop for a better price.”

111

Price-fixing at a minimum 1/3 standard fee gives the lawyers a very unfair advantage over the

uneducated and less sophisticated clients. It allows the PI lawyers to stick with the old storyline

of an “standard 1/3 fee” that allows PI lawyers to be loose and fast with the facts about an

ambiguous “standard fee” that they claim is approved or required by “the bar.”

The client trusts the lawyer because he is licensed by an official Bar Association, and since she

believes that the Bar Association is there to protect her from lawyers giving inaccurate legal

advice regarding fee structures, she believes the lawyers legal opinion that it is a “standard fee”

that is honored throughout the entire bar. The client simply does not know any better in that

secluded lawyer’s office.

These strong-arm sales techniques are referred to by us as “the sleeper hold”, in order to show

how it is misleading for the PI lawyer to refer to a “free initial consultation”, when the lawyer is

going to be paid big bucks for that consultation when the client’s case settles. The “sleeper hold”

lulls the clients into submission and agreeing to a huge balloon payment at the end of the case in

consideration for the ability to hire a PI lawyer for “free” at the initial consultation.

The PI lawyers make extremely effective use of these salesmanship tools in order to postpone the

heavy gravity of an oppressive price-fixed 1/3 minimum fee at a much later date. In the hands of

an experienced PI lawyer, the client has no idea she just agreed to a fee structure and timing that

will make it more probable that she will be in a higher risk for bankruptcy and divorce after the

case settlement is received.

Graduate school students will have plenty of victims to interview while studying the socio-

economic, medical, psychiatric/psychological, family and social patterns of PI claimants and

their affected family members, after they settled their PI claims who combined are approximated

at about twenty million Americans per year. I look forward to reading their doctoral dissertations

written about the victims of the PI lawyers’ price-fixing, referral fees and the “sleeper hold.”

xxxii On just one occasion, I had a very trusted, veteran PI defense lawyer, with hundreds of jury

trials under his belt, advise me over lunch, “Kid, you retire on your referral fees and you live

off of your billable hours. Oh, and join the Lions’ Club or the Rotary because that’s a great

place to pick up PI cases.”, as he chomped on a Reuben sandwich. That plain advice regarding

referral fees came from the very unlikely source of an insurance defense lawyer, who I

subsequently, but regretfully, found to be typical. He hawked PI cases at informal settings and

subsequently received lots of PI referral fees for the cases he sent to plaintiff “working lawyers.”

The veteran PI defense lawyer, who graced me with his referral fee and wealth accumulation

advice, was obviously inconsistent and hypocritical with his contradictory speech and actions.

He was hawking PI cases, and secretly referring them to plaintiff lawyers with an agreement to

receive a PI referral fee. Then, he was turning around and bad-mouthing the plaintiff lawyers in

public. “It’s a lot like politics kid. It’s not what you say out in public that matters. It is what

goes on behind closed doors that you take to the bank”, is what the sage said to me with a

shrug.

112

That highly respected PI claim defense lawyer was considered a staunch tort-reform proponent.

He loved to speak about reforming the tort system, and damning the plaintiff lawyers as a cancer

on society. However, he kept on depositing those big referral fee checks into his retirement

account, which he was handed from those same plaintiff lawyers behind closed doors. I have

received quite similar “damn them in public, but take their money in private” advice about five

times by various wealthy and successful civil defense lawyers.

But it is advice opposite of the cause they tell people publically that they believe would correct

the PI industry. These lawyers say one thing, but behind the backs of their corporate clients, they

are willfully participating in the furtherance and expansion of the PI industry, by cashing PI

referral fee checks that their tort-reform allies do not know about. Their take is approximately $6

Billion per year, which is about ¼ of the $24 Billion+ in referral fees collected from PI clients

annually.

Whether it is needed or not, there will be no meaningful Tort Reform achieved until the

proponents remove the tort-friendly referral fee recipients, who are enemies sitting right in their

own tort-reform camps hearing all of their secrets and giving them advice. Tort-reformists: Don’t

be angry at me for telling you that you have some serious conflict of interest issues in the

lawyers you are relying on to further your cause. Get the lawyers to sign oaths of allegiance that

they never received a PI referral fee. And if they did, from who and for how much. Until then,

you can’t tell who your ideological opponent is, and who your ally is. That advice goes out to all

corporate CEO and other executives.

In response to this under-the-table referral fee scenario, I suggest that corporations get their in-

house and out-sourced lawyers to sign oaths that they have not and will not accept any PI referral

fees. If they have received referral fees, they should be listed in detail so the corporation can

assess the total liability risk they are looking at to keep that lawyer on their payroll because

keeping him employed is a sign to a jury that the corporation knew about and approved of their

lawyers receipt of PI injury referral fees. If that was done, it would certainly thin out their ranks

in the hallways of the corporate legal departments.

Such an oath requirement for in-house or similar counsel would also reduce the pending crushing

liabilities corporations and other institutions are going to be facing for the $Billions those

lawyers received as PI referral fees while they were employed by the institutions. When you

suspect that a liability tsunami is coming, it is best to seek higher ground before you actually see

the wave coming at you at 600 mph. If the wave “I want my PI referral fee money back.” never

hits your company, great! However, the slow to take precautions do not fare well when the

tsunami hits. If you think I am being outlandish, please go reread Jordan Furlongs’ predictions

for the future of practicing law in the free world. (see footnote viii)

On an awkward but sincere note of recommendation, meant without any malice, I advise new

lawyers to learn the law of referral fees and antitrust because there will be a very large amount of

legal fees earned by one generation of non-PI lawyers suing another generation of PI lawyers for

violating those laws. (Watch the statutes of limitations because many PI lawyers may try to stall

their clients out of client records needed to prove their cases.)

113

xxxiii See lawyer ads found in popular legal services trade publications with an almost zero

percent (0%) readership by non-lawyers, which prevents the clients from asking PI lawyers or

the Bar Associations innocent, but prying and uncomfortable, questions about referral fees and

the price-fixing that makes it possible. Given that offering competitive referral fees to referring

lawyers requires the “working lawyers” to raise their gross rates charged to the clients in order to

maintain or increase the net margin the “working lawyers” enjoy when the case settles. This

raising of the amount the client pays reduces her KIMP in order to keep referrals coming to PI

lawyers who compete on referral rates by raising the gross fee charged to clients in order to

maintain or increase the net margin the “working lawyers” make at the additional expense of the

injured clients.

We believe that in a transparent market for legal services, the gross fee charged to the clients

should go down because there would be a diminishing need for C2L2L referrals.

To wit: “Competitive fees for referring attorneys”; “Refer with confidence, Competitive

Referral Fees, No Renegotiation When The Money Comes In”; “LAST YEAR WE PAID

OUR REFERRING ATTORNIES OVER $500,000, We offer 50% Referral Fees”; We

have shared millions in attorney fees with our referring lawyers on many of these [PI]

cases, [CALL]…TO DISCUSS REFERRALS”

xxxiv To wit: “Competitive fees for referring attorneys”; “Refer with confidence,

Competitive Referral Fees, No Renegotiation When The Money Comes In”; “LAST YEAR

WE PAID OUR REFERRING ATTORNIES OVER $500,000, We offer 50% Referral

Fees”; We have shared millions in attorney fees with our referring lawyers on many of

these [PI] cases, [CALL]…TO DISCUSS REFERRALS”

xxxv

See notes XIV AND XV

xxxvi “Shah, the Antitrust Risks of Discussing Legal Fees” at:

http://www.wisbar.org/newspublications/wisconsinlawyer/pages/article.aspx?Volume=83&Issue

=12&ArticleID=2003

And

Link: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Price+Fixing

Excerpt:

“Price-fixing

The agreement to inhibit price competition by raising, depressing, fixing, or stabilizing prices is

the most serious example of a per se violation under the Sherman Act. Under the act, it is

immaterial whether the fixed prices are set at a maximum price, a minimum price, the actual

cost, or the fair market price. It is also immaterial under the law whether the fixed price is

reasonable.

All horizontal and vertical price-fixing agreements are illegal per se. Horizontal price-fixing

agreements include agreements among sellers to establish maximum or minimum prices on

certain goods or services. This can also include competitors' changing their prices simultaneously

in some circumstances. Also significant is the fact that horizontal price-fixing agreements may

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Price+Fixing

114

be direct or indirect and still be illegal. Thus, a promotion or discount that is tied closely to price

cannot be raised, depressed, fixed, or stabilized, without a Sherman Act violation. Vertical price-

fixing agreements include situations where a wholesaler mandates the minimum or maximum

price at which retailers may sell certain products.”

xxxvii “The Top 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google Adwords Advertising”; 2011;

LINK: http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords

And

“Mesothelioma will cost you $100/click”; by Lisa Melegari, October 15, 2009;

LINK: http://www.wedowebcontent.com/blog/mesothelioma-will-cost-you-100-per-click/

And

“The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Bing Ads”

Excerpt:

“Top Bing Keywords Tell a Tale of our Collective Legal Woes

Well, not really. But they're certainly indicative of the high value of clients in the legal world. If

you want that top spot on Bing for the term "lawyer," be prepared to shell out up to $109 per

click! In fact, the top five terms are all related to law:

Lawyer - $109.21

Attorney - $101.77

Structured settlements - $78.39

DUI - $69.56

Mesothelioma - $68.95

This is pretty similar to what we saw in our analysis of the most expensive keywords in

AdWords. The top CPC keyword in Google – Insurance – cost a comparatively low $54.91, but

remember that research was conducted in 2011.”

xxxviii “Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the imprisoned”;

By Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf; Prison Policy Initiative; July 9, 2015;

LINK: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html

And

“How Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates”;

LINK: http://financesonline.com/how-income-inequality-affects-crime-rates/

And

“Are America's jails used to punish poor people?”

LINK: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jails-are-warehousing-those-too-poor-to-make-bail/

ETC, ETC.

xxxix Excerpt from March 8, 2015 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, pp. 7-9;

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords

http://www.wedowebcontent.com/blog/mesothelioma-will-cost-you-100-per-click/

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html

http://financesonline.com/how-income-inequality-affects-crime-rates/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jails-are-warehousing-those-too-poor-to-make-bail/

115

see LINK: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/03-08-2015-pdf-FINAL-

ready-2-US-Atty-Genl-LTR-Re-Price-Fixing-etc-5.pdf

“As an example of what the public has been missing in the referral fee (aka split fee/fee splitting)

debates follows as a dissent to allowing split-fees a/k/a referral fees by Jethro K. Lieberman who

was chosen in 1978 to attend the Roscoe Pound-American Trial Lawyers Foundation because he

was considered one of the top 50 of the nation’s foremost experts in the legal system. Mr.

Lieberman’s 1978 opinion rings as true today as it did back then, that the financial rational

supporting referral fees as a way to increase the monies in the clients pocket is bankrupt.

“Jethro K. Lieberman writes: “I wish to dissent from Recommendation H concerning

[giving clients notice of lawyer referral fee] fee-splitting for several reasons.

“First. That the rule against fee-splitting is now “flagrantly violated and its violators

rarely prosecuted’ is an argument for more vigorous prosecution, not abolition of the

rule. On this basis, quite a number of other accepted provisions of the Code of

Professional Responsibility ought to be scrapped.

“Second. The argument that lawyers need an incentive to forward cases to those who are

competent to handle them is peculiar, to say the least. It is central to the professional’s

obligations not to accept cases he is incompetent to handle. To suggest that the current

code provides attorneys an incentive to act incompetently is to suggest that the code is

bankrupt. It may be, as I have elsewhere argued, but not for this reason. A professional

ought not to be paid to be ethical or specially rewarded for not doing damage to a client

he has no right to represent.

“Third. I seriously doubt that the lack of evidence suggesting clients might pay more

under the proposed fee-splitting rules is dispositive. Who has been looking for this

evidence? What methods have been used to obtain it? I know from personal

conversations that lawyers in the habit of splitting fees will reduce their fees when they

learn that the lawyer at the other end will not accept the proffered share. Moreover, it is

fallacious to argue that in contingent fees cases, the client does not suffer. Of course he

must. If there were no fee-splitting, then the percentage of the judgment subject to

contingency could be reduced – or at least, not increased, as I suspect it gradually would

be in those jurisdictions where it is presently set by statute or court rule.

“Fourth. Conditioned fee-splitting on client consent is simply an open invitation to

dishonesty. The Code presently does not prohibit accepting commissions from the

insurance companies as long as the client is informed, but it is abundantly clear that

many members of the bar do not trouble themselves to explain to their clients that the fee

for the insurance is higher than it would otherwise be because a portion is being rebated

to the attorney. Rules permitting otherwise objectionable activity upon the consent of the

http://goldenrulelaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/03-08-2015-pdf-FINAL-ready-2-US-Atty-Genl-LTR-Re-Price-Fixing-etc-5.pdf


116

client are clearly not self-policing and lead to numerous abuses. Moreover, what form of

notice must be given to the client so that he can intelligently consent? The discussion is

silent on this critical issue. Perhaps that is because it raises an impossible burden: how,

after all, can the lawyer tell a client with a straight face that, say, one-third of the fee that

the client must pay is being siphoned off to his original lawyer simple for making a

telephone call or sending a letter?

This proposal betrays the meaning of being a professional, which is to perform a service

requiring expert knowledge and skills and to do so with the interests of the client

foremost, and the interests of the professional subordinated to that primary interest. To

allow a lawyer to be paid for what ought to be considered a minimal public service

obligation - namely, sending a potential client to the right attorney for the case – is

reprehensible.” (See Ethics and Advocacy – Chancery Court; Final Report, Annual

Chief Justice Earl Warren Conference on Advocacy in the United States, June 23-24,

1978; Under the sponsorship of – The Roscoe Pound – American Trial Lawyers

Foundation, pp. 18-19.) (Emphasis added)

Sadly for personal injury claimants everywhere, nothing substantive has changed to

improve the plight of the innocent victims of referral fees in the 37 years following Mr.

Lieberman’s indictment of America’s referral fee/split fees system. In fact, the victims of referral

fees are more numerous and more financially and emotionally damaged because they are now

required to pay back the medical bills to their health insurance providers through subrogation

claims, when, in 1978 such an occurrence was rare, if ever. We believe this terrible financial

loss, of secret referral fee monies that was represented to the insurance companies as critical for

the survival of the injury claimant and her family, and which were paid to provide for the future

medical bills and necessary finances of the injured person predictably causes America’s

“injured families” to suffer higher incident rates of depression, divorce, bankruptcy, emotional

trauma, welfare claims and suicide.”

LINK TO USAG HOLDER LETTER: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/wp-

content/uploads/2015/06/03-08-2015-pdf-FINAL-ready-2-US-Atty-Genl-LTR-Re-Price-Fixing-

etc-5.pdf

NOTICE: This paper is still in a Draft stage, and therefore it is not fully edited and

proofed. Please ask permission before citing to it.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are an injured person looking for a personal injury (PI)








117


from your local jurisdiction immediately if you need legal counsel or representation.


May God bless you and may God bless America!

Please have a nice day!

118

XVI. APPENDIX OF EXHIBITS

Exhibits

I apologize in that not all of the subject lawyer ads requesting injury claim referrals from other

lawyers were able to be fully formatted into this draft of this ongoing report. We will endeavor to

provide better copies of ads in the future drafts or editions.

Ads In Lawyer Trade Periodicals

Have a case to refer?

Competitive fees for referring attorneys

Xxxxxxxx AND XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Refer With Confidence

Competitive Referral Fees

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx AND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

LAST YEAR WE PAID OUR REFERRING ATTORNEYS OVER $500,000.

WE OFFER 50% REFERRAL FEES.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX AND XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

HEADLINE: TOO MANY LAWYERS, TOO LITTLE WORK

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX END OF LAWYER ADS/TEXT XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

119

GOLDFARB V. VIRGINIA STATE BAR, EXHIBIT 29

VIRGINIA STATE BAR

MINIMUM FEE SCHEDULE REPORT

1969

Submitted by:

Committee on Professional Efficiency

& Economic Research

John M. Goldsmith, Chairman

B. Purnell Eggleston

Roger G. Hopper

James H. Michael, Jr.

Leslie M. Mullins

Carter L. Refo

Felix E. Edmunds

Note: This copy of the 1969 Virginia State Bar’s Minimum Fee Schedule Report was

obtained through the Stanford Law School Library’s Reference Section. The District Court

marked this “Exhibit 29” at trial of Goldfarb v. Virginia Bar, in 1973.

120

PARTIAL VIEW OF PAGE 8 OF 1969 VA MINIMUM FEE SCHEDULE REPORT

“DEFENSE OF NEGLIGENCE CASES

Review file and suit papers 75.00

Preparation and filing of responsive pleadings

Answer and grounds of defense 75.00

Removal to Federal Court, including answer 150.00

(a) When attorney is moving party 100.00

(b) Otherwise 100.00

Referred Cases 200.00”

8

Author’s Notice: Please note that although the prices for other legal services changes

substantially in the 46 years after this price- fixing schedule was provided by the Virginia

Bar. Since 1969, there has been zero movement in the exorbitant 1/3 price charged for

negligence PI cases. Note that the below 25% fee appears to be a reference to worker

compensation rates, not non-worker comp cases, as was common in that era of

PI/WC/FELA law. Please also note the doubling of the above “Referred Cases” fee to

accommodate a $100, 50% fee for the “working lawyer” and a 50% fee of $100 for the

“referring lawyer.”

PARTIAL VIEW OF PAGE 10 OF 1969 VIRGINIA BAR MINIMUM FEE SCHEDULE

REPORT (GOLDFARB) THAT REQUIRES MINIMUM 1/3 (33.3%) PRICE-FIXING

“Merger of an a mensa et thoro decree into a decree a

vinculo matrimonii 100.00

Prenuptial agreement 150.00

Stipulations or property settlement agreement 100.00”

“PLAINTIFF NEGLIGENCE CASES-CONTINGENT FEES

While it is generally recognized that the customary con-

tingent fee is and should be 33\13%, in those cases warrant-

ing consideration of a lesser fee, the minimum fee shall not

be less than 25% of the amount recovered, except where con-

trolled by statute.”

121

FOLLOWING IS A PARTIAL VIEW OF PAGE 11 OF 1969 VA MINIMUM FEE

SCHEDULE REPORT Note: This is the Goldfarb language the US Supreme Court visited

and found to violate the Sherman Anti-trust Act along with the ENTIRE rest of the

Virginia Bar’s Minimum Fee Schedule Report Page 11. Trial Exhibit #29.

“REALTY

Title examinations (not including closing, settlement, preparation of papers):

(a) 1% of the first $50,000 of the loan amount or purchase price

(b) ½ of 1% of the loan amount or purchase price from $50,000 - $250,000

(c) Over $250,000 of loan amount of purchase price, by negotiation or agreement,

but not less than the fee for $250,000

(d) (d) Minimum fee for title examination, $75”

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: EMPHASIS ADDED TO PARTS OF THE ABOVE REFERENCES

TO THE “GOLDFARB” 1969 VIRGINIA BAR MIMIMUM FEE SCHEDULE REPORT]

122

TM

___________________________________

GOODLAWYERGOODPRICE.COM Humane. Transparent. Now! TM

March 8, 2015

Mr. Eric Holder Sent via: USPS Certified/Express Mail

United States Attorney General Delivery Verification and by Email

U.S. Department of Justice to: [email protected]

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001Address

RE: OFFICIAL NOTICE OF QUESTIONABLE AND/OR ILLEGAL BUSINESS

PRACTICES OF PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS AND FIRMS WHO

ADVERTISE USING “LARGE-NET” MARKETING CAMPAIGNS IN

SELECTED MARKETS AND/OR THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND

ITS TERRITORIES

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

This notice to you coincides with International Women’s Day since a major part of our

focus at GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com is on helping women and minorities. We strive to help

women and minority lawyers looking for clients and women and minorities who are searching

for a lawyer. International Women’s Day is a special way for us to remember that legal services

are an essential part of the human experience world-wide. Enforcing legal rights is very

important to women and minorities everywhere. This is especially true in America, where

women and minorities many times end up carrying an unfair portion of suffering and

responsibility, shifted onto them, after they or a family member become the victim of improper

personal injury lawyer fee practices of TV lawyers, “TV Titans.” We serve this notice earnestly

as a benchmark in time.

mailto:[email protected]?subject=USDOJ%20Comments

123

I. NOTICE THAT PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS ACROSS AMERICA MAY

BE PRICE-FIXING ON CONTINGENT FEE CASES IN VIOLATION OF

THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT AND UNITED STATES SUPREME

COURT PRECEDENT ISSUED IN GOLDFARB V. VIRGINIA STATE BAR

(1975)

Pursuant to our research, the “standard fee” or “customary fee” for personal injury

claimant’s representation across America, has a lower limit of a 1/3 or 33.3% contingency fee for

handling personal injury matters. However, the lawyers performing the actual work, the

“working lawyers” are only charging around 22.2% and this is difference in rates is unknown to

the respective clients. Even though we have compiled numerous web postings reflecting that the

“standard fee” is price-fixed at one-third nationwide, we will be inviting persons to post the rates

that they were charged by American personal injury lawyers in each state and territory. This will

be posted by the respective injury claimants to the Internet through our site

GoodlawyerGoodPrice.com, as a searchable database service to our patrons who demand Price

and Quality and Value transparency in their search for legal services.

We respectfully submit to you that this information is indicative of rampant, overt price-

fixing; “Fee Bullying” that serves primarily to facilitate the extra monies paid to referring

lawyers in America’s long-standing and mostly secretive referral fee system that generates a

whopping surplus $23 billion dollars per year of client monies finding a home in unknown

lawyers’ pockets. In support of this position, please note that the US Supreme Court previously

ruled that lawyers are forbidden to price-fix as they are subject to all the Sherman Anti-Trust

Act. See Goldfarb vs. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975). See also our online presentation

The Land of 3’s – A Story About Price-Fixing Unfairness that can be downloaded for free at

URL: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/

Please also note that the Goldfarb court held that the entire Minimum-Fee Schedule

Report that formed the basis of the price-fixing allegations violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act:

“Held: The minimum-fee schedule, as published by the County Bar Association

and enforced by the State Bar, violates [section] 1 of the Sherman Act.”,

Goldfarb, at 773.

Tragically, the Bar made no notice to the American people that the stricken Minimum-

Fee Schedule Report also covered personal injury contingent fees, at Page 10 of the schedule:


124

“PLAINTIFF NEGLIGENCE CASES – CONTINGENT FEES

While it is generally recognized that the customary contingent fee is and should be

33 1/3%, in those cases warranting consideration of a lesser fee, the lesser fee shall

not be less than 25% of the amount recovered, except when controlled by statute.”

(Emphasis added)

Therefore, the Goldfarb opinion appears to possibly carry collateral estoppel and/or res

judicata applicability to every personal injury fee claim involving a “Standard/Customary Fee”,

since 1975, in the future and as a possible claim for contingent fee reimbursement, subject to the

individual states’ statutes of limitations. I respectfully submit that the law of the land, across

America, appears that personal injury “Standard Contingent Fees” or “Customary Contingent

Fees” may violate sections 1 or 2 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, under Goldfarb analysis.

Accordingly, those lawyers, institutions and Bar Associations that continue to condone,

advertise or practice the charging of what might be illegal “standard” or “customary” contingent

fees, and the legal services of the lawyers whom they know or through the exercise of reasonable

care should know that such questionable fees are being charged by advertising lawyers, may

subject themselves to the treble damages provision of the Sherman Act. Furthermore, continued

use of “standard/customary fees” by the private Bar and/or the respective state governments’

supreme courts disciplinary offices for representation fees would also appear to possibly violate

the Civil Rights of the millions of claimants who seek legal representation for personal injury

and worker compensation claims annually.

II. NOTICE THAT A TROUBLING NUMBER OF PERSONAL INJURY

LAWYERS WHO ADVERTISE ON TV AND/OR THROUGH INTERNET

SEARCH ENGINES ARE TARGETING MINORITIES, LOW-INCOME,

ELDERLY AND SINGLE PARENTS THROUGH “LARGE-NET

ADVERTISING” REFERRAL FEE SCHEMES AND THEREBY VIOLATING

THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF THESE INJURED PERSONS AND FAMILIES BY

DENYING THE TARGETED PEOPLE EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE

LAWS AND NOTICE OF THEIR RIGHTS TO KNOWINGLY AND

INTELLIGENTLY WAIVE THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS TO KNOW

AND UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF SECRET LAWYER REFERRAL

FEES AND PRICED-FIXED “STANDARD FEES” IN ORDER TO RECEIVE

ADEQUATE REPRESENTATION FOR THEIR INJURY CLAIMS.

The Federal and State protected Civil Rights of millions of injured Americans and their

family members are violated by questionable business practices of a troubling number of TV

125

Titans and “settlement mills” that cause a disparate impact on minorities (Latinos, Afro-

American, Asian-American, American Indian/Eskimo, etc.) and other persons who do not have

an adequate socio-economic structure supporting them and their families. This is true even

though the majority of the victims of some of the TV Titan’s settlement mills are Caucasian. .”

Please also see our online presentation regarding how questionable TV Titan lawyer ads

disproportionately impact minorities and the low-income injured, Low Dough Jo – A Story About

Lawyer Fee Unfairness, found in our website’s library at URL:

http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/ .

In support of our allegations that a troubling number of TV Titan’s “settlement mills”

target minorities and subsequently violate their Civil Rights, we respectfully offer to you the

preceding Supreme Court precedent and also the enclosed trinity of extremely well researched

and documented law review articles authored by Nora Freemen Engstrom of Stanford Law

School: (2009) “Run-of-the-Mill Justice”; (2011) “Legal Access and Attorney Advertising”;

(2013) “Attorney Advertising and the Contingency Fee Cost Paradox.” Please also see our

online presentation regarding large-net lawyer advertising, Large Net Lawyer Ads Fishing

System – Traps injury clients into a system that pays lawyers over $23 Billion extra per year for

out-sourcing, found in our library at url: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/ .

Please note that inter-state and intra-state commerce, in the form of legal services for

personal injury law and worker’s compensation law, is substantially affected by referrals of

injury cases among and between lawyers of different states. The United States personal injury

industry measures approximately 2.2% of our great country’s present GDP of $17 Trillion

dollars; which equates to a size of an approximate $374 Billion annual tort/personal injury law

industry. The referral of worker’s compensation and personal injury cases within and between

the individual states amounts to billions of dollars of settlements and respective lawyer fees

every year, in addition to the massive amounts of money spent by the institutions evaluating,

litigating and paying the respective claims.

Injury law is big business. And the lawyers representing the “little people” are using TV

and Internet Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and search engine campaigns to run rough-shod

over the injured and their families much like the robber barons did when Congress found it

necessary to pass the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In fact, searching for an injury lawyer online is

one of the very top revenue sources for a troubling number of Internet search engines. For good

background information on this aspect of personal injury contingency fees, please see the

extensive writings of Professor Lester Brickman, of Cardoza Law School, on the topic of

personal injury contingent fees including all of his articles and books on the topic of contingency

fees but most especially his book, Lawyer Barons, What Their Contingency Fees Really Cost

America (2011).



126

Much like stock brokers and financial advisors who recommend buying financial

products that earn the advisors the highest fees, the respective lawyers involved, who may be

conducting such mass media campaigns, may be knowingly, or unwittingly, breaching their

fiduciary duties to their personal injury clients by putting their own financial gain ahead of their

clients. This is because injury settlement monies involved are just as precious to the survival of

individuals and their families as are IRA/401(k) monies of the elderly, for whom the current

administration recently determined it was imperative to change how such stock broker consulting

fees are regulated, by upping the duty owed to the customer to a fiduciary duty.

However, the patch work of the individual states’ regulations of lawyers allows for the

respective state Bar Associations and state bar disciplinary authorities to fail to enforce bar ethics

rules that require personal injury and worker’s compensation clients to be fully informed about

referral fees and fee-splits between lawyers associated with their individual claims. It’s our

observation that the majority of Bar Associations are dominated by wealthy, white, male,

personal injury lawyers. This has the effect of the foxes guarding the minority hen house

regarding enforcing referral fee rules.

Regretfully, it seems that the Bar Associations have put injury clients in an impossible

situation where they expect the clients to act on information the clients have never received. In

the present model for “unethical fee enforcement”, the state Bars expects non-lawyer injury

victims to reveal to the Bar Associations, when they have fallen victim to personal injury lawyers

not obtaining proper client authorization for referral/split-fees that are secretly paid behinds the

clients’ backs! In my multi-year investigation and research of this referral fee fiasco and in my

26+ years of practicing law in Missouri and Illinois, I have yet to see or hear about a contingency

fee injury client ever being advised much less adequately advised of her rights to veto any

referral fees she believes are unnecessary and not part of the original agreement for personal

injury legal services.

III. CLAIMS OF WHISTLE-BLOWER’S PROTECTION AND QUI TAM

Please visit our website at GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com and click on “Library” in order to

get an idea as to how common place the practice of TV lawyers (who we call “TV Titans”) is to

use a crippling combination of “standard fees” and secret referral fees, in an apparent violation of

the fiduciary duty owed by lawyers to clients. This causes billions of dollars of human misery

across the United States every year. Our Power Point presentations: Low Dough Jo, The Land of

Three’s, Large Net Lawyer Advertising and a Message from The Medical Community should

give you a good overview as to the nature of this massive loophole that allows lawyers to violate

the Civil Rights of injured people coast to coast. Accordingly, we claim “whistle blower”

127

protection under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) and any other applicable statutes federal and state or

regulations that apply to persons who reveal these Civil Rights violations, conducted by officers

of the courts under color of state and federal laws.

We also claim “whistle blower protection” under 15 U.S.C. § 15(a)) and any other

applicable statutes or regulation that apply to persons who reveal that the use of “1/3 standard

fees” and or “1/3 customary fees” and/or the settling of subrogation claims and liens asserted by

Federal, State and Local governmental entities because such practices unnecessarily costs

taxpayers billions of dollars per year. Furthermore, the “1/3 standard fee” also costs taxpayers,

insurance companies, labor union trust funds and other entities handling medical bills of the

injured unnecessary loss of billions of dollars of corporate revenues, tax revenues and labor

union funds per year. But most importantly, the use of the “1/3 standard fee” causes the injured

clients and their families to end up with less money in their pockets after their respective cases

are fully settled and accounted for. Accordingly, we respectfully claim a reasonable and fair

percentage Qui Tam monetary interest, in the monies saved by the federal and/or respective

states governments due to our revealing this information to the government, even though we may

not possess the resources to litigate such massive claims involving numerous federal agencies,

insurance companies, and other institutions settling the proper apportionment of subrogation

monies that have been paid in the past and present.

Bringing this information to you and the American public, in a manner that must endure

and not be allowed to be silenced by Big Law interests, has required my wife and I to sacrifice

our home in order to continue to research and design a website that not only provides

information to the public but also will provide a unique, for-profit business model, in which

people and businesses can conveniently search for a good lawyer at a good price. We are

ultimately trying to bring transparency and justice to a system that seems corrupt and unduly

favors the fat cat TV Titans. We believe that someone has to speak up for the forgotten voices of

millions of clients per year that become financially crippled by unscrupulous lawyers using

unenforced loopholes. Real people becoming real victims of some TV Titan lawyers form the

basis of our ministry of preventing the destruction of families and lives. Somebody has to stand

up for and be advocates for these victimized people.

I learned how dangerous it is for a do-gooder to volunteer information that upsets the

Rules of Engagement and status quo when I donated 4,000+ professional hours representing an

innocent man, through the US Supreme Court and beyond. My client merely volunteered to

testify in front of a Federal Grand Jury regarding corruption in the personal injury industry but

instead found himself criminally prosecuted for telling the truth. [See Waldermer vs. United

States, 98 F.3d 306 (1996 7th Circuit)].

The United States has a dark history of persecuting its reformists, whistle blowers, and

do-gooders for exercising their freedom of speech. Eugene Debbs, Brigadier General Billy

128

Mitchell, Commander Richard Marcinko (Seal), US Attorney and ex-SEAL intelligence officer,

Michael Shelby, and many other good men who dared to try to make the world a better place by

revealing the truth. We sacrificed our home and retirement savings in order to follow a ministry

to develop a system that will provide the American people and businesses critical information

without the status quo crushing us.

IV. THE TV TITANS OFFER OF A “FREE CONSULTATION” IS MANY TIMES

A DECEPTIVE BUSINESS PRACTICE THAT HARMS THE

UNSUSPECTING INJURED PERSONS

When a TV Titan law firm offers to review a client’s case that the firm does not

specialize in it is more probable than not that the client will be referred to a specialist who will

end up “charging” the client a hefty referral fee, which is facilitated by the charging of at least a

“standard/customary” 33.3% contingency fee, all unbeknown to the client who responds to the

offer of a “Free Consultation.”. The “Free Consultation” is a ruse and usually ends up being

nothing but a lure to bait the prospect client into calling the TV Titans firm to get free advice.

As a result, the offer of “free consultation” by TV or an Internet search engine is

extremely deceptive because a troubling number of TV Titans airing such ads know that the free

consultation will end up generating a lot of revenue for the TV Titans. This is because many TV

Titans know that a relatively high percentage of the injury cases they initially review under the

auspices of a “Free Consultation”, will end up being referred away to a “working lawyer” a/k/a

“settlement mill” immediately after the “Free Consultation” to cause the TV Titan firm to receive

a very fancy referral fee paid out of the clients’ pockets.

To see how our patent pending advertising model may decrease the incidence of the

“Free Consultation” ruse fueled by TV Titan TV and Internet personal injury lawyer advertising,

please see our online presentation, GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com – An Evolution In Search-For-A-

Lawyer Advertising at url: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/ .

V. THE AMERICAN CITIZENS SUFFER TAXATION WITHOUT

REPRESENTATION BECAUSE REFERRAL FEES REMAIN SECRET

The American public does not realize that it has little, if any, influence on some of the

biggest financial decisions that will affect individuals, their families, and millions of tax payers

every year. This is because the Bar Associations work on a “majority rules” basis. This means


129

that when the Bar of each state debates whether or not referral fees should be allowed, and if

they are allowed how the clients will authorize the payment of a referral fee, the public is rarely

if ever informed about debate details since these debates are usually conducted by hand-picked

committees that operate behind closed doors in relative secrecy.

The hidden costs of the referral fees and “standard fees” are hidden taxes upon the

American public that must be paid due to the monopolistic “Fee Bullying” lawyer fee tactics.

The majority of the Bar is bought and paid for having lived high on the hog for the last 100 years

due to the financial windfalls bestowed upon the majority of bar members, both corporate and

plaintiff lawyers alike. Nowhere in the process, is the public allowed to give any meaningful

opinions about how lawyers conduct their secret fee business because they are kept in the dark s

to the ramifications and details.

As an example of what the public has been missing in the referral fee (aka split fee/fee

splitting) debates follows as a dissent to allowing split-fees a/k/a referral fees by Jethro K.

Lieberman who was chosen in 1978 to attend the Roscoe Pound-American Trial Lawyers

Foundation because he was considered one of the top 50 of the nation’s foremost experts in the

legal system. Mr. Lieberman’s 1978 opinion rings as true today as it did back then, that the

financial rational supporting referral fees as a way to increase the monies in the clients pocket is

bankrupt.

“Jethro K. Lieberman writes: “I wish to dissent from Recommendation H concerning

[giving clients notice of lawyer referral fee] fee-splitting for several reasons.

“First. That the rule against fee-splitting is now “flagrantly violated and its violaters

rarely prosecuted’ is an argument for more vigorous prosecution, not abolition of the

rule. On this basis, quite a number of other accepted provisions of the Code of

Professional Responsibility ought to be scrapped.

“Second. The argument that lawyers need an incentive to forward cases to those who are

competent to handle them is peculiar, to say the least. It is central to the professional’s

obligations not to accept cases he is incompetent to handle. To suggest that the current

code provides attorneys an incentive to act incompetently is to suggest that the code is

bankrupt. It may be, as I have elsewhere argued, but not for this reason. A professional

ought not to be paid to be ethical or specially rewarded for not doing damage to a client

he has no right to represent.

“Third. I seriously doubt that the lack of evidence suggesting clients might pay more

under the proposed fee-splitting rules is dispositive. Who has been looking for this

evidence? What methods have been used to obtain it? I know from personal

130

conversations that lawyers in the habit of splitting fees will reduce their fees when they

learn that the lawyer at the other end will not accept the proffered share. Moreover, it is

fallacious to argue that in contingent fees cases, the client does not suffer. Of course he

must. If there were no fee-splitting, then the percentage of the judgment subject to

contingency could be reduced – or at least, not increased, as I suspect it gradually would

be in those jurisdictions where it is presently set by statute or court rule.

“Fourth. Conditioned fee-splitting on client consent is simply an open invitation to

dishonesty. The Code presently does not prohibit accepting commissions from the

insurance companies as long as the client is informed, but it is abundantly clear that

many members of the bar do not trouble themselves to explain to their clients that the fee

for the insurance is higher than it would otherwise be because a portion is being rebated

to the attorney. Rules permitting otherwise objectionable activity upon the consent of the

client are clearly not self-policing and lead to numerous abuses. Moreover, what form of

notice must be given to the client so that he can intelligently consent? The discussion is

silent on this critical issue. Perhaps that is because it raises an impossible burden: how,

after all, can the lawyer tell a client with a straight face that, say, one-third of the fee that

the client must pay is being siphoned off to his original lawyer simple for making a

telephone call or sending a letter?

This proposal betrays the meaning of being a professional, which is to perform a service

requiring expert knowledge and skills and to do so with the interests of the client

foremost, and the interests of the professional subordinated to that primary interest. To

allow a lawyer to be paid for what ought to be considered a minimal public service

obligation - namely, sending a potential client to the right attorney for the case – is

reprehensible.” (See Ethics and Advocacy – Chancery Court; Final Report, Annual

Chief Justice Earl Warren Conference on Advocacy in the United States, June 23-24,

1978; Under the sponsorship of – The Roscoe Pound – American Trial Lawyers

Foundation, pp. 18-19.) (Emphasis added)

Sadly for personal injury claimants everywhere, nothing substantive has changed to

improve the plight of the innocent victims of referral fees in the 37 years following Mr.

Lieberman’s indictment of America’s referral fee/split fees system. In fact, the victims of referral

fees are more numerous and more financially and emotionally damaged because they are now

required to pay back the medical bills to their health insurance providers through subrogation

claims, when, in 1978 such an occurrence was rare, if ever. We believe this terrible financial

loss, of secret referral fee monies that was represented to the insurance companies as critical for

the survival of the injury claimant and her family, and which were paid to provide for the future

medical bills and necessary finances of the injured person predictably causes America’s

“injured families” to suffer higher incident rates of depression, divorce, bankruptcy, emotional

trauma, welfare claims and suicide.

131

VI. THOUSANDS OF LAWYERS WHO ARE PUBLIC OFFICIALS AND

LAWYERS FOR CORPORATIONS AND INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE

ANNUALLY SECRETLY PAID BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF PERSONAL

INJURY REFERRAL FEES BUT THEY DO NOT REPORT THOSE

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST TO TAX PAYERS, THEIR EMPLOYERS OR

TO THEIR CLIENTS

It is a little known fact outside of the walls of America’s law firms, courts, corporations,

and insurance companies that personal injury lawyers pay billions of dollars every year, as secret

referral/split-fees to insurance defense lawyers, in-house insurance and corporate lawyers and

elected/appointed federal/state/local officials, including judges. Rather surprisingly, the referral

fees paid by the plaintiff injury lawyers to insurance defense and corporate lawyers, etc. lowers

the total amount of money the plaintiff injury lawyers earn and raises the total amount of money

the insurance defense and corporate lawyers earn. Therefore, by our calculations, due to the

payment and receipt of referral fees throughout many of the 1.1 million lawyers in America, the

plaintiff lawyers, as a class, may earn less money from the personal injury industry than the

defense and corporate lawyers, etc. earn from their dealings with the personal injury/tort

industry.

Please see our online presentation, Billions Spent In the Personal Injury Market, for more

information regarding the respective “pre-referral fee” and “post-referral fee” earnings of

America’s lawyers at url: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/billions-spent-in-the-personal-

injury-market/ and at url: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/page/2/ . The results

might be quite surprising to many tort-reform opponents and proponents.

This revelation of thousands of personal injury defense lawyers being paid Billions of

dollars of personal injury referral fees annually may explain why the truth regarding referral fees

and their destructive effects on the injured, taxpayers and solo lawyers has rarely seen the light

of day. This may be true because it is the massive $23 Billion reservoir of referral fee and fee

mark-ups (“standard/ customary contingent fees”) that allow lawyers from both sides of the

personal injury industry to lead America in federal/state/local campaign contributions to

candidates on both sides of the isle.

This information may also go a long way in explaining why the legal services industry

has defied traditional laws of economics and efficiency. Presently there is an approximate glut of

250,000 too many lawyers in the United States, yet the cost of their labor has continued to climb

to some un-deserved, astronomical levels. Transparency is imperative to the natural flow of the

laws of economics and fairness. If the lawyers are the only ones who have the critical Price-

http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/billions-spent-in-the-personal-injury-market/

http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/billions-spent-in-the-personal-injury-market/

http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/page/2/

132

Quality-Value information and the lawyers are the only ones making, interpreting and enforcing

the laws and rules of ethics, then they have too much power and The People will continue to

suffer. Unchecked power always corrupts.

I also have personal knowledge of this because I was one of numerous corporate in-house

trial lawyers employed by a major insurance company to defend personal injury claims in court.

During my employ I received referral fee funds and observed a goodly number of my cohorts in

the defense lawyer cadre to quietly admit to receiving referral fees while employed by an

insurance company that defended against similar personal injury claims. When I practiced for a

private insurance defense firm, I experienced an even higher incidence rate of the defense bar

quietly receiving massive referral fees while defending against similar type tort claims.

There is a saying by the tort defense bar that I heard numerous times, “Live off your

billable hour’s income, and retire on your [personal injury] referral fees.” I also experienced the

hypocrisy of the same type of defense lawyers who would quietly receive personal injury claims

referral fees and have the gall to line up in support of the tort-reform movement in token support

of reforming a system that was making them rich. They were plainly getting milk from both

sides of the personal injury cow, whereas the plaintiff lawyers kept their milk bucket on just one

side. In fact, the largest referral fee I ever received, six figures, was when I was employed by an

insurance defense firm to defend against personal injury claims.

Over the years, I wondered how much the insurance companies and other institutional

clients, who hired defense firms, knew about the potential conflicts of interest that the referral

fees paid by plaintiff lawyers to defense lawyers created conflicts of interest in the defense

lawyers ability to handle claims of the plaintiff lawyer who just paid them or would/might be

paying them a referral fee in the future. These conflicts of interest happen every day in America,

but few institutional clients are ever told about them. Transparency and information sharing

between clients can reduce these conflicts of interest.

In short, the entire legal services industry is permeated with unknown/secret conflicts of

interest that manifest themselves like the “Invisible Hand” espoused by legendary economist

Adam Smith to describe unintended benefits resulting from individual actions.

These conflicts are very real and may cause the uninformed to wonder why or how

certain results occur between two opposing lawyers or between lawyers and judges or

prosecutors, when referral fee conflicts of interest are not known by all parties. I once had a

judge ask my legal opinion about if the approximate Four Hundred Thousand Dollars

(~$400,000.00) in referral fees he had received while he was on the bench would be an ethics

problem since he had ended up donating all of those fees to a charity. I ask you, how many

public servants would take a “free” Four Hundred Thousand Dollars (~$400,000) and drop it in

133

the collection hat? How many would not let it create a conflict of interest in their dealings with

the lawyers that paid those referral fees? See the following link for more discussion/reporting of

judges and referral fees at URL: http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-

05/news/37440909_1_referral-fees-contingency-fee-referral-payments

VII. A TROUBLING NUMBER OF UN-NAMED, POWERFUL AND

INFLUENCIAL PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS ACTIVELY

PARTICIPATE IN ORGANIZED CRIME IN ORDER TO OBTAIN

PERSONAL INJURY CASES BY PAYING REFERRAL FEES

America must learn its past in order to chart its future. America has a documented past of

powerful personal injury lawyers who illegally use their wealth and influence to obtain many

personal injury cases. However, the full secrets of who, what, where, when, why and how, have

been protected by the United States government. In United States vs. Boyd, (See Houston, TX,

District Court case number H-03-362-SS, September 13, 2005 court order, (Document 306)

Judge Sim Lake detailed how and why the US government would be allowed to protect the

identities of dozens of personal injury lawyers who had actively and willfully participated in

organized crime in order to receive personal injury cases. Sadly, because the government has

protected powerful personal injury lawyers, due to their ability to make large campaign

contributions, the identities of these corrupt lawyers will never be known by the public who may

hire them unwittingly. How, on God’s Earth is that fair to “The People?”

The late Houston, Texas US Attorney Michael Shelby requested Judge Lake to allow

Shelby to follow ethics rules and send the names and testimony transcripts of the participating,

investigated personal injury lawyers to respective Bar Associations, across America, detailing

how dozens of personal injury lawyers had voluntarily participated in organized crime by paying

referral fees, etc. to lawyers and non-lawyers in order to receive personal injury cases. The fact

that Americans and all of its disciplinary Bar Associations will never know the true identities of

these felon-assisting lawyers, who willfully participated in planning and executing complex

schemes of organized crime, is an example of how our system of justice has totally failed to

provide transparency of critical information to the American public. We do not advocate the

release of those names given security concerns.

However, the secrecy surrounding the Boyd personal injury corruption case is a symbol

of a much bigger problem with the personal injury industry as a whole. It appears that many of

the powerful personal injury lawyers and TV Titans are granted such favored status by our

government’s policed organizations that they could be referred to as the “Untouchables.”

Apparently, they are still out there practicing law. Please see a copy of Judge Lake’s bold and

http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-05/news/37440909_1_referral-fees-contingency-fee-referral-payments

http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-05/news/37440909_1_referral-fees-contingency-fee-referral-payments

134

brave order on our website, since over 300 of the Boyd personal injury lawyers corruption case’s

documents are sealed off from public viewing. View the official Judge’s order at our URL:


VIII. ENFORCING THE LAWS REGARDING PERSONAL INJURY “STANDARD

FEES” AND REFERRAL FEES WILL HELP TO PROVIDE BILLIONS OF

DOLLARS OF PRESENTLY LOST AND WRITTEN OFF REVENUES TO

PHYSICIANS, NURSES, HOSPITALS AND HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

WHICH COULD STIMULATE AND SUSTAIN JOBS IN THE STRUGGLING

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

The healthcare industry will receive a much needed influx of billions of dollars of

revenue in the form of personal injury victims being able to pay those monies to their healthcare

providers because the clients “medical bills money” was not paid to a lawyer for an unnecessary

and many times unauthorized referral fee or “standard fee.” These monies are critical to the

healthful recovery of many personal injury victims. Furthermore, healthcare providers are

continually required to write-off billions of dollars of personal injury victims’ medical bills every

year. These massive write-offs for personal injury victims, in order to allow the secret referral

fees, cause a terrible strain on the healthcare providers. This is because they have to turn around

and raise their rates for the patients who are able to pay their medical bills. In turn, this causes an

undue pressure on taxpayers and stockholders picking up the tab on Medicare/Medicaid/private

insurance subrogation reimbursements.

Please visit our website and view the “Special Message From America’s Doctors and

Healthcare Workers.” url: http://www.goodlawyergoodprice.com/library/ It would be absurd to

imagine an America where billions of dollars of unauthorized medical procedures were

performed, but this is akin to our present referral fee practices of some TV Titan “settlement

mill” law firms. They cause unauthorized referral fees to be paid between lawyers using their

clients’ medical bills monies. Accordingly, we respectfully suggest adoption of the referral fee

policy and laws that apply to physicians should be applied to America’s personal injury lawyers

– simply forbid them.

However, there may not be a need for any new laws, Rules of Court or Ethics Rules

because American citizens already hold the constitutional rights to demand a free market for

legal services. They can boycott and bargain against referral fees and therefore perform much of

the policing of the industry – but they need legal system transparency to effectively exercise

those rights.



135

We regret the untoward manner of having to tell America about the “800 pound gorilla

called referral fees” that so many lawyers see sitting at the supper table of injured clients, that

eats way more than its share, but there is no nice way to make a graceful reference to such a self-

serving beast. The beast exists as an invitee of the clients’ lawyers. It eats the clients’ personal

injury settlement money and gives little or nothing back in return, except an insulting burp. For

the sake of some of America’s neediest, it’s injured, it is high time the injured understand why

they are left with such a relatively small amount of the feast that they paid for out of monies the

Rule of Law has always said is theirs.

If we know better, than we have a duty to do better for those who rely on our system of

justice.

IX. WHAT IS AT STAKE IF WE AMERICANS DO NOTHING?

In order for you and the American public to understand the enormous size of these real

problems that affect real lives of citizens and real families of citizens every year in our America,

please pause and try to imagine that if we as an American people focused on eradicating these

problems we could supplement some other very worthy and wonderful works by philanthropists

that are touching the lives of real human beings, in a very real way, every day around the world.

If America corrected just one section of the legal fees fiasco, namely the personal injury referral

fees and “standard/customary fees” fiasco, and were able to do this immediately, we would be

able to “raise” enough money ($23 Billion per year) for America’s injured needy to accomplish

the following:

Raise more money for America’s neediest families, in just two (2) months, than

the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates to very worthy and effective

charities world-wide for the entire year; or

Raise more money for America’s neediest injured citizens, in only two (2)

months, than is donated to the top ten (10) charities in America combined in an

entire year; or

Over a given five (5) year period, allow approximately one hundred million

(100,000,000) American citizens to enjoy a much higher quality of life; without

the extreme anxiety of trying to pay medical bills that were foreseen by TV Titan

lawyers but the money allocated to pay those necessary medical bills were

secretly paid out, through secret referral fee agreements and/or referral fee mark-

ups via standard/customary” fees to “mystery lawyers.”

That is a lot of clout! Those are a lot of lives we can change for the better! And if we do

nothing to correct the unfair legal fees, the cries of American families and their children will be

136

forgotten. There are a lot of cries for need from America’s forgotten children, which number

approximately 1.88 innocent children per injured person, or in simple terms, over 10,000,000

innocent children per year are adversely affected by these legal fee practices being allowed to

continue in the face of terrible client adversity. Therefore, we must take action now.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us that, “It is always the right time to do the right

thing.”

X. FOUNDER’S BACKGROUND

I have a keen intellectual, emotional, spiritual and financial interest in the well-being of

America’s injured and her businesses trying to find a good lawyer at a good price because I come

by it by family and by education. I hold two business degrees from the University of Missouri in

St. Louis. A Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration (1983); and a Master of

Science Degree in Management of Computer Information Systems (2001). I graduated with a

Jesuit education in the law from St. Louis University School of Law (1986), focusing on the big

picture of the ramifications for society and “The Average Jane” of enforcement and non-

enforcement of our laws. I attended SLULAW while I clerked for my father who practiced law

in St. Louis, Missouri for almost forty (40) years. Dad was my original mentor in the law before

he died the summer of 1986, prior to my induction to the Bar.

Thereafter, I was mentored by my late uncle George J. Moran, Sr. who had retired from

the Illinois Fifth District Court of Appeals. George was known throughout America as a

champion of “the little guy.” He carried that un-written reputation not merely for his open-

minded decisions he authored, but also for the work he had accomplished as a lawyer prior to

taking the bench. In one instance, he argued and won a case for an injured barge worker, in front

of the US Supreme Court, in Senko v. Lacrosse Dredging Corp., 352 U.S. 370 (1957)

My father, the late Brigadier General Glennon T. Moran, Sr. represented a young lady

horribly disfigured in a collision with a St. Louis trolley car and won a record setting verdict for

her in the case Abernathy v. St. Louis Public Service Co., 240 S.W.2d 914 (1951). Dad

continued to practice personal injury law until the early 1960’s when he was advised by Air

Force Intelligence that he had to stop practicing personal injury law or resign his officer’s

commission because some of the factions in that area of law operated in organized crime. In fact,

Dad told me he was subsequently denied his second general’s star eleven years later because of

his alleged short socialization with members of a rail union eleven years prior merely because

they asked him to represent their workers in their personal injury claims because Dad was then

the current record holder for personal injury verdicts in Missouri.

What was perhaps most practical lesson Dad taught me was why and how referral fees

worked. While I was going to law school, I asked Dad “How did they come up with 1/3 for the

137

personal injury contingency rate?” He immediately answered, “That is so you have enough

money to pay your referral fee.” Since they don’t teach such little known subjects in law school,

he sat me down and explained at great length, with pencil and paper, the good number of

different angles and ways referral fees are calculated and paid. It can be a very smelly business,

especially when the public servants get involved.

Of course, that was in a time before the advancements of Information Technology

allowed health insurance companies to demand to be reimbursed the money they paid for an

injured client’s medical bills. That advancement in IT and the change in the operative law of

medical bills reimbursements have caused referral fees to be the equivalent of causing a sizable

hole in the client’s money pocket, almost assuring the bankrupting of a predictable number of

families because the only reason those monies are paid is for the injured person’s “proven”

predictable medical bills and essential expenses.

The advice that both my uncle and my father gave to me regarding personal injury fees is

to make sure that your client always receives more than the lawyer by the end of the case.

Through my research, I regret to report that the preceding Golden Rule taught to me be my two

primary mentors in the practice of law, is violated by a woeful number of TV Titans who treat

their clients with a callous disregard for them and their families’ long-term financial well-being.

I have never regretted staying in St. Louis to attend law school and learn under the tutelage of

my father rather than attending a big name law school elsewhere. In retrospect, my legal

education from the Jesuits and my father was superb. It has afforded me a unique perspective

regarding legal fees, when coupled with my IT experience/education.

What may deserve to also be explained, is that I have been told that I have a heightened

but practical sense of fairness and justice. I believe this may be true, in part, due to two events

that influenced the rest of my life. First, I was attacked and had my jaw broken by a man who

was cruising around in a carload of five men just looking for kids to attack on Halloween night

1971. I was respectful to them when they stopped their car, but I was in the wrong place at the

wrong time. I had my jaws wired together for six weeks due to the beating I received. I was

lucky to escape when I did. Lessons: Life is not fair even if you did everything politely and

correct. Sometimes you are forced to fight for your life even when you did nothing wrong.

Second, I saved a drowning African-American boy when I was attending Meramec

Community College ~ 1978. A few days later, a long-time friend of mine who was attending

another college found out about what I did. He immediately launched into a diatribe chastising

me for saving the life of a *&#! N____ . I was astonished that there was that much explosive

hatred in his heart. I assumed that he learned that racism from home and kept it festering by

looking for those who agreed with him. Lessons: Racism has no place in our society and

138

especially not in providing professional services. That we must evolve, intellectually and

spiritually, as a society, to a higher plane of respect for each other. Not revolution, but evolution.

These lessons merge in our offering to help society find a more convenient, truthful and

humane manner in which to find a lawyer when one is in a legal fight. It is also reflected in our

disdain for lawyers who continue to employ an “Old Boy” system for legal fees that they know

hurt the clients. America needs a new cadre of lawyers to answer the need for the type of lawyers

who can become a cut above the rest in their offering to make their fees as transparent as

possible, rejecting the antiquated legal fee practices from three generations ago. In response to

free-market forces, a new generation of lawyers, comprised in large part by minorities and

women, will evolve in order to capture major market shares for personal injury legal services that

the “old boy” L2L2C (Lawyer To Lawyer To Client) network can no longer capture due to

consumer awareness about referral fees and standard fees.

The L2L2C referral network “old boys” are now faced with a quandary. Do I adopt the

new efficient, online L2C business model and be forced by my present clients to lower the rate

that I signed all of them up at because they know my actual rate because of the transparency I

post online? Or do I ride out the storm by quickly settling most or all the cases in my inventory

so that I can begin to compete with lawyers using the L2C model? Or am I going to have to cut

the rates on most of my inventory, which is already heavily leveraged with bank loans, because

my present clients see the lower rates of other competent lawyers and decide to leave me and go

to them? I submit to you that the tie-breaker is the winners in the new era of personal injury

practice will be the lawyers who are the most tech-savvy and can operate their law offices with

the lowest functional overhead.

Given that there are hundreds of thousands of surplus lawyers available in America, we

believe that America’s free markets will cultivate the required new and improved version of

lawyers who offer a more transparent and convenient search process for a lawyer. This will help

level the playing field between the TV Titans who spends millions on ad campaigns and the solo

and small firm lawyers. That more neighborhood lawyers will get more neighborhood business

will, on average, make the quality of services improve from that of the many “settlement mills”

documented by Stanford Law Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom. This trend will be enhanced by

the SoLoMo (Short for Social-Local-Mobile: Social Media promoting Local Businesses using

Mobile Devices) movement that will necessary favor local lawyers instead of “settlement mills”

that are not usually local.

Contrary to what some readers may think, I do not claim to be a Republican. Nor do I

claim to be a Democrat. I am an American. I am a veteran of the United States Air Force and

although I never saw any combat, I wore the blues and saluted the flag proudly. I grew up

washing dishes and other manual work in my family’s restaurants and dinner theatre. I worked as

139

a union laborer, a cement factory worker, waited tables and did dozens of other jobs to get

myself through college because, at one time, my parents had six of their seven children in college

at the same time. I am a member of MENSA, the ACLU and the NRA. I have about twenty (20)

civil and criminal jury trials under my belt. I have served as an Asst. States Attorney and as an

Asst. Public Defender.

I have no political aspirations. I just want to build a great company that provides great

services to Americans (and eventually the world’s citizens) to help them find affordable justice

in matters essential to the human experience. We also will provide valuable services for those

needing pro bono legal services.

I believe in a transparent, free-market system for legal services. I refuse to bring anybody

onboard who has some political axe to grind. We don’t have time to take and defend sides.

Besides, these issues straddle and derive from the platforms of all political parties. The sure way

to go broke is to try to please everyone else and your target market(s).

Our target market(s) are people who we help to solve a two-pronged problem for

people/businesses searching for lawyers and for lawyers searching for clients. We help these

people conveniently find the answers to two questions. 1. How much quality/quantity of legal

services can I anticipate receiving if I hire a particular lawyer? And 2. How much will that

amount of quality/quantity of legal services cost? The answers to “How much? for How much?”

will always be in demand by America’s citizens. Furthermore, it will help to streamline and

improve our US economy.

XI. A RESPECTFUL REQUEST FOR ACTION

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and

hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Winston Churchill

The truth is that America is in an economically dangerous period of transition between

the Pre-Internet Era and the Internet Era for large portions of its economy, including professional

services such as legal services. Other countries’ economies are adapting to new technologies,

becoming more efficient much faster than we are. (See Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is

Flat.) In that swift adaptation they are creating jobs faster than America. As Jim Clifton instructs

in his book, The Coming Jobs War, we must have the courage to change, to become more

efficient, to promote entrepreneurship, in order to create the millions of new jobs America needs

to maintain its leadership position in the world’s economy.

140

Sir, I approached you only out of necessity and in my capacity as a lawyer licensed to

practice law in the states of Missouri and Illinois who took the oath to protect and defend the

United States Constitution and the Constitutions of the great states of Illinois and Missouri; as a

concerned citizen expressing my Constitutional Rights to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of

(Online) Assembly and Freedom of Religion, as a Veteran who took the oath to protect and

defend the Constitution of the United States of America and as General Counsel for

GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com.

By sending this letter of official notice I am fulfilling a sworn duty as a lawyer to the

wonderful American society in which I practice. In support of the acceptance of this duty I

reference a 2008 Illinois State Bar Association President’s Page article written by then serving

ISBA President, Joseph G. Bisceglia titled, The “Lawyer” Who Shot Liberty Valance - From the

old American West to Iraq we learn lessons on the critical role of lawyers in enforcing the rule

of law. “That is why we have a duty as lawyers not just to represent our clients, but also to

maintain the integrity of and assure continued confidence in the system.” And Mr. Bisceglia

further offers his leadership, “And remember that our loyalty belongs as much to that important

system of justice, and to the rule of law, as it does to the clients we represent.” A copy of this

article may be downloaded for free and the following URL:

ISBA Past-President, Joseph G. Bisceglia Article Link

https://jenner.com/system/assets/publications/816/original/pres_page_may08.pdf?131378

8844

The rule of law applies to lawyers too. Accordingly, we are providing you official notice,

in order to create a benchmark in time, that disturbing numbers of the legal profession appear

that they may be openly violating the Anti-Trust, Organized Crime (RICO), and/or ethics rules in

the individual states and thereby annually cause, permit, suffer or allow millions of injured

Americans and their families serious and unnecessary financial and emotional harm. Regretfully,

America’s minorities appear to be hit the very hardest at the hands of some of the unscrupulous

TV Titan “settlement mills.”

Minorities are targeted by some TV Titan law firms and thereby cause minorities to be

disproportionately victimized, well above their population percentage in America’s general

population, by the sleight of hand, slick and hard-dealing business practices of some of the TV

Titan lawyers and “settlement mill” law firms that are discussed thoroughly by the trilogy of law

review articles painstakingly researched and authored by Nora Freemen Engstrom of Stanford

Law School. (As an example of the lack of an adequate family support structure as a factor that

causes minority families to be disproportionately affected by referral fee practices see Carolyn C.

Rogers’ work, Age and Family Structure, by Race/Ethnicity and Place of Residence explaining



141

the incidence of a lack of an adequate support structure endemic to minority families at url:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/934458/aer731d_002.pdf .)

Using Mr. Bisceglia’s analogy to the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it might

appear that The People of the United States of America could be represented by the character

played by John Wayne who ends up recognizing that the lawlessness of a wealthy rancher will

only continue if Wayne doesn’t become part of the solution. GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com is

prepared to assist The People in sharing legal representation information about lawyers to expose

various business practices of lawyers.

After all, the lawyers have been organized in their exclusive Bar Associations for over

200 years in America. Isn’t it about time that The People organize themselves too? Our website

blog titled, ‘We The People’ will form the genesis of the voluminous documents and other

information sharing for the numerous areas of law practiced by American lawyers so as to

develop an accessible database of information regarding which lawyers (who may be public

servants or private lawyers) improperly received referral fees and other questionable practices by

lawyers. The Internet brings tremendous transparency, if the people know which questions to ask

and which doors to open.

The American people are tough and resilient. Together, they will find the truth online and

then use the Rule of Law to create and demand entirely new Rules of Engagement for people and

businesses searching for good value in legal services. Americans will become empowered in

their newfound rights to exercise much more control over their destiny while interacting with a

legal industry that has enjoyed decades of monopolistic price-fixing and referral fee slight-of-

hand at the profound expense of innocent Americans. At that point, a troubling number of the TV

Titans will know, “The jigs up.”

I respectfully submit to you that we can make these changes in the legal industry if you

and other leaders and the individual American citizens exhibit the required courage by simply

following the laws that already exist in order to force the legal services industry to improve its

efficiency and thereby lower the collective cost to Americans for having their legal system of

fairness. The monies saved by this improved efficiency will create new jobs and decrease

American families’ incidence rates of serious, life-changing financial and emotional damage.

Saving taxpayers billions of dollars per year, and thereby preventing great numbers of

families from going on the roles of welfare, is an obvious positive effect that taking action about

referral fees and standard fees will certainly bring. So by your taking swift action regarding

referral fees and referral fee mark-ups “standard fees”, the massive influx of money into the

grateful clients’ purses and wallets will improve our economy substantially.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/934458/aer731d_002.pdf

142

Putting the referral fees back into the clients’ pockets will allow approximately 20

million injured Americans with their family members to spend the $23 Billion dollars per year

they presently pay for America’s referral fee system more efficiently than will the corresponding

referral fee recipient lawyers with their family members, totaling about one million people,

spending that same $23 Billion per year of clients’ monies. That is a heck of a good

improvement in our economy; to increase the spend ratio 20:1. That kind of spending by that

many people will create new American jobs.

In a consistent manner, we respectfully request that you use your office to investigate

these Civil Rights violations and other wrongs that are serious matters involving our nation’s

system of justice, which has become terribly inefficient. The American people have a right to

know the truth about our system of fairness that is essential to their human experience and is

vitally important to America creating jobs, increasing critical entrepreneurship, and remaining

highly competitive in the world’s market for goods and services.

To allow the system of referral fees and “standard/customary fees” to continue unchecked

is like watching a sick version of the movie Groundhog Day. However, instead of a comedy, it is

a horror story that reveals the daily taking and then retaking of over $50,000,000.00 per day from

a collective population of over 50,000 innocent, injured people and family members per day. If

Bill Murray could wake up and stop this daily, repeating financial nightmare, I would send him

this letter instead.

Nation-wide violation of the individual states’ referral fee rules of ethics, referenced by

Mr. Lieberman’s previous passage, and overt violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act through

“Fee Bullying” price-fixing the “standard” contingent fee at 33 1/3%, may not be much unlike

the nation-wide bootlegging in the Prohibition era. Back then, state government resources were

not enough to police effectively against those forces of organized crime. And today, State

resources appear inadequate to police the lawyer fee matters of referral fees and

“standard/customary” contingent fees in personal injury cases because they have grown worse

since 1975 when the US Supreme Court ruled that the legal services listed in the minimum-fee

schedule violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; and since 1978 when the esteemed Jethro

Lieberman attempted to bring the warning of impending doom for clients to the public’s

awareness regarding split/referral fees. It may be obvious that the states just don’t have the

resources or the desire to correct these long-lasting, decades old problems affecting millions of

citizens every year.

XII. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

143

Solution: Transparency and a strong US central government are required to correct the

mistakes of the past. Left to the states, The People will only get more of The Lawyers’ secrecy

that The People have tragically endured for the past forty years following the Goldfarb ruling of

the Supreme Court. Enforce the Sherman Act, enforce FFC and FTC regulations regarding TV

Titan questionable “Large-Net” advertising practices on TV and on the Internet and mandate

Federal supervision for the enforcement of the respective States’ rules regarding necessary client

counseling and clear authorization of referral fees and “standard/customary fees” and much of

the TV Titan advertising and client “unnecessary financial loss” problems will be alleviated.

Promote and encourage lawyers to practice The Golden Rule; that their fiduciary duties

to their clients include that they should always do unto their clients as they would want their

clients to do unto them, if their roles were reversed. To see where this is already applied to a

measured degree by the personal injury lawyer corps, one need go any farther than observing the

common practice among lawyers where personal injury lawyers will, up-front at the beginning of

representation, quickly waive and forfeit the referral fee, mark-up portion of their contingent fee,

if they represent a member of a fellow lawyer’s family. (Forfeit “a third of a third”; 11.1% of the

“standard” 33.3% contingent fee to arrive at a total 22.2% “professional courtesy” fee.) Why

aren’t they treating the non-lawyers the same way? WWJD? What Would “A Judge” Do?

Our online system at GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com will allow The People to organize and

coordinate so they can share the track records of individual TV Titan and other law firms so that

other consumers can conveniently observe these matters in the open, with transparency, rather

than be denied critical financial information as the present, non-transparent, system of searching

for a lawyer dictates. If justice is not affordable, there is no justice. Our great Constitution

begins, “We The People…” not We The Lawyers.

However, Mr. Attorney General, given the powerful political positions of the lawyers and

financiers making billions of unwarranted profits off of uninformed clients, this endeavor to “do

the right thing” and enforce the laws on the books will require strong, swift action and

leadership. However, action must come primarily by The People individually and collectively

boycotting lawyers who charge non-competitive fees and who do not give transparency to their

fee rates up-front; and secondarily by government leaders, if those being harmed will receive any

meaningful relief in the near future. This combined, self-centered power of the lawyers and

public officials who will be adversely affected by reform in these matters is why we claimed

“whistle-blower” status and protection in the above section of this notice.

144

A PERSONAL INVITATION TO SPEAK

On a different note, and with all sincerity and respect to your office and busy schedule, I

cordially invite you to attend and speak at the April 4, 2015 ceremony dedicating the Theiss

Road Bridge in South St. Louis County, Missouri, in the name of my late father, Brigadier

General, Glennon T. Moran and who served as the Missouri Liquor Control Supervisor, 1965-

1966.

The Missouri Legislature renamed that bridge in honor of my father’s public service as

the Missouri State Liquor Control Supervisor and as the Commander of Missouri’s Air National

Guard Forces. Under my father’s leadership, Missouri passed the first statute in the United

States requiring a photo ID to purchase liquor. [See RSMO Section 311.328 (1965) see URL:

http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/stathtml/31100003281.html]

As a bright spot in the timeline of history, that first-ever Missouri statute led other states

to follow Missouri’s leadership as the “Show-Me ID” state. Arguably, one may assume that over

the past fifty (50) years, Missouri’s passage of that statute has saved tens of thousands of lives

and families through drunk driving prevention across America. Sir, your presence and

inspirational words at the bridge dedication could further that life-saving effort.

If you need any further information about the above referenced matters, we respectfully

request you or any or your agents to contact our lawyer. In order to prevent an unnecessary

deluge of calls, from media and the general public to our lawyer’s office, we will gladly provide

his firm’s contact information upon your email request to us.

Thank-you for your valuable time, Mr. Holder. Your kind and professional attention to

these matters will be genuinely appreciated. Please have a nice day.

Respectfully,

Mark B. Moran

CEO/President/GC

GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com

Illinois Bar #6200497, Missouri Bar # 36057


http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/stathtml/31100003281.html

145

Encl.: Nora Freemen Engstrom of Stanford Law School: (2009) “Run-of-the-Mill Justice” may

be found at the following URL:

https://www.law.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication/259631/doc/slspublic/Engstro

m.pdf

(2011) “Legal Access and Attorney Advertising” may be found at the following URL:

http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1535&context=jgsp

l ;

and (2013) “Attorney Advertising and the Contingency Fee Cost Paradox.” May be

found at the following URL: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/attorney-

advertising-and-contingency-fee-cost-paradox

Pdf copy of the Minimum Fee Schedule Report, 1969 Virginia State Bar

CC: Speaker of The House of Congress: Speaker John Boehner@SpeakerBoehner Senate Majority Leader: NO EMAIL ADDRESS PROVIDED Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission: [email protected]

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan: [email protected] Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner (via Donna Arduin): [email protected] Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel: NO EMAIL ADDRESS ON WEBSITE Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster: [email protected] Missouri Governor Jay Nixon: [email protected]

Chairman, Federal Trade Commission: [email protected] Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: [email protected]

National Association of Women Lawyers: [email protected] La Raza: [email protected] NAACP: [email protected] National Assn. of Black Journalists: [email protected] National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists: [email protected] National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum: [email protected] Asian American Assn: [email protected] National Bar Association: [email protected] Hispanic National Bar Association: [email protected] National Association of Minority & Women Owned Law Firms: [email protected] National Baptist Convention: [email protected] North American Assn. of Synagogue Executives: [email protected] National Assn. of Catholic Chaplains: [email protected] National Assn. of Catholic Nurses USA: [email protected] American Medical Assn.: NO EMAIL CONTACT PROVIDED AT HOME PAGE Assn. of American Physicians and Surgeons: [email protected]; [email protected] National Black Church Initiative: [email protected] Islamic Society of North America: No Email Address on Website American Hindu Assn.: [email protected] The Pope of The Roman Catholic Church: [email protected] Orthodox Church in America (via Fr. John Matusiak): [email protected]

https://www.law.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication/259631/doc/slspublic/Engstrom.pdf

https://www.law.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication/259631/doc/slspublic/Engstrom.pdf





http://twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/status/574646016109998080

http://twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/status/574646016109998080

















mailto:

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Message%20to%20the%20President%20of%20NBC%2C%20USA%2C%20Inc.







mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Hello%20



146

Association of Black Women Lawyers: [email protected] Legal Momentum: Advancing Women's Rights: [email protected] Lex Mundi, Women in the Law: No Email Address on Website National Asian Pacific Women's Forum: [email protected] National Assn of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms: [email protected] National Assn of Women Judges: [email protected] National Bar Assn Women's Division: [email protected] National Conf of Women's Bar Associations: [email protected] National Women's Law Center: [email protected] St. Louis University School of law Dean: [email protected] Washington University School of Law Dean: No Email Address on Website Stanford School of Law: [email protected] Harvard Law School: [email protected] St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Via Fr. Daniel Friedman): [email protected] St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Via Deacon Charles Litteken): [email protected] St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Via Deacon Stephen Aubuchon ): [email protected]

END OF USAG LETTER DATED MARCH 8, 2015

http://www.geocities.com/abwagroup/


http://www.legalmomentum.org/


http://www.lexmundi.com/lexmundi/Women__the_Law_Profile.asp?SnID=627129063

http://napawf.org/


mailto:National%20Assn%20of%20Minority%20and%20Women%20Owned%20Law%20Firms

mailto:

http://www.nawj.org/


http://www.nbawomen.org/


http://www.ncwba.org/








147

GoldenRuleLaw.org (A Non-Profit Organization)

________________________

If Justice Is Not Affordable, There Is No Justice. ™

Mark Moran: CEO and General Counsel


September 18, 2015

Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan

Springfield Main Office (Mailed Certified Return Receipt Requested)

500 South Second Street

Springfield, IL 62706

Metro East Illinois Regional Office (Hand Delivered)

201 West Pointe Drive

Suite 7

Belleville, IL 62226

Re: Request for Investigation Into Lawyer Price-Fixing and Other Violations

Dear Attorney General Madigan:

I am writing to you as I am licensed to practice law in the state of Illinois, and as an

officer of the courts of Illinois. Therefore, I am sworn to protect and defend the constitutions of

the great state of Illinois and of the United States.

I supplement this letter of request with a much longer and detailed letter I sent to

Attorney General Eric Holder in March, 2015. You may download that letter at the following

internet link to our website: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/ . Forty years ago, in Goldfarb v.

Virginia State Bar, 421 US 773 (1975), the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously

that standard rates for percentage contingent fees for legal services that were, proven to be

pervasive throughout the Virginia Bar, violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In Goldfarb, the

U.S. Supreme Court also established a collateral estoppel prohibition of re-litigating the

propriety of various legal fees for services by throwing out the entire Fee Schedule Report that

included, on page 10, standard or customary charges of 1/3rd (33.3%) contingent fees for

personal injury legal services.

Accordingly, I hereby respectfully request that your office investigate the highly

improper, if not illegal, practice of personal injury lawyers charging their clients a price-

fixed contingent “standard fee” or “customary fee”of 1/3rd (33.3%) and higher. This price-

fixing practice, which is widespread throughout America and Illinois, violates Illinois’s


http://goldenrulelaw.org/

148

anti-trust statute(s) codified at (740 ILCS 10/1 et seq) Illinois Antitrust Act.

Within a short time of conducting an internet search, your investigators will discover

what is already known to lawyers throughout Illinois. Illinois lawyers are repeatedly and

blatantly violating the price-fixing prohibitions contained in Illinois’s statutes and the Federal

Sherman Act. This causes the destruction of thousands of Illinois families every year.

Regretfully, by your office failing to enforce these laws for decades, the personal injury lawyers

practicing in Illinois have been encouraged to continue to fix and increase the prices and rates

they charge for injury legal services. The effect of non-enforcement has been extremely hard on

the most vulnerable of Illinois’s citizens, minorities and the poor.

Additionally, I request whistleblower protection(s) for myself and our associates and

affiliates from harassment and harm. We also claim qui tam awards, if available, because lawyer

price-fixing practices are unnecessarily costing Illinois taxpayers millions of dollars to

eventually pick up the tab of Medicaid and other welfare payments for injured residents who ran

out of money to pay their injury related medical bills. In effect, Illinois taxpayers are under-

writing the cost of lawyers taking excessive fees from injury clients. Surprisingly, the

uninformed injured clients are paying the personal injury lawyers out of monies ear-marked for

payment of future medical bills of the injured.

The following facts and statistics may show to you why time is of the essence. Lives and

families depend on your swift attention to this matter.

The Ferguson Effect: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Mahatma Gandhi

Although it might be hard for people to understand the magnitude of the improper, anti-trust

monopolistic practices by Illinois lawyers, the gross pro rata amount for Illinois is approximately

between $917,000,000 to $1,955,000,000 per year. Year after year after year… Nationally, this

has totaled around $2 Trillion over 50 years!

A troubling number of TV advertising lawyers (whom we refer to as “The TV Titans” and

whom Stanford law professor Nora Freeman-Engstrom refers to as “settlement mills”) focus

their misleading “Free Consultation” ads on minorities and low-income people and thereby

garner the poor people’s injury business. Then, a troubling number of the TV Titans proceed to

overcharge their clients, which causes unnecessary financial hardships and emotionally and

spiritually brutal disintegration of their families.

Cause and effect: Fact: The #1 cause of bankruptcy is the inability to pay medical bills.

Fact: The #1 cause of divorce, families and their members exploding out from a once secure

family core and fragmenting like shrapnel throughout society, is bankruptcy. Therefore, the

effects of lawyers over-charging the poor and minorities, has the effect of an unnecessary

amount of poverty in America’s neighborhoods. This is most prevalent in the low-income,

minority Ferguson, Missouri type communities that suffer markedly higher rates of crime,

welfare, bankruptcy, divorce, suicide and incarceration. Please make note of the number of

149

highway billboards for personal injury lawyers in and around these poor and troubled

communities.

By your office causing, permitting, suffering or allowing rampant price-fixing coupled with

a monopoly on the practice of law, the people of Illinois have suffered terribly over the past 50

years through the explosion of Personal Injury and Worker Compensation law practice from

1964-2015. Whatever good that was conducted by lawyers increasing the injured clients’

recovery was erased by the secret fee dealings of the personal injury lawyers that have caused so

many bankruptcies and broken homes that the total damage to society is incalculable. The

amount of money left for the client, after lawyer fees is what matters. Greed has no bounds.

In order to focus on the families and individuals affected by the rampant price-fixing and

referral fees practices by Illinois personal injury and worker compensation lawyers, I offer some

sobering statistics. Of the approximate 6 million worker compensation and personal injury

claimants and their family members totaling about 20 million men, women and children families

in the US annually, Illinois’s pro-rata share (13 Million/ 316 Million ~ is about 4% of the US

Population) this means that there are approximately 240,000 injured Illinois residents and their

family members (798,000 total Illinois family members) affected by the subject anti-trust

activities of lawyers.

It is well settled law throughout America that a contract calling for illegal activity,

which price-fixing is included as an illegal activity, is void as it is against public policy.

Therefore, contracts between personal injury lawyers and their clients may be

unenforceable and may be re-negotiated. Furthermore, since the statute of limitations for

people wanting to be paid back their money wrongfully charged by their lawyers (there are

startling amounts, over $50 Million per day) that might go uncollected due to the expiration of

applicable statutes of limitation. Monies that are dearly needed by the injured and their families,

monies paid by insurance companies because they are dearly needed, are monies the Illinois

taxpayers will eventually pay as welfare for the injured families in order to fill the void caused

by lawyers absconding with exorbitant legal fees, at times totaling over $20,000 per hour. Your

office can help, by swiftly interceding, to prevent consumers losing their claims due to a statute

of limitations.

Please investigate these matters and bring justice to injured Illinoisans and their families.

“It is always the right time to do the right thing.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Your kind and professional assistance in this matter will be genuinely appreciated. If you

have any questions, please contact me at the above email address.

Sincerely,

Mark B. Moran

CEO and General Counsel

ARDC #6200497

150

END OF ILAG LETTER DATED SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

GoldenRuleLaw.org (A Non-Profit Organization)

________________________

If Justice Is Not Affordable, There Is No Justice. ™

Mark Moran: CEO and General Counsel


September 18, 2015

Missouri Attorney General's Office (Mailed certified Return Receipt Requested)

Supreme Court Building

207 W. High St.

Jefferson City, MO 65102

And

815 Olive Street, Suite 200 (Hand Delivered)

St. Louis, MO 63101

Re: Request for Investigation Into Lawyer Price-Fixing and Other Violations

Dear Attorney General Koster;

I am writing to you as a member of the Missouri Bar Association, and as an officer of the

courts of Missouri. Therefore, I am sworn to protect and defend the constitutions of the great

state of Missouri and of the United States.

I supplement this letter of request with a much longer and detailed letter I sent to

Attorney General Eric Holder in March, 2015. You may download that letter at the following

internet link to our website: http://GoldenRuleLaw.org/ . Forty years ago, in Goldfarb v.

Virginia State Bar, 421 US 773 (1975), the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously

that standard rates for percentage contingent fees for legal services that were, proven to be

pervasive throughout the Virginia Bar, violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In Goldfarb, the

U.S. Supreme Court also established a collateral estoppel prohibition of re-litigating the

propriety of various legal fees for services by throwing out the entire Fee Schedule Report that

included, on page 10, standard or customary charges of 1/3rd (33.3%) contingent fees for


http://goldenrulelaw.org/

151

personal injury legal services.

Accordingly, I hereby respectfully request that your office investigate the highly

improper, if not illegal, practice of personal injury lawyers charging their clients a price-fixed

contingent “standard fee” of 1/3rd (33.3%) and higher. This price-fixing practice, which is

widespread throughout America and Missouri, violates Missouri’s anti-trust statute(s) codified at

RSMO sections 416.011 through 416.161, commonly referred to as "Missouri Antitrust Law",

Chapter 416, Monopolies, Discriminations and Conspiracies.

Within a short time of conducting an internet search, your investigators will discover

what is already known to lawyers throughout Missouri. Missouri lawyers are repeatedly and

blatantly violating the price-fixing prohibitions contained in Missouri’s statutes and the Federal

Sherman Act. This causes the destruction of thousands of Missouri families every year.

Regretfully, by your office failing to enforce these laws for decades, the personal injury lawyers

practicing in Missouri have been encouraged to continue to fix and increase the prices and rates

they charge for injury legal services. The effect of non-enforcement has been extremely hard on

the most vulnerable of Missouri’s citizens, minorities and the poor.

Additionally, I request whistleblower protection(s) for myself and our associates and

affiliates from harassment and harm. We also claim qui tam awards, if available, because lawyer

price-fixing practices are unnecessarily costing Missouri taxpayers millions of dollars to

eventually pick up the tab of Medicaid and other welfare payments for injured residents who ran

out of money to pay their injury related medical bills. In effect, Missouri taxpayers are under-

writing the cost of lawyers taking excessive fees from injury clients. Surprisingly, the

uninformed injured clients are paying the personal injury lawyers out of monies ear-marked for

payment of future medical bills of the injured.

The following facts and statistics may show to you why time is of the essence. Lives and

families depend on your swift attention to this matter.

The Ferguson Effect: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Mahatma Gandhi

Although it might be hard for people to understand the magnitude of the improper, anti-trust

monopolistic practices by Missouri lawyers, the gross pro rata amount for Missouri is

approximately $437,000,000 to $931,000,000 per year. Year after year after year… Nationally,

this has totaled around $2 Trillion over 50 years!

A troubling number of TV advertising lawyers (whom we refer to as “The TV Titans” and

whom Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom refers to as “settlement mills”) focus their

misleading “Free Consultation” ads on minorities and low-income people and thereby garner the

poor people’s injury business. Then, a troubling number of the TV Titans proceed to overcharge

their clients, which causes unnecessary financial hardships and emotionally and spiritually brutal

disintegration of their families.

Cause and effect. Fact: The #1 cause of bankruptcy is the inability to pay medical bills.

Fact: The #1 cause of divorce, families and their members exploding out from a once secure

family core and fragmenting like shrapnel throughout society, is bankruptcy. Therefore, the

152

effects of lawyers over-charging the poor and minorities, has the effect of an unnecessary

amount of poverty in America’s neighborhoods. This is most prevalent in the low-income,

minority Ferguson, Missouri type communities that suffer markedly higher rates of crime,

welfare, bankruptcy, divorce, suicide and incarceration. Please make note of the number of

highway billboards for personal injury lawyers in and around these poor and troubled

communities.

By your office causing, permitting, suffering or allowing rampant price-fixing coupled with

a monopoly on the practice of law, the people of Missouri have suffered terribly over the past 50

years through the explosion of Personal Injury and Worker Compensation law practice from

1964-2015. Whatever good that was conducted by lawyers increasing the injured clients’

recovery was erased by the secret fee dealings of the personal injury lawyers that have caused so

many bankruptcies and broken homes that the total damage to society is incalculable. The

amount of money left for the client, after lawyer fees is what matters. Greed has no bounds.

In order to focus on the families and individuals affected by the rampant price-fixing and

referral fees practices by Missouri personal injury and worker compensation lawyers, I offer

some sobering statistics. Of the approximate 6 million worker compensation and personal injury

claimants and their family members totaling about 20 million men, women and children families

in the US annually, Missouri’s pro-rata share (6 Million/ 316 Million ~ is about 1.9% of the US

Population) this means that there are approximately 114,000 injured Missouri residents and their

family members (380,000 total Missouri family members) affected by the subject anti-trust

activities of lawyers.

It is well settled law throughout America that a contract calling for illegal activity,

which price-fixing is included as an illegal activity, is void as it is against public policy.

Therefore, contracts between personal injury lawyers and their clients may be

unenforceable and may be re-negotiated. Furthermore, since the statute of limitations for

people wanting to be paid back their money wrongfully charged by their lawyers (there are

startling amounts, over $50 Million per day) that might go uncollected due to the expiration of

applicable statutes of limitation. Monies that are dearly needed by the injured and their families,

monies paid by insurance companies because they are dearly needed, are monies the Missouri

taxpayers will eventually pay as welfare for the injured families in order to fill the void caused

by lawyers absconding with exorbitant legal fees, at times totaling over $20,000 per hour. Your

office can help, by swiftly interceding, to prevent consumers losing their claims due to a statute

of limitations.

Please investigate these matters to bring justice to injured Missourians and their families.

“It is always the right time to do the right thing.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Your kind and professional assistance in this matter will be genuinely appreciated. If you

have any questions, please contact me at the above email address.

Sincerely,

153

Mark B. Moran

CEO and General Counsel

MOBAR #36057

END OF MOAG LETTER DATED SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

154

NOTICES AND WARNINGS









from your local jurisdiction immediately if you need legal counsel or representation. The

opinions contained in this report are just opinions; they are not facts. Any reference to the

possible commission of price fixing or other crime or unethical behavior is not related to, in

reference to, or directed at any person or firm in particular and any connection or

inference that may be made thereto is purely coincidence.

NOTICE: THIS IS NOT A FINAL DRAFT BUT AN ON-GOING WORK THAT WILL

BE EDITED PRIOR TO FINAL PUBLISHING

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL BAR ASSOCIATION OR STATE’S LAWYER BAR

REGULATORY AGENCY/COURT TO VERIFY INFORMATION YOU MAY OBSERVE

HEREIN. PLEASE BE SURE TO VERIFY THAT THERE IS NO BAR MANDATED,

SUGGESTED, OFFICIAL, CONDONED, APPROVED, REQUIRED OR SANCTIONED

“STANDARD 1/3 MINIMUM CONTINGENT FEE” a/k/a “THE STANDARD FEE” FOR

PERSONAL INJURY LEGAL CLAIMS BECAUSE SUCH A STANDARD OR

CUSTOMARY FEE DOES NOT EXIST IN THE LAW, AS IT WAS DECLARED TO

VIOLATE THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT, BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT IN

GOLDFARB V VIRGINIA BAR, 421 U.S. 773, (1975).

IF ANY BAR ASSOCIATION DOES INDICATE THE OPPOSITE TO YOU, THAT THEY

APPROVE OF PRICE-FIXING, OR THEY TRY TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THE

MAJORITY OF LAWYERS CHARGING THE SAME PRICE IS NOT PRICE-FIXING, PLEASE CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY WITH NAMES, PHONE NUMBERS AND THE

PARTICULARS OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED TO YOU BY THAT BAR

ASSOCIATION OR AGENCY. YOUR PROMPT ACTION MAY PREVENT INNOCENT

INJURED PEOPLE AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS FROM SUFFERING

UNNECESSARY FINANCIAL LOSS AND ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS.

155

PLEASE NOTE THAT LAWYERS ARE REGULATED BY OTHER LAWYERS, AND AS

SUCH, LAWYERS WRITE THEIR OWN RULES, THEY INTERPRET THEIR OWN RULES

AND THEY DECIDE TO ENFORCE OR TO NOT ENFORCE THEIR OWN RULES. SO,

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY “NO” TO A FEE THAT YOU BELIEVE IS NOT FAIR.

WE STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT YOU CONSIDER BOYCOTTING THE PAYING OR

AGREEING TO PAY ANY VERSION OF A 1/3 MINIMUM STANDARD FEE AND/OR A

REFERRAL FEE FOR PERSONAL INJURY MATTERS, AND TO AGREE TO PAYING

SUCH ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE VERIFIED THE TRUTH OF THE INFORMATION

PROVIDED TO YOU BY CONSULTING WITH THE REGULATORY AGENCY

OVERSEEING THE PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER WHO GAVE YOU THAT

INFORMATION.

WARNING TO CONSUMERS! YOU ARE ALWAYS ALLOWED TO ASK A

PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER QUESTIONS REGARDING A FEE OR THE TERMS

OF A FEE CONTRACT/AGREEMENT. YOU ALSO HAVE THE RIGHTS TO

RESPECTFULLY DEMAND THE PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER PROVIDE TO YOU

A THOROUGH, WRITTEN, DATED AND SIGNED EXPLANATION REGARDING

WHY THE SUBJECT PERCENTAGE, CONTINGENT FEE IN THE SUBJECT

CONTRACT/AGREEMENT COMPLIES WITH THE LAWYER’S BAR RULES OF

ETHICS AND IS NOT PRICE-FIXING, BEFORE YOU AGREE TO PAYING ANY

SUCH FEE AGREEMENT/CONTRACT.

WARNING! A PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER TELLING YOU THAT THE STANDARD

OR CUSTOMARY FEE YOU WILL BE CHARGED IS THE SAME THAT ALL OF THE

OTHER LAWYERS CHARGE FOR SIMILAR CASES IS CONSISTENT WITH ILLEGAL

PRICE-FIXING, AND THEREFORE THE FEE SHOULD BE VERIFIED WITH THE LOCAL

BAR AND A WRITTEN REQUEST FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION REGARDING THE

LEGALITY OF THE FEE MAY BE REQUESTED.

TOGETHER THE AMERICANS, WHO ARE NOT LAWYERS, CAN CORRECT THIS

MATTER OF LAWYERS CHARGING CLIENTS SOCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE, UNFAIR

OR EXCESSIVE LAWYERS’ FEES, ON THEIR OWN, WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM

THE GOVERNMENT, BY USING THEIR RIGHTS AS BUYERS OF LEGAL SERVICES

AND THEREBY USE THE SAME ECONOMIC FORCES THAT BEGAN THE AMERICAN

REVOLUTION. A BOYCOTT.

BOYCOTT EXCESSIVE LAWYER FEES.

WITHOUT A GOOD EXPLANATION TO YOU, BY THE RELEVANT LAWYER OR BAR

ASSOCIATION OFFICIAL, WE SUGGEST THAT YOU CONSIDER BOYCOTTING THE

1/3 STANDARD MINIMUM CONTINGENT FEE. YOUR PURSES AND POCKETBOOKS

WILL THANK YOU. AND IT WILL ALSO GENERATE A NET INCREASE OF

THOUSANDS OF SUSTAINABLE JOBS SINCE THE PEOPLE WILL BE SPENDING

THEIR MONEY, ON MEDICAL SERVICES AND OTHER NECESSITIES, AT AN

156

INCREASED 20:1 SPENDING RATIO IN EXCESS AND ABOVE HOW THE LAWYERS

COLLECTING THE $24BILLION+ IN UNNECESSARY PI LEGAL FEES.

We at GoldenRuleLaw.org and GoodLawyerGoodPrice.com humbly expect to make lawyers

better. We help to defend the defenseless injured people and their families. We give a voice to

those who cannot speak for themselves. We do these things as non-profit and for-profit

companies.

God Bless America.

THANK YOU.


Documents

11 14 2015 PI Lawyer Price Fixing