Identifying Case Mills

Recently we have seen solicitations from a few law firms that are automatically mailed to any person recently charged with serious traffic offenses or minor infractions in our local courts. In these solicitations, the law firms claim to be experts in the field of criminal and traffic defense. These solicitations may include misleading language and other obfuscations with fine print and seals of approval that actually mean very little in the legal field.

Be aware that the law firms sending these solicitations may be “case mills” that offer little more than cheap fees for little work, and do a high volume business to make high profits at the expense of the general public. Case mills assign inexperienced attorneys to whom they pay next to nothing to represent their clients. The attorneys are often times subcontractors and not actual employees of the law firm. These attorneys are typically unfamiliar with our local judges and courts.

Case mills, despite being small firms, often hire full-time marketing and sales staff to churn new business into their mills.  With few clients making the mistake of hiring them more than once, new and unsuspecting clients are necessary for them to continue their “churn and burn” style of business.  Often they spend as much time and money on their sales and marketing efforts as they do on the actual practice of law.

Avoiding Case Mills and Retaining Effective Legal Counsel

By taking cases for a cheap fee and only paying the assigned attorney a pittance to work on the case, case mills can only afford to make a minimum effort to prepare for the case in advance of the court date. Many times, the final results of the case reflect the lack of lack of time and effort put into preparing the cases and the inexperience of the attorneys and their unfamiliarity with our local judges and courts.

The general public should avoid case mills at all costs. The general public should seek to retain effective counsel that is focused on practicing law rather than sales and marketing.

See Winning Matters for more details on the difference that allows us and other reputable law firms to be successful in obtaining excellent results for our clients time and time again.