Lawyer Is Big Winner In Webcamgate Settlement

crimeandpunishment writes "The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania has agreed to a $610,000 settlement in two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops. Less than a third of that will go to the students. A total of $185,000 will be put in trust for the students. Their lawyer will receive $425,000."

Comments

as usual...

[alanshot]

the only winners in class action lawsuits are the lawyers.

Re:as usual...

[elrous0]

Actually, it's a little-known secret that the companies being sued (and their insurers) often benefit too, and sometimes even quietly "encourage" a given firm to pursue a class action suit. For the price of one easy settlement, they're permanently indemnified from being stung with thousands of individual suits (since the VAST majority of plaintiffs, even if they do hear about the suit, will not go to the trouble to opt-out of it).

Lawyer gets paid crazy amount of cash. Company gets indemnity against future lawsuits. Consumer gets a crappy coupon for $5 off their next purchase.

Better FAs

[mcgrew]

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Skunkpost? WTF is that?

Re:Wow, just... wow

[hedwards]

Short answer is that he doesn't get to keep it. There's whatever he gets to keep as a part of his salary, but there's the cost of the paralegals, office, professional literature, time spent interviewing witnesses, time spent researching the case and coming up with a strategy. There's a lot of work that goes into the practice of practicing law.

Plus, if the case was taken on contingency, which it looks like it was, he has to worry about the possibility of losing and ending up being paid nothing. Which can and does happen, there's a reason why attorneys work so hard to keep things out of the courts, the jury can be very unpredictable at times.

Re:Associated costs

[jriding]

The big difference between lawyer and most other skills is that as a IT person someone asks me for advice, I am not held accountable.
A lawyer who is asked for advice by the very nature of answering is giving "Legal Advice" and can be held accountable even if it is in the setting of a party or casual question.
Makes it a lot harder for a lawyer to just answer a quick easy question.

Re:Associated costs

[Kijori]

I'm not sure that that's true. I'm a law student and the solicitors that I know do a lot of work for free - both in the IT worker sense of giving friends small pieces of advice and by doing pro bono work for disadvantaged people.

It's true that an IT worker might offer to do some actual work, such as reinstalling software or cleaning viruses off a computer, as a favour for a friend, but there isn't really any comparable work for a lawyer. First, any mistake you make could cost an incredible amount of money for both the friend and you; second, even fairly simple tasks, such as preparing a will, can take a long time because of the formalities involved.

Re:Associated costs

[Etrias]

bullshit.

Holy shit, who modded this informative? This guy isn't a lawyer, he "works with electricians and home owners".

Know what, my wife is a lawyer and I feel barely qualified to answer this post. What I do know is that my wife couldn't legally give advice to people unless she was a member of that state's bar association, even though she had been admitted into three other states and two federal jurisdictions. The law isn't the same from state to state and you can be held liable for your legal opinions.