1L SA -- Day 3, still bad at my job. Forum

[Anonymous User]

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[Icculus]

deleted by request from OP.
/rant

Sounds lik your boss is a actually giving you a chance to learn here. I worked as a law clerk all 2L and my first few assignments I kept being told to stop thinking and writing like a law student. After a few assignments I starts to get the hang of it and by the time I left I had stopped writing like an LRW student. You'll be fine as long as you take the advice and criticisms you are given and you try and get better.

[lolwat]

i don't know this area at all, but if he sees some way out of it, then there is some way to at least make an argument (even if it won't ultimately be bought by a court etc). if the law itself says you have to pay - look beyond the law - find a reason, any reason why you can plausibly argue you don't have to pay. even if you THINK it might be a losing argument but it's the best one you can come up with. randomly off the top of my head, maybe the hospital gave you way more medical records than the subpoena actually asked for, so you shouldn't have to pay the full invoice or something

but yeah, he's giving you a chance to learn - treat it as such and don't feel like you totally f'd things up - if you can't come up with anything, ask him what he thinks and how he got to that conclusion, etc.

[qwertyboard]

0l here. Sounds like an awesome time. Be glad your boss gave you some feedback. I had a boss once who NEVER gave me feedback. Good luck!

[RELIC]

0l here. Sounds like an awesome time. Be glad your boss gave you some feedback. I had a boss once who NEVER gave me feedback. Good luck!

Don't post in this forum if you are a 0L.

[thesealocust]

OP: Definitely sounds like a good lesson. The answer might be a "you and what army" kind of thing - your boss may be comfortable ignoring the request for payment, and just wants to have some arguable position for doing so. It's still possible it's so clear cut even that is silly, but in this case even an argument you think only has a 2% chance of success might be all he needs to feel comfortable with ignoring the bill, because why would the hospital bother suing over it?

0l here. Sounds like an awesome time. Be glad your boss gave you some feedback. I had a boss once who NEVER gave me feedback. Good luck!

Don't post in this forum if you are a 0L.

(1) the prohibition is on posting questions here. It's at least ambiguous whether 0Ls should refrain from replying to threads in the forum, but I've never seen it enforced.

(2) Pointing it out 0Ls and derailing threads is way more annoying than 0Ls.

[TheColonel]

(1) the prohibition is on posting questions here. It's at least ambiguous whether 0Ls should refrain from replying to threads in the forum, but I've never seen it enforced.

I was a little leery of posting as a 0L, but I'm a paralegal at a firm and deal with medical records daily so hopefully I can be a little helpful.

My boss hates paying for medical records, so we try to get out of paying fairly frequently. If I were you, I'd look in to how the subpoena was worded. Did it ask for a certain date range? Did it ask for only a certain type of records (abstracts only, for example)? Did the subpoena mention that records would only be accepted with prepayment by your firm? Did you ask to have them delivered a certain way?

Other things worth looking into: I've found that hospitals and doctors office just throw a number out there fairly frequently without following the states statutes, so check their math. Some states have different rules for different types of offices (i.e. Hospital versus Doctor's offices). Other states have rules about not being able to charge for medical records if they are going to be used for certain things (Social Security Disability is one that comes to mind). I'm not sure about this, but some states may handle subpoenas differently than normal requests for medical records.

Good luck.

[Anonymous User]

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[HellOnHeels]

Even if the subpoena was extremely permissive, was what they sent over (20K pages) necessary, or was it excessive? In a similar case, would a similar institution have sent over 20K pages?

Along that note, how redundant were the records? For example, did they send you a copy of an x-ray, plus a copy of the technician's interpretation which included a copy of the x-ray, plus a copy of the dr's record which included a copy of the x-ray and a copy of the technicians interpretation which included a copy of the x-ray, and so on?

[Eco]

Sounds like your boss is a actually giving you a chance to learn here.

[holdencaulfield]

What state?

[Literally_Napoleon]

Lucky OP

[Anonymous User]

What state?

Court sits in FL

[Myself]

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[Anonymous User]

I would delete some of this information after you're done.

Have you tried calling the Westlaw research attorneys? They're pretty helpful. You can try asking your school's reference librarian too.

Will do. Thanks much

[kaiser]

OP, I can totally envision what you did, since I had an urge to do the same thing when the law seemed pretty tough to work with. Even as an SA, keep in mind that you are working as a lawyer. Instead of just telling the partner/assigning lawyer what the law is (unless they simply ask what the law is), you need to determine how a lawyer would actually use that tool to his advantage, even if the tool doesn't seem to really work in your favor. I found that, during my summer, the assigning attorneys really appreciated when I would at least take a stab at crafting an argument, trying to distinguish unhelpful precedent, think of a way to approach an issue, a way of couching an argument in certain terms as to make it fit more in line with the precedent, etc.

For example, lets say the partner wants to make a certain argument, and asks you to check up the law in that area. You check it, and it seems to work against you. Don't just report back that the law works against us. That is only step 1. The next step is to recommend how you get around this issue, whether it be to use certain phrasing that makes our position more compatible with the law, etc.