probate law interest.... Forum

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tacosman

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Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2019 9:40 pm

probate law interest....

Post by tacosman » Tue Jun 18, 2019 9:59 pm

Specifically mental health.

I'm working right now for a firm I'm considering joining after graduation. One of the lawyers does the probate side of the practice mostly, so I was tagging along with him today.

When a mental hospital petitions someone to keep them in the mental hospital longer, they are assigned a lawyer to work with them towards their goals. You meet with them in the hospital, go over the options, how they are doing, their goals(home with family? Fight the commitment? plead for outpt?) and then you have to go typically the next day to 'mental health court'. In this case it was in the hospital.

First I could see how rewarding it is to work with these clients. A lot of them it seemed the system was giving up one...just kind of assuming they would be committed for several months to the state hospital. But then the hearings were so different than I expected. Here the opposing lawyer actually was working with us to try to find the best solution for the client/patient. It's like "how can we work together as a team to get the best outcome". The judge too. I didn't feel like it was adversarial, or anyone was a winner or loser.

Financially, it has the potential to be very good as well. They stack the cases back to back in mental health court. We had 5 and they took about an hour total. Our compensation for each case I learned was 360 dollars. That's 1800 dollars, for a couple of hours work(if you count yesterdays pre-planning for the hearing with the clients). That's also a lot lot more I was told than the psychiatrist gets paid for participating testifying, so it's nice to know you are valued by the court.

the best part is I was told they aren't even competitive to grab. The guy I was with today got into it because one guy who did about 30% of the countys cases was retiring, and people weren't jumping at offers to take over. So word leaked down to our group. They have them every week. The combination of the money, the non-adversarial approach, and the feeling that you are making a difference is all very appealing as something to get into right after graduation if I join this firm.

Anyone else thinking about MH probate cases as a component of their practice?

bigpete777

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Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 11:20 am

Re: probate law interest....

Post by bigpete777 » Mon Aug 19, 2019 9:36 pm

Hey Tacosman. I'm interested in probate as well. Sounds like an interesting niche you've found. Do you know how difficult it would be to get involved with something like this? I'm a recently TX attorney (DFW) still trying to figure out in what area I want to practice...

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