Can’t Win For Losing

Someone said “Lawyer” and the pool hall conversation immediately drifted off course. After a few general derogatory comments were made, I saw an opening and decided to thrill the boys with my personal tale of woe. I told them about this sleaze bag New Jersey attorney I had gotten myself involved with while trying to settle my mother’s estate. I explained how, after I had concluded that rather than helping me get things done he was standing in the way, I fired his candy ass and asked him to return what I had coming of my $1500 retainer. I didn’t hear from him for two months, so I sent him another letter asking him to return what I had coming. He responds to this by sending a trumped up bill to my new lawyer in which he claims that I have not only used up my $1500 retainer but that I owe him another $1500 on top of that. Boston Bobby started shaking his head. “You never get that back – the retainer. They figure some way to get it.” Then he relates a story of how he had been arrested once on an aggravated assault charge only to have the charges dropped later when the star witness finally admitted she had misidentified him. Even though he had been a thousand miles away at the time of the alleged assault and the case had never gone to court and the charges were eventually dropped, he wound up paying $25,000 in legal fees. That, obviously, was a much better sleaze-bag-lawyer story than mine.