Law Canada: A Place to Discuss the Professional Legal Experience in Canada

I was pushing forty, and I'd learned a lot of lessons in more than ten years of practice. But one of the most important lessons I learned was from an older lawyer that I worked for as a summer student, after the second year of law school.

"A lawyer has three duties," he told me, "first to himself, second to the court, and last, the client. Always make sure you come first, and the client comes last." The reason? "Because clients will fuck you," he said, "they'll throw you under the bus without thinking twice." I should have articled with this lawyer, and maybe worked for him afterwards. But being young and an idiot, I had to go work downtown, and I'm still downtown now, but fortunately for me, I remembered this lesson, and it came in handy many years later when a client really did try to throw me under the bus.

My client was this mid-sized company that did this and that and owned things here and there, not big enough to be listed, but it did have a pretty sizable real estate portfolio, and one day a building they owned burned to the ground. Shit happens; that's what insurance is for, right? A building burned down, so the company told Frank to deal with it. Frank was close to sixty and thought he knew what he was doing. He didn't need me to help him with the insurance claim, he told me; he had everything under control. Besides, lawyers are expensive. Some guys really get off on not paying legal fees, and Frank was one of those guys who gloated over every penny that he managed not to pay to the lawyers. I dealt with Frank a lot, and he was always nickel and diming me.

"The insurer is going to fuck you," I told Frank. It was only by luck that I even knew about the fire and the loss because Frank had not asked for my help; he'd just let it slip one day, and since then, I'd kept on top of him, trying to get him to smarten up. I'd had to fight to get him to send me the proof of claim to make sure he hadn't messed that up. Frank fucked up a lot, and I wondered sometimes how he had a job. But the proof of claim was okay, at least, so that was one less thing to worry about.

"You don't know that," he said. I could tell he just wanted to get me off the phone.

"I'm paid to know when insurers are trying to screw my clients," I said, "and the insurer is going to screw you. They've been stringing you along for ages with requests and questions and paperwork, but they aren't going to pay you. Not unless you sue them." But Frank said he knew what he was doing, that it was all under control, and besides, he got along with the adjuster so great.

"The limitation period expires in two weeks," I said, "and once that two weeks pass, it will be too late to sue. The moment that limitation period expires, they will stop taking your calls. You'll get a final email saying sorry, you're out of time, and that will be that. Don't leave this till the last minute. Let me sue right now, and you'll have the money in no time." Frank was like sure, fine, whatever, don't bother me I got this blah blah blah, and he got off the phone as soon as he could. I sent him the usual email with clear warnings and recommendations, which he ignored. I sent the email again, and then again as the limitation period approached, and again a couple of days before the deadline. "I'm going to be at trial, and you won't be able to reach me," my final email said, "but you have to sue. You have other firms on your list, so pick one and sue." He didn't bother to reply, and I went off to do my trial.

The trial lasted a couple of weeks, and no email from Frank. Then a month passed, and another month, still no email. I figured he must have sorted things out. "Maybe Frank was right after all," I said to myself, and then my phone rang. It was Frank.

"Remember that fire insurance thing we spoke about?" We'd only spoken about it like a dozen times. I figured he was calling up to gloat, so I cut to the chase. "So they paid out. That's great, Frank. You were right."