I would like to blow a whistle but don&#39;t want to face retaliation (The following is slightly fictionalized, but more-or-less true) I recently ended a relationship with a hedge fund. The relationship ended unpleasantly, and lawyers were involved. I tried to explain to my lawyer that they were doing a number of things that are breaking SEC's regulations - but these things were way too complicated for my lawyer to wrap his mind around. My lawyer told me to settle with them and sign a non-disparagement agreement. So I did. (They dropped legal action, but did not compensate me in any way.) The hedge fund has continued to do the things which I believe are illegal, and not only that, they are bragging about them openly to their investors. This infuriates me. I would relish reporting them, especially since they are continuing to do this, and they are bragging about doing this, and because this is what led to my original dispute with them. I emphasize that I strongly believe they are breaking the law: I have read the laws and I have read their descriptions of what they are doing. I have put these side-by-side and if I can read English, they are breaking the law. However, my experience is that how laws are enforced in practice can sometimes be different from how the law reads to someone on the outside. My understanding is that this is an issue of public interest, and that they couldn't retaliate against me by enforcing the agreement. I'm not willing to do this without consultation from an attorney. So now I have several options. Go directly to the SEC. I could show them exactly where they brag about breaking the law. I could do this anonymously, but the hedge fund would have a good idea it was me. Go to a lawyer who represents hedge funds, and have a consultation before reporting anything. This lawyer would probably have a good picture of what laws are prosecuted and which ones aren't, but I would have to trust there was no conflict of interest. Go to a consumer lawyer and have a consultation before reporting anything. The problem here is that I doubt the average lawyer would have any idea about these laws, because they are somewhat complex. Sit here and try to root for the Mets and be content that the hedge fund is hurting other people and not me.
Take option #2. Your concern in that scenario is not realistic: A lawyer who "reported" you to the counterparty of your settlement for such a consultation would be disbarred so quickly and harshly that it might actually give you faith in the Bar Associations. Consultations with lawyers are privileged, and lawyers have a duty to maintain client confidentiality in all but the most extreme situations. Furthermore, you might (ultimately) be entitled to whistleblower compensation, and unless you're an SEC rules specialist you probably wouldn't know how to get that without an advocate like a securities industry lawyer.
Dale M is correct. Lawyers get calls all day long from people who want free advice and have no intention of entering into a paid representation. That is what your letter sounds like. I write separately just to add that you may have better results if you make explicit that you are aware of their rates and prepared to pay them. Even then, though, it may be that whatever you'd pay for the two hours to walk you through this is not as valuable as time they'd spend on other matters. If I have to prioritize between a repeat client and someone who will probably not pay for anything more than having one question answered, that's an easy choice.
Some portions of your inquiry are confusing, as in "I insisted that we were going to continue to send money to the mortgage company if we don’t understand what the fees are for". It is unclear why you would continue to send money without understanding the reason for fees, especially since you purportedly sent "the complete payoff" already. What is an appropriate response to an email from a lawyer that says she’s going to withdraw from my case, because I would like to understand the additional fees and charges my mortgage company is charging (over and beyond the plan payment/payoff)? Rather than replying to the lawyer's email, it is more important that you timely file in court a response (with 2 or 3 copies) to her motion to withdraw and that you attend the court hearing (if any is scheduled). Don't forget to also mail your attorney a copy of your response. In the response, you will need to argue that your lawyer's refusal to adequately address your inquiries is in violation of the rules of "professional" conduct (with which attorneys are supposed to comply). By granting the attorney's motion, the court would improperly release her from pending obligations she has with respect to you. For instance, Rule 1.4 of Michigan RPC states: (a) A lawyer shall keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter and comply promptly with reasonable requests for information. [...] (b) A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation. (note: other jurisdictions in the U.S. have equivalent rules, so you will need to refer to their corresponding label) By pushing you to pay another $850 without actually explaining you the details of the "settlement" with mortgage company's counsel, your lawyer clearly is failing her duty to reasonably inform you of the matter for which you retained her. Therefore, your response should substantiate that a granting of the attorney's motion to withdraw ought to be conditioned on the fulfillment of her obligation to provide you with reasonably sufficient information which you as her client are entitled to obtain. It will help if you attach to your motion &amp; brief an exhibit showing that the mortgage company actually directed you to inquire of your lawyer the clarification(s) you are pursuing. Once you take care of that issue, I encourage you to seriously assess (and proceed accordingly) whether your attorney's misconduct merits being reported with the entity in charge of disciplining lawyers for their legal malpractice. If I were knowledgeable of bankruptcy law, I would be happy to address your first question. I can only suggest you to do some research on leagle.com to become acquainted with how courts decide bankruptcy issues. Be sure to set parameter "Search By Court" to "Federal Bankruptcy Court".
If you're in the United States, another lawyer in a firm you've hired may or may not be your attorney, but it would not be uncommon for him to have some involvement in the case, and he would be expected to treat you as a client in terms of privilege and conflicts of interest. Just the same, this is something you need to be very direct on. &quot;Are you my attorney?&quot; or &quot;Have we established an attorney-client relationship?&quot; are going to be your best options.
united-states Meet the word &quot;clawback&quot;. The general rule is that anything you do simply for asset protection can be undone by the government or courts. See the excellent book by Adkisson and Riser titled Asset Protection. First, the creditor is going to ask about all your assets including transfers. You have to answer truthfully, or else you open a whole other can of worms. The creditor and court will look at the character of these transactions. Suppose you sell a Ferrari worth $200,000 appraised value, to your brother for $155,000. However, it was an open eBay auction. Plaintiffs review it, hoping to find it was a &quot;vest pocket&quot; sale rigged to be unappealing to anyone but family. Wrong: it was a competent and earnest listing, which did attract 12 stranger bidders, and 3 bidders took up your offer to let them inspect the car. And according to Ferrari brokers that price was realistic given the soft market. Your brother simply outbid them, for nostalgia reasons. You did get the money and did use it to settle with creditors. That sale will be considered legitimate, because there's extensive provenance held in reliable third party hands (eBay). You sell the Ferrari for $100 to your brother. The court will presume that you intend to buy the car back for $100 after your legal troubles have cleared. This sale will be declared invalid, the Ferrari clawed back, and the creditor will be able to target that asset. The same thing can happen if you are insolvent, expect to enter bankruptcy, and pay a creditor &quot;out of turn&quot;. E.G. you settle your debt with the country club (so you can keep attending) before you pay your tax bill. The creditors, IRS or court can &quot;claw back&quot; that payment. That happened to my family's business once. Meet the word &quot;Penalties&quot;. OK, so what does a dumb crook do? They lie about their assets. They testify &quot;I crashed the Ferrari on the property, it was a basket case. I parted it out and chopped up the rest, threw it in the weekly trash week by week&quot;. And they can produce no documentation of any part sales. Meanwhile, plaintiff had already pulled DMV records and found it's currently registered... to the brother, with a DMV sale price of $100. They sent over a detective, who has pictures of it sitting in the brother's garage. And plaintiff gleefully maneuvered the dumb crook into a lie under oath. And now they face judicial punishment - including harsh fines, and jail for contempt of court or refusal to disclose. This bypasses the Fourth Amendment, so there is no trial for proof of guilt. But it's a government agency, not a private party All the moreso, then. Government has the right to bypass some of the rules for private parties - such as being able to do asset search, subpoena, or attach assets without filing a lawsuit. The IRS is probably the most experienced at pursuing asset hiders. They have &quot;their own&quot; Tax Court which does exclusively tax cases.
SCOTUS blog regularly does posts on that kind of topic (see, e.g., their Stat Pack) and if you looked at their sources or the authors of those posts, you could probably easily find more. There are people who do that and make their findings publicly available, but I don't know them off hand.
What would be the most reasonable thing to do? Live with it. Oh, and stop breaking the law with your automated emails. Illegality on their part does not justify illegality on your part. Also, it’s likely that this activity has caused your email address to be blocked automatically which may explain why they aren’t contacting you. From a legal point of view, that’s the only reasonable option. You do have valid grounds for a lawsuit for the value of the watermelon but the cost of filing will be a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the value of the melon so doing so isn’t “reasonable”. If you want to vent, the internet offers a wide variety of social media platforms for which that seems to be their primary focus. But that’s got nothing to do with the law.
Unless the lawyer is sitting around with nothing to do (in which case s/he has bigger problems than one yelp review) s/he would have to take time which could otherwise be spent on paying cases to file such a suit. The lawyer would still have to pay court fees to file such a suit. If such a suit were clearly meritless (say the review is not defamatory but merely an expression of opinion) then it should be dismissed early in the process, and the judge and other legal insiders who may follow such matters are likely to have a negative view of the lawyer based on such a filing. This may well hurt the lawyer. more than any Yelp review ever could. If the lawyer files a clearly meritless suit, the court may well order that s/he pay your legal fees as well. There are no guarantees, but the risk of a lawyer filing a "revenge suit" over a moderately negative Yelp review seem low.