Employees Should Know About the Economics Behind Hiring an Employment Lawyer in California

Employers throughout the state of Califoria continue to violate employee rights by committing violations relating to wrongful termination, discrimination, sexual harassment, overtime pay, working off the clock and employee benefits such as vacation pay. When an employer violates the law, employees usually start looking for an employment law attorney to help them recover from the company’s illegal practices. 

The thing that employees often most overlook is that the merits of the case are not the only important thing that employment law firms are looking into. Most employees search for a contingency, no win no fee employment law attorney in California. Contingency fee law firms take cases that are economically viable; if they did not, the labor law firm would likely be out of business. 

Therefore, the most important thing that the employment lawyers look into before deciding to take a case is how much the case is worth. After all, the labor lawyers don’t win a dollar unless the employee wins and they only win a percent of the employees total settlement or trial verdict. The more the case settles for, the more money the attorneys stand to make. 

Suppose you applied for a job that was goign to pay you $100,000 as a marketing director. You were up against one caucasion person for the job and the CEO of the company sent you an email stating, “Although you are highly qualified, we want to hire someone who is white.” This is clearly smoking gun evidence of discrimination, but this is just the start of what employment lawyers look into. 

The main inquiry is always, how has the employee been damaged. Based on the example above, suppose the employee was able to get another, higher paying job the next week. The attorneys would be skeptical to take the case even though it is a flawless discrimination claim because the damages are not that big. 

Suppose on the other hand that the employee can never get another job after this incident of discrimination in the workplace. Then, in this scenario, even though the merits are the same, contingency fee attorneys would likely be jumping all over this one as opposed to the first example because the damages are a lot greater. The employee could potentially win lost future wages for years. 

The point is that if employees want to find a good employment law firm, they should focus on how they have been damaged during the first free initial consultation rather than the merits of the case. Of course, the merits are ultimately the determinative factor, as a meritless case will not stand in court and the attorneys will not even file it if they discover it is meritless. However, by talking about the damages, employees can get the attention of the law firm. Once an employee has the law firm’s attentionl, he or she will have the opportunity to go over all of the merits of the case. 

Attention Grabbing Inquiry:

I was fired from a company with a lot of money and I think it was because of my race. I made $100,000/year and have not been able to get another job since I was fired. What are my options?

vs.

Likely not to get a response:

I was fired and I know it was discrimination because my boss told my supervisor that I had stolen from my coworker when in fact it was my coworker who stole from me.  I can prove that I was not the one who stole the item in question. I have all the documents to prove that I am being framed by my supervisor, who does not like me because she thinks I am trying to take over her position.