Lawyers apparently receive referral fees, and can be a third of the award that is won during a case.
Pete Stark needs to look into that.
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This was absolutely true 10 years ago when I used to know alot of lawyers in practice in Texas (I doubt it’s changed). In fact, some lawyers could earn a decent living just off their “third of a third” referral fees–without ever having to try a case themselves. I always thought it stunk also!
Those law firms that advertise nationally on TV.
Is that how they’re making a living? Shaking the tree for the cases, and then referring to participating lawyers close to the client?
I always wondered how that worked, with a Boston lawyer, for example, advertising nationally for cases.
In Asbestos, silicosis, and other class action cases that is precisely how it works. You advertise and draw in the clients, get them to sign, then you own the clients–they are your assets.
Imagine where PCP’s would be if medicine worked that way here? I am glad it doesn’t though.
I am told by one of my immigrant friends that it works just like that in India. She says that all of the surgeons routinely make kickbacks to the referring doctors and the doctors won’t refer to them if they don’t. As a result people don’t trust the doctors–and shouldn’t.
It also explains some the baldness of some of the unethical and greedy practices of some of the docs I know from there. Not all mind you but some just don’t even seem to get that others see this as something other than a business.
>>Imagine where PCP’s would be if medicine worked that way here?
I believe that’s called “fee-splitting”?
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