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OLAS media.
This is Overdue Over time, presented by Sommers Schwartz. And now here's your host, Justin Isaac.
Welcome to Overdue Over Time, a podcast for lawyers and employees interested in learning about lawsuits for unpaid overtime and other wage benefits. My name is Justin Isaac and I am your host today. I am an estate planning attorney based in San Diego, and I'm actually joined today by Jason Thompson of Sommers Schwartz. Jason, thank you very much for joining us.
Great to be here, Justin. Looking forward to talking to you about off the clock work.
As my and you know, speaking of off the clock, we're back in 2021. Forbes magazine did a report and they said that the average American worker worked an extra day in unpaid overtime each week. And they said that one of the most common ways that employers try and avoid paying these wages is off the clock work. So please, let's let's talk about off the clock work. What is it? How do we notice it? What are we looking for?
Yeah. When I saw that statistic, even somebody like myself who specializes in this area of law and handles these cases, my jaw dropped. I mean, can you imagine the reaction if most people realized that they were working an extra day a week and not getting paid for it? It's it's I mean, it's it's really amazing. It was it was incredible study. So when when I think of off the clock work, I got to kind of put two hats on one more of a common sense way. What
does it mean to most people? And then, of course, as a lawyer who specializes in these cases, I get deep into the elements of the case, but at its essence, off the clock work is just what it sounds like. You're performing work in services without getting paid for it. That's the off the clock piece of that of that phrase. You're working off the clock. You're working for free.
So when you have an employer who's asking an employee to when it's not explicit, there's so many times where I'm sure there's employees who are working, where the employer doesn't say, I want you to work, but don't clock in. That's very rare, I imagine. But there's got to be other instances where this would be considered off the clock work, but it might not be so prevalent, I guess, or
it might not be so easy to see. Is there any way to kind of look for something like that or what should we be looking for?
You know, it's a great question. Let me start by saying you'd be surprised how many people are asked to work explicitly off the. Really? Yeah, absolutely. By their employer. And it's not it's not easy to look your boss, your manager or your employer in the eye and say, no, that's illegal. I'm not going to do it. When you're facing rent, like today's rent prices go up and all of the inflation that that's happening, it's a very difficult
kind of trigger to pull. And so you find a lot of middle management or foremen, people who have production quotas hanging over them and looming over them, jam that pressure down on the workforce and tell them, listen, we've got to do a few extra things here today. I want you punched out or before we actually punch in, we're going to get everything set up. I'm getting a lot of heat from above and I need to get my numbers up. So we're going to do a few
extra things here. And if you don't like it, take, you know, get a get a different job and or don't show up.
So before we get into the actual elements of what off the clock work would be, because for anyone who, you know, doesn't have a legal background, there's usually when there's a violation of some kind of code, there are elements that you need to meet, and that's either established by the legislature or usually some kind of case law. So there's certain things where if an element isn't met, then it might not be considered a violation of whatever
you know, we're talking about. But before we get into the elements of what off the clock work is, I do want to ask what if there is an employer who asks an employee to clock out, but says that they'll be compensated elsewhere? Or maybe they'll be looked at in favor with the upper management, or I'll buy you a burger or something like that. Is that still considered off the clock work or does it have to be strictly monetary compensation?
Well, I've never seen in all my years a case where a employer took the position that we actually complied with the law. You got your benefit of the bargain because we got your cheeseburger or, you know, we bought lunch. You know, that's that's never come across my desk before. The law certainly isn't written that way. It all comes back to your hourly wage. Yeah, it is about the money.
And if there's a if there's a agreement to provide an hour of labor for $15 an hour, then once that labor has been provided, that time has been provided, that hour has been incurred, that $15 is owed. If you want to buy me a cheeseburger on top of that, that's great. But you have to pay for the hour once once the work is done, the wages owed.
And that makes sense. I was just thinking, you know, I'm sure there's some kind of employer out there who might have said, Oh, I paid you in other ways when you worked these, you know, X amount of hours. And I, you know, put you up for promotion. So I expect you to do these things off the clock. And and that again, goes back to that power imbalance where, you know, you the employee want something and they're willing to make these kind of sacrifices where the employer can take advantage, right?
Yeah, exactly. I can't tell you how many clients I've represented. And, you know, they've come to me with a particular problem, a particular circumstance. We end up filing a lawsuit over it. But in the course of getting to know the client, getting to know their background, there's been many instances that led up to that. And it's exactly what you just talked about. It's those subtle requests, those innuendoes about promotion and whatnot. It's human nature and people react to that.
And all my clients have to make that decision. Look, am I going to tip over the applecart? Am I going to risk angering, you know, my supervisor when I got a nice gig here, or am I just going to be quiet about it and and see what happens? It's it's it's never an easy choice for people who are living paycheck to paycheck and trying to make ends meet.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So let's talk about the elements of a violation for off the clock work. What are we looking for? And does this vary the state by state or is this kind of a national standard?
So most states have their own wage and hour laws. That's what this is called wage and hour law. But the federal law is pretty much applicable in all states. And any state that has its own statute essentially mirrors it. So for today's purposes, we're going to just talk as if there was there was one set of laws, okay, for off the clock work requires a couple of things. First of all, the activity that we're talking about actually
has to be work. Second of all, your employer needs to know or should have known that the work was being performed. And then thirdly, the job classification needs to be covered by the law itself, by the Fair Labor Standards Act or the state wage and hour laws. And we could chat about each of those three elements. But those are those are those are kind of the general tests that anybody would have to go through in order to establish a claim for off the clock work.
Okay. So let's start off with, is the activity actually work? Can you give an example of some situations where something might be considered work, something might not be considered work, like maybe planning a party for someone's birthday in the office, something like, Can you give a couple of examples?
Yeah. And you just started to exactly zero in on what the law looks at. The law looks at something that's indispensable or intrinsic to the principal activities of the job. I know that's kind of a big definition or some some some large words there, but essentially what it comes down to is, was this activity part of your actual principal job duties? So if if you have a job and you're stocking shelves, planning the birthday party for one of your coworkers, that's not really part of your job.
You're stacking the shelves. If it's unwrapping the shipment in the back room of the materials before you stocked the shelves, you can start to see how that stuff is. Principal activity that is intrinsic. If you can't actually complete the job function without the activity you're talking about, chances are that's actually work.
Interesting. So I imagine there are scenarios where people are asked to do things that are outside the scope of their work and it does that factor in because, okay, so I'm I'm trying to think for people who who don't have that legal background, what kind of questions would be asked here? So your person who's a stock boy who is asked to do something for a birthday party set up for one of the other employees. And I imagine that if you were to talk to that person
and say, you know, did you consider this work? Is this a subjective standard or objective standard when we're talking about what is or isn't considered work?
It's an objective standard. That's that's okay. It has a third party, somebody who is looking at that job title, the job function and how it fits into the business. Would a reasonable person conclude that? Yes, that's and that's an intrinsic that's indispensable. The perform task has to be done. Every day is part of that job. That's that's what tests for work. So, yeah, it's an objective test, not a subjective test.
Okay. And so if it's not something that's actually work, then kind of falls by the wayside pretty quick. Right?
Right. So here's here's kind of a real world example from my personal life. When I was in in college, I worked at a furniture warehouse and we would load up trucks, you know, people who are moving. And one day the owner of the company gave me 20 bucks and said, Go get my car washed. Hmm. So I did. Of course. And, yeah, I came back and wondered whether I should give him his change back. But I did that, too. And, yeah, and I never got docked for that half hour. I
was gone. I never punched out to go do that. You know, he's paying me. He just chose to have me wash his car rather than move furniture. But if I was trying to make a claim for that as being off the clock work, it wouldn't meet the test. You know, wash having the boss's car washed and taking it out and returning it from the car wash had nothing to do with my warehouse and furniture moving assignments. So, you know that that's an example that that just wouldn't
meet the test. But notice how I said my employer did not ask me to punch out. He didn't give me the half hour. I got paid. So no harm, no foul.
Well, I imagine there's a lot of people who are being asked to do things outside the scope of work that are not on their hourly time. BLOCK So if you're what about a in a situation where he asked you to have his car washed after you had just clocked out, that's not considered a part of your normal scope of work. However, you're still being asked to do something that you wouldn't normally do. Could that could be considered some other violation or something like that?
Unfortunately, no, that's not fall, in my opinion, under the definition of work. So, you know, in your scenario, you're dealing with a lot of the same elements we've been talking about here so far. Power imbalance, pressure from above, implicit promises of of reward. But under the law, you know, as we've talked about, that first element of an off the clock work claim is it has to be indispensable or an intrinsic element to the principal activities of the job. And.
Going to get the car wash for the boss really has nothing to do with moving furniture and loading trucks. Of course, it has everything to do with me getting scheduled to work next week. It has everything to do. Keeping a good relationship at the at the warehouse. But it would not a basis for a wage and hour lawsuit.
And from a like, you know, I'm not trying to get too far sidetracked here, but from a liability standpoint, legally speaking, it could mean a lot for that business owner if you were to get into a car accident with his car, like if it's considered a part of like, you know, But anyways, I don't want to get too, too far into something else because I know we want to talk about wage and hour.
Yeah, trusting me to drive your car when I was in college is certainly a whole nother podcast.
And a whole nother host of liability there. Okay, So let's talk about I think the second element was did the employer know or should have known the work was being performed? Is that right?
Exactly. So once we've crossed the first threshold and it's actually work that you're asking, you're being asked to do either early or late or on your day off. Then the next element is, did your employer actually know? So, you know, let's talk about some of those scenarios where the middle management or the foreman or the office manager, you know, with a wink and a nod or explicitly says to you, come on in on Saturday, or come on, stay late tomorrow. We've got a few extra things to do.
That's not the employer we're talking about in this element of the test. Who we're talking about is actually the corporation or the company or the owner of the business. That's the employer that we're talking about. And it is a defense. If they don't know that the work is being performed now, it's not quite as cut and dry as I just made it sound, because there's also the second criteria knew or should have known. So let me give you a great example of the should have known. Okay.
So so let's say, for example, you're a call center worker, and in a call center you have to have a computer. It has to be turned on. You have to have your headset that has to be booted up. There's usually three or four other programs that you have to have loaded on your laptop or your or your computer and opened. Oftentimes, there's an early set of emails from your manager, things that are going on today. You have to read those
and then your shift starts at 7 a.m.. Well, in call centers, it's a very automated, very high tech business environment and those calls are routed to you starting at 7:00, not nine and not seven or one. They start coming in. And if you were working at a call center and your shift started at 7:00, that first call comes in at 7:00 or 701. You have to be ready to take that call. Everything I've just told you, Justin, is
for that industry. Anybody running a call center over the last ten years would tell you, Yeah, that's exactly how it works now. How in the world are you supposed to be ready to take a call if you arrive at your desk and sit down at 659 when you've got five, seven, nine, maybe even 12 minutes of elementary work, preliminary activity that needs to be done so that at 7:00 you can take that first call. The answer is it's impossible.
Yeah. There's a lot of prep, it sounds like.
Where the employer should have known that their workers at a 7:00 shift had to be paid an additional amount of time to set up their computers, get their headsets working, open up the apps and read any, you know, early emails from from the department head.
Yeah. So it's the two elements of that the know or should have known. I mean no is just pretty straightforward. It's explicit. It's just knowledge that this person is working and they're not clocked in and the should've known definitely makes sense to because if you have these requirements for all this the setup, you can't claim that they have to start right at seven and not pay them for
that prep that they were doing before seven. So you should have known that since you made these requirements for them to that they needed to take this extra time and therefore should be paid for that, correct?
That's exactly right.
So that all makes sense to and that the with regards to the know or should have known. I did want to ask, though, because you mentioned that lower level management, mid management might not be able to we might not be able to hold accountable the actual corporation, the owner, because they didn't know what was going on and we can't really hold them legally liable. Is that correct?
Well, you know, like we talked about it, it depends on what the activity is. And that's why these elements all kind of dovetailed together. And they fit very nicely. Because if if the activity is an indispensable and important part of the of the job duty. Well, then the employer should know what needs to be done. The call center example we just gave is a perfect example. Here's
another one working in a restaurant. How many times does a waiter or a waitress or a hostess come in early to fold napkins, set the table, put the flowers in the base, make sure the silverware spotless, the wineglasses spotless. That's done all the time by restaurant workers again. I have personal experience that you may have experience with that. So the owner of the restaurant can't say, My gosh, I didn't know that was happening. I feel awful, but
I'm sorry. I just didn't know that was happening. Well, that's not fair. It's not reasonable. It's not going to that's not going to hold water when you open your restaurant at noon for lunch. Guess what? That table didn't set itself magically. You know, your manager was having the waitstaff and the hostess come in 10 minutes, early 15 minutes early to fold the napkins and do all that work. So the elements really are dovetailing together as we move
through this conversation. On the other hand, if we go back to the carwash example and my manager had to go wash the car at 1130 and then be ready to go at noon. Well, the employer could say, I'm sorry, I feel bad about that, too. But I had no idea that the manager was asking the waitstaff to wash and wax this car.
Yeah. So is there is there recourse where say you have a. I do have experience as a manager of a restaurant and an employee of a restaurant for many years before I went to law school. And I'm thinking of maybe someone who was considered a key holder, which is not a full time manager, but someone who just helps out as a manager and say they knew that someone was working or doing things off the clock. Are we is the employers still going to be held liable
in that situation? And it sounds like maybe not.
Well, I don't want to get too far. Stray from from, you know, the laws that we're talking about here. But there are other claims that lawyers such as myself and at my firm bring that would be designed to scoop that stuff up. Breach of contract, unjust enrichment. Those are other claims under the law. That would probably be a better fit and would be less susceptible to a defense by the employer lawyer under the technical requirements of wage and hour laws.
Yeah. So it's still it's still some kind of violation or still some kind of there is recourse or compensation available, but it might not necessarily fit perfectly in the box for the wage and hour law. So if you're listening to something like this and you feel like you're your claim, you have some kind of claim to and you think, well, I you know, it might not be explicit or it
might not hit this particular element. Well, there's obviously a lot of different things that an attorney such as Jason would be able to help you with in figuring out where there is compensation for a claim that you might have, whether it be through wage and hour or some other kind of unknown thing. Like a lot of people don't know what unjust enrichment is. And, you know, I guess I can try and give like a pretty generic explanation.
And Jason, feel free to chime in. So I would say unjust enrichment is where someone is getting a benefit from something you're doing without either like a contract or, you know, and it doesn't necessarily have to be monetary, in my knowledge. Unjust enrichment is just someone who's getting a benefit from something that you did that probably was not intended to be so. Would you agree with something like that?
Right. I think that's a that's a wonderful definition. And the unfair thread is is, you know, woven through that as well. And so in our little example, yeah, you know, wash again, it's it's really unfair to quote unquote ask the hostess or the waiter to go wash the car. Even given the situation, the only reason they're saying yes is because they they know you are their manager and
they need the job. And there's an implicit, you know, threat that if you're not going to help me out with my personal life, I'm going to make yours miserable. So that's the other thread of it on, you know, the thread, I should say, of an unjust enrichment claim. And so something like that would certainly be be something we would look at for our client who had that situation going on.
I do want to ask you, I want to go over that last element in just one second. But I do after this, I want to talk about like compensation. How is compensation calculated? And, you know, is there double damages for really wrongful acts by the employer? But let's talk about what workers are actually covered by these wage laws,
are they? I know you mentioned this in the top of or the beginning of the show, but there's got to be some people who are excluded, unfortunately, from, you know, unfair practices like off the clock, you know, violations.
Right. So like every law, there's exceptions. So if you think about it, why else would you penalize really an employer for having work force work over 40 hours a week? Right. Over 40 hours a week means you get time and a half in America. Well, that's the law we're talking about. And so what Congress wanted to do was say, stop overworking one person and instead hire the second person. We're in a depression. Unemployment's through the roof. This country needs workers.
Everybody needs a job. It has tremendous benefits. It creates tax dollars, stable communities, etc., etc.. So, you know, what the law was designed to do was to get people back to work. And the way it chose to do it was set a number at 40. And so if you are working in a in a hourly position. And you're working more than 40 hours a week. The law kicks in for overtime if that same job is is at issue and you're and you're not being paid minimum wage,
then that also is protected by the statute. Primarily, what our lawsuits are for for overtime and it's for hourly workers. Now, having said that, there are literally hundreds of exemptions and there's sometimes common sense to them. One of the early ones I found somewhat intriguing was the carnival worker exemption. So carnival workers are clearly hourly workers and they travel all over the country and they go from county to county fair, City fair. And for whatever reason, their lobbyists
were successful in getting an exemption from them. And, you know, the argument is woe is me. We couldn't stay in business if we had to pay for all this downtime. Mm hmm. I don't know. Maybe it makes sense. You know, I would imagine there is a lot of downtime. But. But be that as it may, that's. That's an exemption. Flight attendants, similar situation. So there's a lot of different jobs and and even hourly jobs that frankly, are not
covered by the wage and hour law. And you would just have to talk to a specialist such as myself to find out if your particular job title and position was exempt or not. The other big exemption and I shouldn't say exemption because exemption really is for hourly workers, but but it's the phrase we use is high compensated individuals like executives, people who are actually running the business
or people who are working in a administrative capacity. Getting back to my example, at the furniture warehouse, there was a whole front office that handled the invoicing and the paperwork. They had nothing to do with the furniture. They didn't move furniture, they didn't run trucks. They didn't do anything that was part of that core business. But of course, you had to have them. That's an administrative exemption. So we could go on and maybe someday we'll do another
podcast about all the exemptions. I'm not sure it's all that terribly interesting. But, you know, back to your your real question. If you just think about it in terms of hourly workers and not not in a supervisory capacity or not as an executive, you pretty much have the working definition of who's covered in anybody who's in that type of a position that is being asked to work off the clock should seriously consider coming forward and taking action.
You know, part of part of what our firm specializes in is group cases. So, you know, that's that's a whole other podcast. We probably will we will want to talk about as to how those group cases or class actions get put together. And that's where you can really, really have some fun, because businesses at that point have a lot of money at stake. It's an entire classification
of workers or a whole state of workers. And as we all know, the way the world works, you know, the more at stake, the more attention you're going to get, the bigger club you kind of wield to solve these problems.
Yeah, it's very interesting, too, because there's so many nuances to this field of law. And, you know, as I mentioned, the beginning of the show, I'm an estate planning attorney. I focus on estate planning. And I, I was looking at some of the material when it comes to off the clock work. And I was like, this is fascinating because I'm sure there's an exemption to an exemption to an exemption. And you can get so far into the
weeds for certain things. And I guess like so you're saying that general hourly employees, non executives, non, you know, managerial were the ones who are who this law really applies to. What about salaried employees that would be exempt from this as well.
Right. So there's there's you know I don't know about you but I was kind of always brought up to believe that if you were on salary, you didn't get overtime if you were hourly and did get overtime. It's a little bit more complicated than that because there's a there's a job duties test. And you have to you have to get into some of the weeds in terms
of the job duties. Mm hmm. But basically, you know, for for for most instances, hourly workers are who are or always kind of the target for this for this law and the coverage of its benefits.
And that makes sense. And so you talked about this is obviously something you need to speak to a specialist about. And these are common at your firm at some resorts, or is it, you know, 20% of what you do pretty, pretty often?
No, the department that I co-chair and manage works exclusively on these cases. We file about 50 to 60 cases a year. Our cases are in almost every state. We still chuckle about wanting to get Hawaii and fight for that assignment. But. But we're all over the country. It is a specialization. As I said, there's there's a lot of areas within the law and you've alluded to some of the specialization, but what we do are handle the class actions and that that is a whole nother level
of specialization. There's a whole other test and a set of questions that the lawyer has to, you know, be successful in. In addition to the things you and I have talked about here today. In order for a case to be certified as either a class action or a collective action. And so we have. About 2 to 3 administrative staff or what you call paralegal positions that are working on these cases. There are four senior partners such as myself, who specialize in these cases and would and
would handle the primary court hearings and any trials. And then we have three or four associate attorneys, younger attorneys that are assisting us with both all aspects of the of the case and the preparation. And then lastly, but certainly not least, is our intake specialists. So we have anywhere varies from year to year, but 3 to 5000 leads, calls, client while they come in a year with potential cases. And that's a full time position for our intake specialist.
Absolutely manages the software for that and and is is a pretty darn good resource in terms of the law and what type of cases there are. And she can decide right away whether or not that needs to be escalated to one of the attorneys or whether it's the what we call a turn back. It just doesn't fit the law.
Yeah, I think that a lot of people don't really think about that aspect. I do get a lot of calls at my firm for other things other than estate planning. And it's it's really a challenge sometimes to train people to know what is the appropriate response, whether it's something that we can help them with or not. And that
requires a lot of hands on training. And with with this field of law, I imagine this intake specialist, you know, whether or not she has a legal background, I guess, you know, it would be it would be helpful if she did. But if she just knows what you're looking for, if you have those kind of details, that would be so helpful because as an attorney, we don't want to take on something or waste time, the client's time, our time.
We want to make sure we're being efficient. And and I imagine that it's really difficult to find if you're getting that many inquiries every year. You really need to have someone who's going to be able to weed out the ones that just don't apply or something that you can't help with.
Yeah, it it's a daunting task. She'll tell you. I mean, it's it's it's a very, very broad set of questions and fact patterns, and she does a lot more than just filter the cases to. I mean, people ask questions on on hot button issues, you know, Can I get fired? Yes. Yeah. What? You know, what's going to happen to me if we don't win? Will I get blackballed in my industry over
this lawsuit even if we do win? You know, I'm looking forward to getting back together with you and talking about these and other podcasts, because there's just a lot of a lot of other topics. You know, how do I pay you? Well, you know, you don't that's one of the features of of the law and of the of the, you know, the plaintiff's lawyer. We only get
paid if we win. The client never pays us. It's a portion of their wages, you know, a portion of the settlement that that we would apply for as our fee. And here's a wonderful part about the law. There is an attorney fee shifting provision in the statute. So what does that mean? That means the defendant, the employer, if they lose, they've got to pay your legal fees. Oh, so, you know, it's a it's a fantastic statute. Our intake specialist understands all the key points, and she will field
questions from from a wide array of perspectives. Some of the stuff we talked about and a whole lot more.
I would I would love to hear her process because I'm pretty fascinated by that. And in just this field of law in general, I kind of touched on this a second ago and maybe this will kind of I'll weave two questions together. What kind of damages. I know you mentioned, obviously compensation. And then, you know, the attorneys get paid through that. But are there situations where you'll have double or treble damages for a particularly egregious act? Do you have any kind of story that we can
that you can tell? Redacted information, of course, to make sure it's kept private. But I'm sure a lot of people would like to hear some kind of interesting story where someone was really hit hard and you had a nice success story for your for your clients.
Well, there's so many. And, you know, I hate to sound cliche, but I've been practicing law for over 30 years, you know, and I've been in this for the last 17 or 18 years. And, you know, with 3000 leads coming in a year, the the number of cases starting to mount. So I'll say I'll tell you a couple
of things. The statute, the wage and hour law we've been talking about today, the Fair Labor Standards Act or the FLSA, not only awards you attorney fees if you win, but in addition, if there's a lack of good faith by the defendant, you know, by the employer, then the wages are liquidated, which is just a fancy word for doubling. So, you know, if you're earning 13, 14 bucks an hour and you've been having to work, you know, even 5 minutes off the clock, you know, every minute is compensable.
Every minute you work is compensable in this world. And it adds up tremendously quickly. If you if you have 5 minutes of off the clock, work a day and you're working overtime 60 days a week and you know, you get up to four weeks of vacation or two weeks of vacation, it doesn't take long before you start talking about thousands of dollars. Mm hmm. And the law was designed, again, to really force employers to comply. It's a very labor protective statute. In most instances, the employee
wins the benefit of the doubt. The old baseball analogy, the tie goes to the runner, if you will. You know, the worker is the runner in this scenario. And so you get your attorney fees paid for and you get double the damages. So it does have some fantastic protections. The reason I don't have a really good story for you in terms of a particular case where, you know, we could say we slayed the dragon or particularly effective in getting these liquidated damages is because it's a fairly
easy task. You know, Yeah, the good faith violation or lack of good faith. And I don't know. I didn't know Gee was confusing. Gosh, my lawyer got it wrong. None of that works. And so basically, in every case and in every settlement, liquidated damages and attorney's fees are on the table. And part of the negotiation, you know, in addition to the base wage that wasn't paid.
So one last question before we wrap up. What percentage would you say of your cases actually go to trial and what are what percentage are just settled before you even get close to trial?
A. A. A review of our case filings. Know we're fairly selective in the cases that we take, but a review of our case filings will show you that less than less than 5% ever go to trial. We're going to do another podcast with you about mediation, because that's really today's substitution for trial. That's that's how most of
these cases get resolved is with a mediation. And a mediation is where both sides have had a year or so to investigate the case, interview witnesses, and maybe have some preliminary legal disputes with the judge once that's over. Rather than spend a whole lot of time getting ready for trial. In today's world, in today's courts across America, mediation has really replaced trial and both sides will agree
upon a third party. It's usually a retired judge or a lawyer who's got a lot of experience and later in their practice decides they want to be a mediator. They are. They are the third party that tries to get the parties to settle their case. They don't have any authority. They certainly are in charge of the case. It's all secretive from the judge, but they're very effective.
They're good communicators. They're they're experts in many aspects of of courtroom and litigation and perhaps even the law that's at issue. And most of our cases, we work up for a year to to that's how long it takes. And they end up in mediation. And our clients are active in that process. Of our clients participate in the mediation and they are they are vitally important to making that final decision as to, okay, is this a good settlement or is this not a good settlement? Is this enough?
You know, yeah, really being honest with us. And a lot of that inside information that only a client can bring to that process.
Yeah, I know. I have so many different questions, but I know we need to wrap up here. We're going to definitely have to do this again because I mediation, compensation, all the things that are involved in this. I'm just super curious as you know, an individual and as an attorney how it all works. So we definitely need to have you back on or do a new another podcast pretty soon. So Jason Thompson from Summer Schwartz, thank you
so much for all the great information. And it was it was really there was a lot of good things to think about.
Thank you, Justin. Happy to be here.
If you have comments, questions and show ideas, visit Somer's PC dot com. Overdue Overtime is produced at the IVC Media Lab in San Diego, California. Your host is Justin Isaac. Jessica Garcia serves as general manager. Elia Ramos is the creative director. Lina Alvarez assists with production in Chad Peace is president and founding partner. So this has been a presentation of Sommers Schwartz on the OLAS Media network.
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