Hey everybody! It's Andy and welcome again to my office in Modesto, California. I'm
an attorney licensed to practice law in California as well as New York. In this
video, I'm going to go over guarantees and specifically I'm going to go over
guarantees that occur when, I guess in, in the context of an attorney-client
relationship. So I'll give you some pretty common scenarios. If a client is
looking to hire an attorney, you know, the attorney might say 'Hey hire me and I
guarantee that you will win your case' or 'I guarantee that I will get this case
dismissed' or 'I guarantee that the judge will do this' or something. From, from the
client's pers, I guess, from the attorney's perspective, the client might
say 'Hey if I hire you, can you guarantee that this case will cost no more than
$5,000?' or 'Can you guarantee that this case will end by June of this year?' or
something. So guarantees about how the course of a litigation case, for instance,
will go. I'm only going to talk about litigation cases here. The same type of
idea can apply to non-litigation cases as well. So, for example, drafting of
documents, let's say, but this video is, strictly speaking, going to be only about
litigation cases. So again, to summarize, the point is, you know, in the course of
hiring an attorney or dealing with an attorney, you know, during a litigation
case, guarantees might be made from both sides. The client might want a guarantee
from the attorney about how the case will go. The attorney might make a
guarantee to the client about how the case will go, you know, usually in, in the
hope that, that will sway the client to hire them versus another attorney, for
example. So hopefully that made sense, like that's the type of guarantee that
I'm talking about. Uh, and the reason I'm making this video - it doesn't make any
sense to me why this happens, I guess - but the reason why I'm making this video is
that these types of guarantees occur a surprising amount of the time. So, for
instance, you know a client might hire an attorney because they believed that the
attorney had, you know, could guarantee that, you know, they would win their case,
for example, or that the judge would dismiss the, you know, dismiss the case or
something. Uh, I don't, I mean, common sense. Let's apply some common sense here for a
moment. If you've never been involved in a court case at all,
you might not know this, I guess, but, you know, you could possibly learn it by
getting multiple opinions. If you watch this video, hopefully you will you know, know
this also: a litigation case is very complicated. There are a lot of variables
involved. So an attorney basically does not control all of those variables. So if
it's something where, you know, you want the judge to dismiss a case, that's up to
the judge to do. Your attorney, no attorney controls what the judge does.
If you want the other side to, you know, to give up, to dismiss their case
themselves, no attorney can, can force the other side to dismiss a case. The basic
idea is no matter what attorney you hire, that attorney cannot force other people
to do things. So they can't force the other party to, you know, to, you know,
dismiss their case, they can't force the judge to rule for the other, er, for them
against the other party and so on. So guarantees in that situation, I think, are
basically pointless to ask for and certainly pointless for an attorney to
make. The attorney just does not control all the variables here. So if you hire an
attorney because they said 'Oh hey, I guarantee that we'll get the DA to, or
the prosecutor, to dismiss this or we'll guarantee that, you know, they will drop
this from a fel, er, from a felony down to a misdemeanor or something, take that
with a grain of salt because there is no way that an attorney can guarantee that
a prosecutor will do this or won't do this or a judge will do this or not do
this. So, yeah so like if there's a guarantee kind of, you know, either asked
for or offered during the course of an attorney-client relationship, be very
wary no matter which side you're on, yeah. So, attorneys, you know, basically if the
client is wanting a guarantee from you, you got to be honest with them and tell,
and tell them 'Hey, you know, I will do my best, I will cite to, you know, the
relevant case law that I think will, you know, apply here that the judge will find
most persuasive, but at the end of the day, it is up to the judge whether or not,
you know, they rule for you or not. It's up to the jury whether or not they
rule for you or not. It is up to the prosecutor whether they dismiss the case
or reduce it from a felony to a misdemeanor. I will do my best, but
ultimately, it is not my choice, or it's not up to me whether any of that stuff
happens. Yeah, so hopefully all that helps. The, the basic idea here is that in the
course of a attorney-client relationship either side might want a guarantee or
seek guarantee or offer a guarantee. Generally speaking a guarantee like
that I don't think really works in a litigation case at all because a
lot of the stuff that those guarantees will be about - guaranteeing that the case
will be dismissed, for example - a lot of that is not up to the attorney in
question. So no matter who you hire, no matter which attorney you hire, for
example, they cannot force the judge to dismiss this, they can't force the
prosecutor to dismiss that, etc. What they can do, you know, just - I guess, maybe this
is what a lot of people get confused on - is if your attorney happens to appear in
this courtroom or deal with this judge or deal with this prosecutor a lot, can
your attorney tell you 'Hey, in my experience, this is what the prosecutor
likes to see. If you do this, there's a chance that he might dismiss it because
I've seen him do it before, for example.' Can your attorney tell you that? Yes, you
know, he can. I've done that before. I think, you know, in my opinion, it's your
attorney's job to tell you 'Hey based on my experience with cases similar to
yours, this judge likes to see this.' That type of knowledge, in my opinion, that's
why you hire your attorney in the first place, for stuff like that, for experience
stuff like that. So hopefully all that helped. Again guarantees I'd just be very,
very wary regardless of whether or not you're an attorney or a client, guarantees in
the context of a litigation case just are really problematic. You have to be
clear what you are agreeing to, what's possible, what's not possible, that's all.
So hopefully all that helps. Go ahead and like, share, comment, subscribe. Yeah
like, share, comment, subscribe and I will see you in the next video. Thanks.