By Sean Barrett, Head of Legal Consulting
As law firms continue to resolve cases for their clients in the Monsanto Roundup mass tort litigation, they seek simplicity in managing fee arrangements.
Partners know the factors that make fee arrangements so complex: referral agreements, marketing deals, MDL fees, and settlement counsel providing parameters for these payouts. Mass Tort lawyers also know how hard it is to keep track of these multi-layered fee arrangements. It is not easy to digitize all these details into structured data when dealing with hundreds or thousands of cases that all have slightly different fee situations . Doing so would let them take on and resolve more cases comfortably – and that’s often the motivation behind a law firm who selects BRIO to build a unified software solution managing their mass tort litigation cases.
8 Forgotten Struggles of Managing Complex Fee Arrangements in the Monsanto Mass Tort for Law Firms Using a Unified Software Solution
- Organizing Fee Structures: The Roundup litigation involves numerous plaintiffs with varying circumstances, settlement amounts, and fee arrangements. Structured data can help organize these fee structures in a systematic and easily accessible manner. Each plaintiff’s data can be organized according to their specific fee arrangement.
- Tracking Referral Agreements and Marketing Arrangements: Law firms enter into referral agreements as well as marketing deals with other firms or entities involved in the case as they settle their Roundup cases. Structured data can help track these agreements, ensuring transparency and accuracy in fee calculations across a large docket. By maintaining a clear record of these arrangements, law firms can easily calculate the appropriate distribution of fees among all parties involved.
- Consulting Bulk Data During Settlement Negotiation: For law firm Partners engaging in a docket-wide settlement negotiation of a Mass Tort, a major challenge is just knowing the answer to simple questions about mass numbers of cases. If the information isn’t immediately available, the law firm may scramble to hand review hundreds or thousands of cases just to answer a single hypothetical question—a miserable process that can repeat again and again during a negotiation process or across the life cycle of a litigation. The pain is especially acute in the context of complex fee arrangements. The systems we build for mass tort litigation provide real-time updates on fee calculations, allowing both the primary trial counsel and settlement counsel to see the impact of different settlement offers instantly. This facilitates more informed decision-making during negotiations which is quite relevant in the Roundup cases due to the huge number of victims that need representation.
- Analyzing Impact on Final Settlement Fees: Mass tort litigation often spans years, during which various factors can impact the final settlement fees. Structured data allows law firms to analyze these factors comprehensively, such as changes in case law, the emergence of new evidence, or shifts in the legal landscape. By leveraging structured data analytics, law firms can anticipate potential changes in settlement amounts and adjust fee arrangements. In an earlier article, I wrote that law firms frequently take out loans against projected case values to finance these lengthy legal battles. A unified software solution lets firms borrow an accurate amount of money and predict future financial needs as well as opportunities to repay debts.
- Compliance and Reporting: Mass tort litigation involves strict regulatory requirements and reporting standards. Structured data enables law firms to maintain compliance with these standards by accurately documenting fee arrangements and ensuring transparency in financial transactions.
- Bulk Expense Distribution: Managing expenses across a large number of cases in mass tort litigation can be particularly challenging and time-consuming. Law firms often grapple with manually distributing expenses, risking errors and inefficiencies in financial management. Implementing a unified software solution specifically designed for mass torts can streamline this process, automating expense distribution and ensuring accuracy and efficiency.
- Lien Payouts and Holdbacks: Law firms involved in mass tort litigation face complexities in handling lien payouts and holdbacks, requiring meticulous tracking and compliance with legal obligations. Manual calculations and tracking can be prone to errors and delays, potentially hindering the progress of cases. BRIO mobilizes law firms handling mass torts to automate lien payouts and holdbacks, minimizing errors and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Dealing with Estates and Probate Courts: Disbursing funds to deceased clients and navigating probate courts present significant challenges, particularly when multiple heirs are entitled to varying percentages of the settlement. These scenarios can be time-consuming and prone to errors if managed manually. Implementing a software solution simplifies this process by providing via data and automated calculations tailored to each unique scenario, facilitating smoother, more accurate disbursements while reducing administrative burdens for law firms.
Which of these challenges will you be the most excited to eliminate? A hint: you might not be able to pick just one! And that’s why software is critical for managing mass tort litigation and its deluge of data; there are no shortcuts, and all struggles can be truly forgotten with a single, unified software system. You can count on increased revenue rather instantly and save big on expenses year-over-year.
Write a comment with a few reasons why you’re taking your time with upgrading your firm’s tooling. We will likely find some shared curiosities about making the plunge which we will work through together.