Really, We All Have Nothing Better to Do

Most of us here in the Trenches are extremely aware of how much legal services cost.  We really try not to waste our clients' money.  When I go to court and I know there is a possibility I am going to have to wait around before I can appear before a judge, I try very hard not to simply sit there and bill my client for the time spent waiting.  I prepare witnesses,  prepare my argument, and organize my witnesses, so the time for which I am charging my client is productive.  Many times, if I bring work for other clients so I'm billing a client for work actually performed and not my other client for whom I am sitting there doing nothing.  I know clients don't like me to bill them for doing nothing, and frankly, I don't enjoy billing them for it either.  Today, therefore, really annoyed me.  In my jurisdiction, family cases with significant property issues are sent to ADR (alternative dispute resolution).  What that means is that, after all the information concerning the money issues is gathered, the two clients and their attorneys attend mediation with a court-appointed mediator for three hours.  Court-appointed mediators charge $200 per hour.  Assuming each attorney charges $300 per hour and each needs an hour to prepare beforehand, one of these mediation sessions costs the clients $3,000, and that doesn't include the income each of them loses by missing work for those hours.  Today, the other attorney in a case suggested we go to ADR now rather than wait until a little later, when we had all the information.  Then, when we got there and had spent some significant time suggesting options for settlement (the same options, I might add that I had sent a month ago and to which he never responded), it turned out that he was not prepared to have any substantive discussions toward settlement.  That's right, he was not prepared to negotiate al all.  That means our clients flushed $3,000 down the toilet today.  I'm sure they could have used that money to send their children to camp, fix the roof on their house,  for actually anything else at all.  What a waste of time and money.   Luckily, it doesn't happen often; it's a shame it happens at all.  Here in the Trenches.