I will call this piece "The Wonderful World of Applicant Attorneys". When I worked as a defense attorney, I almost always had an applicant attorney on the other side of my case. Sometimes, the attorney was a solo practitioner and sometimes the attorney worked in a law firm. I like to call the practice of workers’ compensation a “blue collar” area of law. This is because the single most important participant in the system—the injured worker—is typically a blue collar worker. The people who make everything we eat, wear, drive, build infrastructure, feed us, clean us, and take care of our children or our parents, etc. Yea, that worker. Decidedly so, the attorney who becomes an applicant attorney and represents these workers is a special kind of attorney, in my view. You need to have compassion and be willing to be of service to other people in order to be an effective advocate for injured workers.
Most of the time, I had a pleasant experience dealing with applicant attorneys. Having worked in both Northern California and Southern California over the years, I found myself appearing at Boards in Sacramento, Stockton, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Salinas, and of course San Diego. I would say that the more friendly and reasonable the applicant attorney behaved, the more willing I was to work with him or her to resolve whatever issues we had on the case. The more willing I was to say “yes” to the requests made by them on behalf of their clients, the easier the relationship became. I think it’s human nature. You get more with honey than with vinegar. This is true in life in general and so it prevails in the legal profession. In fact, there were many cases where my real battle was not with the applicant attorney, but with my own client—Claims. Yes, that’s right! I had to do more arm twisting with Claims than I had to do with the applicant attorney. Why? Because my primary interest was to get the case resolved as soon as it was resolvable. The longer a case remains open, the more expensive it typically becomes in the long run. The only good case is a closed or settled case! A wise applicant attorney once said that to me and I will never forgot it.
On the other side of the coin was the applicant attorney who thought it was a good idea to be arrogant, belittling, rude, demanding, and even dishonest(sometimes in writing, but most of the time in person). With this special type of attorney, I made them work for everything. I figure if I was going to be subjected to that type of behavior, I would not go out of my way to work things out with the cumbersome attorney. Again, human nature. These cases usually took longer to resolve and required more appearances at the Board. Not a good strategy in my view.
So, if you are an applicant attorney, my suggestion is that you use honey instead of vinegar whenever possible. You may find that your cases settle quicker, with less overall litigation, and for more money for your client. Of course this works both ways. You should not be a doormat to an abusive or dishonest defense attorney. Keep your calm and remain steadfast in your advocacy for your client. In the end, your client is the one who will benefit from your professionalism.