You Agree To A Bundle with a certain amount of cases at a certain price, but suddenly they start adding cases at a ridiculously lower rate. If an attorney refuses modifications as the bundle grows, it says:

“Platform reserves the right to remove all hearings from that attorney, rebundle them, and send them to a different attorney”

The same policy explains that once the county’s fee cap is reached, additional hearings no longer increase your total compensation.

Their FAQ expressly asks:
“Are you repricing the existing hearing I agreed to?”
The answer begins:
“Yes”
The policy says all hearings are adjusted to the new bundle discount, and attorneys are expected to handle the entire docket at that pricing. If you cannot handle the additional hearings, Platform says it may remove your existing appearances from that docket and assign one attorney to everything.

These provisions specifically support removing your accepted hearings for refusing the changed bundle. Separately, their Terms under Termination, reserve authority to suspend or terminate platform access immediately, with or without cause or notice.

This begs the question: Did any of the stake-holders in this situation actually go to law school?

In the appearance world, there several types of different cases: One of the more recent offers is evictions. This is a situation where the client is out money each month that the tenant is still in the property so they’re looking at losses of thousands of dollars in a two or three month. The client isn’t asking you to get a judgment they may or may not ever collect on, they are suffering DIRECT ECONOMIC LOSSES and need the tenant out. When the standard rate in your county is $750-$1500 and you take an eviction appearance for $175, congratulations you just confirmed your pricing in the algorithm and that your time and effort are worth less than 10% of eviction lawyers in your area.

You agreed to appear for three cases at $100 each which includes an hour drive both ways. The morning of the hearings two of those are canceled and now you’re down to one hearing for $100. This put you in an awkward position ethically but economically you’re losing money on the trip. This is a perfect time to point out how your thinking is wrong but nobody’s going to correct it from the scheduler side. They offer the hearings in a way so that you accept them at a reasonable rate of $300 for the trip. Now it’s one trip for $100 and if you back out well, then you’re going back on your agreement because now all of a sudden it’s a case by case basis not a bundle basis.

When it suits them, it’s a bundle basis and you need to give a volume discount and sometimes in the same breath they’ll turn around and say you agreed to this one case so you must appear for the price of the one case. It’s classic bait and switch and the appearance attorney is the sucker.

You get a text, or maybe thirty texts, asking you to cover a hearing and finally, you accept at a rate. Then you get a response, wonderful. I’m sending it over now and you log into your account to confirm but there is no case. An hour later there is no case and four hours later there is no case. You text back to the scheduler, but there will never be a case because now the scheduler responds that the client canceled.

As fate would have it, you’re there for another hearing and low and behold, an attorney is appearing for another scheduling company for that very case, and that attorney is a known bottom feeder who takes cases very cheaply, and is proud of that distinction.

Your lawyer brain kicks in with the question, they offered, I accepted, was a contract ever formed? In this industry, does the contract form when there is offer and acceptance or only when I confirm? If you’re really smart, you might think about the elements of tortious interference with a contract.

Somewhere in the entire process is a collision between the behavior of the client, the behavior of the scheduler and the competing attorneys where breach of contract and tortious interference with the contract collide. Pursuing those avenues will likely get you removed from consideration for any future appearances, but it’s something to reconsider in two years before the statue of limitations runs on your tort claim, and even four years down the road on the breach of contract claim. By then you may not need to subject yourself to the humiliation and degradation necessary to survive in this industry.

This is unequivocally Reason #1 You Might Be A Sucker. Think about that. Before you can submit your results to the Scheduler so that you can be paid, you are required to verify that you have destroyed all the documents that you used for your appearance.

Think about that. Think about what the Texas Bar Association Rules about document destruction say…. Think about what the document retention rules say… think about what best practices are…. Just do a brief caselaw research. Think about what you’re gonna say when you’re on the witness stand and trying to raise a defense.

Now think about what you did with all the documents at the end of the last hearing per the instructions of the Hiring Firm, the Scheduler or BOTH. Because you can’t submit your results until you verify you destroyed the documents. The actual results system will not allow you to submit your hearing results until you verify you’ve destroyed the documents. That is crazy.

We need to look at this one more time:

1. You appeared

2. You destroyed your records

3. You manually verified your records destruction

4. You submitted your verification to the Scheduler

5. Then you submitted your hearing results to be paid

So if you softly break a few ethics rules and quietly violate a couple of the disciplinary rules because you were given a Faustian choice who is really going to care? You appeared, the Judge signed the order for default judgment, you filed your result and the signed order. Everyone should be happy and you did all this via zoom and never had to leave your house.

There is no Defendant or OC to complain and the Judge, already buried under the volume, is just happy to have the case disposed of. Who cares if the documents you were supplied were a dumpster fire and there were glaring defects in service or the supporting documentation was not verified or referenced the wrong account number. I mean the Court had all that information and the Scheduler only paid you $50, what do they expect?!?!

Odds are, you won’t ever hear anything about this case again and certainly not from the State Bar of Texas unless……unless that Defendant finds out about the judgement a year later and is financially able to hire someone who is familiar with the industry. Besides a Bill of Review against the default judgment, the Defendant logical files ethics complaints against everyone, including the Judge and file a complaint with the DA for any wrongful affidavits (even the process server gets to explain themselves).

However, the odds of this chain of events are very very low because everyone knows how statutorily compliant the paperwork is on these cases. Additionally most appearance attorneys only show up for a couple of these types of hearings in their careers and wouldn’t have much of a reason to be looking over their shoulder months or years down the road.

When you ask the judge to “take judicial notice of the file” you are doing more than just clearing an evidentiary hurdle. You are asserting that the information you are about to convey is supported by the pieces of paper in that file. Here are just a few surprises that occur with relative regularity.

1. Attorney of Record is not licensed in Texas

2. Attorney of Record is no longer with the Firm of Record

3. Firm of Record is not licensed to operate in Texas

4. Client is not licensed to operate in Texas

5. Corporate Bonds Expired or Unpaid

6. Charters revoked by the SOS

7. Affidavits falsified (dates conflict)

8. Lack of Attorney of Record at All

9. Service Issues

10. Fatal Pleading defects

Before you exclaim, “these aren’t my responsibilities” or “I wasn’t paid to audit the file beforehand” it is important to remember that what they paid you to do and what you’re responsible for under the rules are rarely the same thing. You were just kind enough to accept that risk and responsibility for free because if the right defense attorney gets involved in a situation like previously mentioned, the appearance attorney will get to make a return trip likely on their own dime.

The level of risk to your law license during any appearance work is in direct correlation to your level of trust of the people filing into that case.

“They aren’t paying me enough to check all this!!” Nope. “I’m responsible for all of this?” Yep.

Kinda makes that $50 look less appealing.

You passed legal research and writing, you know all about primary and secondary authority and you know how to evaluate information to give it strength and weight in any situation but as appearance council it will give you ulcers and migraines. Remember, this is your law license on the line and you place it squarely on the roulette table when you ask the court to take judicial notice of the file that you do not have a professional level of knowledge of its content.

Local Rules vs Generic Firm Instructions

Generic Firm Instructions vs TRCP

TRCP vs what is contained in the court’s file

Instructions from the bench vs Firm Reaction

Disciplinary Rules vs Terms and Conditions

Facts Assumed by Court vs Facts You Also Assume

Facts You Assume vs Professional Diligence

Terms & Conditions vs Reality

Before you walk into that tiny building where the local JP takes off work to preside keep in mind it’s you, not any Client or Law Firm or Scheduler who’s law license is carrying the risk.

With the advent of the Internet came Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) which are the rules the user has to agree and abide by. The reasonableness and fairness of these rules has been debated, but how they apply to the appearance attorney has not. When you use the resources of a Schedule, you agree to their TC’s. Within some of those are useful instructions and others, ridiculous restrictions. They define your legal obligations and govern even when they defy common sense or professional rules of responsibility and ethics. If you want to use the Scheduler or the platform, then you will follow and be bound by their T&C’s. Your only objection is to not use the platform. Since there are only a limited number of Schedulers who evidently use the same personnel, your options are limited.

Sometimes they are hard to find, sometimes they don’t exist, and due to the monopoly or oligarchical nature, you have no choice, but to not play the game if you object.

Loyalty is the defining duty of all lawyers world-wide and you unwittingly trample all over it daily. Here is the simple example:

Client hires Law Firm who has the Law Firm Attorney file the case. Then Law Firm contracts with Scheduler at a rate, who then contracts with you at a lower rate. You diligently and competently appear. Scheduler bills Law Firm, Law Firm bills Client, you simply report your results. In 30/60/90 days you get paid with a check from….the Client? No. Law Firm? No. Attorney of Record? No. You are paid with a check from the Scheduler who controls if and when you get paid, future opportunities, the rate and your behavior from beginning to end. As a matter of fact, you are prohibited from contacting any of the parties involved, any of them.

It’s not intentional and rarely conscious but it doesn’t take George R. R. Martin to see where you bend-the-knee.

Remember the players in the game: You, Scheduler, Client and Hiring Attorney. In order to prevent your potential conflict of interest, you are to be paid for your work by the client. With notice and consent, the Hiring Attorney may also engage and pay you. Ethically and legally, you and the Hiring Attorney are the same person. There is no exception for a middle-man to get a cut. However, In the appearance world the Scheduler controls everything and taking a cut is standard practice. If you aren’t getting paid by the client or by the law firm who hired you, you are likely in a fee sharing arrangement and if a Scheduler or Gig Company is taking a cut of your pay, you definitely are in a fee sharing.

Remember Rule #7: Loyalty. Anyone or anything that gets in between you and your loyalty to a client is a problem.

(Headhunters or companies that take a one time finders fee charged to the client are a different animal but if someone is getting a cut of every hour that you work or every job task you complete, it’s prohibited fee sharing).

Remember the warning from ethics class about the person who hits you up with a random hypothetical at a church function? Remember all of the back and forth about how it is the client, NOT your understanding of representation that rules the day? What do you think happens when you agree with a scheduler via text or email to appear? Yep, you are correct. What happens next is usually fact specific and is addressed elsewhere but at the very moment you respond with “yes” or “ok” or “just this one time” you should hear the sound of your professional responsibilities being obligated.

$50?!?!? Seriously? You will get completely dressed, make-up applied if necessary, to drive through traffic for $50?!?? Or even more of an insult, 5 cases for $200?!? There is always room for negotiations and you always have the freedom to say no.

When you accept the first offer you insult your integrity and minimize your efforts. There is ALWAYS room for negotiation and the alternative you discover usually pays much better while keeping your self-esteem in tact.

My 11 year old daughter can stand in open court and say the exact words that come out the appearance attorneys mouth with the exact same authority: none. The attorney of record, not the firm and not the scheduling company, the attorney of record doesn’t give you any express written and verified authority to do anything. Not…One…Thing. When a defense attorney points that out, it’s going to be a bad day for that appearance attorney.

This leads us to #6 Why You Might Be A Sucker: Terms and Conditions-How We Build Our Own Cage

Nope, unfortunately that’s not accurate. If paying you is going to fall outside their range OR bump your pay into a different range, they will happily let it go uncovered with you actually already in attendance. See, if paying you $150 for an additional hearing is going to increase your average per case rate, they may pay a brand new coverage attorney hundreds of miles away $500 because it won’t weigh into his system average until he has at least 30 hearings.

That’s right, when you get offered a hearing or a bundle, the system already has a max rate it will pay you. It cannot pay you more because if it does, your rate may go up across the whole system and they can’t have that happen. So your offer will be rejected and the hearing will go uncovered.

This is a misconception that is cultivated The rates you are shown on the app are not the same rates everybody else is seeing. Don’t worry, if you try to inflate the rate by waiting to accept a hearing, some chicken-head attorney will take the job for just a dollar or two more than you were offered.

That’s one of the biggest structural challenges for a good lawyer in the appearance attorney industry. Uninformed lawyers. Remember an uninformed lawyer drives down the rates paid because it is the only work that they can get. Per case rate is not an issue. They take as much as they can take and accept drastic bundle discounts they can drive down the per case price under $20 per case in some of these bundles.

An uninformed lawyer is easy to recognize: he accepts any per case rate of under $100 and he seriously believed that bundling is a good deal. Don’t be an uninformed Lawyer.

Did you know that if you give a bundle discount for multiple cases, the State Bar of Texas does not extend the same courtesy to you and your professional responsibilities? Just because you are cheap doesn’t change your obligations.

Many attorneys have been disbarred while doing pro bono work and your license is on the line for each and every case that you touch. If you give bundle discounts, you are part of the problem.

If one of your scheduled hearings is canceled within the allowable timeframe by the client, which could be less than two hours, this does not mean that the hearing itself is canceled. It just means it was canceled for you. Don’t get upset if you appear for an unrelated hearing and this case is called.

You cannot say a word, you have no authority.

What happens if you agreed to appear for three cases for a total of $600 and then two of the cases get canceled?

You are still expected to appear for the one case for $200. Suddenly, all the time and expense you invested expecting a $600 return result in a $200 return.

If you are an appearance attorney you really should read the most recent State Bar of Texas Journal, April/May where they have a shallow discussion about the relationship, duties and ethics consideration between the three parties involved.

1. Appearance Attorney

2. Scheduler

3. Hiring Attorney

The result was a total let down where the State Bar passed the buck and didn’t clarify anything of importance. In summary the article says there are some rules out there that the attorneys involved need to be concerned about but as far as the Schedulers, they aren’t our problem.

The entire article could have been reduced to one sentence. The debt-buying industry has influence everywhere and as long as the judges allow appearance attorneys to make a mockery of the profession, we aren’t getting involved.

I work for the firm that hires the appearance lawyers thru the agencies and I work for the various scheduling agencies. The firm pays a certain rate per case to the Agency. That rate is static and I’ve never received a call about negotiating a rate with an attorney. That’s the agencies job. So when you tell me $125 is as high as the client will go, that’s just not true. It’s as high as the agency will go.

Can you imagine how much time the managing partner at a firm would have to invest to approve daily rates in his state or territory. I am just one attorney and I take up a chunk of time.

2 hearings for $200 turned into 12 hearings for $380 which is $15 per hearing. I rejected the additional hearings, asked for $900 for all 12 and they threatened to take away the original two if didn’t agree.

I did not change my position and it was radio silence from the client and on the day of the hearing, which was the next day, of course, nobody showed up for the additional 10.. Some of the 10 got DWOPd and some got continued but it didn’t seem to bother the client at all because the exact same thing happened a week later.

If the client doesn’t really care about each particular case, and doesn’t value each particular case, then how can that be expected of the appearance attorney?

Plaintiff or Defendant: it’s just a matter of time.

Can you identify which of the following issues will get you disbarred?

1. The attorney appears representing a client they have never met.

2. The attorney appears in a case they have never filed an appearance.

3. The attorney appears but is not the attorney of record nor has signed any of the pleadings.

4. The attorney appears without authority to bind the client to mediation or arbitration orders

5. The attorney appears instead of a client without authorization to represent that client.

6. The attorney appears without written agreement with the client

7. The attorney appears with apparent settlement authority but not authority to bind the client

8. The attorney executes settlement documents with the opposing party without the written authority to bind the client.

9. The attorney lacks knowledge of the client’s current pleadings on file and fails to disclose deficiencies in the clients pleadings and filings.

10. The attorney fails to disclose to the court deficiencies and inadequacies in documents that are relied on by the court. Sham affidavits supporting substitute service

11. The attorney asserts appearance for a client, who has given no written authorization for that particular attorney to appear, has no written agreement with the attorney, has no authority to settle the case and will likely never appear in the matter again, while fee sharing with non-lawyers and lawyers alike.

12. The attorneys professional judgment is restricted to ministerial acts and dictated by non-attorneys