Looking for a really mean lawyer in Maryland.

June 1, 2011 5:23 PM

My employer is owed a great deal of money by the University of Maryland Medical System, and we are preparing to sue. Can you recommend a really mean lawyer to kick their ass in court?

Obviously I can't go into a lot of detail, but my employer has had a long-standing business relationship with the University of Maryland Medical System. They now appear likely to renege on their contract, and we need an attorney in Maryland who--and this is important--has no prior connection to UMMS. The big firms almost certainly have done business with them before. Can you suggest any names?

posted by anonymous to law & government (5 answers total)

Sure. Drop me a line. I'm a lawyer and I know lots of litigators in DC.
posted by The World Famous at 5:25 PM on June 1, 2011

You can also go to martindale.com and look at the lawyers who have AV ratings.

On another note, any lawyer or firm who has represented UMMS in the past will not be able to take the case due to a conflict of interest.
posted by reenum at 7:26 PM on June 1, 2011

Just to play devil's advocate...is it really such a good idea to post a question like this with the name of the other party and unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety? Contract law is a highly specialized field. Just because you and your employer have one interpretation of UMMS's obligations under the contract doesn't mean it will be agreed with by a court of law.
posted by smithsmith at 8:02 PM on June 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

any lawyer or firm who has represented UMMS in the past will not be able to take the case due to a conflict of interest.

Not necessarily. My firm represents insurance carriers, who sue each other all the damn time. While we can't represent two different carriers in the same suit, the fact that they periodically exchange lawsuits does not prevent us from representing them on other matters.

It would really help to know what "a great deal of money" is. Kirkland and Ellis, for example, is a top-flight corporate litigation firm, but it's going to be hard to attract their interest for a case worth less than $25 million. They've been defending a toxic tort case in Michigan which had a $1 billion verdict overturned last year. They're more into the eight- and nine-figure controversies than the seven or smaller. Same goes for the other, major white-shoe firms like Jones Day, DLA Piper, etc. So if you're talking about a few hundred grand, or even a couple of million, which is admittedly a lot of money to most people, you need to be looking somewhere else, somewhere more local.

There are going to be a bunch of mid-sized corporate litigation firms in the DC area. Martindale is a great place to start. I'd recommend looking for firms with more than fifty lawyers, but less than 200.
posted by valkyryn at 3:15 AM on June 2, 2011

Oh, and don't hire the kind of plaintiff's attorney you see in the phone book. Those guys do mostly bodily injury and property damage litigation, nickel and dime stuff to keep the lights on and the occasional six-figure award to buy that Porsche. But they're basically hacks, most of the time, and are not going to have the resources or chops to take on a defendant like UMMS in a contract dispute.
posted by valkyryn at 3:17 AM on June 2, 2011