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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone. Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, a podcast dedicated to you made specifically and entirely for you. Especially if you are a law school student, we are here to help you transition from law school student into your professional career, having graduated law school, having passed the bar, getting your ticket, applying for your first job as an attorney, getting that job and starting on your first day.
[00:00:34] Scott Benton: We are here to teach you everything you need to know. about practicing law subject that is not taught in law school. Law school is there to get you to graduate law school.
[00:00:44] Scott Benton: So today we’re going to look at a question of Are pound of flesh cases. worth it. Are pound of flesh case is worth it.
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[00:01:43] Scott Benton: What does that mean? Pound of flesh? What are you talking about? You may have heard this in law school. You may have heard this if you’re a big Shakespeare fan, but essentially pound of flesh comes from the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice. By the way, if you don’t know Shakespeare, Shakespeare is very worth getting into [00:02:00] and learning as many of the plays as you can.
[00:02:02] Scott Benton: Pay attention. Start with Macbeth, start with Hamlet, work your way to Merchant of Venice if you can. There are plenty of movies you can watch of Merchant of Venice if this is applicable to you, if you want to learn more about Shakespeare and this particular play. If you just can’t get into Shakespeare, I always suggest to people that they start with a Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa called Throne of Blood.
[00:02:23] Scott Benton: Throne of Blood is widely considered the best version of Macbeth ever put on film. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles. It is not in iambic pentameter or in verse at all. And it’s the one film that will not only if you watch You’re not going to be able to turn it off, I’m telling you right now. It’s the one film that if you watch it, it’ll bridge you into Shakespeare.
[00:02:43] Scott Benton: You’ll understand that, and if you go and watch Merchant of Venice or any other Shakespeare play, you’re going to understand that world a whole lot better by watching Throne of Blood. So where Merchant of Venice is concerned and where Pound of Flesh cases come in, Merchant of Venice is about a borrower [00:03:00] who borrows money from a lender and puts up collateral as a pound of his own human flesh, of his real flesh off of his body.
[00:03:10] Scott Benton: That is the collateral for the loan that he takes out. And wouldn’t you know it, the borrower defaults on that loan and the lender takes him to court and actually demands the collateral. for that defaulted loan, which is a pound of the borrower’s flesh. And so there’s a big case about whether or not. the lender is entitled to that human pound of flesh and all the suffering and pain that’s going to create.
[00:03:40] Scott Benton: We find out in the play that there was a long history earlier where the borrower had openly insulted the lender out in the square and so by the time the borrower defaults on the loan the lender seeks revenge and does everything that he can to [00:04:00] claim His pound of flesh, he says in the play, I will have my pound of flesh.
[00:04:05] Scott Benton: And that’s where the term comes from. So when it comes to the work that you’re doing, let’s say you’re working in a trust and a probate litigation law firm, such as the one that I work at. If you are working in that type of law, and this doesn’t just apply to that type of law can apply to many other types of law.
[00:04:23] Scott Benton: But let’s, for the sake of argument, say that’s what you’re working. And you might get a client that comes in and they say that they were fraudulently written out of a will. They want you to represent them against the rest of the family in order to have them put back into the will as a beneficiary. And so that they can receive, let’s say 50 percent of the distribution of that estate.
[00:04:45] Scott Benton: So they’re hiring you out with a very specific legal goal to acquire what they say is due to them based on an inheritance that they tell you they were written out of fraudulently, [00:05:00] illegally, that maybe the elderly parent was subject to undue influence by the other . Brothers and sisters, let’s say, and your client is claiming to have been written out of that will.
[00:05:12] Scott Benton: However, later on, you find out that they were written out on purpose because they illegally sold an investment property. I’m completely making this up, by the way. You understand that, right? We understand each other. So the client has illegally sold an investment property that was in the trust, kept the money for themselves, and the family said, that’s okay.
[00:05:33] Scott Benton: We’re not going to prosecute you. We’re a little upset, but instead of doing anything to harm you because we’re your family and we love you, why don’t you keep the money? We’ll just write you out of the will. That agreement is made. Your client was written out of the will. They’ve neglected to tell you this part of the story when they hired you during the initial consultation.
[00:05:54] Scott Benton: So essentially now the legal objective is changed because there’s no [00:06:00] value in the case to this client any longer and you go to the client, you tell them, listen, There’s no value to this case. There’s no reason we should pursue that this any longer and the client says that I want to change my legal objective.
[00:06:15] Scott Benton: I now want to file an elder abuse charge. I want an accounting. I believe that assets have been stolen from the trust by the other beneficiaries and trustees and I want an accounting and I want So basically what they’re doing is they’re inflicting as much pain as they possibly can on their other family members in this fictional example.
[00:06:40] Scott Benton: The case that you thought you were working on, which was about acquiring something that was taken away from your client, has now made a complete 180 degree turnaround. It has turned into a revenge case. This is a classic. Pound of flesh case for whatever reason your client [00:07:00] has decided that they want to go after the other family members and just simply because they can.
[00:07:06] Scott Benton: They can hire you and they can have you Make all kinds of accusations and find and, file different filings and create all kinds of havoc for the opposing side. Now, your client, by the way, may have nothing to gain in this particular situation. In other words, there’s no monetary gain for them.
[00:07:25] Scott Benton: They’re going to end up with nothing. no matter what They just want to create as much pain as possible, and your client might be someone that has a lot of money and can just keep paying for your legal services. So now you’re at this crossroads. Do you want to be hired as an attorney to fight this client’s battle that is basically a revenge case?
[00:07:47] Scott Benton: That is basically all about a pound of flesh, because They’ve been wronged in some way, or they just want to inflict pain on other people. You may not know this, but there are people like that out in the world that just [00:08:00] enjoy creating as many problems as they can for other people. And this might be Someone who fits that particular profile, but we’re trying to answer the question of our pound of flesh cases.
[00:08:11] Scott Benton: Worth it. Is it worth it? Maybe not. Chances are when you have a client who is interested in revenge. And they’re going to go after somebody, whether it’s family members, whoever’s on the other side of that table, in the opposing party, whoever they’re going to go after, when that case is over, there’s a very good possibility that they’re going to turn that revenge target onto you.
[00:08:35] Scott Benton: You’re going to become the target. You, the law firm. And they’re going to come back and demand all of their money be returned. You’re probably going to feel somewhat sick to your stomach for having helped this person create pain on another person or a group of people or whatever it is and now here they are coming back demanding all of their money returned they might go to the bar [00:09:00] association they might create a lot of chaos for you and your firm and that’s going to lead to a lot of sleepless nights for everybody who’s involved as you’re trying to unscramble this situation.
[00:09:12] Scott Benton: That is going to feel as if it’s getting more and more unstable and my advice to you is that you probably want to think twice about putting yourself in that position and that’s what can happen with these revenge slash pound of flesh cases that you once you realize that you’re in one, you’re You want to make sure that you’re going to immediately turn to your senior attorney supervisor and sit down and discuss the dynamics of this case.
[00:09:43] Scott Benton: Some cases, there’s only a portion of that pound of flesh thing going on, so the bigger case could be a legitimate case, but sometimes there is a bit of revenge happening. And so you’re gonna with your senior attorney supervisor, [00:10:00] figure out how to navigate that. But figure out overall, is the case worth it?
[00:10:04] Scott Benton: Generally, you’re going to sit down to determine if each case is worth there’s value to the case. If there’s the percentage of how winnable is it all that statistics, minutiae you’re going to go through in your mind to determine if your ability to work on this case and win is there and if the monetary value of that case is strong enough that it’s worth pursuing for your client.
[00:10:27] Scott Benton: But there are also going to come cases where they have a little bit of revenge in them, probably a little piece of it. Is it something or the entire case is just one big bound of flesh revenge case. And those cases can come back and harm you. So keep that in mind when you’re deciding whether or not to move forward on working on this case or just or get rid of it.
[00:10:51] Scott Benton: Abandon it at that point and just sub out of the case because it’s not one that you feel that you can necessarily win or really want to participate in.
[00:10:58] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s been [00:11:00] helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. If this is valuable information for you, and you’d like to get an alert every time we put out a new episode of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast, go to our website.
[00:11:10] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com That’s classroom2courtroom. com courtroom. com. Put in your contact information and we’ll send out an alert once a new episode has been published and uploaded. And if you do like this material, don’t forget to share, and subscribe. Do all three of those. And and join us for the next episode of the classroom of courtroom podcast.
[00:11:31] Scott Benton: And in the meantime, we also hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place. One client at a time. Thank you so much.
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