Banking, Regulations, and Litigation: A Perfect Match

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dave Scriven-Young:

Hello everyone and welcome to Litigation Radio. I’m your host, Dave Scriven Young. I’m a commercial and environmental litigator in the Chicago office of the car, Abramson, which is recognized as the largest law firm serving the construction industry with the 115 lawyers and 11 offices around the us. On this show, we talk to the country’s top litigators and judges to discover best practices in developing our careers, winning cases, getting more clients, and building a sustainable practice. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcasting app to make sure that you’re getting updated with future episodes. This podcast is brought to you by the litigation section of the American Bar Association. It’s where I make my home in the A BA. The litigation section provides litigators of all practice areas, the resources we need to be successful advocates for our clients. Learn more at ambar.org/litigation.

America’s banks play a critical role in the US economy and the banking industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries that touch the lives of every American. My two guests on today’s show will help us take a deep dive into the legal challenges and strategies banks need to navigate today’s complex regulatory environment. In fact, they help write the book on the banking industry as they’re contributing authors and editors of a book called Banking on It, the 10 Most Common Claims Involving Banks, which is being published by the A litigation section. So let me introduce today’s guests. First we have Brett Watson. He’s chair of the retail banking practice at Cozen O’Connor and its Santa Monica, California office. For more than two decades top banks, credit card issuers and financial institutions across the United States have called upon Brett to litigate issues relating to the full spectrum of their retail financial products. Welcome to the show, Brett.

Brett Watson:

Thanks, Dave. Happy to be here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And our second guest is Aaron Krause. He is a business litigator in the Philadelphia office of Cozen O’Connor. With more than 30 years of experience representing corporations and individuals in business disputes, he concentrates his practice in the areas of commercial health, employment, and intellectual property litigation. Aaron, thanks for being on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

Alright, well Brett, let me start with you and give our guests a little bit of a context and tell us about what it means to be a banking lawyer. So tell us about what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Brett Watson:

Sure. So it goes by different terminology. Some folks use the term retail banking, some use operational banking. There’s a few other terms, but it basically just means litigation relating to the day-to-Day, functioning of a bank or a financial institution. The chapters in the book like check claims, wire fraud, debit and credit card claims, lender claims, mortgage, foreclosure, things like that. It would be both on the consumer side and the business banking side. Collectively, basically anything you can envision a bank might get sued over other than Embroker dealer and securities type litigation.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Got it. So tell us a little bit about the different types of banks. I know there’s credit unions, commercial and retail banks, presumably there’s regulations, different regulations governing all of these different types of banks.

Brett Watson:

There are largely, these types of claims are governed by the commercial code, but yes, there’s minor differences depending on if you’re a bank or a credit union. There’s minor differences and if you’re a national bank or a state chartered bank, but they’re all handled in terms of these type of operational claims. They’re largely the same.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Okay, great. And so for those young lawyers and law students who listen to the podcast, Aaron, I wanted to ask you and Brett, but we’ll start with you. How did you get your start in being a banking lawyer and what do you enjoy about it?

Aaron Krauss:

I got my start as a banking lawyer the old fashioned way. I represented a guy in a deposition on something having nothing to do with the bank, and he later became a bank president. And apparently I did well representing him, so he kept calling me. And as all young lawyers and even old lawyers know, when a client calls you answer their call. One of the advantages of being at a big firm, if somebody asks you a question that stumps, you can real quick call up one of your partners like Brett and say, Hey, what’s the answer for those lawyers? And something that we forget, guys like Brett and I and that are in big firms, half of all lawyers out there are practicing in firms of either one or two lawyers. So what do they do? Well, coincidentally, we write these great books and they can take the book down off the shelf and flip through and say, oh yeah, that’s what that stuff is about. And it’s a quick both refresher, primer and orientation to how to get in and not get hurt.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Excellent. And we will talk about the book in one moment. Brett, back to you. How did you get your start in being a banking lawyer?

Brett Watson:

Sure. Well, my start actually dates all the way back to law school. I was part of a summer associate program with the firm here in Los Angeles. As with most summer associate programs, they try to expose you to a bunch of different practice areas. One such practice area was I was getting some work from one of the partners handling defensive claims brought against accounting firms. And while obviously not a bank, it’s in the financial services industry. And I was sort of more drawn to those cases than I was to a lot of the other practice areas when I was that summer associate. And I just sort of never looked back. So after I graduated, I continued down that path and quickly gained an expertise in the area and still doing it today.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And it sounds like being a banking lawyer, it’s a true industry practice. So for example, you may not just be dealing with UCC claims or mortgage foreclosures, but really anything related to a bank or the banking industry, Aaron, because I know that you, for example, you do employment claims relating to the banking industry as well, correct?

Aaron Krauss:

Correct. Banks fundamentally are businesses and yes, they’re regulated businesses, which makes some things different, but they can have any and every problem that any business out there has, ranging from landlord tenant to the government, wants to take half their parking lot to widen the street to slip and falls in the lobby to employment claims, to commercial breach of contract cases. Yes, they have check cases, which other businesses generally don’t, but it runs the gamut, which is one of the nice things about it. You can do all sorts of things.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And Aaron, you did mention the book banking on it, the 10 most common claims involving banks. So tell us more about the book and how did you guys decide on the specific areas of banking litigation to cover?

Aaron Krauss:

Well, we just sat down and started thinking about, all right, what tends to come up a lot? And if we were going to give a younger lawyer a list of, all right, we’re sending you in to go to a board meeting at your local bank or the other way around if you’re a plaintiff’s lawyer and as they say banks are where the money is, so you want to sue banks, great. What are the claims that most frequently come up? And we made a list and cut it down and then started finding friends and associates to write chapters and the book came together really nicely.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Excellent. And Brett, you are the editor of the book, is that correct?

Brett Watson:

That’s correct, yes.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Okay. And so in terms of putting the book together, did you have anything else to add about how you went about selecting authors, selecting topics and that sort of thing?

Brett Watson:

I don’t know that I have anything to add on selecting topics. I mean, what Aaron pretty much covered is in terms of just what are the most common subjects that come up as a banking litigator now for 25 years or so? I can say that there’s not a lot, surprisingly, that’s been written on banking litigation and the ones that are not very thorough, I’m thinking of two right now, one that covers checks and one that covers credit cards. But they’re pretty siloed. They’re well-written books, but they are very narrow in focus. And so this one fills that gap in the sense that it covers many different topics that banks face.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Got it. And Aaron, tell us more about the style of the book because it’s really not a typical treatise, at least that’s the way that I looked at it.

Aaron Krauss:

Correct. And it’s not supposed to be, I mean, this isn’t supposed to be an academic book. It’s supposed to be practical. And again, the thought is if you are a lawyer new to the practice area, either because you’re fresh out of school or you’ve never done a bank claim before, but one walked in the door, you can take down the book, turn to the chapter, and very quickly get oriented as to what I’ll call the usual way that these cases develop. What are the usual claims? What are the usual defenses? What are the usual pitfalls? You have to watch out for the type of thing. If a young lawyer came into my office and said, Hey, so-and-so just put me on this case. What do I do now? What would I tell them? And we just wrote that down and tried to do it in a way that wouldn’t people put people to sleep. You can be the judge of whether we succeeded on that or not.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Love that. So let’s talk specifically about a couple of topics that is specific to the banking industry. One is litigating check claims. I think Brett, you wrote the chapter in the book on those claims specifically. So tell us what that’s all about and if there’s anything kind of new in the area that we need to know about.

Brett Watson:

So check claims, they’re largely governed by Article four of the commercial code. And as supplemented by each bank’s deposit account agreement, you open a checking account, the bank gives you an account agreement. They’re largely similar between banks, but they do have some differences. And a lot of the terms in those agreements can supplement the commercial code statutes and check claims come in all different sorts of shapes and forms while the one-off forged check claim is never going to make its way to litigation. The way that these things will turn to litigation is frequently found in the context of a bookkeeper claim. So for example, you’ve got a business, you hire a bookkeeper. That bookkeeper is now in charge of maintaining finances, maintaining the books, reviewing bank statements. A lot of times those bookkeepers will also have check signing authority, the name of the entity, A, B, C Widgets Inc. So the bookkeeper goes out and generates the paperwork for opening A, B, C, widgets, LLC. They now take checks that are made payable to A, B, C widgets and deposit those checks. And after a few years,

Aaron Krauss:

And by the way, it’s a very diligent bookkeeper, they never take a day off many years working for the company, never took a vacation.

Brett Watson:

Yep, that’s right. That’s right. And then millions of dollars later when they’re caught and largely judgment proof, the entity will look to their bank. And that’s where I come in

Dave Scriven-Young:

And I know people still write checks, but my kids when I have to tell them, and I have a sophomore and now going to be junior in college and a kid coming out of being a senior in high school, they don’t write a lot of checks and presumably check litigation may not. Dave,

Aaron Krauss:

Let me ask, can they even sign their names? Well, I’m not kidding. I don’t think they can sign a check. Now, can

Dave Scriven-Young:

There are kids that some schools are not teaching cursive, and so certainly they can print their names. Cursive may be a challenge, but what’s the next iteration of a check claim, Brett? Is it electronic fund transfers? Is it crypto transactions? What’s kind of the new or newest iteration of a check claim?

Brett Watson:

Yeah, well, they’ll be governed a little bit differently and there are already rules and regulations dealing with your PayPals and your electronic transfers. There’s Zelle, there’s any number of other means of electronic transfers, and those all have separate regulations that are in place. They’re not governed the same way that checks are, but it all boils down to was it authorized or not? Is there apparent authorization and things like that.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And I think one of the things that I think we all worry about using PayPal and other third party vendors is that you may not have that FDIC insurance or certainly not the backing of an institution that may not be able to make you whole if there’s some sort of fraud. Is that something that banks worry about a lot or customers for example?

Brett Watson:

You have to think of it more like a wire transfer in the sense that the transfers are more instantaneous, but there’s obviously safeguards in place. You have to have the person’s phone number or email address. You do typically get some sort of immediate feedback sent to your phone indicating that the transfer has been made. And so if you get a popup on your phone saying you’re a thousand dollars transfer to John Doe has been made and you didn’t transfer a thousand dollars to John Doe, you can pretty quickly call your bank.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And I feel like there’s been a lot of kind of scammers out there trying to scam, especially elderly, but people like me, although I haven’t been scammed yet out of money, people who are claiming, oh yeah, I’m your sister or long lost relative who’s kidnapped or on a far-flung vacation and need money, send it immediately. What are some safeguards that are in place to help people who get scammed like that?

Brett Watson:

Well, I guess it sort of depends on the facts of each situation. And I would say that it largely depends also on how quickly you discover it. So the type of thing that I think you’re envisioning would be governed most likely by the Electronic Funds Transfer Act. And the sooner you’re able to catch it, the better. So I always tell people, because I do get that question a lot as a bank lawyer, friends and relatives will ask me what they can best do to protect themselves from those types of scams. And I always just say, go to the bank’s website, they’ll have a section about alerts and just sign up for everyone that exists. Me personally, I get alerts every single time a check or a transfer is made out of my accounts and sometimes the alerts become burdensome, but I’d rather have that than the opposite.

Aaron Krauss:

One of the other things you can do, which is of course not a banking issue, is with your immediate family have a family password, kind of like you used to have with your young kids when somebody else is going to pick ’em up from school or whatever. And if they don’t know the password, you can just hang up. And Brett’s point is very well taken when they call you and say, oh my God, it’s an emergency transfer this money to blah blah, blah. Or better yet, we’re the security department of your bank. We need to check something. Please give me your password so I can confirm that this was you. Yeah, don’t do that. Hang up the phone, pull out your ATM card or your credit card from the bank and you dial the number on the back because the scammers are very good at spoofing numbers and spoofing voices. Make sure you reach out to something is a correct mode of communication with the people you want to talk to.

Brett Watson:

I’ll echo all of that and then just add a bank will never ask you for your password. A bank will never send you an email referring to you as customer. So if you get an email that says, dear customer, we’ve been alerted to potential fraud on your account, that’s likely not a legitimate email. Don’t click any links in that email. Don’t provide any information. As Aaron said, hang up the phone, call your bank directly, and if there actually was a problem, they’ll route you to the right department.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And Aaron, you wrote the chapter on litigating employment claims. So what’s kind of new in that area of the law? And tell us a little bit about what your

Aaron Krauss:

Chapter, so actually the only really new thing is the Moro case from the Supreme Court. This was brought by a police officer who was transferred from what she considered a really good and a high profile job to a job that she didn’t like. She sued claiming that was discrimination. The lower courts threw it out saying, well, there wasn’t enough change. It wasn’t a significant burden on you. And the Supreme Court said, no, there’s no significant burden requirement in Title vii. Now some people believe it upended every employment case out there. Some people believe it only upended transfer cases, but that remains to be seen. But that’s the latest and greatest fight on employment claims. The other thing I can leave you with about the chapter employment claims against a bank are pretty much the same as employment claims against any other employer, but they’re really three wrinkles.

The first is that banks have video of almost everything. So if anything happened in a bank, the odds are it was on video, which can be good or bad depending on whether your claim is good or bad. But practitioners should know that’s out there. They should also know that banks don’t save that video forever. And the retention time period can be anywhere from a week to a year or more. So if you think you have a claim on either side against a bank, immediately make the document preservation request and have the bank preserve the video. And by the way, when you do that, please ask them specifically in saying preserve any and all video at Bank branch location 1, 2, 3 4 Main Street. That’s not helpful and that’s not going to be acted on as opposed to the afternoon of February four in the drive through. Okay.

That’s something that the bank can work with. Second of all, banks have more policies than any other industry I’ve ever seen. I mean, I swear they have policies on how often you have to change your socks. So that means if it’s an employment claim, there’s probably going to be a policy on it and somebody will claim that either you were fired because you didn’t follow the policy or the reverse, why are you bugging me? Whatever I was doing is not against the policy. So that’s often an area of both discovery and debate. And then the last is something Brett brought up at the beginning, banks are highly regulated. So on the plaintiff side, if there’s a claim against a bank, there’s always a question, do you want to go to the regulators? And there’s pros and cons. Does that put pressure on a bank? Maybe?

Does that really anger a bank and make them dig in? Yes. Does it mean that the plaintiff’s lawyer is going to lose control of this case maybe to regulators? And prosecutors absolutely hate it when they think they’re being used as a pawn in a civil dispute. Absolutely. So that’s something that plaintiff’s lawyers often consider. And my only advice, and again, full disclosure, I’m generally on the defense side in bank cases before you reach out to the regulators, think about it because it’s not at all clear. I mean, in some cases absolutely, but in a lot of cases probably not.

Dave Scriven-Young:

It’s interesting you bring that up because it’s not something that I would’ve thought about, which is bringing in a regulator to help you with an employment case. What are typically the powers of a regulator to, I don’t know, to resolve or to assist in resolving some of these disputes?

Aaron Krauss:

If a regulator gets involved, it would be because the regulator thinks that the bank has done something wrong. And if that’s the case, the bank, I mean, look, banks would prefer not to get on the wrong side of the regulators for obvious reasons. And again, for an employment case, it’s probably unusual that the regulator actually would want to get involved. And really the only likely way is if the employee can claim to be a whistleblower and if they claim they saw the bank doing something wrong, whatever that might be, and they went to the bank and then all of a sudden they got fired. But again, at least in my experience, it’s sort of like the threat of publicity. Plaintiffs always want to threaten bad publicity, the threat might be worth something, but once you actually do it, you lose all your leverage because it’s done.

Dave Scriven-Young:

And that probably goes back or does it go back to 2008, 2009, kind of the recession and subsequent investigations that show that perhaps there should have been some reporting up or reporting up that was ignored by banks. And so therefore regulators are more apt to get involved in those situations.

Aaron Krauss:

They might. I mean, since you bring up oh 8, 0 9, a lot of the problem was driven by what everybody in the industry called liars loans. These were no documentation mortgages. You didn’t have to supply any documentation of your income, your assets, or anything else. Now, when everybody in the industry is referring to this as a liar’s loan, forgive me, it doesn’t take a genius to know that there’s going to be a problem here.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Sure, yeah, no, that makes total sense. Alright, so I think we’re coming to a little bit towards the end of our time together, but I did want to talk about what’s next in the baking industry. What do you see coming forward in terms of regulations or perhaps cases on the horizon? Brett, why don’t we start with you? Anything that you see coming next and what do you see for the future of the banking industry?

Brett Watson:

Well, in terms of current regulations, I think what a lot of people are talking about now, so back in January, the CFPB moved to sort of tighten regulations on large national banks in terms of overdraft and not sufficient funds fees. Most recently in my state of California, the Attorney General Rob Bonta did the same for, excuse

Aaron Krauss:

Me, California, the People’s Republic of California. I have to know in Pennsylvania. Go on. Yes, Brett, I apologize.

Brett Watson:

No worries. So the CFPB moved on behalf of the federal government against large national banks. And then the California Ag Rob Bonta did basically the same for California state chartered banks and credit unions suggesting that certain overdraft and not sufficient funds fees might violate state and federal unfair competition or consumer protection laws. So there’s a lot that’s being discussed and talked about this at the moment. I have a article on Law 360 that is on the topic if people want to read more about it, but it’s basically just being monitored. Now I think the regulators pejoratively look at this in terms of, they call them junk fees. It is difficult because as a bank, as one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, one of the primary things banks are obligated to do is to mitigate and monitor risk. And if you’ve got customers that are frequently overdrawing their account or negotiating checks against insufficient funds, banks are required to supervise that and mitigate risk and there’s losses and risks associated with that. So charging a fee is, in my opinion, absolutely appropriate. So I guess the line’s going to be what is necessary and what do the regulators believe to be excessive. And that will at some point get ironed out,

Aaron Krauss:

And I suspect it’ll be you get two free passes, so to speak. I mean, let me use the analogy, everybody ran and raves that credit card interest rates are ridiculous. Oh my god, 21% or whatever it is on a credit card. The actual research says that for credit cards, they’re actually three completely separate pools of users. The first pool of users are those who pay their balances every month, and they don’t care what the interest rates are because they never pay ’em. The second pool is the people that think they pay their balance every month, but occasionally, like hypothetically in January or whenever they get back from vacation, they might carry a balance for a month or two. Those are the ones for which the fee is probably unfair and too high. But then you have the pool of people that just constantly carry a balance.

So these are people, again, we’re back to liar’s loans, essentially these are people who are taking a zero collateral loan from the bank, but guess what? If you’re borrowing thousands of dollars with zero collateral, there’s a high risk of loss, there’s a high default rate, and yeah, there’s going to be a high interest rate for those people. That rate is probably right. So I think Brett is right, it needs to be ironed out. And some of it, forgive me for stepping into the pundit role, it depends on who wins the election. Everybody believes that the regulatory environment for banks and large businesses will be very different depending on who wins in November.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Interesting. Aaron, is there anything else that we should be watching for in the future on the horizon, if you will, for the banking industry?

Aaron Krauss:

I think that one of the biggest issues in the banking industry is, as they say, bricks and sticks versus e-commerce. And more and more people are going online or into the physical bank branch less and less. And how does the banking industry adapt to that and how does the banking industry adapt to internet only banks? I mean, especially in underserved neighborhoods, there really is a need for what they used to call community banking. The loan officer that actually knows you, knows your situation and can say, look, I understand what this looks like on paper, but I really know this person and they’re actually a good bet for a business loan. People get a little leery when people say things like that because in the past some of that has been used in discriminatory ways, but if done right, it’s a lot better than some faceless AI algorithm. So I don’t know how that’s going to play out, but it’s definitely an issue in the banking industry.

Dave Scriven-Young:

All right. Well, stuff to look forward to in the future. And so we, at the end of our time together, and I’ll be asking for your last thoughts in a moment, but I want all of our listeners to know that for those of you interested in purchasing the book discussed on today’s show, banking on it, the 10 most common claims involving banks, go to ambar.org/banking. That’s our short link. And as always, a a members and section of litigation members can buy the book at a discounted price. So again, you can go to ambar.org/banking to learn more. Brett, let’s start with you. Any kind of last thoughts leave with our listeners today?

Brett Watson:

Just other than Dave, I’m a fan of the podcast and I appreciate you having me on as a guest.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Oh, of course. Thanks for listening. And then Aaron, kind of last thoughts here.

Aaron Krauss:

Absolutely. Thank you very much for listening and by the book, give it to a friend. They make great holiday gifts.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Awesome. Alright, well, Brett Watson, Aaron Krauss, thanks so much for being on the show today. Really do appreciate it.

Aaron Krauss:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Thank you to the section’s law firm’s Pearl sponsor Bradley, Aaron Bolt, Cummings for their support of the litigation section. And now it’s time for our quick tip from the A litigation section. I’m pleased to welcome back Latasha Ellis to the show. Latasha is a litigator in the Washington DC office of Hunt, Andrews Kirth focusing on insurance coverage cases. Welcome back to the show, Latasha.

Speaker 5:

Hi Dave, thanks for having me.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Of course. I understand you’re going to be giving us tips about how to win repeat business. So what’s your quick tip?

Speaker 5:

Yeah, so I recently read what I thought was a really fantastic article in the spring 2024 edition of the litigation Journal, the section of litigation litigation journal, and it is written by Andrew Hans bro, who I believe is at Flow Serve Corporation, and he’s a director of litigation there. But in any event, he wrote this great article based on his experience in private practice and now that he’s in-house on practical tips for litigators to win repeat business, Andrew actually discusses 10 different practical tips. But I just wanted to highlight a couple that I thought really resonated with me. So I really thought that this was a great article just because I think that as litigators, we certainly spend a ton of time trying to hone our craft, but we also spend, at least I know I do countless hours trying to land business, trying to win business.

And I think as hard as that process may be once you have business, the key is actually to keep the client coming back for more so to speak. So that’s why this really resonated for me because presumably our goal is to market our efforts in such a way as not just to win the business, but also to be vigilant about maintaining that business and keeping a repeat customer. So three of the tips that as I said I thought really resonated with me was the first one was learn the client’s expectations upfront and meet them. I think everyone’s clients has certain idiosyncrasies or expectations or preferences, and whether that’s related to substantive expectations in terms of drafting your brief or how you handle a matter or administrative expectations such as billing guidelines, I think it’s super important to learn the client’s expectations upfront and to really, quite frankly, not just meet them but exceed them.

Some clients communicate their expectations upfront, they will provide you with their billing practices and guidelines upfront. Some don’t. I think that the key thing is that when client expectations are not clear at the outset, then really one of the best things that you can do is to simply ask about the client’s general case management preferences. What type of work product do they want or do they prefer? Again, their billing policies and even their communication preferences. Do they want phone calls or do they want emails? I have some clients who only want phone calls, but in any event, learning the client’s expectations upfront and meeting and as I said, I think exceeding them, the second practical tip that Andrew gave was earn the client’s trust. And I thought that was a really great tip to, because certainly being able to have a client who trusts you can lead to repeat business for sure.

I think that clients want to know that they’re working with firms that can handle their matter competently so that they can deal with everything else that they have to do, the actual business that they’re in, so to speak. And so I think earning the client’s trust means meeting deadlines, handling smaller issues without consistently checking in or bothering the client, following through on commitments. For me, I try to send timely copies of filings and pleadings to the client. I confirm when I’ve completed things that they’ve asked me to, if that’s just me sending a quick note to let the client know that I did the thing that we discussed. But I think that taking those small steps ensures that over time the client will trust what you’re doing. And I also think that trust can lead to repeat business. The third and final tip that I wanted to discuss from the article was discuss openly and plan ahead for cost considerations.

I think this is huge because as litigators, clients are always consistently asking for budgets even when you’re just pitching the business. They want to know how much is it going to cost, what is the budget? And having a realistic budget from the outset of a matter is key. Now, I am sure that probably everyone listening to this has presented a budget to a client and then inevitably exceeded that budget, whether there was protracted discovery that wasn’t anticipated or some other issue. And I think that’s fine, but I think that if you are off budget, you have to communicate with the client by acknowledging the prior budget shortcomings, if there were any, explaining what caused that variance and providing a new budget in a timely manner that reflects the current realities. I am currently dealing with this issue because of some unexpected things that happened in one of my cases that is going to exceed the budget that we pitched to the client significantly.

And so I had to have this conversation with the client and I found that the client was very receptive to us flagging it well in advance as opposed to them receiving the invoices after the fact and realizing just how much it was going to be over budget. So the three tips again that I wanted to highlight from Andrew’s article is learn the client’s expectations upfront and meet them, earn the client’s trust and discuss openly and plan ahead for cost considerations. And I think that these are three great tips that will help you learn how to win repeat business. I strongly encourage everyone who’s listening to go on to the a a section of litigation website and download the spring or take a look at the spring 2024 litigation journal. Andrew article is in there and you can see read the other seven practical tips, but there’s also some other great topics too. So those are my tips.

Dave Scriven-Young:

Great. Well thanks so much Latasha. Really appreciate your tips today.

Speaker 5:

Thank you.

Dave Scriven-Young:

That’s all we have for our show today and I’d love to hear your thoughts about today’s episode. If you have comments or a question you’d like for me to answer on an upcoming show, you can contact me at d [email protected] and connect with me on social. I’m at Attorney Dsy on LinkedIn, Instagram X and Facebook. You can also connect with the ABA Litigation Section on those platforms as well. But as much as I’d like to connect with you online, nothing beats meeting in person at one of our next litigation section events. So please make plans to join us at the 2024 Class Actions National Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, taking place October 24th through the 25th. The National Institute is to premier class action conference in the United States and is attended by practitioners on both sides of theBar, esteemed jurors in-house counsel and academics. The world of class actions moves quickly and with several recent court decisions and litigation trends.

This year’s conference promises to be more relevant than ever, whether you litigate and try class action lawsuits, want to learn more about how to best help your clients or keep up to date on current class action decisions and recent Supreme Court decisions. You won’t want to miss this program. To find out more and for registration information, go to ambar.org/class actions. If you like the show, please help spread the word by sharing a link to this episode with a friend or through a post on social and invite others to join the show and community. If you want to leave a review over at Apple Podcasts, it’s incredibly helpful. Even a quick rating at Spotify is super helpful as well. And finally, I want to quickly thank some folks who make the show possible. Thanks Tom. Mighell Obert, who’s on staff with the litigation section. Thanks. Also goes out to the co-chairs of the Litigation Section’s audio contact committee, Haley Maple and Tyler, true thank you to the audio professionals from Legal Talk Network. And last but not least, thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time.

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