LD : BETHANY KRISTOVICH : TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] JOHN QUINN: This is John Quinn, and this is Law Disrupted. And today, we are going to be speaking with another attorney here in Los Angeles, Bethany Christovich, who's at the very distinguished and excellent law firm of Munger, Tolles, and Olson. And Bethany has a very interesting practice, probably not all she does, but I gather a significant part of what she does is representing lawyers.

Thanks. Representing other lawyers, probably mostly in malpractice cases, and I've got to think, uh, I have very limited experience representing lawyers, but I've got to think, and I think most people would think, boy, representing lawyers, that's got to be tough. One, you know, in our society, they're not necessarily the most beloved people and professionals, uh, and, and maybe not easy to make likable, and second, I would think they have their own ideas.

And you've got to try to give them advice, which may not be consistent with what their own opinions and instincts are telling them. So, I mean, those are some just facially. Some of the challenges that it seems to me. And so let's begin by asking. What is it about? You know representing lawyers that's different than representing other kinds of clients 

[00:01:21] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Sure, so both of your observations are true.

Uh to an extent I mean They're definitely true whether There are ways you can sort of navigate around that is um an interesting area for discussion Um in terms of how representing lawyers is different Every case it's not just one area of law, right the alleged malpractice because you're right john.

It is often Alleged malpractice Comes up in any different context. So, for example, it could be in the handling of a bankruptcy. It could be in the handling of a trust in a state case. Some of the best legal practice law comes out of the trust in a state context where. Once the client passes away is often when the problems with the work are revealed and so you get really interesting issues of standing and.

Who has standing to see the lawyers. Um, and so one of my favorite things about it is that every case arises in a totally different context. So I get to do this thing that I know, John, you do with being a trial lawyer where you're always learning. You're always. 

[00:02:26] JOHN QUINN: Yeah, and you have to try. You're trying the case within the case.

[00:02:30] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Exactly. You're trying the case, but then the case, right? 

[00:02:32] JOHN QUINN: There's been this underlying engagement, which may have been a litigation. It may even have been a trial. And somebody is saying that your client mishandled that. So, you're kind of trying that underlying case. What happened? Would it even have made a difference if things had gone differently?

Uh, and then did this lawyer exercise the appropriate level of professional care in the, in the practice? 

[00:02:56] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Right. So, so many things in what you just said that are absolutely right. You're trying the case within the case, meaning you don't only have to show that a lawyer fell below the standard of care, but you also have to show that it would have made a difference to an outcome.

And so, in essence, you're asking the jury to hold everything else constant and just tweak the lawyer's conduct to be what the plaintiff says it should have been. That's an incredibly, you know, and in depth dealing with your second point, John, about the standard of care. Lawyers make mistakes just like everyone else does in their job, but to say to a jury lawyers are not held to a standard of perfection is, frankly, a very difficult thing to do because people do want their lawyers to, you know, hit the mark in their representation.

One of the hardest things about practicing law, I think, is that you are making decisions every day with imperfect information. So you make a decision about. What witness to pursue what order to take depositions what documents to ask for and then you get more information So so there's a lot of hindsight bias when it comes to this But yeah in hindsight you do a lot of things differently figuring out how to tell that story From the vantage that the lawyers had at the time Is it's challenging but it's also super fun.

[00:04:10] JOHN QUINN: Yeah, and and lawyers are not, you know, especially litigators I mean, they're not uh bashful people. They don't You Generally have fragile egos or at least if they are fragile, they try to hide that from you, right? And it's it's got to be not easy now You know you get one in you don't practice for as long as i've practiced Uh and not have somebody sometime accuse you of not handling something properly in my experience almost I think the times that that's happened almost 100 percent of the time.

It's like a counterclaim in a collection action It's a standard defense Uh, when you're trying to get paid, but I would think having somebody tell you you, you know, you Failed me here. You made a mistake and it made a big difference your clients must They don't take to that easily. I would think when you first meet them.

They've got to be very defensive Uh, they've got to be, you know, protecting their own egos, their own professional standing, their sense of themselves, which is being challenged by this claim. I mean, that's my speculation. A, is that true? B, how do you deal with it if it is true? 

[00:05:23] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: I would say it is true and it is Even more than it is true with me.

It is true internally, right? Like in other words people may feel comfortable confessing their sins to an outside lawyer who's been brought in They have a much harder time Telling the person down the hall from them who they may have internal you know political things with but I always tell people that you know, it does help that I do this for a living and I I I can tell people, look, here's what I've seen before.

Is that similar to what happened here? In other words, at this point, I haven't seen three or four archetypal stories, right, of the client that you never should have had in the first place, the relationship that soured. You know, there's sort of three or four stories that get told. And if I can offer one to the client of like, look, I've seen this happen before.

Is that kind of what went on here? And get them to talk back to me after I've said, look, this is a normal thing. This does happen from time to time that can be big in getting the ego. I also let clients know that part of the reason that I chose this practice is because it makes me a much more humble lawyer.

I mean, I see what lawyers go through. I see how they're having to navigate the business that, you know, managing teams that. Dealing with other case deadlines and so telling them, look, I, I live this world. I understand it does tend to have a lot. It's funny you mentioned that about the collections case. 1 of the things I oftentimes get asked about prophylactics, like, what can you do to avoid these type cases?

And I always tell them like the number 1 issue is intake, meaning most of these situations are a client that was not worthy of the lawyer from the outset. Like, we saw this huge spike in cases in around 2010, 2011 and it was because a lot of firms were very. Hungry in 2008, 2009. And so they took on all kinds of cases that they shouldn't have taken on.

But the second biggest, um, prophylactic measure is getting a retainer and staying current on your billing and your collections, because it's when you start to go and try to collect six month old bills, that's when, like you said, a lot of the complaints come out. 

[00:07:35] JOHN QUINN: How often does it, does it happen that you have a client that's just.

Not open to the idea that they have some vulnerability that they're they're absolutely convinced. They did the right thing The jury's going to see it's the right thing and they're not open to any suggestion that they face some risk. Does that happen? 

[00:07:53] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: I would say usually um Maybe this is a sign that I have some kind of like bad mark on my door by the time things get to my door People usually understand they have a situation I also often frame it as look, it's not that you did anything wrong, it's that we have all these headwinds against us, John, the ones you started with, they're like, here's how lawyers are perceived.

Here's the standard they're held to. I'm not saying you did anything wrong. Oftentimes, I find that insurers can help with this. Like, look, the goal here isn't right, wrong. The goal is like, let's put this behind us. That said, there are certain times where I've had cases where Plaintiffs wanted more than the law firm sort of net revenue and it was like, look, you're just going to have to win this.

You're not, we're not going to engage in a discussion with you about the kind of sums you're seeking. Usually the plaintiffs can come around, but you sometimes have to get trial ready in these cases. 

[00:08:50] JOHN QUINN: So, I mean, to go back to my original question, how it's different. I mean, what would you say are the, are the main things that distinguish this practice of representing lawyers from representing other kinds of clients?

[00:09:01] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Sure. There's a saying that I always think guides this people hate lawyers, but they like their lawyer and I think that it's different because people all have this expectation of lawyers. They all have an image of a lawyer in a way that they might not a lot of other roles and so being able to understand where they're coming from.

And understand that they're going to think lawyers are just, you're responsible for getting everything right, but shifting the focus a little bit and thinking is, is this the type lawyer who I want representing me and really humanizing your client can really help. 1 of the other ways that this is different than other practices of law is, frankly, the complexity, the case within the case aspect that you noted, this isn't a simple, you know, what color was the light when the cars pass through the intersection?

I mean, you really have to be willing to roll up your sleeves. And get into the details. You have to understand. Okay, if the I had one case where the underlying thing was an insider trading thing I had to really get in the weeds and learn the insider trading thing And so I think that the the complexity of these cases can get high pretty quickly 

[00:10:10] JOHN QUINN: Is there is a lot expert testimony important in these cases?

I would think yes 

[00:10:15] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: It is hugely important and there comes this moment at every point john when I think You Why do we have an expert in the law again? Um, yeah, 

[00:10:23] JOHN QUINN: really? I mean, that's what strikes me as we all know Usually you don't have experts to testify in court about what the law is But you kind of do that in this practice area.

[00:10:32] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: You definitely do in this practice area and I I've always um I go into these in limine hearings when we do have dueling experts in the law and i'm waiting for one day a judge To say to me miss krisovich. I'm the expert in the law So far knock on wood that has not happened I think sometimes how I have reconciled it in my head because usually you don't get experts in law is It's almost like an advisory jury would be.

You're asking the judge for sort of a, like a hot tubbing of experts on this, like, really deep specialized area that the judge may not litigate in that frequently or have that much exposure and so separating out the advocacy of me or the plaintiff's lawyer and having there be, you know, some sort of credentialed expert that the judge can engage with on What is this area?

Well, I, I do see that serving some benefits. I had very technical specialized areas of underlying law that again. I do have to master and get up to speed on, but I can see how it can be helpful to a judge. In addition to those, the damages experts in these cases are crazy because you have to redo the damages from the underlying litigation.

[00:11:45] JOHN QUINN: And that's all, that's all this kind of wild hypothetical speculative exercise. Right. If your client hadn't done X or had done Y. The result would have been Z. 

[00:11:56] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: And how do you do that? Especially I had one involving a jury trial in Texas and how do we know what a jury would have done if X argument had been made?

And so you're, you're really asking that first jury to put themselves back in that situation and, and, I'm asking the second jury to put themselves in the situation of the first jury. And how do they do that without full on expert testimony? 

[00:12:17] JOHN QUINN: So why doesn't this just all fall under the heading, these are speculative damages.

We can't entertain that. 

[00:12:24] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: We, that is an in limine, I would say in probably 7 cases, their damages are speculative or at least some huge portion of them. Because you're, right, you're asking new jurors to put themselves in the shoes of old jurors, uh, and then even when you don't have a jury verdict, it's, okay, what would the settlement offer have been?

What would the government have done with respect to its fines or penalties if X, Y, or Z argument had been made? That's why, look, I know that lawyers tend to be hesitant to try these cases. But I have done several mock jury exercises where jurors will engage on that and they will start to engage on the causation If you can normalize the conduct enough to make it where they're not mad They will engage on some of the damages type issues 

[00:13:10] JOHN QUINN: Well, you've talked to a lot of people a lot of mock jurors And a lot of jurors in jury selection process About lawyers and having a lawyer as a client and a lawyer having allegedly made a mistake.

What is your sense? You From that experience now about the degree to which jurors are prejudiced against lawyers, quick to assume their, they made mistakes or open minded about listening to that a lawyer, after all, as you said, if you go do a good job of humanizing them, is this another human being and things happen or what's your sense of what people think about lawyers?

[00:13:45] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Ultimately, it's a popularity contest. They come in predisposed against certain lawyers, and this is the most self thing. You can't turn on your former client, right? You can't say, actually, they were just like a jackass and they never gave us any of the right information. I mean, you can't, you can't, it has to be very subtle.

You have to just sort of. Let the person show themselves at deposition or in videos. You have to be incredibly nice. 

[00:14:12] JOHN QUINN: Wait a second. If part of your defense would be the client didn't tell me about ABC, surely you can do that. 

[00:14:20] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: You know, if it's, they didn't tell me, absolutely. If it's they made poor decisions all the time and they Disregarded my advice and they had a sort of crummy business model from the beginning and this was a risk that I told them about You have to distinguish between facts and whining is what I want to say Like you can't just whine about your former clients and say like well, they weren't very responsive and they Yeah, you know that they made bad decisions and they sort of engaged not you have to be very concrete with Things like I specifically told them not to do this and they did it anyway, which is fine And you always have to be respectful like that's their choice But I to the extent they think I didn't advise them of this I did and here's how I went about advising them They elected to make a different choice.

That's of course Their preference you you have to be very respectful and matter of fact about prior clients because if you One of the things I found is if you go on the if you blame too much or if you whine about them People will say well, then why didn't you do something too? Yeah, it sort of comes back to you.

But if you can if you can make it a Respectful matter of fact point and if you can point out this is getting back to answering your question if you can make the the client Look a little shady And you look like you were always trying to like Give them upfront advice that just for whatever reason they wouldn't take they'll wind up taking their Previous positions about lawyers and like shifting them to your former client 

[00:15:55] JOHN QUINN: But the privilege is out the window in this context the privilege in the underlying case 

[00:15:59] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: The privilege in the underlying case is out the window, which is one of the other things that I always tell lawyers be very careful um what you say about your clients in Internal emails because I some of Look, I grew up doing tobacco work.

The worst documents I have ever seen have been in law firm work because Lawyers think that all of their communications are privileged and so they grouse about each other In internal emails and you want to know what looks really bad in a malpractice case is two lawyers from the same firm Complaining about each other and the quality of their work.

All 

[00:16:32] JOHN QUINN: right. All right well, I understand that the privileged communications between The client, the client's lawyer in a malpractice case, that's all fair game. The lawyer can use that. But are you saying that if two lawyers in the law firm that's representing the plaintiff, talk at all about the client.

That the client's entitled to get that in the malpractice case. 

[00:16:54] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: I mean, again, it depends on the scope of the RFP, you know, cause you're not just limited to client file and discovery. You get the scope. So John, let's say that a client made noise to you about saying like, John, why did you make this decision?

Nobody would ever do it to you. Let me give you a different hypothetical. Said, why did you make this decision? And let's say you asked two younger lawyers to, Hey, can y'all pull for me the timeline of like what we were doing here? And let's say one of them was just. Grumpy and started saying, why is he making us pull this?

We all know it's his fault because blah, blah, blah. That's discovery. 

[00:17:29] JOHN QUINN: Okay. Well, your firm, I'm sure like our firm has a partner who's designated as the general counsel and we kind of operate on the assumption. I hope you're going to tell me it's a fair that it holds up is that we can have communications with our general counsel for us to get advice about handling matters and that that privilege stands.

[00:17:49] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Absolutely. And that would stand. And so in my example, let's say there is a team of four lawyers working on a case, and two of them are complaining internally about one of the other ones saying like, God, did you see his argument? He was no good. Whatever. That's not seeking advice from your general counsel, right?

But if the firm's general counsel is on it, and you say, hey, Okay. Lawyer, you know, client raised this issue. They're unhappy. We're putting together a response. Absolutely include the general counsel on that. And that is privilege. But if it's just 2 lawyers complain, which hasn't complained about a colleague in their career, but the notion that, like, all of that could be subject to discovery and malpractice action is, um, I think bracing for a lot of lawyers.

[00:18:33] JOHN QUINN: Well, what advice can you give to lawyers, uh, about protecting themselves, uh, use the word prophylactic, uh, one thing I think you've told us is be very careful about bringing collection actions and getting retainers and make sure you're not in a position where you, you have to bring a collection action.

The 2nd is be careful what you say to each other. Are there any other things that you've learned from this practice? 

[00:18:58] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Yeah, so one of the things, and this gets back, John, to how you started, which is, um, that lawyers may bring their own ideas to things and could be, um, seen as difficult clients. One of the things that I've learned, and I do this now, not only in representing lawyers, but in all of my cases, is I try to have, Clients be a part of the decision making process.

And by that I mean, hey, they asked us for an extension until Friday, inclined to give it to them, we'll do so unless you say otherwise. It's a 20 second email to write. But it keeps them in the loop. Of course, you're not going to get a malpractice extension about granting a discovery extension. But the point is, like, the more you bring clients into the loop with respect to decisions, I think the less likely you are to see second guessing of decisions later.

Even ones that on their face are just great decisions. And so I try to make it a point to Anything of development that happens in a case, I just let the clients know, but I asked their permission. I asked their input on arguments. A lot of times they think, no, that looks good. But even if they don't, I think it is a helpful, um, exercise to go through to keep them in the loop.

A lot of times I'm doing these things and I say, and I'll do panels with insurance lawyers and they'll say, memorialize your advice to your clients in writing, especially when they disagree with you. At our level of practice, clients don't necessarily want like, I advised you that you should produce these documents.

[00:20:28] JOHN QUINN: Yeah, this, this is just to confirm that we had a conversation and I told you the following. 

[00:20:33] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Right, it's like a relationship killer.

[00:20:35] JOHN QUINN: It kind of, yeah, it kind of suggests I don't trust, there's no trust here. 

[00:20:38] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: There's no trust here and that it's a total relationship killer and like you can't practice law at our level assuming that like every case is going to go south or go sideways.

It's just too destructive to the relationships. And so one of the things that I suggest lawyers to do, um, but by the same token, you don't want everything to have been done on conference calls with no contemporaneous record, including because sometimes it's hard to go back and figure out what the hell happened here.

So, 1 of the things that I suggest doing is just sending a brief agenda before calls. It can just be bullet point outline. But that way, if you're going to cover, you know, scope of our responses, or what documents are we producing, um, or discuss in our choice. A jury is then going to believe you later when you say look we talked about it on the phone call and then after that phone call I didn't produce the documents or I didn't provide this discovery response.

In other words, if you can create little like breadcrumbs along the way, which is again part of bringing the clients into the decision making. So I think agendas Notes of calls, things like that can be way better than like, CYA minutes. Don't make the only time you memorialize legal advice when they disagree with it, right?

Like, that's just a bad fact, but make it just part of your pattern and practice to keep them in the loop. And then when problems do emerge, this is to your other point about lawyers tend to be a very ego driven and type A bunch. Um, there's a tendency to either confess. And say we're sorry or deny that anything went wrong and immediate neither of those is the best instinct like at that point Get your firm counsel involved Don't say things that aren't 100 right because like in any other case if if you start just talking and saying well You told me to do this and blah blah blah blah blah And then it turns out that that's a little bit inconsistent with the defense at trial.

Yeah, it's a total disaster 

[00:22:30] JOHN QUINN: Right when you're representing a lawyer or a law firm I guess sometimes your clients are individual lawyers and sometimes they're the law firm itself and sometimes both Does when it's a large firm or firm like yours or firm like ours to what degree is the law firm itself?

Uh as opposed to the individual lawyer a player In the trial and how things play out. I mean, 1 of the reasons I ask is, I'm sure, uh, plaintiffs bring a claim came against your firm, our firm that go to the website. Our websites. Not bashful In our world, uh in this day and age we Try to say nice things about ourselves and what we can do for clients.

I assume all that gets quoted back in courtrooms 

[00:23:16] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: It all gets quoted back. Let me say it this way. I've never had a case where I don't accept the heightened standard of care of an expert, right? I mean, because it's, um, it all gets quoted back. I don't want to run from that at the rates that a lot of big firms charge.

I would say typically it is the firm that is at least the primary defendant. One of the unfortunate things that I've seen happen is, um, individuals jurisdictional purposes, either to create diversity or defeat diversity, and they'll name individual lawyers. Look up. I'm about as aggressive as they come in No holds barred litigation.

I hate it when I see it because it really does have an effect on people's practice long term Um, especially if it's a case that hangs out for a long time and all their partners know about it Their future clients know about it. Um, and it's Look, I love being a lawyer and I think it's just, it's an incredible privilege.

You hate it when you see somebody have, you know, a very storied career and then one relationship went sideways and, you know, it just never picks back up at the same level again. And I hate that. And I also think that. As things have gotten more transactional, you'll sometimes have clients say, what do you care?

You have insurance. And I don't think they quite understand the importance of reputation to lawyers and that, um, being seen as somebody who engaged in malpractice is just not. 

[00:24:43] JOHN QUINN: Or what the lawsuit will do to your premiums and your insurability in the very near future.

[00:24:48] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Exactly. Exactly. The what do you care?

You have insurance. So, okay, you've never practiced. 

[00:24:56] JOHN QUINN: So, at trial when there's, do you typically have. The individual lawyer, uh, at council table and as some kind of representative from the firm. 

[00:25:05] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Yes, and that's sensitive. I think it's important to have someone from the firm there. Um, that said, some firms don't.

You have to also think about how they're going to present. Um, and especially how you're being portrayed. Um, 

[00:25:22] JOHN QUINN: so do you sometimes have this conversation with the law firm? Like, uh, I don't think that person, do you have somebody else? 

[00:25:28] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Yes. Yes. Keep going with the casting. And now really day after the Oscars.

Yes. Sometimes you do think like, do you have someone who presents a little less? Fancy, um, because sometimes what's really attractive to a law firm full of lawyers is, you know External signs of success that do not scream. Um, so

[00:25:49] JOHN QUINN: like the rolex

[00:25:54] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Suspenders, yeah All of the above and again, those things all have their place in meeting rooms, but maybe not at council table But then I do think it's really important to have. Um, the The lawyer or in some cases, it's the lawyers like the team, um, who are practicing on the case there. Um, maybe not, you know, if it's a 2 week trial, maybe not the whole time, but certainly for key parts of it.

I think that's really important that the jury get to know and like them. The 1 thing I will say, though, is sometimes they are, um. Psychologically just messed up by this and sometimes you just think that, hey, if it's going to be worse to have you there because you look like distraught, you know, and again, we do a lot of like.

Witness counseling and, um, we try to be thoughtful about. Image that we're sending, you know, it's funny, but I think you'll appreciate this. One of the things that i've seen I learned this very early in my career if a lawyer at their deposition does not know his or her billing rate That's way worse than having a high billing rate And so just little things like that people think there's an arrogance and they don't understand how law firms work You don't always know your rate in any given matter and there can be discounts

[00:27:07] JOHN QUINN: How often they quote it wrong They quote it 

[00:27:11] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: wrong, you know, there's a, this one had a freeze, that one had a random discount get involved.

And so lawyers might not always know what their quote rate is. And it's funny that sends a jury through the roof more than just about anything else. They think it's just a sign of arrogance. 

[00:27:30] JOHN QUINN: Yeah, I'll bet they always get the question at deposition. Is there anything reflecting back on this whole experience?

Is there anything that you would have done differently? And the temptation has got to be to say, I wish I'd never accepted this client. 

[00:27:43] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Well,

[00:27:45] JOHN QUINN: you can't say that 

[00:27:46] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: you can't say that. But look, absolutely. And we always tell people you don't want to answer that question. Oh, God, let me give you the laundry list.

But you also don't want to answer that question by being like, Nope, I did nothing wrong. And I give myself an A plus. And so figuring out how to say, you know, look, in hindsight, I could have done X, Y, or Z. But again, I think we did a great job here. It's, you know, it's interesting. It's a lot like medical malpractice.

I'm not saying there aren't errors made, but the correlation between errors and poor outcomes, I think, is a very noisy correlation at best. And the ironic thing is that in a lot of these cases, when I look at the results that the clients got, I think, wait, you're suing for malpractice, you know, because they're not all that bad given sort of how things could have been.

[00:28:37] JOHN QUINN: Right. Do you have 

a sense that this is a practice area is growing, that more claims over time are being brought against lawyers and law firms? 

[00:28:47] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Yeah, unfortunately what we see from all the insurance data suggests that these claims are just Increasing and not only are they increasing in numbers, but I think you're seeing more and more like nine figure claims frankly, I remember when I started in 2006 2007 I was handling a 20 million dollar case and I was the first year associate on it um, and that was just gigantic against the law firm and now We see just Cases like that pretty routinely, and usually once a year or more, we'll have one that that is in the nine figures.

Um, those are hard cases for law firms to deal with because law firms don't have the balance sheets that, you know, a fortune 100 company would have. And so, Yeah, if you were to do a risk probability analysis, which again, I understand not everyone likes to do 20 percent chance of losing 100 million case or claim is worth 20 million.

I mean, that's not the right way to think about it, but it's it's a big risk factor for these law firms. 

[00:29:50] JOHN QUINN: Right? Why do you think that this more of these claims are being brought? 

[00:29:54] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: So a couple of things. One, Okay. I think that there are more and more sophisticated things being done in the American economy than before.

In other words, you look at sort of the whole spat deal. You look at the crypto. You look at financing. There are more and more things where. Lawyers are being asked to construct something new, right? Um, look at private equity in healthcare, in now like the HVAC space. I mean, there are just more and more sort of expansions and like just new things are developing.

I think that's great for the American economy. Um, that there, we continue to be, you know, a fount of innovation. I think it's hard for lawyers, right? Because you think you've done something before, but it's a little bit different. And there's more opportunities for mistakes when that happen. Um. Yeah. I think there have been in the last Call it 12 years between the housing crisis and then covid two pretty big shocks to the economy And anytime you have shocks to the economy You are going to have some bad outcomes and anytime you have bad outcomes people can look to lawyers I also think and this is more of a My personal view on something and less of something that I could point to that I think there's a lot more lateral partner movement and You It comes with a lot of expectations.

People want to deliver on certain size books of business and they may not know their partners as well. And so I think that can tend to lead to just a little bit of what I call gripping like you're holding on to clients a little bit longer than you should. Maybe you may be a little less likely to it.

Bring in new people when problems start to develop and problems always get bigger when you try to try to paper over them. But I think the sort of innovation in the economy, the trouble in the economy and just the law firms starting to behave more economically with the movement. Those are all factors that I see.

[00:31:49] JOHN QUINN: How did you get into this line of work originally? 

[00:31:52] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Sure. So when I started at the law firm in, I graduated in 05. Worked until I was six. I went and I was a public defender in new orleans for a couple months because hurricane katrina Had happened when I was clerking and I wanted to be a trial lawyer and a stand up lawyer um And I you know didn't i'm from louisiana.

And so I did that for a couple months. I started the firm I thought okay. I'm just gonna do this to pay my loans. I would never want to be a corporate lawyer forever My very first assignment was a legal malpractice case with Ron Olson and Kevin Allred, who's still at the firm. And I thought, God, did I just get the most boring case ever?

It's legal malpractice. I should have started sooner. All the good assignments have been taken. Um, but I totally loved it and I love my client. He was this, um, old New York general counsel who was managing the case for the law firm. And he was just a riot. And the opposing Lawyer was, um, something to deal with.

I'll put it that way. Um, and I just had so much fun and I liked the case within the case aspect. I like working for lawyers. They're very rational actors. And, um, so it's so fun. And so I think ever since then, I've had a case or 2 on the docket. I had my 2nd case was for a law firm named Cedric, which is, um, Now defunct, not my doing, I swear, um, but, uh, I wrote a demur as a first year lawyer arguing that the statute of limitations barred the claim.

They're such good clients. I wrote the demurra. The demurra was successful. I was not allowed to argue that So I was you know a first year lawyer by the time the case went on up on appeal I was a third year and they let me argue the case at the california court of appeal Which I thought was just an incredibly cool thing to do and not a lot of uh, you know Mid level at that point associates are getting to do it So so i've been doing it ever since and I will say some of my Best friends in the practice have come through other law firms 

[00:33:48] JOHN QUINN: Sounds like you enjoy it and you enjoy it Uh in large part because of the personal relationships that you're able to develop with your clients 

[00:33:56] BETHANY KRISTOVICH: Absolutely.

And look that is not only I will say that this aspect of representing Law firms and the things I like about it has very much spilled over into my other, you know, sort of crisis type cases um, and I think that You For someone who grew up an introvert actually getting to like know other Lawyers and getting to work with them and then getting to know people on the client side It's I never thought that that would be my favorite part of the job, but it is by far 

[00:34:26] JOHN QUINN: Thank you so much for being with us bethany.

This has been very interesting We've been speaking with best bethany kristovich of the munger tolls and olson firm About her kind of unique practice of representing lawyers in malpractice cases. This is john quinn And this has been law disrupted.

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