It's, frankly, pretty easy for a law firm to pump up their billable hours.
"Document review" is something law firms can dump thousands of manhours into with no real appreciable change in outcome. It ends up being more a question of what a company/individual is willing to pay.
The reason big lawfirms stay in business isn't because they generally get much better results, but rather it's because they have the time and manpower to chase down every single rabbit hole to fully understand the law around the cases they are working. So, instead of a firm giving you a "We are 95% sure the law is this way" with a bigger firm you get "We are 99% sure the law is this way."
The other messed up part of the US legal system is the bigger the law firm, the more time they have to chase down discovery rabbit holes looking for wins and (potentially) legally bankrupting their opponents. "Document A references document B written by Foo? Well, lets have a deposition of Foo and a request for Document B". It ends up looking a lot like refactoring spaghetti code in a dynamically typed language.
The finalizing Depp vs. Herd trial is good example what happens when both sides have stupid amounts of money to burn... 6 weeks in court for civil matter, and it probably would have been even longer. With seemingly hours and hours of depositions, stupid numbers of evidence and transcripts...
you have to wonder how much of that content is actually retained by the jurors. I always make a good faith effort to pay attention when I am selected, but I have a hard time remembering exactly what was said after a mere three days, let alone six weeks. in a criminal case, I suppose that works in favor of the defense (at least ideally). I have no idea what it does in a civil case.
Being on a jury was one of the few times in life when taking notes paid off for me, mostly to correct the memory of other jurors! oddly some judges don’t allow it.
I was allowed to take notes, but I was not permitted to bring them with me during the deliberations. Were you allowed to look at your notes, and share them, during the entire process?
They let me use them in deliberation, but took them at the end of the trial. The judge did specifically mention at some point that notes aren't the equivalent to a transcript.
I have, and many besides, billed every last penny on the basis of "what I may miss I still understand better than anyone else". My 0.01% failures are 100% of my proposition.
"Document review" is something law firms can dump thousands of manhours into with no real appreciable change in outcome. It ends up being more a question of what a company/individual is willing to pay.
The reason big lawfirms stay in business isn't because they generally get much better results, but rather it's because they have the time and manpower to chase down every single rabbit hole to fully understand the law around the cases they are working. So, instead of a firm giving you a "We are 95% sure the law is this way" with a bigger firm you get "We are 99% sure the law is this way."
The other messed up part of the US legal system is the bigger the law firm, the more time they have to chase down discovery rabbit holes looking for wins and (potentially) legally bankrupting their opponents. "Document A references document B written by Foo? Well, lets have a deposition of Foo and a request for Document B". It ends up looking a lot like refactoring spaghetti code in a dynamically typed language.