How to Get a $1,000,000 Settlement

- How do lawyers get settlements of more than a million dollars for their clients? I'm going to explain how settlements get to seven figures and above in this video, but I'm also gonna give you guidelines on how you can maximize the value of your settlement, if you're ever, unfortunately, involved in a legal action. Now, listen, I'm not some scummy ambulance chaser.

This video is not click-bait. I promise you will get insight into the legal system, so if you want to know how the real lawyering gets done, keep watching. (upbeat music) My name is Branigan Robertson, and I'm an employment lawyer.

Here's my promise. I'm gonna break down in simple to understand terms why some settlements are big, and why are some are not, because everybody wants to know, "How much is my case worth? " Well, this video explains the framework that underpins most settlements and the structure behind them.

We are gonna talk about damages, leverage, risk, negotiating skill, facts, lawyer quality, attorney's fees, and a whole lot more. And if you're smart, you'll watch every second of this video because you'll not only learn something, but it's also going to teach you how to act and who to hire to maximize the value of any case that you're involved in, now or in the future. And I know this video is long, but if you have the grit to stick with it, it will pay off.

Now, my expertise is employment law, so I'm mostly gonna talk about settlements through the lens of employment law, which involves things like workplace harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination. But most of what I talk about in this video, and the concepts here are applicable in every area of law that gets litigated. Now, before I start revealing the golden goose, I have one last important thing to say.

I have a license to practice law in California, but I'm making this video for people all across America. This video covers some basics, but it should not be taken as legal advice for your situation. The laws not only differ from state to state, but I don't know you or anything about your situation, so you should never take what is said on a YouTube video as legal advice.

If you need legal advice, pick up the phone and call a lawyer in your state. All right, let's bring on the money. Big picture.

Okay, you first need to understand some fundamentals. Number one, settlements are different than verdicts. We all hear about big verdicts on TV and on the news.

Just because somebody got a big verdict at trial does not mean they're actually going to collect that money. In many cases, they don't. A big settlement on the other hand, is real money.

Usually that means the person suing, AKA the plaintiff, is agreeing to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the bad guy, AKA the defendant, paying them a negotiated amount of money, which leads us to number two, settlements are negotiated. It is not a math formula. Aside from Worker's Comp, there is no predetermined chart that says if X bad thing happens to Jane, then John, the bad guy must pay her Y amount of money.

At its basic level, a settlement is an agreement, a contract that the parties reach to avoid the risk of trial. The person suing the plaintiff is agreeing to drop the lawsuit to avoid the risk that they will lose at trial and get nothing. The person or company being sued, the defendant, is agreeing to pay that money to avoid the risk that the jury will order them to pay more at trial.

Fundamentally, settlement is a compromise. Number three, with some exceptions, million plus dollar settlements require the following seven factors. Number one, the defendant must have caused significant damages to the plaintiff.

Number two, the plaintiff has a good shot at proving the defendant broke the law and is liable. Number three, the plaintiff can prove the key facts that underpin his or her case. Number four, the plaintiff must have a high-quality attorney to build the case.

Number five, the plaintiff must have an attorney who knows how to negotiate. Number six, the defendant, the company being sued, must have the ability to pay the settlement. And number seven, this is important, you must have the right risk tolerance.

If your case is missing any one of these seven factors, it's unlikely that you'll get a large settlement, and I'm gonna break down these factors for the rest of the video. To get a $1 million plus settlement, the defendant must have inflicted significant damages on you. Well, what are damages?

Simply, damages are the economic, physical, emotional, or business harms caused by the bad guy, to you, that the law allows you to recover. And this can be a variety of things like lost wages, medical bills, emotional distress, lost profits, et cetera. Well, what are significant damages, Branigan?

Well, the best way to explain this is with a few examples. Let's say you were crossing the street and a truck driver negligently runs over you and breaks your back. So, you go to the hospital, you get medical treatment, and your medical bills are more than $1 million.

Well, in a simple example like this, so long as the insurance policy is big enough, and you have a halfway competent attorney, it's highly likely that you're gonna get a settlement worth more than $1 million. But that is not a very good example to learn from because it's very simple and straightforward. Let's look at what most cases are like.

Let's look at a wrongful termination hypothetical. The numbers are fun in this hypothetical, so stick with me. Let's say you're a highly-paid employee, earning $240,000 a year, and you've been employed at the same company for 20 years, but then your boss breaks state law and wrongfully terminates you.

What are your damages? Well, to settle a case like this, you need to first break down your damages into their component parts, and get a realistic understanding of what each is potentially worth at trial. Then, and only then, can your lawyer engage in an educated negotiation.

So, let's do that, okay? Depending on your state laws, generally in an employment wrongful termination case like this, you can legally recover three types of damages, economic damages, emotional distress damages, and punitive damages. Okay, let's look at each of those in turn.

Economic damages, these are the lost wages, bonuses, and benefits the employee would have earned had they not been fired unlawfully. So, if you were making 240k per year and then got fired unlawfully, your damages are about $20,000 a month accruing until you find a new job. Let's say that you're out of work for an entire 12 months, but then you find a new job, thankfully, but you're only earning $120,000 a year, and then 12 months later you go to trial and you win.

What are your economic damages? Let's do some simple math. It's been two years exactly from when you got fired illegally.

You were out of work for an entire year, that's $240,000 in lost wages, then you got a new job at the one year mark, making $120,000 less. Added together, that's $360,000, but that alone doesn't make you whole on an economic basis because you will have earned $120,000 per year less moving forward into the future. So, the jury will make a projection on what your future lost wages will be.

Let's say the jury believes it'll take you four years to get back to earning 240k, at which point your lost wages will stop accruing, and they believe that that loss will be another $200,000. That takes your lost wages, just your economic damages to $560,000. Okay, not bad.

Let's next look at emotional distress. In a wrongful termination case, like what we're discussing, employees are allowed to recover money for the pain and suffering they go through because of their employer's illegal act. In our hypothetical, you worked at the company for 20 years.

If the employer fired you in violation of state law and did it in an egregious way, it's very possible that you will have lifelong emotional scars. Most of our clients do. Many of our clients seek professional help from therapists after the illegal act.

They go to psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, many of them feel immense shame due to the loss in income, standing, and community. Many of our clients were workaholics. Their very identity was tied to the job, and when that was ripped away from them unlawfully, they suffer greatly.

While emotional distress damages are much more difficult to measure or estimate than economic damages, if you hire an experienced attorney who's got their ear to the ground in the community and he or she puts in the long hours of hard work necessary to work your case up properly, he'll probably get an idea of how much they believe they can win at trial. So, let's say after a year of work, your lawyer has done the hard work, and they think, best case scenario, at trial, your emotional and distressed damages will be $800,000. That's really good.

That's a big emotional damage profile. All right, next, let's look at punitive damages. You're allowed to recover punitive damages in a wrongful termination case.

Well, what are they? Well, most people have heard about them and they kind of know what they are. These are monetary damages that are meant to punish the bad guy, the bad actor.

They are not strictly speaking, meant to compensate you, the plaintiff, although you do receive them. They are a monetary award to deter the company from acting like that again in the future, but punitive damages are really hard to win. You must first prove that the company acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, which is really difficult, and you have to prove that by clear and convincing evidence, which is a much higher burden of proof than is typically found in a civil trial.

Out of every 10 employment cases that go to trial, usually only one or two win punitive damages, so the odds of winning them are lower, but when you do, they can get very large, very fast. So, let's say your lawyer looks at all the evidence, they really understand your case, they know who what they're up against, and they believe that you've got a 50/50 shot at winning punitive damages, and if you do win them, your lawyer believes the jury won't give you a home run, but they'll probably give you a double, okay. So, the lawyer thinks, "Well, let's double her compensatory damages," and we think that's a good estimate.

So, your damage projection here was $560,000 for your lost wages, your economic damages, $800,000 for your emotional distress, and double those two combined is $1. 36 million for a total of $2. 72 million.

So, in our fun hypothetical, if your lawyer wants to get you a seven figure settlement, he or she is gonna walk into the negotiation asking for at least $2. 72 million. Now, if I had good facts in a case like this, I'd personally be asking for more than that, but it depends on the other six factors that we haven't even talked about yet, because damages are only one of seven in this settlement equation, and sometimes they're not even the most important part.

So, keep watching, because we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet. Quick side note, if you are in California and you're an employee, please feel free to call me for a free consultation if you think I've earned your phone call, but let me be clear about something, the free consultation process at my office is for California workers who got fired from their job and they believe to have a case for retaliation, discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Oh, and FYI, you should probably subscribe to my channel.

I've made several videos on all of those subjects, so if you wanna learn more about those violations of law, hit the subscribe button, and I'll link to them at the end of the video. All right, let's get back to it. The next critical factor in settlement negotiations is liability.

Liability basically means that your lawyer must prove that the bad guy broke the law, because if the bad guy didn't break any laws, he's not responsible for paying you for any of the damages that we just talked about. For example, in an obvious rear end car accident case, usually the person who ran into your trunk is liable, meaning legally responsible. As such, they must pay for the injuries and damage they cause.

In other areas of law, on the other hand, it can be hard to prove liability because the key to getting a big settlement is to be able to prove that the bad guy broke the law> Alleging that the law was broken and proving it are two different things, so how do you do that, and how do you prove it in settlement negotiations? Let's answer that by looking at another example. Let's say you've been working at a company for 10 years, you've been an outstanding employee with great performance reviews, then out of the blue, you have a medical issue and you need to take three months off to recover.

You apply for FMLA and HR calls you up, and says, "Yeah, you can take FMLA. " Okay, you think everything is fine until two months later, you get a letter in the mail from HR, terminating you for job abandonment. Your legal claim here is they violated your FMLA leave of absence rights, so, how do we prove the law and how do we use it in settlement negotiations?

Your lawyer will first gather facts. They do this by, number one, writing down your story in chronological order with every relevant detail. Two, gathering and reviewing all the relevant documents that you possess.

Three, sending out subpoenas for documents that you don't possess, but the company does, and reviewing them carefully. Four, gathering and listening to witnesses who are willing to talk to us. Five, deposing witnesses who are unwilling to talk to us and asking them lots of questions on the record.

Six, sending out other discovery like interrogatories and requests for admission. Once we have all the facts, we apply those facts to the law. In a leave of absence case like this, we are looking for statements, emails, texts, or anything else that shows the company decided to fire you because you took a protected leave of absence.

So, let's say we find a great email from your boss to HR where your boss says, "There is no way in hell he can come back to my team. "I'm not looking to carry dead weight, fire him. " Well, that is great evidence.

Well, you don't get great evidence like that very often, but if you do, your chances of winning at trial go up dramatically. The company will probably be willing to pay you more money if you have evidence like that, because they're more likely to lose at trial. Unfortunately, evidence usually isn't that clear.

Usually the only one who's going to understand how effective a piece of evidence will be is your lawyer. That is another reason why you need to hire a very good lawyer, which we will talk about more in a minute. Now, before we leave liability, there are two other considerations that we need to talk about.

Evidence aside, how likely are you to win in the courtroom that you've been assigned to? Every judge is different. Some are more conservative than others.

Some allow more evidence than others. Your lawyers should familiarize themselves with your judge. early on in the case, because if you have a favorable judge, you can negotiate harder.

If you have an unfavorable judge, you need to account for that. Moreover, if the facts of your case comfortably fit within well-established law, it really helps to minimize the damage a bad judge can do. I once had a case where the fact pattern almost mirrored a California Supreme Court case.

Well, I didn't have to worry too much about the judge in that case because I knew I would defeat any emotions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment. Cool, right? But, finally, we also need to talk about your jury pool or your jury.

This matters a lot. If you have a hyper-conservative jury pool, it might be hard to convince the defendant to pay you a lot of money to settle. Very conservative juries tend to award smaller amounts, except in the most egregious cases.

On the other hand, if your jury pool is more liberal and the verdicts in that county tend to be larger for your type of case, it will be easier to convince the defendant to pay you lots of money. Next, we need to talk about the facts of the case. The severity of the story matters a lot to case value.

While I think this is common sense, it's important to say that it's hard to get a seven figure settlement when the case is fairly vanilla. If your story does not make people's jaws drop, you're probably not gonna get a big settlement. To put it in another way, the more shocking the story is, generally speaking, the bigger your settlement will be, so long as it's a violation of law, obviously.

So, here's a simple example. Let's say you have a good employment case for harassment. All else being equal, in one situation, you got fired and your boss chased you out of the building with a baseball bat, and in the other situation, you just quietly quit.

Assuming facts, damages, and a violation of law are all present, in which scenario do you think you'd be more likely to get a big settlement? Obviously, is the one where you got fired and your boss chased you out of the building with a bat, because getting fired is always worse than quitting in employment law. Next, we should talk about client veracity.

This is, without question, one of the most important factors in getting a good result, especially in employment law. What do I mean? Your ability to tell your story in a clear and concise way is really important.

If you're a poor communicator, meaning your story is jumbled, inconsistent, filled with tangents, and convoluted, it'll be very hard to convince the defense that you will win at trial. If the defense lawyer thinks that he or she can make you look like a fool on the stand, they have less of an incentive to pay you a big settlement, but more important than that is your honesty. Don't lie under oath.

Don't lie to your lawyer. Don't exaggerate your injuries. Don't pretend to be offended when you're not.

Don't play the victim. When my clients do any of these things, their case crashes and burns hard. In order to get a seven figure settlement, the defense lawyer must believe that the jury is going to believe you.

If they think they can catch you in lies and show the jury those lies, your case is not going to settle for a lot of money. Okay, well, what you say is important, but what is documented in emails, text messages, videos, recordings, et cetera, is even more important. I said earlier, it is very easy to make allegations.

Proving them is what is hard. If you have documents that substantiate your case, the chances of your case settling for big money goes up dramatically. While we are on the subject of documentation, I made a four part video series on how to document bad behavior at work, how to save your emails, how to save text messages, and how to save important company documents in anticipation of a lawsuit.

I strongly recommend that you watch that series when you finish this one. I'll link to it at the end. All right, if you have a great case, but nobody will back up your story, how do you think it'll look to a jury?

Not as great as you would want. The same thing applies to getting big settlements. If you have good witnesses who are willing to tell the truth, your case becomes more valuable.

On the other hand, if your lawyer is talented and can impeach the defendant's witnesses, which means catch the bad guy's witnesses in lies under oath and on camera preferably, then your case value goes up. So, obviously, it's great to have good witnesses, but it's also great to have a lawyer who can catch the bad witnesses in lies, and, finally, your lawyer might need to hire experts. This helps get the maximum value.

Experts are used in our cases to do several things. One, quantify and explain our client's economic losses, two, add weight and credibility to our client's emotional damage claims, and, three, explain very complicated subjects like accident reconstruction, complicated business structures, best practices for your industry, and so on, and so forth. While not every case needs experts, and they are very expensive.

They can be very helpful and put a significant amount of pressure on the defendant. Moreover, if the defense lawyer believes that your experts are convincing and they're great at testifying, and they're credible, it will compel them to offer more money to you. While I know this video is getting long, we are finally starting to get to the good stuff.

So, stay with me. Next, we need to talk about how the lawyers effect the case, aside from the facts of the case and the damages. The single biggest factor in whether you get a big settlement depends on who you hire as your lawyer.

We are gonna talk about each of the following in the order of the most important to the least. Number one, your lawyer's reputation inside the case, number two, the amount of effort that your lawyer puts into the case, number three, your lawyer's ability to negotiate, number four, your lawyer's ability to tell your story, and number five, your attorney's past success. Let's talk about your lawyer's reputation inside the case.

First, listen to me carefully. I don't care who your lawyer is. They could be the best lawyer on the planet, but if they don't put in the hours of work necessary to properly work up the case, you will not get a good result.

Big settlements depend on real work. You earn your reputation inside of each and every case. The lawyers who get the biggest settlements are the ones who consistently put in the hard work case after case.

Let me explain. When your lawyer files the case, they start a brand new relationship with a defense lawyer that they've never met before. Those two lawyers are feeling each other out, carefully watching what the other does, evaluating the other's ability to prosecute or defend the case.

Your lawyer has to earn the respect necessary to demand seven figures. Every action your lawyer takes is educating the other side on how tenacious, persistent, and talented they are, but if the defense lawyer believes that your lawyer is lazy or careless, it will sink your settlement value. Next, let's talk about the amount of effort that your lawyer puts into the case.

This is the second most important factor regarding your attorney, the amount of hours that they put into the case. I'll put it this way, you can hire an attorney who's only been practicing law for one year, and they can get you a massive settlement, if they really put the screws to the defense, if they put in the hours necessary to uncover all the evidence, your case value will go up. On the other hand, you can hire the most successful attorney on the planet, but they won't get you a good settlement if they don't put in the work.

The time invested matters a lot. Your lawyer's ability to negotiate is very important. We will talk more about this in a few minutes here, but to negotiate well, your lawyer must understand the significance of the legal leverage they wield.

Sadly, most lawyers don't really know how to value legal leverage, let alone apply it. As such, most settle for less than they should. While every lawyer is good at talking a big game, very few understand how to play the multi-year chess game necessary to earn a big settlement in litigation.

and at the very least, to get a seven figure settlement, your lawyer has gotta have the guts to turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to get millions. Next, let's talk about your lawyer's ability to tell stories. You know that there are natural born storytellers.

You know the people who can sit at a dinner table and entertain people from all walks of life for hours on end. Guess what? The lawyers who get the big settlements are the ones who can tell stories.

They get the big verdicts because they connect with the jury on a human level. They're real, authentic, likable. Now, I know lots of incredibly hardworking attorneys who can barely hold a conversation.

They are stiff, inflexible, while they can still get their client a very good result. Getting to seven figures usually requires the defense lawyers to fear your ability to tell the story at trial. If your lawyer is likable and able to connect with the jury, the defense lawyers will be terrified.

Finally, let's talk about your lawyer's past success. Prior success is a pretty decent indicator of future success. If your lawyer has good results in the past and has all the qualities that we've talked about earlier, that can only help you, but I don't put as much stock in this as I used to.

I believe the reputation you earn in every case is more important. Okay, that's your lawyer. That's only half of the equation.

What about the defense lawyer? He or she has enormous influence on the settlement value. If you have a very good case and the defense lawyer is competent, honest with the fact pattern, and able to explain risk to the defendant, that is really helpful to you, but if they're brash, arrogant, and greedy, meaning they just want to bill a whole lot to the case in order to make more money, that might make it more difficult to get a big settlement early on.

While we don't need to spend too much time talking about the defense, because we can't control who they are, what they do, or how they act. You can only control yourself and your lawyer, but the defense attorney matters, and if you have a good lawyer, they will adjust their strategy based on Next, let's talk about attorney fees. In many areas of the law, attorneys who pursue cases work on a contingency fee.

That means they don't get paid anything upfront. They take a percentage of the settlement at the end of the case. The wonderful thing about that fee structure is that your economic interest in the case is directly in line with your attorney.

Think about it. If your attorney truly believes that she can get you a seven figure settlement, if she pushes hard enough, you're more likely to get it. In contrast, in most areas of the law, the defense lawyers get paid by the hour.

That means they make more money the longer they stretch out the case. Part of the reason why cases last so long in America is that defense lawyers want to get paid lots of cheddar before they advise their clients to settle, but there's another aspect to attorney's fees that you should know about. In some areas of the law, like employment law, there are attorney fee provisions or attorney fee statutes.

This means if you pursue the case all the way to trial and you win, the defendant must pay your lawyers additional money on top of what they paid you. While this doesn't directly benefit you if you go to trial, most cases don't go to trial. So, let me give you an example, so you can see how this can benefit your settlement.

Hypothetically, let's say your case is worth $800,000 max at trial. Your lawyers have put in 1,600 hours of work into the case and you have amazing evidence. Your attorney is confident that you're gonna win.

While no lawyer can promise or guarantee that you're going to win, if you did win, the court would award your lawyer their "load star," which in this hypothetical, let's say is at least $500,000. That $500,000 would be awarded on top of whatever was awarded to you, which was hopefully $800,000. Well, that attorney fee provision puts you in a great bargaining position.

You can demand well above $1. 3 million at mediation and try to settle at above the seven figure mark when the original case was worth no more than $800,000. Pretty cool, right?

Your attorney's ability to negotiate, their skills in negotiation are very important. There's so much more to negotiating than haggling over numbers. That only happens at the very end.

In fact, the real negotiation starts the moment your attorney takes the case. The work your lawyer does to build the case from day one, lays the foundation upon which you negotiate from. While not every case goes to trial, every case needs to be prepared as if you're going to trial.

Now, there's a lot more that I could say about negotiating, but I think you get the picture, but the last thing that I really think we should talk about under negotiation is mediation. This is how most seven figured cases settle. Mediation is a formal and confidential process for trying to settle cases.

A third party mediator is brought in and hired by both sides. Their job is to meet with the parties, chew on each side, shuffle numbers back and forth, and work with each side to figure out their bottom line. After a day or two of feeling each other out, the mediator might make a proposal, which is a number that he or she believes that both parties should accept.

Sometimes the parties accept and the case settles. Sometimes it doesn't, and the case continues. You can have the best case in the world, the best lawyer in the world, but if the bad guy doesn't have any money, doesn't have the ability to pay, you're not gonna get a big settlement.

The defendant's ability to pay is an important consideration for you and your lawyer to look at carefully before you even start your case. If the defendant doesn't have any money, do they have an insurance policy that does? If so, what are the policy limits of that insurance?

This is something that your lawyer will be able to figure out, so I don't need to get into it here, but we do need to talk about risk tolerance. This is such a big deal. Earlier in the video, I told you that to get a seven figure settlement, your lawyer must have the guts to turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that you have the chance to get millions.

I want to let that sink in for a second, right? Most people underestimate the pressure that comes with turning down a six figure, in the bank, guaranteed amount of money. I don't care who you are, that is a lot of money, but to get across the $1 million mark, you must turn it down with a conviction that you will be offered more later because you believe in your case, but it's really hard to turn down that kind of money if you're desperate for cash.

Good defense lawyers know how to negotiate. They're patient and cruel. They know that if you need money next month to pay for your kids' medical bills, you are likely to accept less money this month, and this concept applies to your lawyer as well.

If your lawyer needs money next month to pay for his stupid Ferrari lease or his mortgage, he's gonna push you to accept a smaller amount of money because he needs the cash now. That is why it is so important that you hire a lawyer who doesn't spend money like a moron. At the end of the day, if you want a big settlement, you and your attorney need to have enough risk tolerance to push the case to seven figures, but risk tolerance cuts both ways.

The defendant, his lawyer, and the insurance company, if one is involved, all have their own thresholds for risk. Some companies have zero threshold for risk. Others would rather go to trial than ever offer you a penny, and if there is an insurance policy involved, their adjusters make decisions differently.

If you have a small policy, your lawyer might have to make a full policy limit demand. Then the insurance adjuster is gonna be worried because if they don't pay it, they might get smashed with a big verdict that busts open the policy and you can collect more than the insurance policy ever allowed. Evaluating risk is a very big part in getting a big settlement.

If you're still with me, you now have a basic understanding of how settlements get big. Usually, years of work goes into getting them. They are not easy to come by, but with the right facts, the right lawyer, and a deep enough pocket, you can get a settlement for over $1 million.

If you are in California, and you're an employee, please feel free to call me for a free consultation if you feel I've earned your phone call, but please remember, the free consultation process at my office is for California workers who got fired from their job and they believe they have a case for retaliation, discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Thank you for watching. If you found this video to be helpful, please give it a thumbs up.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm gonna make a lot more videos on employee rights, so long as you guys keep watching them. All right, that's it.

Take care.