In my experience lawyers will tell you very directly when you don't have a good case, or if you do have a good case but it's not worth pursuing it (the most likely scenario). Also, the time that I did pursue my case, it took around $50,000 to the lawyers before I was able to convince the defendant to settle (for a large multiple of that $50K). If the other side had been more stubborn it would have been around $100K to take it to trial. If I hadn't had the money to pay the lawyer I would have been SOL, and most people don't have $50K to spend on an uncertain outcome like that. So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario.
That $100k is also on the cheap side. If the other side has a lawyer and a lot of money to burn, they can easily hike that way up. Filing a billion motions that your lawyer has to respond to, deposing everyone you've ever met, going after every document you've ever looked at. The more money someone has, the easier it is to make you spend more money, even if you are right.
Right. My case was a very simple contract dispute with very little discovery and only a couple of people to depose, so I was lucky there. And the other side did have more money than me, but not so much that they could burn several hundred K on it without feeling it.
> So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario.
For most cases like the ones we're talking about (NYC unlawful eviction and/or tenant harassment), if you have a good case, you don't have to pay up-front. A lawyer will take it on contingency and get paid by the defendant if you win.
In addition, there are also plenty of free legal resources dedicated to this exact topic as well.
True, but it is only an incredibly narrow subset of legal cases where contingency based lawyers exist. As for non LLM legal resources, they are just fine if you have all day to read them and all of another day to draft the required filings, but most people have jobs.
> As for non LLM legal resources, they are just fine if you have all day to read them and all of another day to draft the required filings, but most people have jobs.
You misunderstand. If you are facing tenant harassment in New York City, there are other avenues for you to resolve it that don't involve engaging a lawyer at all.
> True, but it is only an incredibly narrow subset of legal cases where contingency based lawyers exist.
Not really? If anything, there's a pretty narrow subset of cases where it's not possible to get someone on contingency but it is possible to use an LLM to meaningfully push your case forward without one.
