“Added 9 Years To A Short Sentence”: 50 Lawyers Recall The Stupidest Things Clients Have Done

IANAL, but I used to review disability claims so I often worked with clients who had lawyers.

A man whose attorney had instructed him to not speak with us directly (a very smart, very basic recommendation) called me up to rant, angrily, that his lawyer was wrong. He COULD shop for groceries and mow the lawn and do all sorts of house work JUST FINE, thank you.

Now I had seen this man’s medical records. There’s no way he was doing all of this without difficulty. So I probed a little further. He could shop for groceries… as long as he used a mobility scooter and had his wife carry things in the house. He could mow the lawn… if he used a riding mower and took a lengthy break every 10 minutes or so. He could do house work… which was limited to wiping down counters and folding (but not carrying) laundry. I called his attorney and gave them a quick update as soon as he and I hung up.

I approved his claim, but that man is so damn lucky he got someone who was willing to take an extra 15 minutes with him.

Not my client but the petitioner attorney’s client. The man claimed Workers’ Compensation and threw the kitchen sink at us, meaning, he basically listed just over half of his body parts on the claim petition stating that he injured each one. He was full of s**t and my firm knew it. Anyways, we were going to trial and the day before we ran one more social media search. This absolute f*****g moron posted a video of him winning a break dance competition that was only a few months after the alleged work incident. Never saw a quicker dismissal in my life.

With the utmost certainty in his voice, he yelled at the arresting officer that “It’s not domestic violence; I’m on public property!”

You could tell from his face he really thought he had the cop over a barrel on this one but….

I had a case where a guy was charged for running a red light. The thing is, he had been sitting at the lights for five minutes, and it hadn’t changed. The wording of the specific section under which he was charged related to stop signs and traffic lights and referred to them as 'traffic regulation devices.' I successfully argued that as the traffic light wasn’t changing, it wasn’t regulating traffic, and he got off. I couldn’t believe it when the judge ruled in my favour, neither could the police prosecutor!

I was defending a client who was accused of trademark infringement. Thought he knew better than the IP Attorney assigned to his case (me) and so went on his company's website to "defend" himself by basically confessing to what he did and claiming it wasn't against the law and the trademark owner was a "woke baby" who needed to either "learn the law" or "get back in the kitchen and make her husband a sandwich" ( i wish i could say i was joking). I was one email away from negotiating a settlement that would have allowed the continued use of the complainants mark with limited restrictions and a very nominal fee. Little to say, she saw his website, told us to go f**k ourselves, and dragged it before a judge. My client lost...big. His lack of self-control cost him thousands of dollars.

I’m in a Zoom mediation. The mediator gave a long speech, saying that no one else was supposed to be on the call other than the parties. My client is sitting in the passenger seat of his car. I knew his GF was in the car, on the driver's side, and I texted him and told him she couldn’t be there. He sends me a text that she’s not there. A good 90 minutes into the mediation his car starts driving on the freeway. The mediator tells him he can’t be driving [while] on the phone and to pull over. Mind you, he’s still in the passenger seat.
Finally opposing counsel says, 'Is he in England or in the passenger seat?' The mediator asked my client if he was driving or [if] someone else [was]. He tells her he [is] driving and he’s in the driver's seat. The mediator tells him to move the camera to his left.

The client proceeds to throw the phone on the ground. You hear nothing but people moving around and he says, 'Get down in the back.' He then picks up the phone and is clearly now in another seat, the driver's seat and he proves he’s in the driver's seat.

Needless to say, mediation was canceled and he got charged attorney fees. In the same mediation, he thought he was in a breakout room with just me and called the mediator a 'f*****g b***h

A year out of law school, I once had a potential client who wanted me to sue Canada. Apparently, he could not get into the country due to his felony record. I tried to reason with him that it was up to the sovereign nation to set its own rules regarding entry to the country, but he insisted that we could make a lot of money suing Canada. I didn't take the case but I told him I might be able to get him a letter that said 'sorry' from Canada.

Around 1990 there was a guy on trial for armed robbery. He pled not guilty. A witness on the stand identified the defendant. The defendant jumped to his feet and roared, “I should have blown your head off when I had the chance…..” pause, thinks, adds, “if I had been the one who robbed you…”.

Guy got a divorce in secret by telling the court his wife had left the country when she basically lived down the street. When she discovered this and appealed the divorce, the judge took his side for some reason and had no problem with his lying. I was in complete shock. When I pointed out to the judge that this was legally problematic, his exact words to me were 'I don't care what the law says.' Ugh, I just checked. He's still somehow a judge

Anyone see the video of a guy doing an online court hearing for driving without a license, he answers the call while he's driving. Without a license.

It was a credit card fraud case in the early part of my career. He actually wore the stolen clothes to court and a clerk at the defrauded store identified them in front of the jury. I felt like the guy in the commercial that asks “want to be somewhere else?”.

My wife’s lawyer bans all clients from using social media after he lost a big case.

Wrongful death lawsuit where a man’s wife was killed. Easy money. They were about to settle until the other side found his pictures online from a club a week after his wife died getting a lap dance wearing a shirt that said ‘I love milfs’.

Apparently they didn’t think he had much pain and suffering anymore.

Not me, but a colleague. A wealthy client's son got picked up for d**g dealing at a local music festival. The client bailed him out, and then had his whole fancy law firm defend his son.

The son shambled into the courtroom s****d off his a*s, and loudly attempted to buy d***s off the bailiff.

There wasn't a lot the lawyers could do after that.

NAL - my dad’s psychotic ex-girlfriend was trying to press bogus charges on my dad, in general trying to ruin his life and career. And his family - she attempted to make some things up about me, too. Had to go through interviews, detective’s office talks, APS visits. My dad and I filed protective orders. Her response to the POs, and I was afraid it would happen, was to vandalize a part of his property in a very gross and obscene way. She also went back to the detective to make another claim on me, saying I stole *her non-prescribed d***s*, so basically admitting she had illegal d***s. So she got a bit more than just protective orders against her; she had jail time, now, too. Good riddance!

Not a lawyer, but I am a former police officer and spent a lot of time in courtrooms.

One guy was on trial for a DUI, and he wanted the judge to know that the cop who arrested him was "just some punk kid". He insisted that he'd only had two bottles of wine and his lawyer keeps trying to get him to stop his stream of verbal diarrhea and he just keeps going

Eventually the judge says "I think you should take a moment to confer with your attorney" and the guy says "Don't interrupt me, I'm not a child!"

Judge smiled and leaned back and said "by all means, please continue". dudes attorney just looked like he was deflating.

Law student working at law firm. We have a fax machine that gets tons of spam faxes.
Our chief partner has a vendetta against spam, and he uses it to give us practice in researching and writing petitions. So we catalog each fax, send replies to take us off the list, document everything, and wait for them to fax us again. Then we follow up with a FCC complaint and demand letter. A couple of times, this has ended up with the person getting mad and sending us retaliatory faxes (black sheets of paper).

If they stop sending we don’t do anything, but we’ve gone to small claims a couple of times, and gotten $500 per page a couple of times.

We also got someone trying to sell d***s through fax, but we just turned that over to the police.

I was on a jury where the defendant showed up in court day 1 wearing the same exact outfit as the “unknown suspect” in the video of the crime. It took only a few seconds before the judge immediately called a stoppage. All lawyers went into the back with the judge and they came out like 7 minutes later as announced the defendant had taken the plea deal. Wild.

Client was being sued and didn’t like the opposing counsel or the judge so he left the court a bunch of voicemails so profane that he was subject to a criminal contempt of court hearing.

Not a lawyer, heard this story from a guy I used to work with. His brother in law got injured at work and was suing for a hefty sum. Case was pretty much open and shut, all the evidence was in the BIL's favor... Until the BIL started talking. They ask him to tell them about the day of the accident. BIL started out fine until he gets to the where he approached the piece of equipment that injured him. He tell everyone that there was a note on it stating that it was out of order. BIL then says that he discarded the note and started up the piece of malfunctioning equipment as he had a job to get done...

That easy win was discarded faster than that out of order sign.

NAL, but my uncle used to be a prison manager at the local prison in the area of NZ where I grew up. They had 'court' hearings when the prisoners had done something against the rules etc, they'd go before a couple of the prison workers and explain, kinda like an internal hearing I guess. Uncle was the 'judge' for a lot of these.

One dude had been found with a cellphone. Denied up and down that it was his, didn't know where it came from, blah blah blah. Uncle asked him several times if he wanted to own up, guy absolutely INSISTED it wasn't his.

Uncle "well, someone's wasted a hundred bucks on a phone then"

Prisoner "F**k off, I paid $600 for that!"

Uncle "............."


hahahahhaa miss his work stories.