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Managing Partner, William Scherer, Featured In Invest: Greater Fort Lauderdale Magazine Roundtable: Changes In The Legal Sector

Our Managing Partner and Founder of the firm, William R. Scherer, was recently interviewed by Invest: Greater Fort Lauderdale Magazine on how the firm was able to tackle the needs of our clients during these unprecedented times, notable trends, challenges and opportunities offered by the Greater Fort Lauderdale area, and more.

How have client needs changed in the past year?
Civil disputes are not being resolved much in my area because defendants always want to hold onto their money, they don’t want to settle until trial and mediations are imminent, and because we are not trying jury trials during the pandemic, there’s no pressure to resolve cases.

One of the ways we handle big cases is mock trying them over and over again to understand their nature, and we’ve been doing that remotely through virtual technology, which is pretty amazing because you can do it from all over, putting people together from California and New York. For non-jury cases, it’s pretty much the same. In Broward I tried probably the first non-jury trial via Zoom, which was an interesting experience because I’m a courtroom lawyer, so I’m used to looking witnesses in the eye when I cross examine them, and then seeing how the judge and jury react. All that has really changed. However, I think we are more efficient.

What other major changes have resulted from technology in your practice?
We’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming as a legal profession, into using modern techniques and technology. Part of it the issue is the traditional hourly billing paradigm, which rewards inefficiency. Because a high percentage of our cases are contingent fee we are motivated to be as efficient as possible, using technology, because the cost of the legal work is on our nickel. We treat our hourly clients and our contingent fee clients the same, using technology equally. Everybody benefits.