strategies-init

What Does the Appeals Process Look Like With EDD?

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So the appeals process with EDD operates as kind of a little mini trial. The best way to think about it is if I’m sitting at a conference table, it would be me sitting at the conference table, be you (the client) next to me, you’d have the EDD auditor sitting at the conference table, you’d have the EDD hearing representative (usually an attorney, not always but sometimes) and then you’ll have an administrative law judge sitting at the other end of the table. And what happens is kind of a formal mediation process. The EDD will go first. They’ll present their case, you get to ask questions, you get to cross-examine, you get to go back and forth on this and then you present your case and they will ask you questions. They’ll flesh out your case and then ultimately the judge in the case will make a decision.

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What Is the Cost Structure at Brotman Law?

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So the first thing I’ll tell you about the cost structure of our firm is we bill on an hourly basis. We don’t flat fee matters and our time is our time. Our staffs billing rates are set based on their level of experience and who they are, so at the bottom level we have our paralegals that bill at $150 an hour and at the top level we have me that bills at $525 an hour and then everybody else falls somewhere in between. So the way that we try and mitigate costs for our clients is by spreading work between the different levels. We try and generally have the lowest person who’s competent to do the work do the work in order to save cost. We’re not going to send a paralegal in on a criminal matter or we’re not going to send an attorney to go do $150 hour level work but we try and work within the structure that we have to be as efficient for the client as possible. I’m a small business owner myself and I believe in driving value. I believe in the work that we do providing value to our clients because we’re in tax and, because California and the IRS aren’t going away anytime soon, trust me when I tell you we’re not running out of work. So our team is not really incentivized to bill you any more or any less than what we have to. We bill you as much as

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What Is the Best Way to Communicate With the Firm?

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So we have two methods of communication at the firm: we have email and we have phone calls. We don’t have text messages and the reason we don’t have text messages is because text messages are very hard to track internally and we like for all of our calls and all of our emails to come in and be documented so that they go into your file. If for some reason I’m out of the office one day, our senior attorney can pick up the file, can read through the notes and the history of communications, and be in lockstep with me and the decisions that I would make on the course of your matter. So the best way to handle communications from our firm is by segregating what the best type of communication is for longer explanatory things and things that are better reduced to writing, we prefer email. It helps get thoughts in order and we can more easily move emails under the file, although emails take a lot of time to compose sometimes so we tend to shy away from those.

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