The Big Secret About Demand Letters Lawyers Don’t Tell You #employmentlaw #lawyer #secret #short

[0:00]Hey, here's a little secret about employment law, particularly plaintiff side employment law, or employee side. Hi, I'm Tom Spiegel with the Spiegel Law firm. We help people who've been fired or afraid that they might be. So, generally the first step, one of the first steps you will take in these sort of employment disputes, whether on your own or with a lawyer, is you'll contact the your former employer, your current employer and send them something called a demand letter. It's essentially where you lay out what happened, what your allegations are and what you're asking for. And a lot of people who don't do this work a lot, they want to send the gnarliest, longest letter they can with as many attachments as possible. And I and I get that impulse, but here's the secret: the length of your demand letter and how many attachments that you include, it probably doesn't matter, at least in terms of that first contact. You can send a three-page demand letter with a few key documents or a 15-page demand letter and you're probably going to get the same response. Because the other side is just going to get it, they're going to do their initial investigation, and then they're going to respond, and generally it's always going to be, it's rarely that they will say, oh yeah, you know, you got us. We violated the law, they're going to come back with some kind of explanation for, you know, what happened and why they didn't violate the law, and the only issue is whether or not they're open to negotiation. Whether they will be probably won't be the depend on the length of your demand letter. Now, there are some exceptions that you need to work with your attorney, and there will be opportunities later to respond with all that information. But generally, to kick off the process, I wouldn't spend a ton of money doing a long, gnarly demand letter. So talk to your attorney about that, make a strategic decision. If he or she tells you, "Hey, we don't need all these documents," it's not because they don't want to be aggressive, it's because, at the end of the day, at least with that first contact, it's probably not going to make a lot of difference. So, keep your powder dry for later in the process. Save yourself some money, at least in those early stages. All right, good luck out there.