Settlement Strategy
If you’ve been sexually harassed, discriminated against, or retaliated against at work, you may have already hired a lawyer. You found them through a billboard, a Google search, or a referral from a friend. They took your call, sat down with you, and signed you up. You felt relieved. Someone was on your side.
I need to tell you something that no one in this industry will say out loud: the lawyer who signed you up may have no intention of ever taking your case to trial. And if they don’t, the other side already knows it — and they’re using it against you right now.
I’ve been trying sexual harassment and employment discrimination cases in Southern California for over thirty years. I’ve seen this play out hundreds of times. The clients who get the best outcomes are not the ones with the strongest facts. They’re the ones whose lawyers were actually prepared to stand in front of a jury. The clients who get shortchanged are the ones whose lawyers were optimizing for something else entirely.
This article is about what that something else is, why it’s costing you, and what you can do about it.
There are two kinds of plaintiff’s employment lawyers in Southern California. The first kind builds a practice around volume — aggressive marketing, fast intake, and settlements. They’re good at getting clients in the door. Their faces are on bus benches and their names come up first in Google searches. They may even have notable settlements in their past. They’re not necessarily bad people or even bad lawyers.
But their business model requires turnover. A contingency fee practice built on marketing overhead needs cases to resolve and fees to come in. The lawyers who work at these firms are often junior associates handling files they’re not yet equipped to manage. Cases get worked — or don’t get worked — according to what the settlement economics justify, not what the case is actually worth at trial.
The defense attorney doesn’t fear a lawyer who has never tried a case. They fear a lawyer who has tried dozens of them and won.
Here’s what that looks like on your case. While your lawyer is managing a large docket, the defense attorney — hired by the insurance carrier, not your employer — is methodically working. They’re taking depositions. They’re filing motions. They’re wearing down the record. And your lawyer, if they’re overwhelmed or inexperienced, is responding instead of driving. By the time a mediation is scheduled, the record looks better for the defense than it should, and your lawyer is quietly nudging you toward a number that’s a fraction of what a properly prepared case would recover.
I took over a case not long ago from a client who had been exactly in this situation. Her prior attorney — by all accounts a smart, credentialed lawyer — had never taken a single deposition on her behalf. The defense had taken several. The case had drifted into a posture that made it look like a loser. Her lawyer was preparing to recommend a settlement that would have changed almost nothing about her life.
She fired him and called me. We worked the case up the right way. We turned down $450,000. We tried the case over several weeks. The jury came back with $1.47 million.
That is not an unusual story. It is the story that marketing firms make impossible by design.
Most plaintiffs walk into this process with a fundamental misunderstanding of how the defense actually works. They think the company hired a lawyer to defend them. That’s not what happened.
What happened is this: your employer bought an Employment Practices Liability Insurance policy — EPLI. When you filed your claim, the carrier stepped in. The carrier, not your employer, chose the defense law firm. Your employer may never have met their own lawyer. The employer’s interests and the carrier’s interests are not the same thing, and the lawyer’s primary obligation runs to whoever is writing the checks — which is the carrier.
That policy almost certainly has a self-insured retention — a deductible your employer pays before the carrier contributes a dollar. On many cases, that self-insured retention is $250,000 or higher. Which means the carrier’s money may never come into play at all. The employer is paying every defense billable hour out of their own pocket, while the carrier calls all the shots.
The defense lawyer has zero financial incentive to recommend settlement. Every hour they bill is income. The employer is paying for all of it — and the carrier decides whether they approve it.
There’s more. EPLI policies are eroding limits policies. That means every dollar spent on defense reduces the total amount available to pay a settlement or verdict. The defense law firm knows this. The carrier knows this. Your employer, in most cases, has no idea.
A competent plaintiff’s trial lawyer understands all of this and uses it. There is a specific window, early in a case, to make a settlement demand targeted at the self-insured retention — before the defense has eroded those limits with billable hours. A well-timed demand at the right number does two things: it creates real settlement pressure, and it sets up a post-trial attorney fee motion if the defense refuses and you win at trial.
Marketing firms almost never execute this strategy. They make high, unrealistic demands that get rejected and create no legal consequences. The defense tells their client the plaintiff is being unreasonable, runs up the bill, and waits for the plaintiff’s lawyer to get desperate. The plaintiff never knows any of this is happening.
The economics of employment litigation are shifting faster than most people realize. AI tools are already doing a significant portion of what defense firms have historically billed for: document review, discovery responses, deposition preparation, legal research. The billable hour model that defense firms have used for decades to erode policy limits and exhaust plaintiffs is under serious pressure.
What this means for you is straightforward. The defense’s ability to drag cases out by running up hours is diminishing. Cases that would have dragged on for three years will increasingly resolve faster. And cases that don’t resolve will go to trial with less runway for the defense to outspend and outlast a plaintiff.
If your lawyer is a trial lawyer — someone who actually wants to try the case — this is an extraordinary moment. The playing field is leveling in real time. If your lawyer is a settlement mill, the AI disruption doesn’t help you at all.
If you have an employment lawyer right now, you are entitled to direct answers to direct questions. Here are the ones that matter.
Who is the actual trial lawyer on my case, and when do I meet them? If your attorney hesitates or tells you that question is premature, that is your answer.
What is this case worth if it goes to trial, and what is it worth if it settles? If your lawyer cannot give you both numbers with a reasoned explanation for the difference, they have not done the analysis.
What depositions have been taken, and by whom? If the defense has taken depositions and your side hasn’t, ask why.
Can you give me a written trial evaluation — a detailed assessment of witnesses, strengths, weaknesses, damages, and strategy? A real trial lawyer thinks about closing argument from the moment they read the file. A settlement processor cannot, because they’ve never done that thinking.
A real trial lawyer does not want to settle your case. They want to win it. And the defense knows the difference the moment they see who is on the other side.
If the answers you get to these questions are vague, deflecting, or absent — you may have a settlement mill, not a trial lawyer. And you have the right to get a second opinion before that affects your recovery.
Getting a second opinion on your case does not mean firing your lawyer. It means getting an independent assessment from a trial lawyer who has no stake in the current direction of your case.
In a two-hour conversation, a seasoned trial lawyer can tell you: whether your case has been worked up properly, what the realistic trial value is, what strategic moves have been left on the table, and whether your current posture gives you any leverage at all. That information is worth having regardless of what you decide to do with it.
Some clients come to me for a second opinion and go back to their current lawyer with a clearer picture and better questions. Some decide to make a change. Either way, they leave knowing what they actually have — which is almost always more than they’ve been told.
A Recent Result -$1,470,000
A client came to me after her prior attorney dropped her sexual harassment case. We turned down $450,000 at the settlement conference. After a multi-week trial, the jury returned a verdict of $1,470,000. The prior attorney had decided the case wasn’t worth pursuing.
About the Author
Brian G. Hannemann is a plaintiff’s employment trial lawyer with over thirty years of experience representing victims of sexual harassment and discrimination in Southern California. He has tried complex, contentious employment cases to verdict and regularly takes over cases that other firms have declined, settled too early, or failed to properly prepare. The Hannemann Law Firm represents plaintiffs only — never employers, never carriers.
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