Best Offense Against Being Fired at Work is A Good Lawyer
As soon as you start any kind of job, you should always be prepared to be eventually kicked to the curb and fired especially in this rotten economy where people are losing their jobs left right and center. I’m not talking about mass layoff firings where everyone in a department is fired but mass individual firings where only certain people or positions are canned based on you doing something that totally pissed off your supervisor or his supervisor, deserved or not. The Best Offense is a Good Defense. Or more specifically a Good Lawyer. Someone messes with you, you need to mess with them by exercising your legal rights. You need to have access to a good lawyer who you can afford that will make so much trouble for the company and individuals responsible for you being fired that they will back off, reconsider or sweeten the deal to get rid of you. I would start your search for your Lawyer right away before you’re ever fired which means NOW.
Basically, you should do research for a good week or two online, use the Yellow Pages, talk to friends or people you’ve known that have used lawyers and can help you find someone for your interests. Chances are you can schedule a free initial consultation with the lawyer. Basically you want to tell the Lawyer that you need someone that will represent your interests if they try to fire you at work for any reason, deserved or not. I suggest you also keep a list of anything illegal, immoral, harassment, etc., they’ve done to you at anytime in your work career and document everything with dates, names, places, etc. for your own records from this point forward that your Lawyer can use as ammunition against them if they try to fire you.
Here is the bottom line. Most companies that do not have a huge legal department as part of their company do not want any trouble and they will pay to get you away, whether they think your claim is valid or not because they don’t want the bad publicity, the legal costs, the legal precedents, etc., and would rather sweep things under the rug. A few years ago I was going to be scapegoated for some problems in my office just to be used to get rid of my department head and I didn’t want to lose my job so I got a lawyer. It cost me a few thousand dollars but it was money well spent as they backed off me and I was not fired. They didn’t do this because it was the right thing to do, they did it because they didn’t want trouble. I had sent them a Legal Message.
Look at this as war. If they’re willing to get rid of you then you shouldn’t give a damn about any of them and if you cause them trouble back, tough. The idea is to either save your job or get paid off so that you’re on paid administrative leave for quite a while and leave with a positive written recommendation, etc. You need to discuss this all ahead of time with your lawyer, talking about various scenarios and finding out how much this will cost you and what your lawyer can or can not do for you. We’re basically talking about Out of Court Settlements as the cost is too prohibitive for either side to get to court.
Once you’re happy with your lawyer- if you aren’t on the same wavelength or don’t like him or her during your consultation, then repeat the process with another lawyer till you find someone you’re totally comfortable with. Bottom line is you want someone who will fight for you. You also need to start building up a nest egg now for future legal action and start documenting things for your records. One thing you definitely do not want to do is mouth off to anyone with a second person around to witness things, threaten someone with a lawyer and/or put anything in writing to them that can hurt you in the future. Hopefully, you’ll never have any trouble at work and you won’t need a lawyer, but if you do at least you’ll be prepared.
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