San Diego Trial Lawyers
“If We Can’t Win Your Case,
It Probably Can’t Be Won”®
If you are in business today, you sadly need to have a trial lawyer lawyer in your database. In today’s fast-paced world, not only do misunderstandings happen, but they also may cause people to hurt you while believing that you are the one at fault. When reasoning and negotiation do not seem to get through to these people, you are left with only one option: hiring a trial lawyer. We litigate cases in both state in federal courts anywhere in California (and sometimes out of state). We often find that once you commence litigation, negotiation is much easier and you will save both time and money.
Read a few testimonials from satisfied clients. CONTACT via email now, or call us at (619) 793-4827 and speak to an experienced San Diego Civil Trial Attorney.
LEGAL FEES & COSTS
When losing is not an option, call us and have a free consultation with one of our Trial Lawyers. When other law firms tell you it can’t be done, we often do get it done. Whether you are the person filing or receiving the state or federal lawsuit, our staff can help. In the last 39 years as our trial lawyers have learned many tricks of the trade, and we can share them with you to offer you the advantages you can’t be without. We have gone against some of the largest law firms in San Diego, California, and the nation. These were great litigation attorneys but some of them had a few tricks up their sleeves; they trained us well. This is one of the reasons we chose to be both Plaintiff and Defense lawyers. Working both sides of the equation has taught us so much that we could have never known had we chosen only one side. Learning is a non-stop daily to-do at our law firm; when you stop learning, your clients start losing.
Our San Diego Trial Lawyers have represented all sizes of companies, and the fact that one of the country’s top negotiators is our lead attorney has helped tremendously. Our lawyers rarely go to trial; we resolve the problem, and you save a lot of time as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation costs. We treat litigation as a war game. With San Diego Biz Law APC, it’s all about strategy and a plan – and that is why we prevail, time and time again. The other side of this is that if we do not feel you have a case that can be won, we will inform you up front, and we prefer not to take your money as we do not fight cases we do not believe in; it is not fair to you.
EXAMPLES OF OUR TRIAL LAWYERS’ SUCCESSFUL RESULTS:
1. Our client had two employees who each sued him for $375,000 using two different law firms; one in San Diego and one in Orange County. Now, he did accidentally violate some labor laws, but we settled both cases for $5,000 each and 6 months to pay.
2. One of our clients ( a couple) was sued by their Business partner. We went to mediation. They were asking for $3.4 million. We walked out with $250,000 paid to my clients.
3. We had a lawsuit that went to mediation with the CEO of the company we had filed against. After 8 hours of mediation he offered $10,000 and after 10 hours he had offered a maximum of $20,000. We filed in federal court and worked the case. We settled for a healthy 7-figure number (we cannot tell you how much due to confidentiality provisions).
4. We had a complaint against a large firm. The company had stated it had various complaints of that nature and normally paid $5,000 as the lawyer was the one who had defended these cases for years; we settled for 6 figures. He was bewildered.
5. One of our clients was sued for $600,000; he is a contractor and regrettably made poor decisions. If this case went to trial he would owe a lot more. We settled for $90,000; a great deal according to him.
6. One of our clients was in an employment lawsuit, but with a different law firm. She lost a jury trial and got hit with a $3,000,000 verdict. Our lead attorney, a negotiator, resolved it for $240,000, under 1/12th of what she owed and would have had to pay for the rest of her life.
7. A high-level political figure was being extorted as the other side had evidence of no-nos that would have been destructive for the figure and his team. The case was negotiated by our lead attorney and was resolved with no money changing hands.
8. One of our clients was sued for $2.1 million by ex-employees with charges that may or may not have been real, but had severe consequences. The case was negotiated for $100,000 as it was cheaper than litigation to take to trial.
9. One of clients was recently sued in a case for just over half a million, plus there was an attorneys’ fees provision, so they would have spent a million by the time of trial, in addition to the costs of having us defend them. The case was resolved for $20,000.
PLEASE NOTE: The results are a function of many factors, the chief one being the facts of your case, and is not a guarantee of your case’s results; we will let you know once we know the case better.
This is important to everybody, so let’s get it out of the way first. Our hourly rates are fair and reasonable. Unless you want a senior trial lawyer doing all the work on your case (in which case you will pay more per hour). We delegate everything we can to someone at a lower cost but have a senior lawyer review all of the incoming and outgoing pleadings (ie legal documents), and develop a strategy and guide the case. You pay a small percentage of the senior lawyer’s time with all of the benefits of his experience. This saves you tens of thousands. We treat your money no different than if we were working for a relative of our own. We know if we can resolve your case for less than you expect that you will refer your family and friends. This has been our winning formula for decades.
Our lawyers do not handle cases with under $100,000 at risk. It takes us 200-300 resumes to hire one high-level trial lawyer. All of our lawyers are high-level and accustomed to complex law. For smaller cases, you can find attorneys who specialize in smaller cases. There is usually no need to have highly experienced lawyers on a small case.
We do not nickel and dime you. we provide FREE updates on your case; you should not have to pay to know how your investment is doing (phone call and emails are both FREE with updates). The savings add up; one client received about $5500 in free update time. If you or the opposing counsel sends us an email and it is brief, as is the response, your bill will state ‘BILLED AS ONE’ so you are not paying for both the read and the response. If multiple people are reading your email, you are billed only once (unless it is massive and critical.) If we do something very brief, we may even charge below the minimum or not at all. We want to earn our money doing the tough stuff for which we are highly trained.
Our billing is fair. When we work on your case, you are billed right down to the minute. We don’t guess, and we do not generalize, we monitor the time. There are so many items in a case that are often unbilled so it’s not just about the hourly rate; it’s about what all it includes. If we feel there is something we should know (we are not hard drives, however and cannot memorize everything), we will conduct the research at our expense, not yours. Integrity is important to us.
Last but not least, our firm is big on education. We are constantly taking courses. to make us better litigators. Many lawyers only take 25 hours of CLE (continuing legal education) courses every 3 years, the minimum requirement for the State Bar of California. We subscribe to 3 different companies’ courses year-round, ‘every’ year, and are constantly learning; the lead attorney, Steven Riznyk, attends about 3 CLE courses a week on average, sometimes as many as 8. Law is constantly changing and there is just so much to know, and we want to be at the top of our game.
BUSINESS LITIGATION EXPLAINED
Before we share our strategies with you, let us outline litigation. Whether you are in a dispute as a shareholder, are filing a lawsuit to address anti-competitive activity, or have partnership issues, we can guide you. There is state and there is federal litigation. Once a lawsuit, also called a Complaint, is filed, you have a certain number of days – 21 (Federal) or 30 (state) – in which to file an answer. Once an answer is filed, there is a long stretch between that period of time and the trial. In that time period, normally two events can take place: discovery and motions. Please note: only about 2% of cases go to trial. You have to prepare the case for trial, from day one, however. The foundation must be set in concrete so that you can develop a game plan and win. The other side will know how prepared you are; it helps when it’s time to settle the case.
Discovery, the next step, is where you obtain information about the case and the other party’s strategy and evidence. We use a number of what are called ‘discovery tools’, such as interrogatories (another name for questions), requests for admission, requests for production, and depositions. Call one of our business litigation attorneys so we can explain how each of them works, and how they are strategically issued.
Motions are where you ask the court for something that you want to happen. Depending on how aggressive you want to be in discovery, your fees can stay low or get high. Very few cases make it to trial for many good reasons. The keys are strategic discovery and case development. Discovery is an art; it is not what it looks like; it’s what you ‘don’t’ see or what is between the lines of the responses that counts.
Call us and speak to one of our San Diego trial lawyers, who can demonstrate how things in business litigation are not always what they seem. The key is knowing what to do and how. We get the job done right the first time.
TRIAL STRATEGY
Let’s say you want to file a lawsuit against someone or some company that did something wrong. You can prepare a lawsuit, file it with the court and have it served, and away you go. Now you are forced into spending money. There are two alternatives: negotiation and creating a lawsuit without filing it (see below). At the end of the day, litigation is as much a game of strategy as it is the practice of law. As they say, he or she who has the best lawyer wins.
There is an art to law. Our San Diego trial lawyers are strategic, and this is no different than a good chess game except that in law it is played on multiple layers. Each move has pros and cons. You have to know what moves to execute as well as how and when to execute them. This is where we shine. This is what we enjoy about our work – checkmate!
NEGOTIATION
One alternative is to have us negotiate the case. Negotiation is very different than arbitration or mediation. It is rapid (usually takes a week), and the goal behind it is to preserve the relationship among the parties (which is why it is so useful in domestic disputes). Our lead attorney, Steven Riznyk, has undone kidnappings, extortion, blackmail and career destruction over the phone, in a week and with no money changing hands (the hard part). So, if you have something that’s critical and complicated, we can probably negotiate your issues rapidly and to your satisfaction. Just something to think about. Mr Riznyk is writing a book in this field and trains lawyers nationwide on the topic; three experienced (over 30 years) have stated that it was the best CLE (Continuing Legal Education) course they had attended in their careers.
PREPARING A LAWSUIT WITHOUT FILING IT
Very few San Diego Trail Lawyers will tell you about this method because they cannot make a lot of money using it. However, what you can do is fully prepare a federal or state lawsuit and not file it. Then you would have something to negotiate with, as often, what the other party wants is proof that you have some grounds to stand on and will pursue your claim. If that is the case, you will often find that simply preparing the lawsuit and sending it to them will do the job. However, if they do not comply, keep in mind that there could be consequences, as this sort of maneuver has no value if you don’t go through with it. If you bluff and then the other party later takes action against you, they will no longer believe that you will stand behind your word.
DISCOVERY IN LITIGATION
One of the tools our trial lawyers have found to be very useful is research. In the case of one deposition that our litigation attorneys conducted, they first researched the person being deposed and his lawyer. When the critical time came in the deposition, our litigation attorney presented a lawsuit that his lawyer had prepared against him and had never served, for whatever reason. He fired the lawyer, and the case was settled in five minutes.
The power of discovery is not just in finding out what every trial lawyer can, it’s in finding out what takes work to discover. This is where we excel. We have a number of resources available, including the brilliant people who work for us, who can cut to the chase of a complex issue in minutes to understand what is really at stake and what needs to be done to put the matter to rest. We are not here to churn the case and make money that way. We are here to get you the results you want so that you make San Diego Biz Law APC your first call should you ever need a trial lawyer in the future.
LITIGATION DEFENSE
If we take on your case, we have to believe in you and your cause. Some companies like doing bad things and hire trial lawyers to run up the opponent’s legal fees. We don’t do that. If, on the other hand, you made a mistake, we can help. Between our business litigation skills and negotiation skills, we can put the problem to rest. One of our favorite clients has a small business and was sued by two of his x employees. One was in San Diego County with one law firm, and one was in Orange County with another. Both sent initial settlement demands for $375,000. With a bit of litigation and some high-level negotiation ‘both’ cases, with both law firms, were settled for $5,000 each, with 6 months to pay. This does not always happen but it did, for our trial lawyers and our client. We recently resolved a class action for $15,000 and that was a record in the firm. A year later, in 2025, we resolved a class action lawsuit for $5,000. We resolved a $1.8 million-dollar case for $100,000 (mainly to avoid costs of trial), and in a mediation where the other side wanted $3.4 million from our client, we walked out with a check for $250,000 ‘to’ our client! We have a list of these successes we can share with you.
We are not in the business of charging you as much as we can. We actually want to resolve your case quickly and inexpensively. You may think it is counterintuitive; it’s not. If we do that, you will be our best form of advertising and will send us more clients. This system has worked for us for 39 years and we hope will continue to do so. We are on your side.
‘If You Want Peace, Prepare For War’ – Author Unknown
There are reasons other trial lawyers, doctors, politicians, and CEOs who can afford “anyone” chose our firm: our strategies, and our San Diego trial lawyers!
Many trial lawyers treat a lawsuit as something they can work through over a long period of time in order to generate a large amount of fees. We are not about that. We would prefer to exceed your expectations as to results and costs so that you feel that you are doing your friends a big service by referring us to them.
We have clients who fly in from San Francisco and drive from Los Angeles; there is no shortage of lawyers in those cities. Don’t get us wrong – in some cases, the trial lawyer on the other side can force you into a costly position. There are, however, a number of strategies you can employ in order to make the case come to a halt more rapidly. Not all trial lawyers are aware of these methods or can execute them with skill. We are business people first and lawyers second; we know you want a RAPID and INEXPENSIVE resolution and if you are in litigation defense, we try to resolve the case from day one…even before we file the Answer.
What We Offer Our Clients
- All updates are free of charge and we call and email you regularly – communication is standard operating procedure here. We often call our clients right after we hang up with the other side and hundreds of clients can attest to the rapid response rates we offer.
- Every time you call you with an update, the first 10 minutes are free. It shouldn’t cost you to talk to your attorney about your investment.
- At any given time, you have a complete copy of your case, as we constantly update you and email you all of the critical documents.
- We are high-level researchers. As a medium-sized firm, we spend a lot on online legal research databases. Our pleadings win in court because they are well-written, well-researched, succinct, and thorough…..and persuasive (that is where are negotiation skills come into play).
- All clients have the lead attorney as their case lead and can talk to the person with the most experience; your case will not be led by a junior lawyer.
- We only hire trial lawyers who are high-level and bring something to the table; we are constantly complimented on our staff (HR recruiters have been trying to steal our staff for years, and we stopped advertising their names when we discovered this).
- We are updated on the areas of law in which we work; we attend the seminars and read the updates, but, more importantly, we study strategy and really know it.
- Our pricing is fair and reasonable. All our bills are highly documented – no surprises. Clients use them as case histories as you can follow them to understand what took place on a daily basis.
- Call us today and speak to an experienced, strategic trial lawyer and experience what we have to offer: (619) 793-4827.
San Diego Biz Law Gets The Job Done. Period.
We know you have better things to do and money is always an issue. However, you are in a lawsuit and need to deal with the litigation. Let’s make that as palatable as possible for you. Call us or send an email to understand how our San Diego trial lawyers can be strategic and stretch your dollars.