Above The Law
Hoo boy! These two Phoenix lawyers really, I mean REALLY, don’t like one another. Arizona plaintiffs lawyers Gil Negrete and Brandon Rafi are legitimately feuding — on his podcast, Negrete compared it to Kendrick Lamar and Drake saying, “This is real lawyer beef. Shutting him down.”
While not as tight of an explainer of the disagreement as Not Like Us, the Phoenix New Times still dives into the law battle. It features name calling, bomb threats, multiple podcast rants, and — because it is two lawyers going at it — a court case.
Negrete spoke extensively with the New Times and said he and Rafi used to be friends who would bond over music, go to Suns games, and even vacation together. But a conflict over a client changed all that.
Then in 2022, Negrete said, Rafi cut him off. At issue was one client, representing what Negrete said was only $5,000 in business, who signed with Rafi’s firm before switching to Negrete’s later the same day. Through a subordinate, Rafi demanded Negrete send the client back to RLG. Negrete said he tried to persuade her, but she did not want Rafi’s firm to handle her case. After that, Negrete said, RLG stopped sending cases his way.
Negrete said he objected to how the younger lawyers at Rafi Law Group talked down to him. “I’m being scolded like I was a little kid,” said Negrete, who is 47. “And I’m not a little kid.” The statement from RLG’s attorney did not address New Times’ question about Rafi’s relationship with Negrete before the lawsuit between them.
But the tension between the lawyers escalated with the bomb threat.
On February 9, 2024, there was a bomb threat made to the offices of the Rafi Law Group. Someone took photos of the police response, which then wound up online.
Those photos were shared on the Instagram account @LawyerFiles, an attorney gossip account with more than 62,000 followers that has since been set to private. The account claimed, erroneously, that police were raiding the firm and that RLG’s attorneys had been drinking. RLG wasn’t a new target. In September 2023, @LawyerFiles had authored a long post criticizing Rafi as inexperienced and bankrolled by his father.
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