CONSULTATION POLICY

A legal consultation occurs when an individual engages an attorney to assess a situation for its legal viability. This article is intended to provide information on our consultation policy.

A consultation with our law firm is charged by the hour, with a half hour minimum. Currently our hourly rate is $300. So a consultation lasting one hour will cost $300. A consultation lasting 30 minutes or less will cost $150.

“Do you offer a free consultation?”

No.

Our attorneys do not answer the phones. Our staff members answer our phones. It is our staff’s responsibility to schedule consultations for our attorneys. When a prospective client calls in, it is our staff’s responsibility to determine whether the individual’s situation is something our attorneys are able to provide a consultation. We get many calls a day, and many of those calls are concerning issues that we do not handle. If our staff determines that our attorneys do handle the caller’s type of matter, the staff will provide information on how to schedule a consultation. Our consultations are not free. We charge our normal hourly rate for consultations, which is currently $300 per hour (with a 30 minute minimum of $150 for consultations). If you decide you would like our law firm to manage your case within 3 days of the paid consultation, we will deduct the consultaiton fee paid from the down payment for the attorney fee (only on certain immigration-related flat fee matters).

We simply do not have the bandwidth to offer free consultations; if we did so, we would be giving free consultations all day long and have no time to do anything else.

If we determine we can schedule a consultation for you, please provide us with some details so that our staff can properly prepare the attorney for the consultation. If a caller provides no details to us and refuses to tell the staff what the legal matter is about, we will not schedule a consultation.

In some types of matters our staff can provide a fee quote over the phone (this is typically only for certain immigration-related matters). We cannot guarantee that we can provide a quote in all cases. In matters concerning all other practice areas (estate planning, landlord-tenant, real estate, business, civil litigation, etc.), no flat fee will be quoted over the phone. Those matters are always billed by the hour ($300 per hour), and require an advance fee deposit which is placed in our trust account.

 “I just have a quick question for the lawyer.”

You may have a “quick question,” but we do not have a “quick answer.”

There are many reasons why it is a bad idea for lawyer to engage in this kind of dialogue. But first and foremost, it is a liability. How is a lawyer to know the details of someone’s situation from a “quick question”? Lawyers have to do their due diligence before they are able to provide answers. No good lawyer would freely provide answers to “quick questions” without spending the time needed to assess the whole situation. Answering a “quick question” without doing due diligence is a recipe for malpractice. When someone says they just have a “quick question,” it never turns out that it is just one question. Answering one question usually leads to at least three more questions. Answering those questions leads to more questions, and so on. We do not engage in the “I just have a quick question” dialogue. As stated above, we cannot provide answers to substantive legal questions without doing a paid consultation.

How to get started

You can reach us on the telephone at (425) 947-1130 or through our contact page.