Recently, someone contacted me about retaining our Firm because they were impressed with some of my blogs (why, wouldn’t they be, right?) and needed someone with my aggressive litigation skills and experience to help them with a matter they clearly could not resolve on their own.
They reached out and right from the beginning, it wasn’t a fit, which does happen from time to time, and that’s ok.
Prior to getting retained, we get a general idea on the matter(s) they require assistance with, and if it is something we want to handle, we then confirm that there are no conflicts with the parties. Once conflicts are cleared, we obtain photo identification from the person retaining us, the Articles of Incorporation (if it is a business), our signed Retainer Agreement, and a monetary retainer, the amount which we determine prior to being retained. When all of that is provided to us, we then schedule a virtual call to confirm their identity and get instructions on how they want to proceed. This is the standard practice when retaining a client.
Apparently, that didn’t work for them.
Before any of the above could happen, they sent all their documents, demanded a Zoom call and ultimately expected free legal advice. They were not pleased when they were advised that I don’t review documents until our Firm is retained, not before.
They were also not happy that they would be billed for my time to communicate with opposing counsel (the horror!), who we didn’t know existed, but only discovered after opening a random document provided to us, so that I could find the names of the opposing parties to clear conflicts.
When the above was explained to them, I was accused of trying to “line my pockets” rather than being results driven and it wasn’t going to work out (no kidding)!
It can take time to get results and that time, which is our time is quite valuable. We bill for our time spent on a matter, because that’s how we get paid, because we don’t work for free.
We are a very result driven Firm. We get results, and we get paid for those results, which is probably why we still have clients who have been with us since Inga Andriessen started our firm in 1993.
Murray Brown, Licensed Paralegal