» Entries tagged with "initial consultation"
It’s Lonely Being Perfect
I set aside a few hours on several different days during my recent hike to make sure everything was okay back at the firm. On those partial “work” days, I mostly made sure my clients were happy and everything was going as planned in their cases. I returned calls from a few prospective clients as well. At first, the prospective clients would leave polite messages. They’d ask that I call them back at my convenience, acknowledging that my voice mail greetings said I would have limited availability until May. A few wished me well on my walk and said they’d be contacting Adrian because time was of the essence. What nice people I get to meet sometimes. At some point after climbing onto the Colorado Plateau, however, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Practice in General
The Numbers Game
Meeting prospective clients, I encounter varying degrees of knowledge about the process of hiring a criminal defense lawyer. Right now, most of my clients are referred to me by other lawyers. Referrals from previous clients come in a close second. Those two types of clients rarely ask a lot of questions for some reason. Occasionally, I get a referral with several degrees of separation. Those prospective clients tend to have questions. Lots of them. Often, the consultation feels a bit like a job interview. I try my best to be brutally honest. Whereas the majority of people only care that someone they trust told them to call me and that I have a nice office, suits that fit (more or less), and a bar number, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients
Promises, Promises
One of the most common things I hear in initial consultations is that “attorney so-and-so said he could definitely get me X deal.” It can be a frustrating situation when the client was promised something that no defense attorney in their right mind would promise. Sometimes, it ends up being an amusing situation when the “deal” prospective clients claim they were promised really can be guaranteed. Multiple clients have said to me that local high-volume DUI firms told them, “if you hire us for your first time regular DUI, we can get the judge to suspend all but one of the ten mandatory days of jail.” That’s true. It’s a reasonable guarantee because it’s a virtual certainty, but it’s misleading for that same reason. That result has … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Ethics, Practice in General
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