5 Things to Know Before Hiring a Personal or Business Lawyer
Before hiring a personal or business lawyer to guide you, your family or your business, ask these 5 questions to ensure that you don’t end up paying a whole lot of money for services that are not what you need, expect or want. Hiring an attorney does not have to be a fearful experience. Instead, it can be the most empowered decision you ever make for yourself.
1. How do you bill for your services?
There is no need to be afraid to talk with your lawyer about how he/she bills for the work they will do on your behalf. In fact, when you first call a lawyer’s office, this is one of the very first questions you should ask. No one wants surprises!
If when you call the attorney’s office, they will not give you any information about how they charge for their services or any expectation of what things will cost, beware you could be in for some big surprises about what things cost down the road.
Look for a lawyer who bills all of their services on a flat-fee, project basis and never on an hourly basis, unless required to by the Court for limited purposes. In every event, be sure the lawyer you choose promises to never send you an unexpected bill in the mail for quick phone calls or emails.
2. How are you able to be responsive to my needs on an ongoing basis?
One of the biggest complaints people have about working with a lawyer is that lawyers are notorious for not being responsive. In fact, I’ve heard of situations in which clients have gone weeks without getting a call back from their lawyer.
This generally happens when a lawyer does not have enough administrative support in his or her office. Far too many lawyers believe they can take care of everything in and around their office themselves, from paperwork to client meetings to calendaring to returning phone calls to connecting with their clients other advisors, the list goes on and on. Truth is, a lawyer who is a true solo practitioner without administrative support or in a firm without adequate support will become overwhelmed and non-responsive to your needs.
You can and should ask your lawyer how he or she will respond to your ongoing needs, how quickly calls are returned in the office, if there is someone on hand to answer quick questions and if you should expect to get right through to your lawyer when you call the office.
A great way to test this is to call your prospective lawyer’s office and ask for him or her. If you get put right through or even worse sent to a voicemail, think twice about hiring this lawyer because it means they do not have effective systems in place for managing and responding to calls or answering your quick questions. Instead, what you want is for the person answering the phone or another team member to offer to help you and if he or she cannot then to schedule a call for you to talk with your lawyer at a future date and time when he or she will be ready to focus on your matter.
Your lawyer cannot be effective and efficient if he or she is taking every call that comes through to him or her – all calls should be pre-scheduled when you are both ready and your lawyer can focus on your specific needs.
3. How will you proactively communicate with me on an ongoing basis?
Unfortunately, most lawyers do a horrible job of proactively communicating with their clients on an ongoing basis. The general thinking in the legal industry is that legal work is transactional in nature and clients will call when something changes. But, this is faulty thinking and in my opinion just pure laziness on the part of lawyers.
You want to look for a lawyer who will proactively communicate with you at least quarterly by mail via an informative, easy to read newsletter and monthly by email. I prefer to hear from the professionals I work with monthly by mail and weekly by email, but progress can only happen so fast.
If you are considering hiring a lawyer who does not proactively communicate with his or her clients, think again. This lawyer might be stuck in an old, outdated mindset that won’t serve your needs in the best possible way.
4. Can I call about any legal problem I have or just about matters within your specialty?
In today’s complex world, lawyers must have specialized training in one or more specific practice areas, such as divorce, bankruptcy, wills & trusts, estates, personal injury, business, criminal matters or employment. You definitely do NOT want to be working with a lawyer who professes to be an expert in whatever walks through the door. However, you do want your personal lawyer and/or business lawyer to have a broad enough expertise that you can consult with your lawyer on all sorts of legal or financial issues that come up in your life and he or she will be able to guide you right.
Trust me, you probably don’t want the lawyer who designed your estate plan to also handle your personal injury claim, your dispute with your landlord and advise you on your divorce, but you do want him or her to be there to hear your story, find you the exact right lawyer and be available as a consultant to you. That way, you can call you personal lawyer before signing legal documents (even loan documents), any time you have a legal or financial issue, or whenever anything that could affect your family or business adversely comes up and know you’ll get great guidance.
Look for a lawyer who has an ongoing service program or membership program in place so that you can pay a low monthly fee and be able to call with all of your legal and financial questions without being charged hourly for the consultation. And be sure that when you call, you’ll get to schedule time to talk with your own personal lawyer who you know and trust and not get passed off to one of any number of lawyers who happen to work in the office and may not know who you are or what’s important to you.
5. What happens if you die or retire?
This is a critically important question to ask any service professional when beginning a relationship and a question that is far too often overlooked. Sure, it may feel uncomfortable to ask, but a truly excellent, client-centered service provider will have in place a plan to ensure their clients are taken care of no matter what happens to the lawyer in the future.
Answers you want to look for here are that your lawyer has a clear plan in place for someone warm and caring to take over your matter without providing any interruption of service to you. If your lawyer prepared a Will, Trust and other estate planning documents for you, or you are in the middle of a divorce or lawsuit, you want to ensure your lawyer has a plan in place so you won’t need to start everything over from scratch. And, if you are on a membership program with your lawyer, you’ll want to make sure he or she has a relationship with a lawyer or network of lawyers who can continue to service you under that program.
When you ask these 5 questions before hiring a lawyer for any type of legal matter, you will know you are engaging a trusted advisor who will help you to make the very best decisions for you, your family and your business for the rest of your lifetime.
Get it in Writing … Real Life Reasons for Legal Agreements
Legal agreements are so boring, aren’t they? And, if you are like most people, you are making a lot of deals in life without documenting those deals. I always give people the benefit of the doubt and trust, so I do it myself. And, I’m a lawyer!
That means, if I do it, you do it too.
But, having an agreement isn’t about not trusting someone. It’s about knowing that you’re on the same page. You might think you both agreed to something when in reality you thought one thing and they thought something else.
When you have an agreement in place, that risk is minimized.
Below are some real life examples (including one from my own life) of how putting it in writing can actually increase the likelihood of success for whatever you are doing, whether it’s personal or business related. And I’ve got some easy tips for creating your own legal agreements.
I recently hired a live-in nanny/house manager. She’s great and she’s saving my sanity. She worked with me for about 6 weeks and everything was great.
Then, things started getting not so great. Not bad, but I noticed little things starting to slip through the cracks – meals not ready on time, cats food bowls not refilled, not waking up on time a couple of times. Things like that. Little things, really.
But, enough of these little things could add up to unhappiness and resentment. So, I wrote up an agreement.
It’s a simple agreement that spells out my expectations. (If you want to see it, post a comment on the blog with your email address and I’ll send it to you.) You are more than welcome to use it as a basis for your own agreement.
I emailed it to her and let her know I wanted her input on it as well. It’s an agreement, meaning we both need to agree to what’s included. We sat down together, went over each of the points, and we each signed it. Simple. And, it fleshed out some places we were not on the same page, which could have become a problem later.
Here are some other situations in which you want to have written agreements:
- Buying property with another person
- Hiring an employee or an independent contractor (in fact, if they are an independent contractor, an agreement is even more important because otherwise you are at risk of them being reclassified as an employee, which means you owe all sorts of back taxes)
- Getting married
- Having a baby
- Starting a business
- Buying a business
- Moving in together
- Subletting your house
- Contracting for services
- Hiring a handyman or contractor
So, how do you get your legal agreement done easily? Here’s a few simple steps:
1. Find a Template To Start From
Even lawyers don’t create legal documents from scratch. We use something we’ve created before or ask our friends to send us something they’ve used in a similar situation.
You can do the same by searching Google for the basic document you need … i.e., nanny agreement, cohabitation agreement, roommate agreement, parenting agreement, independent contractor agreement. You may be able to find something free or you may have to pay a few bucks. It’s worth it.
For a template nanny agreement, post your email addy in the comments section of this blog post and I’ll send you my nanny agreement as a starting place for your nanny agreement.
2. Modify the Template to Fit Your Situation
The template you find is not going to be perfect for your situation. It’s going to need modification based on the specifics of your situation. Use the template as a guide to spark your imagination of what you might want to include. There are generally very few mandatory parts of an agreement (other than the date and your signatures), so get creative. This is about your agreement and what you want.
3. Get Buy-In
Once you’ve put in everything you want, email it to the person you are creating the agreement with and ask them for their thoughts on the agreement. Make sure to mention the agreement is a starting place for discussion (if it is) and that you welcome their input.
4. Sign It, Date It and File It
Written agreements just need to be signed and dated to make them valid. Each of you should sign the agreement and date it. You generally don’t need witnesses or notarization. Just your signatures and the date should do. Then, make sure that each of you has a copy of the agreement to refer back to in the event of uncertainty or a later disagreement.
5. Get it Reviewed … Maybe!
Sometimes, you need to get your agreements reviewed by a lawyer, sometimes you don’t.
So, when should you have a lawyer review your agreement? Generally, when it has anything to do with money or your business, it’s a good idea to get it reviewed. If you think there’s a possibility you might need to legally enforce the agreement some day, get it reviewed. One important note here on prenuptial agreements or marital agreements, in some states, like California, the agreement is not legally valid unless both parties were represented by a lawyer. That doesn’t mean it’s not helpful to have an agreement, but it won’t be legally enforceable.
If the purpose of the agreement is about setting and managing expectations, it’s not necessary to get a lawyer involved. Just having the agreement is the point.Don’t have a personal lawyer in your life who can review simple agreements for you? You should! Get your own Personal Family Lawyer here.
By Alexis Martin Neely. Reprinted with permission from www.familywealthmatters.com
