Choosing a Lawyer

If you’re thinking of consulting or hiring a lawyer, you’re looking at a legal problem, significant to you, that you alone cannot untangle. Or you might want a lawyer to help you figure out how strong is a certain position you want to assert in a personal or working relationship, “whether you have a case,” or even whether your challenges have a legal dimension in the first place.

Whatever the reason, you want someone with real experience who can listen and help; someone you can really talk to, who will be kind, realistic, and non-judgmental, and who won’t charge some crazy amount for the conversation you need before you decide to go further. If you’re lucky, the lawyer will answer his or her own phone and can talk with you for at least a few minutes right away. And the lawyer will encourage you to shop around, and even give you a few names.

What happens once you hire a lawyer? Signing a representation agreement begins a specific professional relationship. On the one hand, the lawyer is the client’s servant. On the other hand, the client wants and needs the lawyer to navigate troubled legal waters, and to put powerful words to problems, that the client lacks the training or skill to handle alone.

Here we believe in communicating often. The channel is always open, and neither the lawyer nor the client makes a major decision without consultation. But the relationship is more than that: we put our heads together as much as possible, and each of us helps the other envision the outcome, develop the facts, build the strategy, and conduct the demanding work that most cases require.