Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Steve Palmer here, Lawyer Talk Off The Record on the air. Check us out, lawyertalkpodcast.com if you got a question, shoot it there, send it in the comments, do whatever, and I'll try to answer it right here on the air today. I'm going to follow up on a recent episode I did about consulting with a lawyer, how you pick the right lawyer. And I'm going to expand on that a little bit today and talk about what to expect when you consult with a lawyer, particularly a criminal lawyer. And I know the reason I focus on criminal law, folks, because I am a criminal lawyer. So it is what I know. And this isn't quite a Q and A, but it's sort of a Q and A because I got recently, this week, up in my law practice, Palmer Legal Defense. I got somebody called me on behalf of a loved one wanting to engage me or to consult with me about representing their loved one in a felony case.

Steve Palmer [00:00:49]:

And I went through my normal spiel over the telephone, talked to them about how I handle felony cases. They had some questions about my experience, where I practiced, et cetera, and that all made perfect sense. And then they wanted to go beyond the phone call, and they wanted to email me some information about the case and get my thoughts on it. This is where it gets difficult for lawyers, because as I think Abraham Lincoln said, a lawyer's time is his stock in trade. In other words, it is my time. So the question is, and the hard part is, how do we square an initial consultation, particularly as criminal lawyers, with actual representation? And here's what happened in this case. I said, sure, send me an email. I'll look at what, what you got, and I'll give you my thoughts.

Steve Palmer [00:01:33]:

And my impression of the conversation was it would be, you know, one or two emails. Well, this turned into 10 emails with multiple attachments and, like, spreadsheets and lots of stuff. And, you know, just to put it in perspective, I'm no different than most lawyers. We deal with, you know, 100 emails a day and phone calls and all sorts of stuff. This, this was beyond the scope of what I perceived as an initial consultation. And I'm not sure my client felt the same way or the potential client felt the same way. But I had to politely say, look, I'm happy to review all this material, but this is what I do. This is my stock in trade, and if I'm going to do this, I'm going to need to be retained or paid.

Steve Palmer [00:02:14]:

And I think the client was a little put off by that. And, you know, that Doesn't I take no pleasure in the fact that my client was put off by that. But at the same time, there's boundaries here that both, both sides have to understand. And it got me thinking about how this a client might feel because on the one hand, they want their lawyer to know everything about the case and hear what the lawyer has to say about the case before paying the lawyer anything. On the other hand, I have my time and my stock in trade that I sell for a living. And it's a precious commodity. I only have so much of it and where do we square that? And I don't know that there's always a bright line. And I think sometimes, as in this case, the line maybe got blurred.

Steve Palmer [00:02:50]:

But clearly I know it when I see it. Right? This is the old, I don't, I can't define pornography, but I know when I see it. I know that this was too much. This would have taken me a few hours to go through all this material and then dissect it, interpret it, and give my thoughts to the client about whether this stuff mounted a defense or not. That's what I do for a living. Now, on the other hand, I was more than willing to look at a couple emails and give my thoughts on it. And I certainly also would have been willing to sit down in my office and have a face to face meeting. I joke now that prior to Covid, almost nobody hired me without coming into my conference room, meeting with me face to face.

Steve Palmer [00:03:28]:

And after Covid, almost nobody hires me after coming in and meeting me face to face in the office. It's totally flipped. But so, but I still like to meet people face to face. I think it's important. So I would have done that, but it was a bridge too far to ask me to start digging into all this material. 10 different emails with lots of attachments. So I, I don't know where the, the line is drawn, but that was too much. I think typically what I try to do when people call in this caller was no different.

Steve Palmer [00:03:56]:

I said, look, here's my plan. You have a criminal case, you've just been indicted by the grand jury. We're going to get discovery, which is information from the prosecutor. I'm going to review that. I'm going to meet with you and share that with you and answer your questions about the discovery. We're going to talk about the defenses that you have, the defenses that you may have that we're not sure about, what research needs to be done. We may engage a private investigator and then we'll evaluate where we go next in the defense and to some extent there's a leap of faith that clients have to trust that we know what we're doing and that's back to maybe the last episode where meet with people feel good about it but it's too much to ask of a lawyer during a consultation to start beginning beginning the work that's going to form the basis of defense. It's perhaps not enough to for a lawyer just to say pay me x amount of dollars before I do anything.

Steve Palmer [00:04:47]:

Somewhere in the middle a compromise lies and that's what we typically try to do. If you've got questions or you've got thoughts about engaging a lawyer if you've done it and had a similar experience let me know check it out or shoot me a comment I'll be happy to respond. If you need your own legal help check us out at Palmer Legal Defense. Till then this is Lawyer Talk podcast off the record on the air till now.