I have a legal issue for which I retained an attorney. Are there best practices I can employ as the client to make my attorney’s life easier, and therefore maximum my ROI?
Part of my concerns stem from the fact that this is my first time retaining an attorney. My understanding is that if my attorney advises me XYZ, then I enact XYZ and state ‘my attorney told me to do this’, I could be waiving attorney client privilege. So I thought the below brainstorm might help mitigate this problem?
Here are some I brainstormed, though I am unsure of their execution. Is any of this helpful to the interaction? Why or why not?
Ask to be included on all email communication on my behalf to prevent my attorney from having to speak to the third-party and then to recount the results to me.
Ask to have a family member in my meetings with my attorney to prevent my attorney having to field on going questions from me once my family asks me about it.
Ask for a real-time tracking of units/hour charged to prevent me spending too much time discussing trivial matters.
If you have any additional advice in best practices for working with an attorney, I could use all the help you can give. I recognize I am in an expensive territory and I do not want to mess it up.
2 comments
1. Provide all info and documents early on, even if they only seem tangentially relevant.
2. Discuss any financial concerns/budgetary considerations and what you hope to get out of the representation.
3. Ask if there is anything you can do to help: e.g. summarize voluminous data, to limit legal fees.
You cannot violate attorney-client privilege. You are the client. The privilege belongs to you. So don’t worry about that.
“My attorney told me ….” is a perfectly acceptable answer. The best way to phrase it is “under the advice of my counsel I will/will not…”
For correspondence, normally you want the attorney to take the lead. They will make sure you don’t say anything foolish, illegal, etc. They normally copy you on any correspondence sent on your behalf. If you communicate directly to a party to an action or suit without checking with your attorney, you are risking making admissions or disclosing information that will hurt your case. This isn’t violating privilege, this is just not using your lawyer effectively to protect yourself.
Unless your family member is also represented by the attorney they will not be present during any meetings or attorney work. The exception is if the meeting is with you and you consent to it. The attorney represents your interests, if you really want family there, they are usually ok with it.
Lawyers are expensive. They don’t always work on contingency. As far as I am aware you won’t get real time anything. But you may be able to work on a limited retainer basis, or have the lawyer advise you when they reach certain cost points. Or, you can save money by doing some of thr research and drafting of documents yourself, then have thr lawyer check them over. Sometimes this backfires as it can take even more time than if the lawyer or law student/paralegal just did it in the first place.
Always tell the whole truth about everything to the lawyer. They are bound by privilege and they can only help if you are honest with them.