Keeping costs down

OK, I promised this in part of a previous post, so here goes:

First thing to keep costs down is to get the lawyer before you are in over your head.  Lawyers make a ton of money fixing problems that you created by handling your litigation in wrong ways.  If you thought that you’re good at paperwork so you’ll just handle all that and bring in a lawyer at the last minute, understand that by the time you look for a lawyer, most of us will not take on your case because we know the problems that are about to befall you and we don’t want you to blame us for it.  The alternative is for us to take on the case, do triple the amount of work to get things up to speed and hope the judge does not sanction us or you for gaps in the paperwork.  That triple the amount of work is going to cost you, because it takes our time, and our time costs you money.

Second, prioritize your issues and consult with your lawyer about whether the value of an issue is worth the price it will cost to present it.  Discussing it with your lawyer can help you decide whether or not it can be used to support your position in a different issue and therefore has more value than simply the price of winning the item, or whether the likelihood of winning makes it not worth the time taken to present it.  We understand that when you’re thinking about your issues, every one of them seeks equally important, but 20 years ago, people spent thousands fighting over large console TV sets, record collections or VCR tape collections, and today these people would rather have fought over the retirement savings, because their old electronics are obsolete today.

Third, schedule your consultations with your lawyer ahead of time and send a list of questions or agenda items.  You get a clearer answer and waste less time in the phone call (and being charged by the 10^th of an hour, you don’t want to waste that lawyer’s time), if the lawyer has an idea of what the call will be about and is able to prepare, accordingly.  Don’t expect your lawyer to have definitive answers to most of your questions off the top of their head without review of the file or a little legal research.  Don’t expect them to have definitive answers, ever, to some things, but you’ll have a better idea of whether this is a question that has a clear answer or not, if you give your lawyer a chance to look it up rather than try to answer off the top of their head.

Fourth:  be the best possible client available.  Do not pay your bills late.  Do not show up to meetings or court late.  When the lawyer says they want your past credit card statements, ask “how many”, and when the lawyer says “5 years worth”, don’t fuss and try to cut it down, don’t fiddle around and delay getting them because you have not been a good record keeper (most people lose or toss their records quickly).  Simply get on the phone and call your credit card company, ask what it will take to get a copy of all those statements, and if they say that you need to write a notarized letter and pay $.50 a page for the statements, do it and pay it.  It will cost a ton more money if you have your lawyer do it and if your lawyer has to pay for it.  Heck, even just getting the additional paperwork from you to prove to the credit card company that the lawyer is authorized to get a copy of your credit card statements is going to cost you.  If you do it yourself, you keep costs down.  And when you get the statements, if you have an idea of what the lawyer is looking for, then organize the statements.  Don’t just dump them on th lawyer’s desk in a pile unless you want to pay for the time the lawyer has to take to shuffle through them and arrange them.  For every hour you spend doing this, you’re probably saving at least 2-3 hours worth of legal fees, because you have a better idea what you’re looking for and what you’re looking at.  After all, these are records of your life, not your lawyers’.  You are the best expert in finding them and explaining them to your lawyer, so do it, as big of a pain in the neck as it is, simply do it.  Or understand that you will be paying that $200-500 an hour for your lawyer to do it for you!  Oh, and please don't write on things, put sticky notes on them, put little easily removeable tabbies to help find them, but this stuff might become evidence, it might be disclosed to the other side, and we don't want your private notes on them. 

Finally, Fifth:  ASK.  Don’t direct us on what to do without asking first.  A client who comes in and says, “I want alimony, that’s the most important thing,” will get their lawyer fighting for alimony.  Some lawyers will advise, “I think you’ve got a better shot in your case if we look to get a bigger property settlement”, but if you don’t listen, or if they simply follow your directions and don’t review all of your other options with you, then you may lose your case and lose opportunities you didn’t even know you had. 

The client who wins is the one who says, “I’ve got a problem”, explains it, and then asks the lawyer what the options are, and spends the lawyers time making sure they understand the alternatives before making the decision.  And if the lawyer does not explore the option the client was hoping for, the client asks about it.  That client wins.  The client who walks in and says, “Please write this letter on your letterhead for me,” will get a letter, but may lose opportunities to solve their real problems because have walked into the lawyer’s office with a specific task for the lawyer, without intending to get the lawyer’s expertise about which is the best option.  And paying $200-500 an hour for someone to put your words on their letterhead without at least asking for their expert advice, is foolish.