Curious

[Morning Sun]

I went to my Attorney's office and was curious;

Is it normal for the attorney to take calls, and stop in the middle of something to fax to another client, and eat and attend other cases - while I'm in his office talking to him?

[Edited by Morning Sun on 05-23-2001 at 09:15 PM]

 

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

My response:

Sure, we do it all the time, in varying degrees - - each and every day. Sometimes, we even excuse ourselves so we can use the restroom.

IAAL

 

[LegalBeagle]

It's all about Math’s.. An attorney desires to earn $2,000/hr. If you pay him $2,000/hr then he will stop all calls and listen to you with an intentness of a toyboy on heat. If however, you are only paying $150/hr (or this was a free consultation) then expect him to deal with many other issues at the same time.

 

[Morning Sun]

WOW, OK, so it wasn't just me! It just seemed that he was so preoccupied with his other stuff, I almost wondered if I should leave!!

I was there from 9 to 1PM! Yes, it was a free consultation. Retainer fee was 1500.00 and he charges 200.00 an hour.

Either way, I felt like my case wasn't as important as the others he was working on.

In the distant past I was in another attorney's office, she took no calls, and focused on my case. I would go back to her but she has since passed on.

My how times change!


Thank you,

MS

 

[dorenephilpot]

No offense, but I wouldn't allow a client to take up residence in my office for four hours. When it got to the point where it was too long, I would get up and leave or announce that the consultation needed to end. I have other clients, too, and an initial consultation (especially a free one) that even looked like it was going to be a four-hour job would give me some red flags that the person wanted to socialize w/me or for me to play psychological counselor, not lawyer.

No LEGAL problem from an ordinary individual who doesn't have some complicated business matter, such as a multi-million-dollar merger, should take four hours to explain to an attorney. A psychological counseling session might require that long, but I'm not in the business to do that, and I doubt there are other attorneys who are either.

Perhaps your attorney lacked the cojones to ask you to leave and was being passive-aggressive, doing the other things and HOPING you'd take the hint and leave.