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Tips for Working with your Litigation Lawyer
At Mann & Partners, LLP, we recognize that clients are concerned
with keeping legal costs under control.
It is also important to us that your legal fees be kept to a minimum,
while ensuring that you and your legal matters are well taken
care of. Accordingly, we offer some tips to assist you in communicating
with your lawyers and minimizing costs.
After we meet with you for an initial consultation, your file
normally will be assigned to an associate lawyer to handle your
file on a day to day basis, subject to review and guidance from
a more senior lawyer. The amount of senior review and guidance
required will depend on the issues in each specific case.
You benefit from being charged lower rates for more junior lawyers,
who work on drafting of correspondence and written materials.
You also have the benefit of knowing that these junior associates
are more readily accessible to speak with you.
Keep in mind that the primary way litigation lawyers measure the
services that they sell to clients is by docketing time spent
working on the file. This is also covered in our retainer agreement
with you.
Some clients are not aware that once we are retained, all of the
time spent working on your file - including telephone calls
and email messages - is billable. It takes time for us to
switch between files and think about your questions in order to
provide you with satisfactory answers to questions and recommendations
on how to proceed.
It is to everyone's advantage that you arrange times to speak
with us on the telephone or group your questions together in one
longer email for us to respond to fully, rather than several short
emails. This approach benefits you as our client, and the lawyer,
because the time that we spend on your file will be more focussed
and productive.
It is our job to give you advance notice of key dates on which
events in your case will take place. We will prepare you for those
events and tell you when we need you to assist us to prepare documents
and materials for your case or review and approve what we have
drafted for you. It is also our job to frequently obtain instructions
from you (based on our advice and recommendations to you) on the
various steps in your case, especially regarding delivering or
accepting offers to settle.
We appreciate that you may be feeling nervous about your case
and that you may want to feel in control by taking proactive steps
to move the case forward. You will likely find, however, that
asking us for status updates on too frequent a basis may become
frustrating to you because you may feel that things ought to be
happening on your case that are not, and you may also end up paying
more legal fees than you want to.
We ask you to trust us to know when it is more appropriate to
take certain actions in a case to move it forward and when it
is prudent to wait. We are also good judges of knowing what we
need to inform you of immediately, as opposed to what requires
our consideration and analysis before we go to you. We want to
approach you with answers to the questions that we know you will
have regarding a specific development. We will keep you up to
date on developments and seek your instructions as required.
Please remember that at any given time we are handling numerous
matters for numerous clients. When we are appearing for you at
hearings or meeting with you to discuss your case, you expect
to have the benefit of our full preparation and concentration.
This means that we will have to be unavailable to other clients
while we focus on your case.
Likewise, we may be out of the office or be concentrating intensely
on files that we are preparing for hearings or other key litigation
events for other clients when you contact us. As a result of other
client dealings and litigation events, the length of time that
it takes us to respond to your calls or questions will depend
on the degree of urgency of your matter. We will do our best to
respond to you in a timely manner and we request you to recognize
that we are good judges of the urgency with which a response is
required.
The best way to deal with this reality is to contact the assistant
of the lawyer who is your primary contact. The assistant may have
an answer to your question. If they do not, they will be able
to judge the urgency of your matter and schedule a time for you
to speak with us. In the event that we are away from the office,
they will also be able to judge whether there is a degree of urgency
that requires involving another lawyer from our office to assist
you.
Should you perceive that an extended period of time has passed
and that you want to communicate with us about your case, please
contact the relevant assistant and schedule time for a face-to-face
meeting or a telephone call, so that we can answer your questions
or address your concerns in a meaningful way.
It is our hope that these points will help you to better understand
the process of litigation, and to minimize the costs of your legal
pursuit. If at any point you have questions or concerns, please
let us know.
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