There are three great rules you should follow if you want to get the best from your lawyer for your money. If you follow those rules, you will spend less and receive more: a legal advice more on the point, more powerful arguments in Court, more concise and precise documents drafted for you.
Here are those rules:
Rule #1: Know Your Facts
When you contact your lawyer, be sure to have your story reviewed and organized. Make notes, put all the facts in chronological order, refresh your memory. Your lawyer will be asking questions, trying to understand what’s going on. If you have your facts ready, if you can provide details, dates, names and places right away, you will economize about a half of the time (and money) spent. More importantly, you would not make those disappointing factual mistakes which would lead your lawyer to give you a wrong advice, and you won’t need to go back with explanations and clarifications which could turn everything upside down and require a totally different strategy.
Rule #2: Prepare Your Questions
Very often you know what you want to get from a consultation with a lawyer.But your lawyer does not — until you tell him or her. If your lawyer knows exactly what your questions are, what are you aiming at, what you want to know and what you want to achieve, the conversation will be structured much more efficiently. Irrelevant moments would be set aside, while you could discuss in detail what is really important to you.
It is a very good idea to make a list of your questions before you make an appointment with a lawyer or at least before your consultation starts. Otherwise it might be very upsetting for you to realize short after the consultation that there were significant topics you wanted to discuss, but forgot.
Rule #3: Send Your Documents
If you situation involves any documents (birth and marriage certificates, contracts, lease agreements, prenuptial agreements, invoices, letters, emails and messages, court applications, judgements, mediation agreements, medical records, media publications, photos, last Wills, drafts and your own notes), be sure to send copies of those to your lawyer in advance. Allow a day or two, so that your lawyer would have time to review the documents and make some initial research if necessary.
If you do that, your lawyer will not take time to look for an answer during your consultation, he or she would already know.
All in all, be prepared, let your lawyer prepare, and you will have the best result.
