The Lawyer Referral & Information Service
Your Guide to Hiring An Attorney

When do you need legal help?

Timely legal advice can resolve problems or prevent problems from occurring. For example, a lawyer can assist when starting a business or signing a contract that will have a major financial impact. Generally, you will need a lawyer when being sued or charged with a crime.

Consider hiring a lawyer:

• Before you sign a contract with a major financial impact on you;
• When starting a business or forming a corporation, partnership or limited liability company;
• Before you buy or sell real estate;
• If you are involved in an accident resulting in injury to one or more persons or damage to property;
• When you need to have a will or trust drafted or plan your estate;
• If you are involved in a divorce, domestic relations issue or an adoption;
• If you are arrested and charged with a crime;
• If you have a lawsuit filed against you or you wish to file a lawsuit against someone else.

Do I need a lawyer at all?

There are a couple of questions, which will help you decide whether you need to hire a lawyer. What is at stake? Is it my liberty, my livelihood, my home or property? If anything significant is at stake, it is usually a good idea to at least meet with a lawyer to discuss your options. The second question is, how complicated is this? Unfortunately when it comes to the law, there are not very many things that are simple and easy to understand. Little mistakes in procedure or wording can seriously compromise your rights.

Many people hire lawyers for their advice and counsel all the time. They are thinking about a problem and are not sure how to proceed, so they make an appointment to discuss their options.

Making contact with a lawyer

If you think you have a legal problem, it is usually better to contact a lawyer sooner rather than later. Opportunities for a good resolution may disappear if you wait too long, and simple solutions are usually cheaper solutions.

The attorneys who participate with the Lawyer Referral & Information Service (LRIS) are in good standing with the Supreme Court of Tennessee and most of the attorneys have been in practice 10 years or more. The LRIS helped hundreds of people find the right lawyer last year. The LRIS staff will listen to a description of your legal issue and then refer you to an appropriate attorney who has indicated an interest and experience in handling your particular type of legal case or to another agency that might address your needs. If the lawyer cannot handle your problem, you may request another referral from the referral service.

How to prepare for your visit to the lawyer's office

Ask questions
When you make your appointment, ask the lawyer some questions, such as:

• What are the lawyer's qualifications and experience relevant to your case?
• Has the lawyer handled a problem similar to yours? What was the result?
• Will the lawyer personally work on your case? If not, who will be working on it, lawyers or legal assistants or both?
• What are the lawyer's fees? Will they be changed while representing you?
• What are the services that will be rendered for those fees?
• What other expenses are likely to be incurred, if any?
• What payment options are available?
• How frequently will the lawyer bill you?

Organize your papers
Make copies of the most important papers to give to the lawyer. Keep the originals yourself. If there are a lot of papers, you may want to make a summary sheet that includes important information such as account numbers. You may need to separate the papers into multiple file folders.

Be prepared to briefly outline your problem for the lawyer.
Write down your questions before you visit the lawyer so that you will not forget to ask something important. Common questions you should ask:

• What is the time frame for your case or legal matter? Some cases have long periods of inactivity. If this is likely to happen to you, you need to know that and why.
• How often are you and your lawyer likely to talk, and who will call the meeting?
• Will it be face-to-face contact, by mail or on the phone?

If you are handicapped or have other limitations, be sure to alert the lawyer's office at the time you are making the appointment so that appropriate accommodations can be made.

Do lawyers always accept your case?

The simple answer is no. There are many reasons why a lawyer may need to decline accepting your case. Below are a few of the common ones.

• If the case does not meet the legal standard of a meritorious claim, lawyers cannot accept the case.
• If the lawyer has a conflict of interest, if they have a relationship with the people or company on the other side of your problem, they cannot accept representation.
• If the lawyer is not sufficiently knowledgeable or qualified to handle the problem, they are required to decline representation.
• If you and the lawyer cannot agree on the scope and strategy of a case, they will decline to be involved. This includes the fundamental question of whether the legal fees to be expended are proportional to the likely outcome.

How do you work with your lawyer?

When you have selected a lawyer, you should take certain steps to ensure a smooth working relationship and avoid unnecessary costs and effort. As a client, you should:

• Tell the truth and disclose all known facts about your legal matter, even those facts that you think are damaging to your case. A lawyer cannot effectively represent you unless you relate all of the facts involved in your case.
• Bring copies of all documents, letters and other correspondence relating to your legal matter when you meet with your lawyer. Provide your lawyer with a list of all names, addresses, and telephone numbers of persons involved in the case. These steps will avoid unnecessary delays.
• Ask your lawyer to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your case. Ask your lawyer what outcome, or outcomes, you can reasonably expect from your case.
• Take your lawyers’ advice seriously. Your lawyer is a professional. If you do not have confidence in your lawyer’s ability to make sound legal decisions about your case, you should probably seek a different lawyer.
• Keep your lawyer fully informed about new developments in your case. Save all documents relating to your case and provide copies to your lawyer on a timely basis. Do not let your lawyer be surprised later by a disclosure you should have made earlier.
• Ask your lawyer to keep you fully informed about new developments relating to your case. Request that copies of all documents and correspondence prepared on your behalf by your lawyer be sent to you.
• If you do not understand something that your lawyer says, ask for an explanation. Ask until the answer makes sense. Let the attorney know if you don’t understand.
• Do not sign any agreement until you fully understand its provisions.

Your lawyer, in turn, should take certain steps to ensure a smooth working relationship with you and to affect the best possible result for your legal matter. Your lawyer should:

• Disclose to you in a timely fashion any new developments relating to your legal matter and how those developments might be handled.
• Return all phone calls made by you in a reasonable time frame, or have a staff member update you.
• Keep you fully informed about the impact of any actions that are contemplated.
• Furnish you with a written fee agreement and disclose to you in a timely fashion any unanticipated costs relating to your legal matter.
• Bill you periodically and promptly for fees paid and services rendered.
• Understand your goals and expectations for resolving the matter. Discuss these goals and expectations to ensure they are reasonable.
• Listen to you and be attentive to your concerns.

Not all problems have a fast, cheap, or smooth resolution. Even if you, as the client, are being reasonable, your adversary may not be cooperative in bringing your case to an easy and inexpensive conclusion. Some of these factors may be out of your attorney’s control.

Winning and losing

In any type of contested matter or litigation, lawyers will talk to you in terms of probabilities, but they are not able to guarantee a result. At some point in most legal matters, your lawyer will advise you that the offer before you is probably the one you should take based on their professional experience. In some instances, the lawyer may feel so strongly that you should take the offer that if you refuse, they will decline further representation.

How do lawyers charge?

Before you hire any lawyer, it is very important to understand how the lawyer charges. Do not be embarrassed or afraid to ask detailed questions. If time permits, you may want to consult two or three lawyers to see how much they would charge for your type of problem or legal matter. Be careful to be sure that you are getting an "apples to apples" quote. Some quotes include filing fees and expenses; some do not. A few simple examples:

Contingent fees:
"We don't get paid unless you win." This is what you usually hear or see in lawyer advertising, and it pertains primarily to injury cases. Unfortunately, there are many cases that lawyers will not accept on a contingency fee basis. This is primarily for a couple of reasons: because it will be difficult to prove, legally speaking, who is to blame; or because the cost of bringing the case is not proportionate to a likely jury award.

Some lawyers have different percentages, depending on whether the case is settled before trial, versus going all the way to a jury verdict (99% of cases settle before trial). This is because the lawyer will bear substantially more expense if the case goes to trial. There are times when lawyers feel they have negotiated the best settlement they can, and the client will not accept it, in which case the lawyer may withdraw from further representation. In contingent fee cases, the client is responsible for the expenses associated with the litigation, such as expert fees, transcripts, etc. This is over and beyond the lawyer's percentage fee. In many cases, a portion of the award may be owed to third parties such as health care providers.

Hourly Rates:
This is a fairly common way to charge for professional services, including legal services. The lawyer will tell you what their hourly rate is and how many hours they think it will take to complete the matter. They usually request a retainer in this amount, e.x. 3 hours at $150.00 per hour, $450.00 retainer. In some instances, the lawyer will only be able to estimate the cost as a range. For very complicated matters, the lawyer may bill you on a monthly basis for the amount of time spent during that month.

Flat Rates:
For certain routine transactions with a predictable time commitment such as residential house closing, or wills, the lawyer may charge a flat rate.

What if you have a problem with your lawyer?

If you have a problem with a lawyer referred by the LRIS, please call our office for assistance.

Some problems between lawyers and clients are the result of misunderstandings or a lack of communication. If you believe you have a problem with your lawyer, consider talking it over with the lawyer. The lawyer may be unaware of the problem and, after a discussion, you may be able to come to a mutually acceptable solution. If the lawyer is unwilling to talk to you, write a letter expressing the problem and ask for a response from your lawyer. If your lawyer does not respond, call their office to ask for an appointment so concerns can be addressed in person. If these steps are not effective, consider hiring another lawyer. Keep in mind that if that occurs before your legal problem is settled, you should expect to pay a portion of the fees to the attorney for time already spent (some fees may not be refundable according to contract). The attorney has an obligation to return your file. If you believe your attorney has not acted in your best interest and has thereby done something illegal or unethical, you may wish to file a grievance against your attorney. In Tennessee you may contact the Board of Professional Responsibility at 1-800-486-5714 (www.tbpr.org).

If you are unable to resolve the disagreement over fees, you may wish to get more information about the Knoxville Bar Association Fee Dispute Resolution program (http://www.knoxbar.org/feedispute.htm).

If you wish to file a grievance against the attorney, contact the Board of Professional Responsibility at 1-800-486-5714 (www.tbpr.org).


OTHER SERVICES

Need help or information? Know someone who needs help? Dial 2-1-1 or use the 211 online guide located at http://www.resourcehouse.com/en/dev/cgi-bin/location.asp. The 211 resource database includes information about services in our community offered by nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

• Free and confidential
• Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• 2-1-1 is operated by Family and Children’s Services and includes counties: Knox, Blount, Sevier, Jefferson, Grainger, Union, Anderson, Roane, Loudon, Campbell, Claiborne, Monroe, Morgan, and Scott.