You might find yourself in a number of situations that require some form of legal advice.
Often, you might not even be prepared for such occurrences and you will have to urgently look for legal counsel.
If you are in such a situation right now and are looking for strong legal advice, you should consider these things before choosing a lawyer or a firm for it:
Wide Range of Services
You never know when and for what purpose you might require a lawyer. When choosing a legal representative for yourself, look for firms that offer a comprehensive range of services that includes different kinds of specialized counsel.
This will save you the need of looking for a new legal representative when you urgently need one. You can find a wide range of legal services like commercial, employment, and family lawyers in Melbourne all under the same roof.
While it is not necessary that you have to look for lawyers only when you need advice, it is better to keep a list of firms pre-prepared so that you can consult them at times of crisis.
Clear Fee Structure
There is no doubt that retaining the services of a lawyer can be a costly affair. You should consider your budget before you finalize a legal service provider for yourself. Keep in mind the long-term costs of hiring them and ensure that the costs reflect the services they will be offering you.
Generally, for small cases, you won’t require hiring a very expensive lawyer. Also, the fee structure of the lawyer or the firm must be clear and honest as often, the cost structure provided by them does not include some additional charges that might be incurred during legal proceedings. If you find the price structure too complex to understand, it’s best to avoid hiring them.
Past Record
Even before your first meeting with the lawyer or the firm you are planning on hiring, you should do some research and find out about their previous records including the cases they have fought in the past and their outcomes.
Look for any accusations of malpractice, misconduct charges, or complaints filed against them as well. If you find any of these things, it will be a good option to avoid hiring them. You should also take a look at customer reviews. This will give you an idea about how well their previous clients feel they represented them in legal proceedings.
Availability and Ease of Communication
Your case might last for several weeks, months, or even years. During this time, you will have to stay in constant touch with your lawyer to work out different courses of action.
If your lawyer is one who doesn’t return your emails or respond to your texts for long periods of time, it will cause a lot of problems for you. According to a survey, there’s only 1 lawyer for 4,652 citizens in China which automatically makes it very likely that they might not consider you as a priority.
The crisis might not be important for the lawyer or the firm but it is still important for you and it is important that they understand that. One way to test the communication skills of your lawyer is to send them an email soon after your first meeting with a list of questions. You can judge their availability for yourself based on their response time and how comprehensive their response was.
Transparency
Most firms have a lawyer who has a team of paralegals working under them to represent your case. However, there are also some lawyers who work alone.
While a lawyer’s quality is not determined by these criteria. Still, it is important that you have a strong connection with the person who will be handling your cases personally. If your case will be handled by a team, you should be aware of it in advance so that you know whom to contact if you want to know something specific about your case.
Closing thoughts!
Check for all of these things if you want to ensure that you are getting the best legal advisors for yourself. With these tips, you will be able to determine if the lawyer or firm you are hiring is the best fit for you or whether you must keep looking for more options.
Read more:
Need legal advice? 5 things to consider