Whenever I’ve talked to a lawyer for the first time, the first thing they make clear is that they are not yet my lawyer and cannot offer any actual legal advice (if it’s a free consultation), OR, they had me sign a document & pay them something so they are my lawyer and can give legal advice, even if it’s just a 5 minute chat to answer a specific question.
Can a savey scum bag actually trick/force a lawyer into such a client relationship by just blurting out stuff thereby blocking that attorney from working for his enemies due to this manufactured conflict of interest? It seems like a decent lawyer ought to be able to block such a thing…
Our city doesn’t have an in-house lawyer but rather a law firm we keep on retainer to serve as our law department. As a council person I have access to our law director (an employee of this law firm) 24/7.
We pay the firm a specific amount every year, as pre determined in our budget. But they do charge us for some stuff which I guess must be out of the range of the retainer contract.
How would the wife in this situation proceed? Would she be able to use a divorce attorney from another jurisdiction? Or complain to the ABA and get relief this way?
I don’t disagree with your general comments, but I do dispute that “pricing and bidding to win work” could ever be 20% of a firm’s overhead. Our firm screens a lot of cases (we probably take only 10% of those screened) and the cost of doing this is probably less than 1% of our overhead. And that includes hiring experts sometimes to evaluate a situation. Granted, we’re not a big corporate firm that anyone would hire us on “retainer,” but I do have some understanding of those firms, and still don’t thinking “pricing and bidding” is even a thing (like it might be for a construction company, for example).
She can get any attorney licensed in her state. I doubt Tony conflicted out all of them, there must be thousands of family law attorneys licensed in New Jersey. (including, for example, some NY lawyers who are admitted in both states)
The ABA couldn’t do anything. It has no authority over anything, it’s just a voluntary association of lawyers. Most lawyers are not even members. The State Bar is probably what you’re thinking of, but I don’t see anything they could do.
In any medium to large city, no one could hire all the law firms.
Might happen in some place the size of say Dodge City KS where there there might be only a handful of lawyers handling family law. But then you expand your search to Garden City, Liberal etc. and you have dozens. People in those kinds of small cities/towns are used to driving an hour for this and that.
Don’t ask me why I know the state of the legal profession in south western Kansas.