11 things attorneys do to waste your time and money

11 Things lawyers do to waste your time and money

- What you can do to stop them.



Charge by the hour

Most attorneys charge by the hour. That's good, right? You only pay for what
you use? No, WRONG. They have every incentive in the world to drag out a
project as long as possible and never complete it. If I offered to pay you
$300 an hour for a project, but told you that when you were finished you
would get no more money from me how long would you take to do it? It would
never get finished, and there would be endless excuses as to why it wasn't
and what further work needs to be done. Does this remind you of an attorney?



There is one lawyer I love though - my lawyer.  He is not only smart and
completely lacking in morals, he offers success-based rates.  If he does not
produce, then he does not get paid; it is as simple as that.  Because he is
not paid just for his time, any project gets done very quickly.  Some people
say, "don't you begrudge this guy the thousands of dollars you pay him for a
few hours work?"  Hell NO!  I get what I want.  I get it now, get it right
and I do not get any rubbish about my lawyer having to "research" the
subject on our time.



Ask how many hours the work is likely to take, multiply it by their rate to
get their expected total cost. Now add 10-20% and offer them that as a flat
fee. If they turn you down then they're planning to "run their clock" on
you. If this is the case then get out of there and find a new lawyer
quickly. You are best off offering them a small sum that should cover their
costs, and then a large sum based upon a successful outcome. If the lawyer
will go for this agreement then they're likely to get you a good result
quickly.



If you can afford it put an attorney on retainer, you'll receive very quick
service, done right the first time. If you have a successful corporation
then for about $80K you can get an in-house attorney to handle all of your
legal issues and you won't need to use expensive external lawyers.



Nitpicking

Attorneys are trained to find problems, and they're very good at this. Any
attorney can find a problem in anything. Do not be naive enough to think
that every legal contract is iron clad - it isn't. They'll bring this same
problem finding approach to offering you advice. Ask them for a better
solution, most of them won't be able to think of one, as they haven't been
trained to find solutions. If the "solution" they come up with costs less
than $100 of additional legal fees then go for it, otherwise they're
probably just wasting your time.



It reminds me of a story about lawyers. A lawyer has had a client in
litigation for over twenty years.  He leaves his practice to his son to go
on vacation.  When he gets back, the boy says, "I did it, dad.  I got them
all in a room and we worked out their differences; the dispute is settled."
The older lawyer grabs him by the ear and says, "you idiot, that case put
you and your sisters through college."



It is said that in a town one lawyer can't make a living, but two can do
just fine.





Legal opinions

The "Legal opinion" is closely related to nitpicking. When have you ever
seen a letter from a law firm expressing an opinion that a planned action is
100% legal, no quibbles and they'd stake their reputation on it? Never.
These letters are always C.Y.A. pieces of double talk and totally worthless,
don't ask or pay for one. These guys will never commit themselves to
anything, so this is pretty much useless information for anything other than
to show to some half-wit who happens to be impressed by any document on
fancy, legal letterhead.



Researching

What if you went to see a surgeon for a heart operation and he told you he'd
have to research the subject first. You'd run, wouldn't you? What if he
wanted to charge you for that? You'd laugh at him. If a lawyer is holding
himself out to be an "expert" in the area and doesn't know something that's
his problem, not yours.



"Researching the subject," by the way, is usually a total scam.  Be careful
not to fall for it.  Most "legal research" consists of some paralegal making
less than you do, photocopying law books you can find yourself in a library.
Most legal documents can be downloaded for free from the Internet, and most
legal forms that lawyers "have spent weeks drafting" are boilerplate
documents they have their word processing department paste your name in.



There is a reason lawyer jokes permeate our culture, and it is not just
because some are ambulance chasers; it is because they nearly all will sell
their souls to bill more hours at your expense. Either ask him to recommend
someone who does know, or tell him to look it up at his own expense.



Clock running

Most attorneys are paid by the hour. As we've already discussed, this
drastically increases their incentive to find wasteful missions to run on
your money, things are never simple and new problems always occur. When this
starts be very firm and accuse him of "running his clock", he'll be
indignant, then you can tell him that it's really very simple and XYZ other
attorney offered to do it for a $500 flat fee - watch his attitude change.







The friendly chat

Your attorney is not your friend. I have a couple of attorneys that are my
friends, but for the most part, when you're dealing with one in a
professional situation he's just an hired hand there to perform an
administrative function that would be totally unnecessary if we didn't live
in a nanny state where lawyers write ever expanding rule books.



Now we've established the ground rules, don't engage in chit chat with an
attorney, you'll be charged for this. I know people who don't even say
"hello" or "goodbye", they just hang up the phone - it all adds up.





Boilerplate documents

These are one of the biggest scams that attorneys have going. Most people
seem to think that contracts are written specifically for them, this just
isn't true. They're printed off the computer and your name is substituted
for someone else's. A friend was recently given a contract to read where his
name alternated with that of the previous recipient. He had to make changes
4 times before the law firm got it right, and they gave him a $4,000 bill
for it. Naturally the firm got that faxed back with a "to be discussed"
appended.



You can easily download documents off the Internet that are near identical
to those used by the law firms themselves. These documents vary slightly, so
you might like to take them to an attorney to be "blessed" and printed out
on their letterhead, but you will definitely save yourself all the expensive
"drafting" fees they charge of booting up their word processor.





Business advice

Most lawyers don't know anything about business. If they were really
knowledgeable they'd all be millionaires. They know next to nothing, yet
seem to think they could teach Warren Buffet a thing or two. I fell for
this, taking fund size advice from an "expert" attorney, and I've met a
bunch of other people who got in a real serious mess by taking business
advice from their attorneys.



I once got into an annoying loop of attending meetings with a CPA, who spent
the whole time dishing up business advice to us. I don't have a high
tolerance for this type of thing, so my comments quickly escalated from
"perhaps you could give us some advice on XYZ instead" thru "We're not
interested in stuff you read in the Financial Times and rehashed" to "Look,
you obviously don't know what you're talking about here, can you either get
on with this, or I'm going". Oddly enough we didn't receive an invoice.









Over billing

A prominent, young lawyer suffers a heart attack, only to awaken facing St.
Peter at the pearly gates of Heaven.  There had to be some mistake he
thought, "I'm only thirty-five and too young to die.". "Young?" said St.
Peter raising an eyebrow, "Why based on the number of hours you've billed to
clients, you should be almost seventy!"



If the electric company over bills you then you're straight on the phone,
most people are strangely silent when lawyers do it. Lawyers make mistakes
too, and sometimes this kind of stuff is sadly routine, always check your
bill.





Partner rates

You usually deal with a partner who "sells" you the services of the law
firm. Many people think the same guy does all the work, that's just not
true. Usually it's done by an associate, who then passes it on to a
paralegal, who makes a fraction of this guy's salary and bill out at much
less. However, when you get a bill, you are often charged as if the partner
did the work. Ask him if he did, if he says yes then ask him a technical
question about the documents, when he stumbles ask him to re-bill you at the
paralegal rate.



"Non-negotiable" invoices

With all of the above factors creeping into an invoice, you will have a very
strong negotiating position. Do not believe that just because it is on a law
firm letterhead it is cast in stone. A friend of mine received a $50,000
invoice for legal work on a divorce that had not been completed. He said he
was unhappy with the work, didn't have much money and was still not
divorced. They lowered the bill to $7,000. He said he still wasn't happy,
they said $4,000. "See ya!", he said, and they settled on $3,000 as he was
walking out of the door.





Now not all lawyers are the scum of the earth. Some are actually decent
human beings, and we'd like to thank them both for helping us prepare this
report. As a C.Y.A. for us - always consult a lawyer on any legal matter you
do not fully understand.





Excerpted from:

The Flake Filter - How to handle the unreliable people who waste your time

By Best Selling Author - Toby Unwin



Visit www.FlakeFilter.com or call 1 800 915 5109 NOW for more information or
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