Section 4.  How to Save Attorney's Fees

 

Many friends have asked me, "Are there ways of saving attorney's fees?" To economize on attorney's fees, the simplest way is not to find a lawyer. The problem is that certain circumstances still require hiring a lawyer.  For example, in disputes involving personal injury, hiring a lawyer is indispensable. Also, in certain personal matters such as preparing a will, signing an agreement to cooperate with another person, etc., if the situation is complicated, then not only hiring a lawyer is important, it is best to discuss with a lawyer early and strengthen one's protection.

 

When the time comes where hiring a lawyer is necessary, the client will find it difficult to ask the lawyer to cut fees and save money.  In that event, how are legal fees saved at a maximum?  We mentioned previously that in a majority of cases, the person who is the difference between winning or losing is not the attorney but his or her client. Similarly, whether money can be saved in a case is not the sole responsibility of the attorney.

 

In the United States, the attorney's fees are usually collected in one or two ways: one way is the contingency fee. In other words, the lawyer does not collect legal fees except from winning compensation in a case, usually at a certain percentage but sometimes as high as 40% of the compensation. The advantage of this type of fees collection is that the client does not have to prepare to pay legal fees, but has to share the compensation with the lawyer when the case is won, reducing his recovery. In any event, if the chance of prevailing is not high or the other side is very poor and cannot pay compensation, the lawyer will not accept the case at all.

 

The other more popular way attorney's fees are paid is on an hourly basis, depending on the nature of the case. I shall try to suggest some methods of reducing lawyer's fees by the client under some common circumstances.  

 

Subsection 4.1.  Prepare Well on Your Own

 

The lawyer is paid on an hourly service basis, so the first principle in saving lawyer's fees is saving the lawyer's time. The reasons are simple:

 

Try to do all the things that you can do yourself. This is something the client can discuss with the lawyer. Generally the things you can do yourself including going to hospital and police station to obtain the reports and going to the bank to get financial statements, and so on.

 

Before interviewing the lawyer, spend some time to put together and organize and record what you yourself know about the circumstances about the case, so that when you see the lawyer you can explain them to the lawyer concisely in an orderly manner. If you are confused and disorderly yourself, causing the lawyer to find out the situation from random, purposeless conversations, definitely a lot of time will be spent. That is not the fault of the lawyer.

 

Collect all the personal documents together before seeing the lawyer. For example, if it is a debt collection matter, put together as completely as your can your own name and that of the opposite party, addresses, professions, bank records, other receipts and contracts and so on, and bring them when you go to the lawyer's office. If you can organize the documents into some order and show the lawyer immediately whenever he asks for them, a great deal of time would be saved. When the documents are well organized, the lawyer saves a lot of time organizing and searching for documents as he studies the case. The time saved is equal to lawyer fees saved.

 

Put together an orderly chronology about the key dates, time and what happened in the case in writing.  For example, if the litigation concerns a business partnership dispute, then: when did the partnership began to do business? The date business opened? The date the partnership was formed? Who are the witnesses? And so on. Answers to these questions are prepared in advance by reviewing, organizing and clarifying records.  If the client starts searching through his memory only when the lawyer asks about the time when certain events transpired or the persons involved, all the time consumed is lawyers time. What is worse is that the memory is wrong, and the lawyer is unable to learn about the true facts and the logic of what happened.  Even if corrections are made later, so much time would have been wasted and errors have been made.

 

The books and records provided to the lawyer must be relevant to the case and have a summary. Otherwise the lawyer's time is wasted on reading and reviewing. For example, if you accuse another person of defrauding you, it is best to mark up the portions of the accounts which are false and add up the total. Or you accuse another person for his conduct which caused you to suffer losses, then you need to add up the total amount of losses before you see the lawyer. Otherwise the lawyer will have to find out the items and do the computation, and necessarily consumes a lot of his time. All this preparation should not be done by the high price lawyer.

Subsection 4.2.   How to Interview a Lawyer?

 

Since the lawyer is paid by his time, when you see a lawyer, the more concise and clear the meeting of the two sides, the more "economic benefit" you get from the attorney fees you pay. The following are a fews principles deserving attention:

 

When you talk to the lawyer, do not discuss irrelevant small talks and focus on the matters relevant to the case that you have organized in advance. This is my own experience and that of my colleagues. Many clients from China often like to express their feelings to the lawyer, wasting time.  For example I once had a client who got into a business dispute with her sister.  When I was trying to understand the contents of the dispute, not only did she talk about the reasons and facts about the dispute, she also talked with no break about how good the sister had been and how bad the sister treated her now.  She was determined to get everything out of her system even though I tried many times to stop her from talking about irrelevant subjects.  It should be understood that the lawyer may be your therapist and listen to you talk about your deep feelings or even to offer moral support, but the expense of "therapy" can be very substantial.

 

When a client finds a lawyer to litigate, he is likely to tell the lawyer how bad the opposite client is. Some people cannot help themselves and tell their own histories and prove how honest they themselves are. But it should be understood that when a lawyer takes a case, what he needs are only the legal proofs relevant to the case. As for the history about the past and the subjective feelings of a certain person that are not useful to the case, the lawyer ignores them most of the time. If the lawyer feels necessary, naturally he would ask the lawyer. The most unhappy situation is where the client runs off at the mouth and wastes the lawyer's time, but the lawyer's invoice arrives he or she then complains that the bill is too expensive. The result is that both sides part unhappily. A good lawyer usually does not like to spend time during business hours unproductively. Of course, a lawyer sometimes needs to comfort the client and channel his feelings. That is a responsibility of a good lawyer, and the time he spends here cannot be called a waste of time.

 

When talking with a lawyer, it is important to concentrate and listen carefully to the questions raised by the lawyer and reply concisely. Many people are used to repeating the same issue and say the same thing. It is important to remember that every minute talking with the lawyer costs money. The lawyer's professional expertise and responsibility is to record what is heard just once. If the client repeats himself, he is spending more time but also spending more money.

 

Whatever the lawyer tells the client, the client has to understand it clearly. If there are things he does not understand, he must ask the lawyer to clarify. In the course of dealing with a case, minor misunderstanding or mistaken information not only will influence the time spent by the lawyer at work, they may also affect the outcome of the litigation.

 

Another point: in the course of handling the case, punctuality is mandated, regardless of what task has to be done or where one must go to. Being late not only causes problem, the time lost in being late also creates some financial losses.