Curious

I went to my Attorney's office and was curious;

Is it normal for the attorney to take calls, and stop in the middle of something to fax to another client, and eat and attend other cases - while I'm in his office talking to him?

[Edited by Morning Sun on 05-23-2001 at 09:15 PM]

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

My response:

Sure, we do it all the time, in varying degrees - - each and every day. Sometimes, we even excuse ourselves so we can use the restroom.

IAAL

[LegalBeagle]

It's all about Math’s.. An attorney desires to earn $2,000/hr. If you pay him $2,000/hr then he will stop all calls and listen to you with an intentness of a toyboy on heat. If however, you are only paying $150/hr (or this was a free consultation) then expect him to deal with many other issues at the same time.

WOW, OK, so it wasn't just me! It just seemed that he was so preoccupied with his other stuff, I almost wondered if I should leave!!

I was there from 9 to 1PM! Yes, it was a free consultation. Retainer fee was 1500.00 and he charges 200.00 an hour.

Either way, I felt like my case wasn't as important as the others he was working on.

In the distant past I was in another attorney's office, she took no calls, and focused on my case. I would go back to her but she has since passed on.

My how times change!


Thank you,

MS

No offense, but I wouldn't allow a client to take up residence in my office for four hours. When it got to the point where it was too long, I would get up and leave or announce that the consultation needed to end. I have other clients, too, and an initial consultation (especially a free one) that even looked like it was going to be a four-hour job would give me some red flags that the person wanted to socialize w/me or for me to play psychological counselor, not lawyer.

No LEGAL problem from an ordinary individual who doesn't have some complicated business matter, such as a multi-million-dollar merger, should take four hours to explain to an attorney. A psychological counseling session might require that long, but I'm not in the business to do that, and I doubt there are other attorneys who are either.

Perhaps your attorney lacked the cojones to ask you to leave and was being passive-aggressive, doing the other things and HOPING you'd take the hint and leave.