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CAN I AFFORD INSTANT LAW PARTNER'S SERVICES?
Of course! It should cost you as the attorney nothing! In most cases, attorneys should be billing our
services to your client. If you employ a paralegal, associate, or researcher directly in your office,
you would normally bill your client for your paralegal's or associate's work on the case, at a lower
per-hour rate. Most law firms do. Our services are similar. Consider us your out-sourced paralegals,
associates, and/or legal researchers. So you should bill our services to your client as an associate,
researcher, or paralegal. Some law firms will even mark-up the cost of our services and charge a profit
or premium, on the theory that you must supervise the final result. Others may bill separately for the
time finalizing legal work. Of course, there will be some situations where you might want general advice
for your law practice overall.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
Although we will respond quickly if you have an urgent project, we do recommend that we have a free
orientation consultation to discuss how our services can help you. You can fill out an on-line request
for a consultation and we will get a chance to evaluate your circumstances and how we can do the most
for you. Use the "registration" function on this website to tell us a little about your practice and
request a free orientation call. Lex Consulting's leaders have experience in not only helping lawyers
with their immediate cases, but also with helping solo lawyers and small law firms grow and expand and
develop new or broader areas of practice, attract clients, and the like. So the more we understand your
goals the better we can assist you. We recommend that you sign our umbrella contract right away. There
is no obligation for you to request or order any particular work or services, or pay any fees. But you
will be ready if you need to order work on a project in a hurry, at any time. Our umbrella contract
includes our obligations of confidentiality, etc.
HOW DO I ORDER WORK ON A PARTICULAR PROJECT OR CASE ?
When you decide you want to put "your people" on a project or a case, this particular proejct will be
ordered under our umbrella contract. We prefer to have you send in a request by writing, such as by
Fax, to document that you did in fact ask us to do this work. You should tell us a deadline (earlier
than your actual deadline) to get the work to you. Obviously you will tell us any particular instructions
that you desire and provide us with relevant supporting documentation. (Of course it will be most helpful
for you to have access to a scanner to email documents to us quickly.) We will agree upon an estimate
of the amount of billable time that is expected for the project, and we will require payment of the
estimated fees for this billable time in advance. Once we assign an expert, associate, or researcher
to your project we will confirm that they can meet your deadline and you will be able to talk to them
directly, if you desire. While you can expect that they will already be highly competent in the task
involved, the more information you can provide the better in terms of your own individual strategy,
preferences, or approach for the specific project. However, there may be times when you have an urgent
request from the road. You may need to walk out of one courthouse, call in a task for sending an urgent
letter, arranging a court reporter, firing off a quick pleading, doing some urgent legal research, etc.,
while you are on your way to another courthouse for another case. There are times when you will walk
out of a court hearing and realize that you might be able to turn a case around or protect your client's
position if you could very rapidly file a motion to reconsider or a supplementary brief very fast, sometimes
before the court closes that afternoon. Or some large, over-sized law firm may have tried to throw you
a curveball to beat up the little guy, and you want a quick consultation. When signing our umbrella
contract, you can elect whether you want to have the accounting certainty of always having a written
request to document our work for you or whether you want the flexibility to call in requests on the
fly. Naturally we can change this option over time.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOURS ?
Instant Law Partners is primarily located on the East Coast in the Eastern time zone. Our business hours
are normally 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM EST, Monday through Friday, and 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Saturdays. However,
we understand that the nature of our business and your needs may sometimes require urgent, last-miunte
projects at irregular hours. We cannot guarantee that we will always be available to answer the phone
or that we can always find personnel to work at any specific time. But give us a call and ask. If we
can pull it off, we may be able to work on your project on a crash basis late at night, on Saturdays,
or even Sundays. Don't hesitate to call, email, and/or fax to see if we can be reached. We have arranged
our technology to be able to monitor contacts from wherever we may be at the time, assuming someone
is still awake. We might have scheduling conflicts. But we will try to work with you.
HOW DO I MAKE PAYMENTS TO INSTANT LAW PARTNER?
You can (1) pay by credit card by going to PAYPAL and enter as the recipient ("to") information email address amicusman@verizon.net.,
or you can (2) deposit funds at the nearest Wachovia Bank (to avoid identity theft issues we will provide
the account number to you directly). We can take a check only if you can send us your check well enough
in advance to allow the check to clear before we complete work for you.
IS MY INFORMATION CONFIDENTIAL ?
Of course. One of the first steps for a working relationship is to sign a confidentiality and non-disclosure
agreement. We will not disclose any of your information or your client's information for any reason,
and will safeguard it. All our associates and experts must sign a similar agreement before working for
Lex Consulting.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH MY CLIENT?
Instant Law Partner (Lex Consulting) only works directly with you and your law firm. Our contract with
you and our contracts with our associates, experts, and staff do not permit us to contact or work with
your clients. If you ask us to interview a witness or your client in order to draft a pleading or the
like, Lex Consulting will provide the results only directly to you, and will not provide any advice
or analysis to your client. We agree not to contact your client at any other time.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF LEGAL WORK ?
As the attorney serving your client, you will have the ethical duty to provide your independent judgment
on all legal work for your client. We can do 90% to 95% of the work and save you tons of time. But your
professional judgment is important before you submit any final legal work for your client. Ultimately,
the end result must be yours. Obviously, you will want time to review the "headstart" that we provide
you and finalize all legal work according to your own professional judgment. We can save you a tremendous
amount of time and do most of the work, but you will also want to put your final review and imprint
on the product before using it for your client.
CAN YOU MEET MY "HARD" DEADLINES ?
Naturally, we can never know for sure if you will want to make changes to our work before you finalize
it for your client, if you will want work re-done, or if you will suddenly have new ideas after reviewing
our work. Because you must give your own opinion, we cannot predict whether our final result will also
be your final decision. We will not be able to predict how much time you will want for your final review.
Therefore you should always tell us a deadline at least 3-4 days before your actual "hard" deadline.
We can help you get 2 or 3 times as much work done. But you should always allow time to finalize our
work before it is actually due. You must allow enough time between the deadline you give to us and the
"real" or "hard" deadline for your final review, editing, and finalization of the product.
WHAT IF I ORDER WORK, BUT CHANGE MY MIND?
If you find that your schedule clears up and you have time to do a project for yourself.... and we have
not yet started doing the work... then you can cancel the project. You can do the project yourself.
If we have already started the work, you will be responsible for the time actually spent on the project
(and we will give you the work that we have done so far to give you a headstart), plus a 15% fee. You
can then finish the project yourself, if you choose, building on what was already done.
WHAT IF I AM NOT SATISFIED WITH YOUR WORK?
If Lex Consulting provides a reasonable product which is simply different from your style or
preferences, or you think of new ideas or new approaches, our additional work will be billed at the
regular rate. (Obviously, if you give us instructions on style or preferences, we will follow your instructions.)
But be assured that it is our goal to keep your business and win your glowing referrals to get the business
of your friends and acquaintances. So we will bend over backwards to make you happy. The nature of legal
writing and work is that a great deal of time, preparation, research, organization, editing, thought,
planning, and writing can go into a pleading or legal document. Even if you wish to alter the final
product, it is exceedingly unlikely that you would not be building on a lot of valuable work already
"baked in" to our draft from Lex Consulting which you are modifying or building off of. However, if
you have any dispute, Lex Consulting management will fully explore how to reasonably satisfy you.
WHAT IF I NEED A LAWYER TO APPEAR IN COURT FOR ME OR CONDUCT A DEPOSITION ?
Instant Law Partner does not practice law or appear in court. However, one of our services is to provide
an administrative locator service. We may be able to find for you an attorney who can fill in for you
when you have scheduling conflicts or expanded opportunities or short-term extra work. Instant Law Partner
will charge a fee for arranging this assisttance, but will not share in an attorney's legal fees from
clients. To make it clear that Instant Law Partner does not appear in court as a law firm, you must
communicate directly with such a temporary or contract attorney about his or her license status and
must pay them directly for their time as a contract employee of your law firm.
SHOULD I USE MY LAW LICENSE FOR THESE SERVICES?
You, the Attorney (the client of Instant Law Partner) must be licensed to practice law in any and all
jurisdictions and/or Courts involved in the case. Instant Law Partner only provides support services
directly to licensed attorneys. This gives you confidence that we are here
to support you, and we will never compete with you. We are not going to work directly with your clients
or any other clients. It also simplifies our operations so we can focus on serving you. While in many
if not most situations, Instant Law Partner's experts, associates, or researchers working on your case
or project will in fact be licensed attorneys, and may even be licensed in your particular State, you
the Attorney must rely 100% on your own license to practice law, business license in your State, etc.
CAN INSTANT LAW PARTNER OFFER OTHER SERVICES ?
Quite likely. We have listed the most common services most lawyers need. However, if you have other
needs, give us a call. We might be able to help.
CAN INSTANT LAW PARTNER SCREEN AND RECRUIT PERSONNEL FOR MY LAW FIRM ?
Absolutely. We will enter into a separate contract for personnel recruitment, with payment contingent
upon successa nd your satisfaction.
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