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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   1719 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 5, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I need a lawyer. It's not crime related. I've picked out a couple of candidates. I'm wondering how to prepare and execute my first contact with them. I guess I'll send an email.

Can I describe the problem concisely to them, and ask for an estimated task description, timeframe, and cost for the case, without me being charged for them simply reading and replying to the email? :P

They won't charge you just for reading and replying to the email, though they will probably tell you that they won't discuss the particulars of your case until some payment is made.

Your local bar association's lawyer-referral service probably says something like "the initial 30-minute consultation will not cost more than 30 dollars". So I would expect that to be the bare minimum for an initial consultation from a lawyer who does not explicitly advertise "free consultations" on his website. (But I have never hired a lawyer, so I may be totally wrong.)

I've never paid for consultations, but I've always been recommended by an existing client. If you have someone who can vouch for you, they'll be less likely to suspect that you're a time waster.

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