6 Steps To Take Before Meeting with a Lawyer

12 July

Need legal advice from a family lawyer?

Here’s what to do first.

Most people, thankfully, never need a lawyer. So it can be daunting for many people if they find themselves in a difficult situation and needing legal advice. Here’s what you can do to get the right lawyer, and to make sure your first meeting goes smoothly.

Whether you need a family lawyer for a divorce, parenting dispute, or property settlement, or whether you are contesting a will or need help as the executor of a will applying for probate, or civil litigation, criminal law or a traffic offence, the following simple steps will help you get the best legal advice quickly and easily.

Define the problem

The first step is to work out what is the problem. In my experience, issues needing legal advice usually involve more than legal issues. Whether it is arguments with neighbours, employment matters, business dealings, matrimonial separation or parenting disputes, legal problems are usually closely intertwined with equally as important non-legal problems.

Being able to distil the legal problem down to a few short sentences will be very helpful when you ultimately start looking for the right lawyer to help you. It will avoid you wasting a lot of time telling the whole story from beginning to end, in your very first conversation with a lawyer, and hoping that they will figure out what the legal issues are.

Of course, the non-legal background to any dispute is often important and will often need to be explored in more detail as your matter progresses, to get a satisfactory outcome, but for your first meeting your lawyer will want to primarily focus on the legal issues.

While lawyers are the “experts” on legal issues, no one knows the ins-and-outs of a case like the client. A good lawyer won’t pretend to know everything about a particular matter, but will include their client’s expertise and intimate knowledge of the facts at every step of the way.

Work out a timeline

As a lawyer, one of the tools I use to quickly understand a client’s situation and to get my head around a particular matter, is to draft a chronology – or timeline – of key events. As a lawyer coming into a client’s matter with no previous involvement, knowing what exactly happened and when is very valuable. This is often harder than it seems: clients who have been intimately involved in a legal dispute for a long time will know the chronology of relevant events off by heart, but will often tell their story with a focus on what is most emotionally upsetting, and not focus on what may be legally important. I find that working out a basic timeline with the client at the first meeting often takes a lot of our time together, especially if the legal problem is complex or has been a long time in the making.

If a client has already prepared a timeline then the client and the lawyer can make better use of their time together discussing the relevant legal issues in detail, and coming up with solutions. Remember, lawyers bill by the hour!

Take the time before your first meeting with a lawyer to write down your own version of a basic timeline and give it with your lawyer at your first meeting. Even if it is incomplete, it will be a valuable starting point for your lawyer and will save you a lot of time and money.

Exactly what key events need to be included will depend on the type of legal issue you have. If it is an employment matter, for example, then key dates will include such things as the dates the employment started and ended, periods of leave, dates of conversations between employee and employer, and the dates of letters or written notices. If it is a family law dispute (such as property settlement or parenting matters), then your timeline should include things like when your relationship began and ended, birthdates for children, each party’s working history, and the dates that important assets were bought and sold.

Organise your documents

Often, your legal issue will involve important documents. Your important documents may include children’s medical reports, bank statements, superannuation statements, or business profit and loss statements for family law matters. Important documents will include invoices, receipts, or letters of demand if you are involved in a civil dispute. There could also be important court documents, such as notices to appear, penalty infringement notices, bail conditions, temporary orders, court applications, or a statement of claim.

I always strongly advise my clients to keep the originals in a safe place, but make sure you bring along photocopies of any important documents to your first meeting as well as the originals. By making copies before your first meeting, your lawyer will be able to keep them and put them straight onto your file and, if necessary, make pertinent notes on the copies. Make sure the copies are complete and, if possible, put the documents into date order so your lawyer can quickly and easily read them and get up to speed. Again, the more time your lawyer has to waste sifting through and collating paperwork, or organising photocopying so that you can keep the originals, the less time you and your lawyer will have to work on your actual problem.

Do some research

Gone are the days when “the law” was kept in crusty old leather-bound volumes at the back of a lawyer’s damp and dark office. Thankfully, very few law firms still operate like they’re drawn from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel (although there are still some about!).

There are now some great online sources of information about most areas of law, for free. In my opinion, some of the most useful information sources are:

The Family Court, which publishes online or available for download a plethora of information sheets and brochures about all aspects of family law. There are brochures available for parenting matters, property settlement, alternative dispute resolution, appeal processes, and pretty much any other area of law involving disputes about marriage, de facto relationships, parenting or divorce.
The Caxton Law Handbook, regularly updated by the Caxton Legal Centre in Brisbane. This handbook is “a comprehensive, plain-English legal resource” designed to help non-lawyers understand and navigate for themselves through many common legal issues. The handbook provides information about family law matters, consumer laws, wills and estates, accidents and injury, a whole range of criminal offences including drug-related offences and traffic offences, neighbourhood disputes, defamation, and discrimination (to name a few).
The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AUSTLII), which is an online resource jointly operated by the University of Technology Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. AUSTLII makes freely available for everyone all Commonwealth and State legislation (including regulations and other subordinate laws), heaps of published Court decisions for all jurisdictions, and many legal articles on a range of legal matters. AUSTLII is often easier for non-lawyers to navigate, when looking for specific laws or important court decisions, than each state and territory government’s own legal websites.

By reading a little bit about your legal circumstances yourself, you will be in a much better position to follow along with your lawyer’s advice and get the very best value for money out of your first meeting.

Rather than spending that first meeting with your lawyer giving you a “crash course” in a particular area of law, you and your lawyer may be able to make better use of the time working out the steps needed to resolve the matter.

Doing your own prior research is probably not going to solve your legal problem, but it will probably give you some important context so that you can make better use of the information your lawyer will give you at your first meeting.

Think about the outcome – what do you want to achieve?

Unfortunately, I often have clients come to me seeking my advice about a dispute when they themselves have no idea of what they actually want at the end. Many years ago when I was studying law, I was told the story of a junior lawyer (perhaps in one of those aforementioned crusty old Dickensian law firms) being taken into a senior partner’s office and being introduced gleefully to a client who was “a man of principle!”. The crusty old lawyers of long ago loved clients who wanted to fight a legal battle based on “the principle of the of the thing.” It meant that the client was willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money just to go to war with their enemy, and to win at all cost, without really knowing what it really meant.

The lesson from this is, unless you have a ridiculous amount of money to spend on your lawyer, make sure you are clear about the outcome you want. Take your lawyer’s advice about whether that outcome is likely, achievable, or even realistic.

I often see this in family law matters, for example. One party to a marriage wants to keep the family home no matter the cost, without really thinking about whether they can afford to pay the mortgage or otherwise maintain the home. The other party may want the children to live with them no matter what, without considering whether the long hours they spend at work, or several hours travelling to school and back every day, is going to be in the children’s best interests.

Lastly - pick the right lawyer

If you are able to clearly and concisely explain the legal issue you have, and you know the outcome you want, then you will be in a far better position to contact some law firms and have them tell you realistically whether they can help you or not. If you are not clear about what the legal issues are, and what you want to achieve, then you face the risk of investing time and money meeting with a lawyer only to then be told that they cannot help you because your legal issue is outside their expertise, or your desired outcome is unobtainable.

Be prepared for a lawyer to tell you they cannot help you. While some unscrupulous law firms will pretend they can help you just to get your business, most lawyers will refer you to someone else with the right expertise if your legal problem is beyond their resources or expertise.

It is far better to have this conversation with a lawyer at or even before your first meeting, rather than after you have already spent money with the law firm to advance your matter.

Make sure, before you make any appointment to meet with a lawyer, that they are prepared at least to have a quick chat with you over the ‘phone first, to make sure neither of you are wasting time (or your money!). Make sure you speak directly with the lawyer who is going to actually meet with you. If a lawyer is not prepared to do that, then you may want to consider engaging a different law firm.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to speak with more than one law firm. While the advice may be slightly different, it should not be wildly different and if it is, then you should be asking the lawyers why that is. Feeling comfortable and confident in the relationship, and having a high level of trust and respect between the lawyer and the client, is very important. If your legal problem is serious enough for you to need a lawyer, then don’t feel obligated to engage a lawyer in whom you have little confidence, just because that’s the first one you spoke with. You may need to speak to several different law firms, before you find a lawyer that you feel confident and comfortable with.

If you have a legal matter you may need help with, contact Shorestone Legal via email or on (07) 3266 4657 for a free, confidential discussion about your options. It doesn’t cost you anything to know where you stand.

About the Author

Aaron Ball is the Principal of Shorestone Legal, providing a range of legal services including representing clients in the areas of parenting matters, property disputes, divorce, wills and estates, and criminal matters. More information about Aaron can be found here.