THE legal profession has a reputation for aggressive charging. Surveys report various predatory billing practices: the invariable system of requiring money on account, the over-resourcing of projects and the incurring of needless time. The reality is that it is very easy to get lawyers to give you the benefit of their knowledge and experience purely gratuitously. If you press the right buttons, they will be delighted to work for nothing.
Lawyers have a peculiar characteristic: they like their job and they are interested in what they do. They are, in fact, determined to be liked and eager to help. They love to be thought of as human beings. They hate to be portrayed as dry-as-dust technicians. So, they will set great store by their ability to advise clients on the proper management of their businesses, maximising revenue, credit control and debt collection. But their own practices when dealing with their clients are sometimes less rigorous.
A lawyer is always pleased to have a new client. It is a chance to exercise his skills and show what he can do. The more you flatter a lawyer, the more he is likely to be driven to perform, to go the extra mile and forget about billing. He will, if pressed in the nicest way, agree to carry out certain tasks gladly and with no prospect of an invoice in due course. To some extent, barbed compliments will achieve this. If this turns out not to be the case, you should float the possibility of “jam tomorrow”.
You can easily get the first piece of advice or job done for nothing. Exploiting the “introductory offer” is likely to get you some highly tangible benefit. To proceed to the next stage of your journey to free legal services, you need to be a bit cheekier. When an invoice is mentioned to you, you query the value of the work received or say that you never expected to be billed. You can explain that you thought the work carried out for you was part of the law firm’s “pro bono” policy (or, as we call it in these days of legal linguistic correctness, “law for free”). If it was not, then quite clearly, it should have been.
Alternatively, you receive invoices but simply don’t pay and then take advantage of lax credit control procedures to delay any discussion. You can protest that your next instruction for the firm is likely to be particular remunerative and the cash for it readily forthcoming. Ultimately, you can threaten the withdrawal of your business: the lawyer, anxious to be liked and keen for jam tomorrow to make up for being in a jam today, is likely to be co-operative. Then, quite simply, you move on to the next lawyer. You can always revert to your original choice, restart the cycle of flattery and ensure that, in a triumph of hope over experience, more value can be extracted for little outlay.
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You may find that free advice is worth every penny you pay for it. Therefore, while it is possible to exploit these poor, trusting creatures, you do want to benefit from their eagerness to please. One thing we all know from experience: the cynical operator, the subject of this article, is in a minority and the more common client who pays a fair bill within a reasonable time will benefit from immense goodwill, willing service and, of course, the occasional freebie.
The author is a partner at Laytons, the London law firm