Return to TOC

Previous: Finding a lawyer

Meeting with your lawyer

The first meeting with your lawyer will be stressful for you, but just relax. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I spent a lot of time during my “flipping out” phase on the phone with her. She kept telling me to just relax and wait. I had never been to court for anything other than a traffic ticket about 8 years ago. So learn this lesson fast:

You need to relax and stay calm.

You hire a lawyer to help you win YOUR case. You must help them towards this end. Lawyers are just people and will react much like anyone else if you are always annoying them. Sure they love the billing, but having to drop things to pick up your call takes time away from other clients. They will bill you for every phone call, and the billable time will be about twice the length of the call. Why twice the length of the call? Because they have to put down what they are doing, speak with you, take notes about the call, and then get back to what they were doing. This adds up fast!

Help your lawyer out by providing the facts surrounding your case in small manageable chunks of information. Provide all documents that you have collected as well as copies of relevant pages in your diary. You may want to go over everything on your own a few times to make sure the notes you have taken are clear and follow a distinct timeline.

Present your lawyer with clear manageable chunks of information.

Next: Do I bring anything with me?