General Practice & Other Areas
4. The First Consultation
Authors: Staff Legal Eagle
Firm / Chambers:
Last updated: 27 Jul 2015
- The first consultation with your lawyer helps you to gauge whether you feel confident and comfortable with them.
- The lawyer should tell you how much they estimate the fees to be and what other costs may be involved. For example if you are commencing litigation they should tell you about the applicable court filing fees as well as what they will charge for preparing your case and representing you.
- At this meeting you will need to discuss your legal matter with your lawyer.
- You need to provide your lawyer with a clear outline of the issue as well as the outcome you are hoping to achieve.
- Make sure you bring along all relevant documents.
- You may wish to draw a diagram of the situation to help the lawyer understand. For example if you were in a car crash it can be very helpful to draw an explanation of how it happened.
- Make sure you tell your lawyer that you wish to be updated regularly regarding any development in your case.
- If you believe that you may qualify for legal aid discuss this with your lawyer.
- If you qualify for legal aid some or all of your legal fees will be paid by legal aid instead of you.
- Only some law firms are able to take on legal aid matters.
- For more information see our Legal Aid topic.
- Many lawyers will provide the first consultation to you free of charge to allow you to outline your case and to enable him or her to gauge the amount of work that will be needed so that a fee structure can be devised.
- You can ring around to see which lawyers offer a free first consultation.
- Finding a general practice lawyer that offers a free first consultation is a good idea where you are not sure whether you should be retaining (using) a specialist lawyer.
- If the general practice lawyer advises that you should be seeing a specialist lawyer then you have not wasted any money.
- You should not feel obliged to retain (use) a lawyer following the first meeting with them.
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