The Expert Podcast

So how can you find a good lawyer to take your case? You might think that well if I have a case and I want to pay a lawyer it's like going to any other company just paying the money and I get to hire somebody. Well you may be finding out that it's hard to get a lawyer to take your case or maybe you have a lawyer but they're terrible and you want to get a good lawyer this time. How do you do that? What's the best way to do it? How do people get good lawyers? Well here's a very straightforward process you can use to locate contact and hire an excellent attorney and make them be responsive make them answer your calls make them be able to get back to you and actually take your case.

How do we know this? Well we've dealt with hundreds maybe even over a thousand attorneys and law firms in our experience as a licensed private investigative agency. We've done cases and done work for attorneys most of our cases we do are for law firms and they tell us all the time why they don't take cases and why they don't deal with certain clients. We've also hired attorneys to work for us for corporate reasons for different parts of the country and we know also what goes into engaging with a law firm. We've done it many times dozens of times at the same time we've worked with clients that hire us for investigations that have hired attorneys. We hear all the horror stories we hear all the problems you have and we can find the common denominators. So here's what you need to do if you want to hire a law firm to handle your case.

First of all write down a piece of paper exactly what you're trying to accomplish with your case. Don't write down what the problems are. If it's a divorce case the problem isn't I need to get divorced. If it's a corporate contract dispute your problem isn't I'm having a dispute with this person. What you want to write down is what you want to have as an end result. I want to have a judgment in my favor for this contract. I want to have this divorce settlement agreed to. Maybe it's a probate case write down what the answer you want very concise two maybe three sentences at the most. Start with that make sure you have that so you know yourself not to show to anybody this is enough for any use outside of your own knowledge.

Then what you want to do is in the jurisdiction where this case would take place normally it's where you live if you live in Chicago maybe it's Cook County you first look for attorneys online start with Google that are in that area geographically and I said start with Google but also look at Martindale another legal lookup. Don't contact anybody go through the listings in Google Martindale and maybe some other legal directories and quickly at the attorney website go to the section that says practice area.

Every attorney law firm is going to have a section that says practice area. What that is is a type of law that they do. For example divorce attorney handles divorce corporate litigation handles corporate litigation some attorneys handle criminal defense they defend people that are arrested some attorneys handle liability car crashes personal injury right they're different types of attorneys. You don't want to hire an attorney that doesn't do cases in your practice area the kind of case you have so you want to find them a law firm that has your practice area listed on their website one that's listed as a practice area exclude the ones that don't have it.

Now you may find that a law firm that has more than one attorney two or three or four attorneys they may have more than one practice area that's good as long as it has the one you're looking for keep them on the list and start keeping a list of the firms that have your practice area in the area you're located between all your sources Google Martindale wherever else you look make a list of 20 law firms that are prospects for you to connect with. Don't call them yet though don't contact them yet though there's a few more things you have to do make that list.

Now let me back up a little bit you might say well Dave why do I have to go through all this work to find an attorney why not just start calling them up? Well I have to tell you thousands and thousands of clients over the years hired an attorney without doing this process without performing this due diligence and many of them ended up with an attorney that ruined their case maybe not because they were incompetent maybe because of other reasons. It would get to those other reasons maybe they weren't ready to take a case maybe they weren't true litigators maybe they weren't a match for you as a person we'll talk about that later.

This effort at the beginning of a case is worth it. It's going to take you a few hours of work three or four hours of work I guarantee it. Don't take the easy way out and skip over this if you skip over this you're at risk of ending up with a nightmare case of an attorney that you want to help you for months and months maybe years and for a few hours up front you could have made it easier for you so don't skip these steps.

So let's go back to the process you have this list of 20 attorneys you have a list of or 20 law firms at least. Within each law firm they will have maybe a list of attorneys that's another thing you look at on their website attorney directory partner directory who are their attorneys read through their bios read through each one of them what they do. You're going to find that some of the attorneys in that firm don't work on the kind of cases you want they only work on other practice areas so now take two or maybe three attorneys for that firm that have your practice area but that attorney specifically works on it and make a list of those.

Well you might say well that's two per case times 20 that's 40 attorneys that's right you can have a list of 40 attorneys so far you could do all this in probably 20 minutes you're not spending all day doing it you could do all this work in 20 minutes.

Now comes the hard part. You're going to take that list of 20 attorneys and you're going to look up their bar association number you can do that on Martindale and you're going to get their bar number and maybe put it in a spreadsheet Joe Schmo bar number 1234 Sally Smith bar number four five six seven whatever. And then you're going to go into the court system of your county online almost every county has a court system online to look up cases to look up dockets and you're going to look to see if those attorneys are actively doing cases each one of them.

Because you do not want to hire an attorney that does not like going to court. Many many attorneys don't like going to court you might think well isn't that the whole idea of being an attorney going to court? It's not. Most attorneys don't like getting up from their desk leaving the comfort of their office schlepping down to court going through security waiting at the courthouse for the judge and it's a waste of time because several hours of that you're doing nothing for a hearing. Sometimes the judge is late the case runs late just sitting around the courthouse. Have you ever been to the department of motor vehicles? Have you ever been to a government office? Is it more or less comfortable than your home or your business? Attorneys don't like being there either so it's a hardship to go to court.

Attorneys that go to court are rare. Most attorneys just like to do motions and filings and depositions in their office they don't want to go to court. So look at that list of 40 find out which ones are actually going to court. How do you find that out? Well look to see if their name even shows up in the docket are they even filing anything with the court. But just because you see their name doesn't mean that they're actually showing up in court it could be that they're filing a motion they're filing an appearance. Look at the actual record to see was this a trial was it litigation were they actually did they make an appearance in court or they just filed a document.

So now you can take that list of 40 narrow it down I guarantee you're going to be less than 10 after you do that you might be 7 or 8 of that list of 40. Is that going to take some time? Absolutely that might take an hour and a half to go through that list cutting and paste and putting their name in. Now you have a list of seven attorneys that you know have your practice area they're in your geographic area and they actually go to court.

Then you're going to contact them only then don't jump to gun only then contact them. And the way you start your contact is extremely extremely important. You do not want to send them a message that describes your whole case here's my case I got this this is the problem the person is a jerk I want to sue them I want to win money whatever. All you want to do in your first message is say I'm inquiring about how to talk to you the best way to learn about possibly doing the case very very vague very open-ended. I'm inquiring to see about what's the method of discussing with you the possibility of doing a case.

You're not even inquiring to hire them don't tell them you want to hire them tell them you just want to talk to them about possibly doing a case because here's why. Attorneys get many many inquiries a day when inquiry comes in the default in their head is why do I not want this case. You might not think that that makes any sense their business they want more business like the cell phone store wants to sell another phone Best Buy wants to sell another TV. You would think the lawyer wants to sell another case. They don't want to sell another case they want to find a way to not take your case.

So if they get an inquiry from you that's very general very vague doesn't tell you what kind of case it is now you have their curiosity now they're they don't have any reason to not talk to you right and all you're asking them to do is talk to them you're not asking to take my case because to attorneys the clients that come in are like zombies coming at them you know just hordes of people coming at them trying to force a case on them. Don't be one of them just be somebody says hey I just want to talk to you about a case.

Getting an attorney to agree to talk to you is an easier sale it's a lower ask than asking an attorney to take your case. You're not to that point yet it's kind of like if you're dating somebody and you ask him first thing is do you want to marry me you just want to ask hey can we go for coffee. That's how you want to handle your first contact with an attorney it will set you apart from the other plaintiffs or clients that are coming to them begging them to take the case from the first statement that gives the attorney a bad vibe that you're a high maintenance client you're already like just jumping the gun it's a little bit too soon a little bit too for forward.

First message hey I want to see about what's the best way to talk to you about maybe seeing about a case inquiry it's all it is you don't say I want to hire you. What you're trying to sell at that point is you're trying to sell a conversation all you want to do is get them to agree to talk to you that's it you don't want to agree to do a case you don't want to agree to anything else you just want to get them to agree to have a conversation with you that's it you can pitch your case then.

You ever talk to a car dealer? You ever contact a car dealer about a car on your lot? You ever notice that the car dealer all they want to do is get you in the door to talk to you they don't try to sell you a car over the phone. If you text them they're not trying to say hey buy this car all they're trying to do is get you in the door and a lot of times you don't want to come in the door you just want to get a price you just want to get your payment or your financing information and all they want to do is say hey when can you come down and talk to us when's a good time to make an appointment. You want to know how they do that? Because they want to get you in front of them to give you information about the car they want to sell you they can't sell you over the phone.

Use that same mentality with a lawyer. All you want to do is get in front of them even if you have to pay a fee their hourly rate to talk to them for an hour it's worth doing. So contact those six or seven or eight attorneys inquire about hey I want to just what's the best way to arrange a conversation to talk to you about a case that's it.

If you send that message to all seven or eight of those attorneys you might get back four or five responses half of them will never answer your email period so now you're down to four or five. Now how do you contact them? Don't do it through the main website contact form don't use that form and say hey contact us and fill it in. Find the email for that actual attorney on their page the about us page it might have their email address in their bio. If it doesn't look on the site to see if you can find their email maybe do a Google search to see if their email address shows up somewhere else.

Maybe find on their website somebody else's email for example maybe the bookkeeper has their email on the website their email address and maybe their bookkeeper is Sally Smith and their email is sally.smith at xyzlawfirm.com what does that tell you? It tells you that they use their name with a dot in between to make their email so if your attorney you're trying to contact is Joe Schmo you just send it to joe dot schmo at xyz.com right. Don't send it through the main law firm contact page find a very specific email for the person if you can't find it figure out what it might be. Send it out to all seven or eight of those you are going to get back maybe half four or five now you're down to four or five contacts see what they say depending on what they say you're gonna have to take it from there.

All you're trying to do at that point is not trying to get them to take the case not trying to tell your whole story because I can guarantee you if right now I called you up and I said hey tell me about your case you could talk for hours about everything you know about the case. This person is a jerk I looked up his information this is what they're doing this is what I mean you could ramble on for hours. Nobody wants to hear that at this point it's just going to turn them off so don't do it over the phone don't even do it when you get there. All you want to do at this point is get in front of them make an appointment either video video live conference or in person.

What do you do when you have that conversation? Well let's take a look when you show up for that conversation either in person or by video you want to have three things going for you. One is obviously you want to appear press present yourself well look at it like it's a job interview and you might think well aren't I interviewing them aren't they working for me? Yeah they are but in reality they're the one holding all the cards you need them more than they need you. If they if you don't hire them or they don't take your case there's 20 more people behind you that want to hire them.

So flip the script make it present yourself well present you so professional because for the attorney it's not about the money it's not about well I'm going to get somebody to pay my fee it's about how hard is this person going to be to work with. If you ask an attorney about their last 20 clients nobody's going to really think about how much they got paid they're going to say this was a nightmare this one was was a bad client high maintenance. Believe me when I tell you ask anybody you know who's an attorney so don't be that don't even make it seem like you're going to be that. If you you show a professional at least you know you don't have to be suit and die but at least look like you're a professional intellectual person to deal with a serious person to deal with right.

What else you need to bring with you? Well bring a piece of paper that has the the basics of your case in an outline on one page of paper that's it. The basics your name the other party's name what the the controversies about maybe dollar amounts maybe a couple facts. It should fit on one piece of paper and I don't mean like paragraphs of text run together I mean bullet points in an outline on one sheet of paper that's it because that's the only conversation you want to have.

Now also bring with you every single last document that you have about your case. I guarantee you you have a lot of records you've done research you've saved receipts you've saved everything you've got copies of voicemails emails text messages Facebook printouts you got everything. You've done a lot of work on this I guarantee it. Have it with you in your briefcase in a file file folder in your purse wherever it is but do not take that out at all at by any means unless the attorney begs you for it. Don't even tell them you have it just have it in reserve in case it comes up. It's going to be less than ten percent of the time maybe five percent of the time you'll need to do that on that first meeting but have it just in case.

All you want to talk about is what's on that one outline one sheet of paper and go into that meeting almost like a job interview that you want that attorney to work with you. Now as part of that conversation you want to be thinking in your head that attorney is evaluating you to see what kind of person you are going to be to work with not much about your case but more about what are you going to be like to work with.

So sprinkle into that conversation the reason why I contacted you Mr Mrs attorney Mr Mrs attorney whatever it is is because I saw how you did that case with Joe Schmo back in 2020 and it seems like that's the same kind of case I have and it looked like you handled that well. How do you know about that? Remember that research you did a couple weeks before about looking at all their cases online we'll now have a couple of those in your head in memory maybe making no card if you have to that you can name drop in that conversation.

What does that tell the attorney? It tells them you're serious about your case you're serious about your research that you know a little bit about them it's a little bit of flattery right? Flattery get you everywhere and you are going to set yourself apart from the other hundred of begging complaining high maintenance potential clients that walk into that office or call them up that they don't want to deal with. And at that point the attorney might be jumping over the desk to beg you to take your case.

But those are the steps to go into hiring an attorney. Remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice right you take this with a grain of salt you have to make your own judgment. You also want to do some basic searches to make sure they're not any violations they're not you know under investigation by the bar association you know maybe do some searches on the principles to make sure that they're financially sound you know their homeowners or they don't have any liens against them. That's that's separate we're assuming that the attorney you're working with is good this is about how to get them to take the case.

Let us know what you think in the comments are you having trouble finding an attorney did any of these things work for you or what didn't work for you in the past that you're trying to solve.