Quick note to potential new clients. Specifically, there seem to be a lot of you all of a sudden.
I’m not sure if this means I’m getting more referrals, moving up in the SEO rankings, or if there’s simply an increase in demand for people looking for help navigating employment disputes. If it’s the latter, I fear this is bad news for the economy as a whole.
I went through a phase not too long ago where I have had entire days of nothing but new case evaluation meetings, sometimes stacked up back-to-back. While this seems like a good problem for a lawyer to have, it took time away from my ability to service my existing clients, and that isn’t fair to them. They deserve my attention and their cases are on timetables that demand I do things.
So while I very much want to learn about what other things are happening and what other matters I might be helpful in, I find myself in the position of needing to ration out the time I spend evaluating potential new clients and new cases. To that end, I’m trying an experiment: posting my next availability date on the Contact page. This is to let you know when you can expect to hear back from me and understand that if I offer a time for an appointment, a delay between the request and proposed time is nothing to do with you or the merits of your case.
There are sometimes important limitation periods. Frequently, those dates begin counting from the last adverse action taken by an employer against an employee (regardless of whether or not that action was justified). In a wrongful termination case, this is almost always the date the fact of termination is communicated to the employee. Important periods of time can run, depending on the situation, from 90, 180, 300, or 365 days after that event.
If you’re running up against one of these dates, I hope you’ll take the time to mention that in the “other information” box on the contact form. If you do, that helps me understand if I need to make an exception to my scheduling policy to take a look at your situation before certain deadlines might pass.
Also, please be aware that you only need to use the contact form once. The form is wired into my practice management system, and it creates a new entry. Doing things this way creates a lot of efficiencies for both you and I during the initial phases of our interactions. Multiple uses of the contact form create multiple duplicate entries for you in that system, however, which creates the opposite situation — a lot of inefficiencies.
I try, during regular business operations, to respond to new client inquiries within a business day of their being made, and to respond to them in the order they were made when possible. Sometimes I take time away from work (as we all do) and may take a little bit longer than that to respond. Please be confident that your communication will be received, will be read, and will be acknowledged.
Thanks, and while I hope you don’t have need of my services, if you do, I appreciate your taking the time to read and appreciate how I handle inquiries. I look forward to delivering good service to all my clients.