Working with Attorneys

Perform a conflict check with each candidate

Once you have a candidate attorney on the telephone, let him or her know the general nature of the problem you are confronting, and carefully avoid providing numerous specifics. You should also carefully avoid divulging confidential information at this stage.

Why? The very first thing to be done, before you divulge too much information to the attorney, is to confirm that, if everything else is favorable, he or she would actually be able to take on your case. This would not be possible if, for example, the attorney cannot take on your case due to a conflict of interest.

A simple example will clarify this. Suppose your company Alpha Corp. is involved in a dispute with Beta Corp. You call John Smith to see if he and his law firm would be willing to represent you in this dispute.

Before you tell John all of the details regarding your view of the dispute, John will probably ask you to provide: (a) a general summary of the nature of the dispute; (b) the correct name, address, and other forms of identifying information (e.g., names of major shareholders, directors, and officers) regarding your company Alpha Corp.; and (c) the correct name, address, and other forms of identifying information (e.g., names of major shareholders, directors, and officers) regarding the adverse party Beta Corp.

Why? Imagine that John works on the 2nd floor of a law firm that has around one hundred attorneys, and, although he doesn’t know it yet, one of his partners, Bill Jones, was contacted yesterday by Beta Corp. to assist them in their dispute with you. The ethics rules in effect in most states provide that a single law firm cannot represent both the Plaintiff and the Defendant in the same dispute at the same time.

Thus, the better law firms always ask a client, at the beginning of a screening / interview telephone call, to identify the client and the adverse party with some precision , so that the lawyer can call the Accounting Department to conduct a quick computerized conflict of interest check to ensure that no one at the firm knows of any reason that the lawyer cannot take on the case.

Once the conflict of interest check is complete and clear, you can then rest assured that you can visit with this potential candidate attorney, confident that the secrets you share aren’t being further shared with your opponent.

So, in a nutshell, the very first thing to cover in a telephone call with a potential new attorney is not the details regarding the dispute; rather, it’s whether the potential new attorney is even available to hear those details and possibly take on the case. Remember the conflict check. Make completing the conflict check your first, and highest, priority. You’ll be glad you did.