Florida attorneys Eric Lanigan and Roddy Lanigan see clients in their Winter Park law offices to handle a wide range of complex legal situations.
How Long Will It Take?
Florida attorneys Eric and Roddy Lanigan answer the question: how long will it take which is one of two questions that always get asked and almost never get answered. And that is how much is it going to cost and how long will it take? How much will it cost to handle my case and how long will it take to resolve my case?
And they’re legitimate questions and I feel the frustration of a client when they can’t get an answer. And I try to explain to clients there’s a reason sometimes when you can’t get an answer.
You Can’t Know How Long It Will Take
And I’ve come to an analogy that I think works: If I’m a boxer and I’m getting ready to go in to fight and somebody says, “well how long will this fight last?” Well the realistic answer is, “I don’t know.”
If my opponent steps into the ring and drops his hand and sticks his chin out the fight’s not going to last very long because he’ll get knocked out and within the first few seconds of the fight. But we all know that’s not going to happen.
We know the other fighter’s going to come into the ring, that other lawyer is going to come into the ring and he’s probably going to be qualified and smart and he’s going to have thought through his case and so it’s going to be kind of like that real boxing match and how will it go two rounds will it go fifteen rounds that’s a question that just can’t be answered.
Run If You Hear an Attorney Say This
And if a lawyer sits down with you and says gives a definitive answer in the very first meeting that, “OK this is going to take this so much time and it’s going to cost you this exact amount of money,” in my opinion that client ought to get up and not walk out of that office but run.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take. It’s going to take as long as it’s going to take for us to get in a situation where we’ve either mitigated our losses to an acceptable level for you as a client or we’ve won. That’s how long it’s going to take.
It’s going to cost as much and the amount of resources that we’ll have to throw at a problem will generally depend on how complex and intricate the problem and intricate the issue we’re faced with is.
Everyone Should Have an Attorney
Every single person in the State of Florida should have an attorney.
Ninety-nine percent of the issues that come into my office where people have to pay $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 in fees generally could have been avoided had they had a family attorney on retainer and paid him $500 to $1,000 to $1,500 to $2,000 to look at an issue beforehand.
98% of Clients Can Avoid Legal Problems
About ninety-eight percent of my clients had they had a lawyer overseeing the business decisions that they were making and the documents that they were signing would never find the their way into my office.
How to Keep an Attorney on Retainer
It doesn’t take anything to have an attorney on a retainer. It takes having a business relationship with somebody somebody you trust somebody that you know. Maybe it’s a family friend. Maybe it’s someone you got referred from a friend.
Give them a thousand dollars and say I’d like to keep you on retainer. Give them two thousand dollars say I’d like to keep you on retainer.
When my retainer is exhausted then please send me a bill to refill the retainer so I have that luxury and that option for that when I have a when I as a business person or business owner have that issue I can immediately get my retained attorney on the phone and go over it with them.
Business Speed Kills Deals
But I find that the problem in the business world as opposed to the legal world is where everything in the legal world moves very slowly because of the court system.
In the business world everything happens at light speed. People feel that they need to make this deal and do this deal now. But when you have that attorney on retainer he’s intimately involved with everything that you’re doing in your business life.
It’s not too much to pick up the phone and give them a call and ask them if they should do this or do that.
And in the end I can tell you from experience–from a lot of experience–it’s much, much more cost effective to go ahead and have a personal attorney or business attorney that you can always call to ask these types of questions.
