A colleague is handling a County Court matter with a disputed claim of about $100,000.00. I was doing another interlocutory application and wasn’t sure what the filing fee was so I looked up the ledger of this matter this colleague is working on, as I know a similar application was filed in that matter. I found the answer I was looking for but just as stark, is the fact that this little dispute has racked up a bill of over $20,000.00. My own matter has racked up just over $10,000.00, and that was before an invoice for barrister’s fee of about $6,000.00 was received yesterday.
I guess this reminds me why lawyers are often a hated bunch. Yes, we solve problems but we create new ones as well.
This is going to be a continuing struggle for me. How does one go on doing this? For every problem worth $100 which we solve, we take up to 30-40% of that and line our own pockets. Even that is not as bad as when the problem is actually not solved. The client still has to pay us. That double whammy is what often turns clients against lawyers, sometime venomously so.
It isn’t such a great problem if the client is a corporation. The issues usually involve greater sums of money and they have deeper pockets. So the only thing which keeps me up at night is solving the actual legal problem. I would have no guilt laden conscience in charging the small little struggling family business a fee which justifies my work but land the client on one knee.
The present two cases are not the worst examples. We have had our fair share of even smaller disputes which our fees totally blow out of the water. If you ever choose to be a lawyer, don’t be a suburban lawyer if you have sentiments like mine. If you ever have a dispute, and that dispute is solely on money matters, settle it without even seeing a lawyer if you could. It makes no sense to go to a lawyer if the problem has to do with just money, as it only gives you a bigger problem in terms of a large legal bill. Only make sure you have some paper saying the settlement is final and there is to be no recourse no matter what. You strictly don’t need a lawyer for that piece of paper. Just think of the worst possible scenario where the guy you have a dispute with turns around after shaking your hands, and denying any final agreement/settlement ever took place.
Ante 