What to Expect From an Initial Consultation with Pacific Cascade Legal

Join us for our live event as we sit down with Founding Attorney, Lewis Landerholm, to discuss what you can expect from an initial consultation with our firm when contemplating a legal matter.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you. Covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters, with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests, we hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.

Steve Altishin  0:32  
Welcome, I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnership at Pacific Cascade Legal. I'm here with our Founding Attorney, Lewis Landerholm, to talk about what goes on in an initial consultation. So Lewis, how're you doing today?

Lewis Landerholm  0:43  
I'm doing great, Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Altishin  0:47  
I imagne, you know, a lot of folks who call in and they call in every day to set up an initial consultation. And they probably not only have questions about their case, but about what happens during the initial consultation. So let's talk about that, you know, what happens in a typical initial consultation? If there is even such a thing? In for instance, you know, how does it start?

Lewis Landerholm  1:09  
Normally a consultation is similar to you know, from each one. Normally, what I'll do is ask for underlying facts about kind of the situation what, what everybody is going through as far as what are the issues, like from a, you know, asset standpoint, from a, you know, the kids, kind of a kid standpoint, one of the big things that I ask is, If wife or partner or husband, the other side, if there's been conversations about that this is going to happen, because that helps in the consultation to understand kind of where in the decision making process where the discussion, so any previous discussions about any sort of agreements or kind of ideas, just helps to guide the consultation. So those are the main things that I do at the beginning of this kind of, and then if there's been case filed, then we can talk specifically about process. 

Steve Altishin  2:09  
And so do you get into discussing legal issues, either just in a general format, or as part of their case?

Lewis Landerholm  2:21  
For the most part, because we're not hired as their attorney yet, and we're not giving specific legal advice, because in a, you know, in a 30, minute consultation, 20 minute phone call, whatever it is, you can't really diagnose everything, you know, I mean, there's there's too many nuances that could happen, and could come up to go through all of the if then, you know, options. And so, generally, I'm providing kind of an over overview and a high level view of how the law deals with the issues, so that people have an idea of, you know, kind of what can happen, what does happen, what's possible, all of those things so that it can be applied to their individual facts. But everybody's situation is complicated and different. And so it takes more time to really dig into the underlying situation to provide specific legal advice to, you know, for their case.

Steve Altishin  3:25  
s this open to a sort of a question and answer, period? I mean, do you get many questions during the consultation? 

Lewis Landerholm  3:34  
Yeah for the most part, we get a lot of questions, some specific questions, or more general questions. And then again, I remind people, like, I can't tell somebody what to do or not do, because that's just not good lawyering. If I'm, you know, talking to somebody for 10 minutes, and then tell them what to do. You know, we just, there's too many things that could impact that decision. And so we have to put that to, once somebody's a client, and we can actually have a strategy session and dig into the facts a little bit more. But for the most part, you know, I can answer questions in a general but specific way of how it would apply to their situation, just not directing them. Yeah, do this or that. And so it's kind of all over the all over the board. But I always start with like, what's the area that you are worried about the most? What what are you trying to figure out the most so that kind of helps to give them a little bit of peace of mind and direction on how the law works there.

Steve Altishin  4:38  
I imagine you get asked a lot. Will I get this, can I win? Those kinds of questions. That's got to be, like you said, hard to try to answer those in 30 minutes.

Lewis Landerholm  4:48  
Yeah. And in family law specifically and this is what I tell people all the time, 'when' is very subjective. And you know, for for one case, a win might be getting any amount of spousal support. And another case, getting to have overnights with your kids could be a win another win for customer another case, win is full custody. So the win is runs the gamut or for each individual client. And so it's impossible to just find what a win actually is until we get into a case. And, and really the biggest thing and a consultation for us is we want our potential clients to feel like working with us is a good fit it just as much as we want to determine if working with a potential client is a good fit. And a lot of that is can during that consultation, does the person who I'm having a consultation with, are they reasonable? You know, I'm going to give some answers that aren't the answers that people want for the most part, the law doesn't just say you want it. So therefore you get it. You know, the law says this is the law and how it applies to your specific set of circumstances. So some of those conversations are difficult conversations. And that we want to understand if our expectations can, you know, line up as much as possible so that the Our style is not a style of we're just going to go and say we're going to do whatever you want, we'll advocate for all of our clients to and do that with great skill. And but we also want to work with people who want the advice, who understand that we do know what we're doing. And and that there's a give and take there and the conversation is, is a reasonable one. And everybody understands how things are going to work as we move forward.

Steve Altishin  6:43  
It would seem that, for anyone watching that's going to go into one, the need for that person to be really open and honest and willing to share the good and the bad, right at the beginning would be would be pretty important to help that sort of assessment and bonding.

Lewis Landerholm  7:06  
Yeah, I mean, having done this type of work for so long, there's a number of us who have done it well over 1015 2030 years, it's no judgments, we've seen everything. We don't care what the answer is, we just need to know what the actual answer is because we can deal with the facts. And that helps to just set the groundwork and the expectation about what can actually be done in a case. Because if we're missing facts that could, you know, have a huge detrimental effect on how the law would apply to it. 

Steve Altishin  7:39  
Yep. And that leads to the question, because I know, you have this discussion. And it's, you know, fees and costs. And it seems like if you know everything or know as much as you can, you can give a much better sort of estimate of what's going on. But I imagine that's not necessarily an easy discussion to have. 

Lewis Landerholm  8:02  
Yeah I mean, I think, you know, when I'm talking to people, there's the retainer conversation and the retainer is the initial deposit to get the ball started. And to get to get the case filed and get it moving, then I try to have the give, you know, I tell people all the time when people ask, like, how much is this going to cost? I tried to give goalposts and say, there could be wide ranges, best case scenario, X number based off of the facts, you know, people who are talking together and who have started the conversation, and it seems like everything's gonna be amicable, they're going to save a lot of money, people who we know that the other side is going to, you know, fight for everything and scorch the earth, you could have a delta for the amount of money be 5000 to 50,000, based off of our contention, it's going to be based off of who's playing games with assets, or who's doing this with, you know, with the kids or keeping the kids away from somebody else. I mean, there's, there's just signals at the beginning of cases, kind of how a case is going to go. And we want to try to get in and control some of that, so that we can bring it back to a more reasonable place. But sometimes it's not possible, like the other the other side is just there out to make it as difficult as possible. And unfortunately, that means it's going to be more expensive to get to the finish line.

Steve Altishin  9:31  
Yeah. And do the potential clients respond? How do they respond? I guess what I'm asking is, this is the time for them, I would imagine, if they've got, you know, concerns about the finances to bring it up now.

Lewis Landerholm  9:46  
Yeah. I mean, we talked about it that not only do we have to solve the legal problem, but we also have to solve the financial problem of the case itself because it's not cheap and you've got you know, if you've got an attorney and then You're tuned to be axed as heck gonna have an attorney. And then you got the core three out of those five people we can't control. And so there's a lot of moving parts that that we can't necessarily foresee. So we want to make sure that we can't rely on base best case scenario, because doesn't typically go best case scenario. So then it's talking about how do we minimize, you know, using mediation using judicial settlement conferences using other mechanisms negotiation, what does our client care about more than other things? What can we give up to negotiate something that you want to get? So it's, it's trying to just set the tone and all of that, and one of the things that we help with is we do have a third party financing company who works with us for especially the initial retainer to get a small personal loan to be able to at least get the case started. Because the other, the other part is the case, typically is going to take a year or so give or take, you know, I just tell everybody just count on a year. So the total amount is going to be spread over that year process. And there's ways to go get support turned on, there's ways to go get pre distributions of assets, there's ways to do all of these things. But we just have to make sure that we're all on the same page and, and make sure that you know, that somebody can finance the case all the way through just as much as being able to work the case.

I get a question sometimes, or you hear about people wondering, you know, I went to see this attorney and talk to them, and they must have said something because yada yada, but confidential is a huge thing. And I think people really need to know your need to be confidential, and that you require it to be confidential.

Yeah, I mean, we everything that we say has confidentiality, some of the things that destroy confidentiality, or if a third party is, you know, on the phone call, or listening to the phone call, you know, they could be made to testify as to what was being said, you know, in a consultation. So, you know, some of those things are important to talk about, especially if we're dealing with issues that are very sensitive, like, if there's DHS allegations, or whatever, criminal allegations or whatever there, whatever it is, you know, we want to be really careful about opening up certain things. And so, you know, everything is confidential for us, we just want to make sure also, that it's confidential going the other way. And that everything that the attorney says to the potential client is also covered by that confidentiality. And so, you know, it's a balance with all that because people have their support system, and they want to use their support system, but we don't want it to backfire and cause a problem in the case as well. 

Steve Altishin  12:51  
Oh god, yeah. You talked about assessing, you know, whether you're a good fit. The consultation, I imagine, is, do I have to hire you? You know, when am I required to hire you? That kind of stuff. And maybe, if I do hire you, what next?

Lewis Landerholm  13:12  
Yeah. So do I have to hire you when all of that normally that comes into play when there's already a hearing or a trial that's been set, you know, depending on and not and this is the hard part for potential clients, because they don't do this every day. Not every hearing is the same here. Sometimes we're talking about a trial, a two day trial, that's a different situation, then establish, that's a different situation than a temporary hearing. That's a different situation than a restraining order hearing. Like they all have their own demands and their own requirements and evidentiary rules. And I mean, the rules are the same, but the demands of evidence, depending on the facts. And so there isn't a blanket rule of like, how soon before a hearing do they need to necessarily hire. But sometimes that does come into play. Sometimes we just don't, we don't have the ability to jump into a two day trial month in advance, there's just not enough time to get up to speed, because the judge doesn't care when we jumped in and judge expects it to be prep the right way. And so there's some nuances, there's a ways to go have the potential client go get a room file a motion for a reset, and then if they could get reset, then we can hire so it's always worth asking the question that just doesn't necessarily be that you know, that we'd be able to take the case on like, we're in County specific and Clackamas County, we know that it's going to be harder to get resets to push the timeline out where other counties it's easier to get reset. So all of those things impact the, you know, whether we can take a case or not.

Steve Altishin  14:50  
Assuming that a potential client says, Yeah, I want to hire you. I like it. I like you. I understand the cause, I understand what you've told me, I really want to come on and go. What is the next steps?

Lewis Landerholm  15:05  
So it depends on the case, most cases, somebody hires and then they get assigned to attorney and paralegal team who's going to be working on their case, that's dependent on issues dependent on the geography. Since we have locations from Eugene to Tacoma, you know, we have people in the local area for a reason, so that, you know, they know the judges, they're, you know, closer to dealing with, you know, the case in those local areas. So all of that, and then from there, you know, I'll provide the notes from the initial consultation that I've done. And then the legal team will have a, a much more thorough, like strategy session to really lay out the entire plan of what needs to happen when, and what they need from the client, and what's gonna, you know, timelines on Rn. So from there, it just sort of builds the entire case plan at that point.

Steve Altishin  16:04  
The person who then decides to go forward, you said you match them with a set of attorneys. How long about, normally, would you talk about this, that, you know, someone will get in contact with them to set up another hearing to go into a lot more detail? 

Lewis Landerholm  16:27  
Yeah, that would be paralegals reach out at the same day or next day to schedule that. And then, obviously, it's based on the reason we do it this way is that, then we're not relying on our attorneys court schedules that get in the way. And so but then at that initial strategy meeting, sometimes they are prepping or in court. And so that can take a couple of days or whatever that looks like because, you know, the the court has their own their own demands. And if you have to be there, you have to be there. So, but that's why we do consultation this way so that people don't have to wait for an attorney who's working around a court schedule.

Steve Altishin  17:05  
Yep. And we didn't talk about this, but quickly, I just want to hit it. You don't charge for these, do you?

Lewis Landerholm  17:12  
Right, yeah. So our initial consultation, are free of charge for their complimentary, you know, we generally do them 15 to 30 minutes, it's a way to just introduce the firm to them and diagnose the initial issues that are coming up. But yeah, we don't, we don't charge for them.

Steve Altishin  17:34  
So it's about time to go. But if you had one thing you could say to somebody who's thinking about whether or not it's worth it, or they're scared, they're confused. What could you reassure them about with an in initial consultation, and how much that actually can help them make a decision? 

Lewis Landerholm  18:01  
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's huge, because, again, we handle hundreds of cases. So we see all of the facts and how the law applies to it, as opposed to trying to go to the internet, or go to friends who have seen one instance here there and applying it. Like, it's just impossible to do that. And, and we have the knowledge base to be able to apply the facts to the law and explain how it really works. And so a 15 minute conversation can save hours and hours of time trying to figure it out on your own. So it's always worth having a consultation, especially since we don't charge for them, you know, and then you just know what to do from that point forward.

Steve Altishin  18:42  
And I imagine that once it's done, and even if they don't hire us, that doesn't mean that there's some sort of a foreclosure there, that they can't come back. Because a lot of times people may not hire or may try something else. But they're always welcome back. 

Lewis Landerholm  19:03  
Of course. 

Steve Altishin  19:05  
So that's just seems like a really win win thing for everybody. Hey, Lewis, thank you for sitting down to talk with us about this, what goes on in initial consultation, because it is one of those little things that people are unsure about, because, you know, some people call an initial consultation something that's different and, and yours actually is. So thank you, everyone else. Thank you for joining us today. If anyone has any further questions, please feel free to contact our firm we can get you connected with an attorney who can help. Stay safe, stay happy and be well.

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Pacific Cascade Legal, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at pacificcascadelegal.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.