On Being the “Man to See”
What people want from a lawyer is an ability to solve problems of all shapes ans sizes, with confidence and professionalism. If you can provide that, you will have a good life.
Dear Friends,
As you may well know, I am a member of the bar. I have received a government-granted letter of marque and reprisal which I may use to bring the ferocious power of the state to bear on those who stand in my way.1 It’s really quite heady stuff, even though it tends to come with a massive amount of student loan debt and many self-destructive pathologies.2
Pretty cool, especially for a libertarian, to be able to use the courts to compel testimony, seize assets, and cast other magical spells of power with special words that you went to a wizarding school to learn.3
When your friends and family know you’re a lawyer, they call you when they have a legal problem. My contractor friends get asked how to build a deck, my doctor friends get asked about injuries, and my lawyer friends get asked when someone is falsely imprisoned based on the false report of an estranged family member seeking revenge.
My rule when people call me about a case is stolen from Jim Collins, who related to Tim Ferriss on his podcast that his consulting company always tried to leave potential clients in a better position, regardless of whether or not they accepted the engagement. If you have to turn down a client, you should at least give them good advice about where else to turn.
That's the attitude I try to bring when people call me about legal problems. They know I’m a lawyer, but they seldom remember which kind, so I get asked questions about civil, criminal, family, election, and every other legal problem you could think about.
Still, I work my hardest to give them an overview of the general state of the law and a referral to an attorney in their jurisdiction who I would trust with my own case, if I were in their shoes. Not everyone does that, but everyone should. It’s the literal least you can do to make sure a person gets to someone who can help them make progress.
If you’re interested in having me on retainer, to either fix your problem myself or find you the right person to do so, shoot me a message. If you’re an independent practitioner, strive to connect your potential clients to lawyers who are better than you; it makes you and the client better off.
Yours truly,
Nick
P.S. If you are an attorney who would like to be part of a network of like-minded attorneys around the country, we should talk.
My licenses allow me to practice in Colorado, New Hampshire, and a handful of Federal districts.
The costs of entry into the profession are ridiculous for the amount of psychic weight one takes on in the profession, but that’s a whole other essay…
Law school as Harry Potter is an underdeveloped literary genre.