A brave articling student once quipped about me that, “if you say, ‘pro bono’ near Murray, you’d better be talking about Sonny and Cher.” Now that was a tad unfair. It was not that I was against our firm doing pro bono work, but I did want us to be doing it for people who could not afford a lawyer, as opposed to people who were just cheap and did not value what we did.
Some of the old folks will remember a film titled Bedtime for Bonzo, in which Ronald Reagan played opposite a chimpanzee named Bonzo. A chimp, a chump, Pro Bono, Pro Bonzo. I tried not to confuse them.
As much as I may pine for the days when the practice of law was more of a profession and less of a business, when it comes to charging for legal services, lawyers need to treat it as a business, and that means that you do not give away the inventory for free. And that brings me to the topic of lawyers giving free consultations.
Let me state my general rule first: Don’t do it.
Of course, there are always exceptions. Personal injury law springs to mind. There is big money to be made by screening a large number of clients and selecting those with good claims. Lawyers need to get people in the door so that they can separate the wheat from the chaff.
Now, back to the general rule which applies when the goal is to provide services to quality clients. These are people who have to have the ability to pay for legal services and are willing to pay for them. They are the opposite of people who want to get something for nothing. When you offer a free consultation to these people, all that you do is devalue your services. You tell the potential client that you are not particularly busy and are willing to offer freebies to get business in the door. You suggest to them that you are not serious about being paid for your efforts and that perhaps fees are negotiable. You are being a Bonzo.
None of this suggests that you should ask people to pay for services if you do not provide value. I often told potential clients that they were not required to pay for the first meeting if they did not think that they had received value. This gave me the opportunity to get a good read of them. If they resisted paying the full price for the initial consultation, I could consider declining the retainer or requesting a hefty deposit. Alternatively, I might tell them that they would only pay for the first meeting if they decided to retain me.
Both of these approaches helped the client meet me without fear of paying for an unproductive meeting, and gave me the opportunity to impress them. Neither would be a good idea if the referral were not from a trusted source.
If you do not value yourself, you cannot expect clients to value you. Giving away free legal services makes you a chump. In my not so humble opinion.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.