Initial Consults: To Free or Not to Free?
Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 3:16PM
I'm against lawyers doing free consultations.
Not for the usual reasons given -- such as that it diminishes the attorney's stature or that people simply don't value free things.
No, I'm against free consultations because they frequently mask a serious practice management problem that needs addressing: not being able to close a sale.
Converting an initial consultation into a client (or closing a sale as it is known in every other industry on earth) is perhaps the single most fundamental practice management skill a lawyer in private practice needs to have. Big firm or small firm, black letter law or the most esoteric practice area - lawyers in private practice have got to be paid to do their stuff. Getting paid, unfortunately, involves asking someone to pay you.
It's uncomfortable asking clients for money. Nobody likes it.
It's even more uncomfortable to sit in an empty office all day long hoping the phone rings, though, which is why a lot of lawyers offer free consults. Filling one's calendar with unpaid consults creates busy-ness without productivity. It's the same mindset as continuing to work on cases for clients who are no longer paying their bills. It's feels better to be busy than to work on the deeper issues.
It prioritizes busy-ness over business.
If potential clients who could pay you a reasonable initial consultation fee refuse to do so, figuring out why is the deeper issue you need to work on.
Until you do, there's going to be something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Erik Mazzone
This post generated some interesting discussion, and reasonable people can (and do) disagree on this point:
Lee Rosen over at Divorce Discourse posted a turkey jerky-oriented response (you really should read if for no other reason than you rarely find practice management posts involving jerky) saying that the problem is not inability to close a sale but ineffective lead generation. He makes a good point - and I generally defer to Lee in all matters jerky-related, but...
Lee's point about lead generation only holds water if an attorney reduces the cost of her initial consults as a response to first trying to charge for consults and ending up with an empty calendar. I don't think this is the case for a lot of lawyers, though.
Rather, in a lot of cases lawyers drop their consult fees to start with, before trying to fill a calendar with paid consults. There are a lot of factors that drive this behavior, from fear of rejection (a common sales problem) to lack of belief in the value of their own time and advice.
Susan Cartier Liebel, author of Build a Solo Practice blog and founder of Solo Practice University, posted a comment saying both Lee and I got it wrong, and the problem is more complex. She referenced a detailed article on her blog that you can read here.
In short, Susan argues that free consults are a valuable tool depending where an attorney is in the growth phase of her career. Susan's post elaborates that free consults can be a useful tool for a lawyer to practice interviewing and other skills without wasting paid consults. She adds that paid consults might be better added in "as your knowledge grows... and your 30 to 60 minutes with a client can be worth more than an inexperienced lawyer's three hours..."
With due respect to Susan, I disagree.
This position reinforces the basic fear that at the bottom of the decision not to charge for a consult: that for any reason, a lawyer's time is not worth money.
That reason might be inexperience (as Susan remarks) or having been recently laid off from another firm and new to solo practice or embarrassment at working in a virtual office rather than a "real" office or... you get the idea. The possibilities go on and on.
The bottom line is that if an attorney is admitted to the bar and taking clients, she's in the business of selling her time and expertise for money. No further growth of knowledge is needed to start being paid. To suggest that an attorney essentially practice on low-stakes non-paying clients isn't very fair to either the client or lawyer.
If an attorney's knowledge and skills are so poor that they ought not to be paid for then the solution is not to give free consults but to find another job.
One other note: the best argument for not charging for initial consults came from a comment on a thread on Susan's blog where a reader posted that in his contingency fee practice free consults fit his business model.
The exception to my "no free initial consults rule" is that there are practice areas, such as this reader's, where it makes sense to offer a free consult: areas where the client is not going to ever pay your fee out of pocket.
So, thanks to Lee, Susan and the reader on Susan's blog for making for interesting conversation.
Initial Consults, Sales in Finance 
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (2)
I agree, Erik, for a few reasons. First, some "potential" clients only want to have their questions answered. They have no intention of taking further action. As a result, the hour or so that you spend with them imparts to them the fruits of your wisdom, thereby giving value, and in exchange you have nothing but one hour less in your day to either bill a paying client or play free cell on your computer. My other reasons are somewhat cynical but realistic based on my practice of law for many years. Some people attorney shop to cause a conflict of interest to prevent certain attorneys from representing the opposing party. Free consultations make that very easy to do. Additionally, when an attorney gives away his advice for free, he is exposing himself to malpractice liability regardless of whether he is paid for the advice. Even a minimal charge is better than no charge at all.
Those are great points, Lisa.
Nothing cynical about admitting that the practice of conflict shopping exists, and I agree with you whole-heartedly. Also, the reminder that an attorney is not just giving away her hour of time, she is giving away the professional liability that goes with it.
Thanks for the great comments and for stopping by.