They say every family or group of friends needs a good doctor, accountant, and lawyer among them to help each other navigate the nuances of life on the cheap.
And while I will admit I have taken advantage of the doctors and accountants I know in my orbit, I have never reached out for free legal advice from the attorneys I know. Nor will I readily give any out unless it pertains to the very narrow field in which I practice.
Have a general medical question about why it hurts when you sneeze? You can bet the doctor friend of yours has seen multiple cases of it when they made their rounds as a resident, even if they later went on to specialize in oncology.
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Not sure how much in capital losses you can carry over on your federal taxes from year to year? I suspect your CPA buddy can rattle off the answer cold.
But ask me to help expunge an old DUI from your record and I will follow-up with a dozen more questions.
In what state did it occur? How long ago? What county? Were you driving your car? Was it your first offense? Did you hold a valid driver’s license? Were you nice to the police officer when you were arrested? Was the sun shining and were the birds singing at the time of your arrest?
To my criminal law colleagues rolling their eyes at my above set of interrogatories, that is precisely my point.
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I specialize in health care law and have never tried a criminal case in my life. In fact, the only thing I remember from my 1L criminal law class is that there are a whole bunch of elements that go into each crime and you need to ask a lot of questions to really flesh out the whole story. And since I work in-house for a hospital network, all of my other legal colleagues have about as much depth in criminal law as I do, meaning I can not simply run the question by a more experienced coworker.
I wish I could say the above DUI was purely illustrative and hypothetical, however, I received the exact ask from a friend of mine fairly early on in my legal career. You know the time, when you are still not yet jaded by the system and believe the moment you were sworn into the bar you were magically granted the keys to the proverbial kingdom.
Desperate to flex my new legal muscle for my friend, I eagerly agreed to assist and told him it would not be a problem. I quickly realized I was in over my head the moment I found out I would need to do just a bit more than file an appearance on his behalf and ask the judge nicely to forgive his past sins.
In fact, in my particular jurisdiction, I would even need a letter of recommendation from the current or former county prosecutor, in a county that was three hours away from me no less.
Defeated, I had to sheepishly return to my friend after a couple of weeks of reaching dead ends and let them know I could be of no real help. I did, however, make an introduction to an excellent criminal law attorney I knew; the first and only real value I brought to my friend.
Since that time I have learned to politely decline friendly requests at the outset unless it is an area of law with which I am familiar.
I will, of course, make any introductions or recommendations to other attorneys I know who may be helpful, but as my past attempt at helping demonstrated, getting outside of my area of the law cost my friend a little bit of time, hope, and me, a bit of dignity.
Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at [email protected].