When Do You Really Need a Lawyer?

Dr_Harm asks: "I recently had the misfortune to encounter a CEO who had just received the Klez virus. Apparently, he believed the 'From:' header and accused me of not only authoring the virus, but deliberately and maliciously targeting him and his organization. Normally, clueless people like this don't bother me, except he was inclined to sue me and report me to the FBI. Of course, he's got more money and lawyers than I do, and could probably have made me miserable even though I'm completely innocent... but it raises the question: How do I know when I need a lawyer?"

"Clearly, once I've been served with legal papers, a lawyer is necessary. But I'm guessing that there are situations where having a lawyer before it gets to that point would be helpful. I'm interested in some general guidelines for when I should pick up the phone and call a lawyer. I'm especially interested in tales of 'I waited to long and got burned' as well as 'I got a lawyer so early it was smooth sailing'. Like most people, I make a decent living, but I cannot afford high legal bills for very long.

For those who are interested, the CEO in question decided to simply report the incident to the FBI. My guess is that the Feds logged the complaint for their statistics and then dropped the matter. However, the brush with someone with enough money and power to drain me financially has left me distinctly shaken..."

Comments

You probably don't need one yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Save all your correspondence however. In fact, you might want to post them online as well. As far as I know it's perfectly legal (at least, you see it all the time), and maybe this CEO will be humiliated enough to think twice before ignorantly accusing people of things.

I'd LOVE to know who this person is, by the way, so I can be sure not to ever do business with his or her company.

Re:If you have to ask...

[dirvish]

Make up your mind. Either he should get a lawyer for every situation or he should go with your legal self-help reference. Personally I would wait until I was served with legal papers.

Re:How much could he actually sue you for?

[Osty]

(Emphasis added by me.)

In my experiences with traffic court (lets not get into that), lawyers are especially helpful in the smaller courts. A lawyer on your side is helpful for two reasons I can think of right off. One, you don't do the speaking so you don't accidentally stick your foot in your mouth, and therefore lose the case. Two, when you have a lawyer on your side, no one screws with you. They don't play legal 'tricks' you don't know about, and you're sure to get a much more favorable ruling. If you can afford one (and better yet, if you have a lawyer friend even if it's not their specialty) get the lawyer before entering a courtroom.

Let me first say that I'm just going to stick with traffic courts for this comment, just to make things clear. Now, you explicitly call out "if you can afford [a lawyer]". What most people don't realize is that they can afford a lawyer, especially for traffic tickets. Ignoring the cost of the fine itself (anywhere between $70 and $500, depending on what you were doing), you are almost guaranteed an insurance hike in the case of a ticket. If a traffic lawyer costs $350 (at least, that's what my lawyer generally costs, with it being a bit higher for tickets out of her county), you've just saved close to $600 in insurance fees. It's very easy for a traffic lawyer to get your ticket dismissed or otherwise win the case. All they really have to do is drag out the process by asking for a discovery, which is usually not done in a traffic case but is allowed and must be honored by the court because a traffic ticket is considered a criminal offense and discovery is a right of the defendant in a criminal case. By doing that, the case will drag past the point where it's profitable for the court to continue trying it, and will likely just drop the charges (your lawyer will need to present some sort of plausible case for the charges to be dropped, so the judge can save face, but any good lawyer can do that in his or her sleep). Since traffic tickets are nothing but income for the issuing government, the simple act of fighting the ticket cuts into their profits. The governments prey on those that just blindly pay their tickets and go on their way. Don't you already pay enough in taxes?

The point, then, is that you can afford a lawyer, and should hire one. Sure, it's more expensive than representing yourself, but it's cheaper than paying the insurance increase, and there's a nearly-100% chance the lawyer will win your case (unless you picked a particularly inept lawyer).

Re:If you have to ask...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

IANAL, but - depending onhow nice you want to be- this looks like a real opportunity to bruise a tyrant.

Get a lawyer who understands the lack of merit in your opponents case.

Have him take you up on spec.

It will be VERY easy to conclusively demonstrate that you are not the author of the virus, and that Klez proliferates by spoofing sender addresses.

Take your sweet time in playing the trump card, make this expensive, long and time-consuming for him.

You can probably counter-sue for him pressing a nuisance suit. This is what will be salt on the meat for your lawyer to get involved. The minimum will be a suit to recover expenses.

Make sure that you have your lawyer agree in writing that if you are not successful in pressing suit, his fees are waived. Incentivises him, and removes your financial exposure. Hell, if you have a good laywer, he could spell this whole scenario out to the plaintiff lawyer, and you walk out of the room with a check and no appearance in court!

When you are done, you will have used this fellow's tools of abuse against him, and he might think twice before committing this sort of institutional violence again.