Questions to ask a potential lawyer?

[anonymuse]

My first experience with a lawyer (actually their paralegal) was a horrible experience.

I need to get back in the saddle and go visit a few others for consultations.

I've been searching through past posts and can't quite find the answer to my question:

What questions should you ask a potential lawyer before hiring him/her?

Or if you could provide a link to a previous discussion on this, I would much appreciate it.

[Minnymouth]

Don't have time to list this for you right now but will later on tonite or tomorrow. I will list them under a sticky note for this section.

[anonymuse]

Thank you Minny --- that will be very helpful to me as well. I 'm needing to start looking for a lawyer over the next month, as soon as I get my personal datat together. You are an . All the scary attorney stories have me worried!

I'm not sure what I'm more scared of--the scary lawyers or their scary fees!

[anonymuse]

I was still looking for an answer to this and found this on MSN Money Central:

13 ways to avoid a bad bankruptcy attorney

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/bankruptcyguide/P96525.asp

And here's the section on questions:

Ask questions.

Once you have some candidates, interview them or someone at the law firm. Be sure to ask:

How many bankruptcies do you handle in a month or in a year?

How many of those bankruptcies are consumer or personal rather than business filings?

How much access will I have to an attorney during my bankruptcy filing?

If I'm not working directly with you (the lawyer), who will I be working with?

Can I interview the person with whom I would be working?

What time frame do you have for this bankruptcy?

How will the procedure work?

This is a critical decision, so if you get evasive answers, it's probably a red flag that this is not the firm for you.

[SinkingFast]

That's actually a pretty good list, Anon.

The only one I see you might have a problem with is the time frame thing. When we met with our attny, the paralegal thought she'd have our petition prepared in about 10 days. But as it turns out, we were the 8th set of new clients they'd seen that week. And I guess more than just us decided to file with that attny.