First of all, getting to a lawyer very promptly the sooner the lawyer’s involved, surprisingly, you would think well that means they’re going to be involved longer. No, that can reduce the expense because the lawyer can find ways to try and resolve the dispute without litigation. But if you’ve delayed getting an attorney the tendency is that it involves lack of communication and before you know it, you’re on the doorsteps of a suit and now you’re turning it over to the lawyer after you’ve already been sued. If you see a potential problem get the lawyer’s advice early on and you can usually head off a lot of expense that way.

The other things is that clients being very organized. Making sure that you put things in writing. There’s nothing worse to a lawyer than when he gets an issue, a case and the client’s explaining what happened and it sounds great from that client’s perspective and then he says okay, so where’s the letter that you proves you said that? Where’s the e-mail that documents that exchange occurred on that date? And they say no, this wasn’t an e-mail I just met on the steps of the house or we had a telephone conversation I think it website in September sometime. You don’t have any phone records to document it. The lack of documentation then is just an invitation for fighting over whether or not something happened. But if you have it documented that tends to make that issue a non-dispute and therefore, easier to resolve then at that point.

So I think documentation, communication, and it’s a fine line between over communicating and under communicating but a client that is not calling the attorney every day, maybe saving some of the questions because those points ones and point twos for those two and five minute and six minute calls end up adding up over time. And so making sure that you have your documents in your row, that you’re organized with your questions, and communicating only to the extent necessary for your attorney to be effective for you.