How We Conduct Our Initial Consultations 

General

At Justice Matters we pride ourselves on providing an honest and accurate assessment of each case brought to us even if that means telling a prospective client that they have little or no chance of success.

We conduct our initial consultations by telephone to ensure that a prospective client actually has a matter that we can help them with.

 

Duration

We provide up to 20 minutes free of charge to assess a case over the telephone.  These initial assessments are general in nature and intended to determine if a client has a case that has some chance of success and one where it would be cost-effective to retain us.  If a potential case involves issues or parties we cannot deal with, or amounts of money below those to make it cost effective to retain us, no assessment will take place (although we will likely provide a referral).

Sometimes our initial assessments may take longer than 20 minutes in which case no billing to a prospective client will occur unless we have the client’s express consent for same.  We may, at our own discretion, continue beyond our initial 20 minutes without any charge to a prospective client.

If a prospective client wishes a more thorough assessment than what we can provide within a twenty minute telephone call then the prospective client may elect to have a more detailed consultation for which our hourly rate may apply.

 

Ongoing Process

Clients and prospective clients are advised that assessing cases is an ongoing process and our assessments can change as more information, documents, and opposing arguments become available to us.

Once an assessment has been provided a prospective client then has the option of retaining us or not.

Since litigation is a knowledge intensive enterprise we do not, and cannot, instruct prospective clients on how to handle a case on their own should they choose not to retain us.

 

Our Success Rate

We are often asked what percentage of cases we win.  To answer that question depends upon how you characterize a win.  Some of our cases have multiple heads of damages some of which have greater chances of success than the others.  Some of our cases involve Defendants who we know are going to lose, the question is by how much.  Consequently, we don’t keep track of “wins.”   We do, however, keep track of how often case outcomes match lose given in our assessments.  In that regard, our success rate is over 85%.