The most common complaint against lawyers is that they do not return phone calls. In fact, this is the most common complaint that is made to the various state bar organizations. To answer help people faced with this problem, we have put together an informative video that will explain what you can do if your lawyer does not call back
Here is the transcript of the video above:
I’m Zach Parry. Today we are going to be talking about the situation some people find themselves in when they have an attorney and the attorney won’t call them back. So what do you do?
Number one, try calling your attorney. Leave a couple of messages and send emails. In some cases you are not hearing from the attorney because they’re out of town, or it is a particularly busy time. But there’s no excuse for an attorney not getting back to you promptly.
So whether it’s a few days, anything more than a few day starts to get unreasonable. In fact, the number one complaint that the Bar receives about attorneys is that they failed to communicate. And you may not know that there is an ethical rule that specifically pertains to an attorney’s duty to communicate with the client.
Included in an attorneys responsibility to the client are to keep client reasonably informed of the status of the matter and to promptly return requests for information. So, if you are asking your attorney for an update, your attorney has two ethical duties. One, to have given you an update anyway, and, two, to respond promptly.
So if you absolutely cannot get your attorney to respond, then your attorney may just be a bad person and you should fire your attorney which is your right. Then go get an attorney who does have good communication skills and will respond promptly.
