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I Am Not Your Lawyer: The Non-Engagement Letter

By Eric Lipman

Lawyerist has a reminder this morning about how important it is to avoid inadvertently picking up clients. More specifically, advising on the use of a non-engagement letter in situations where, for one reason or another, after a mutual testing of the waters, you're just not that into each other and decide not to consummate the attorney-client relationship. Making the parameters of the (non)-relationship crystal clear is increasingly crucial in the digital world, says Lawyerist. There are surely people out there who might believe that "@ambulancechaser T-boned by garbage truck, leg broken in 4 places. Pls help me get some ca$$$h out of this horrible tragedy. Kthxbye." means they have just hired themselves a lawyer. After an initial inquiry, if you're not going to go forward with the representation, Lawyerist advises making that explicit in the letter and, where appropriate, also advising the recipient that he may have a statute of limitations issue and he should seek out another sucker in a timely fashion. Such a letter might also be appropriate in situations where multiple parties consulted an attorney together, but conflicts were discovered, making joint representation improper. State bar associations have made sample letters widely available online, and the malpractice...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on March 11, 2010 (boomark / email).