Frequently Asked Questions About Consultations
What Can I Do To Maximise The Usefulness Of My Consultation?
Be on time: As we often have several appointments scheduled, running late for your appointment may unfortunately mean that your consultation time is cut short once the next consultation time slot arrives. For in person appointments, please make an allowance for travel delays due to the Tube, road traffic, or locating the office building.
Provide relevant documents (Why is it important that I fill the Questionnaire out before the appointment?): Legal advice is extremely fact specific and our advice will only be as useful and as accurate as the information that it is based on. For this reason, we ask all individuals attending a consultation with the law firm to fill out a client questionnaire which provides us with relevant background details and screens for commonly encountered problems so that we can better assist you with your legal matter.
Depending on your circumstances, please also provide the following items at least 24 working hours in advance of your consultation.
- For criminal convictions in the UK: Please provide a scan of an ACPO Police Certificate, the final judgment called a 'Memorandum of Conviction', or an enhanced CRB/ CBS record check;
- For criminal convictions in the USA: Please provide a scan of the final judgment issued by the relevant court where you were tried which shows the offense you were convicted of, the statute and section within the statute under which you were convicted, and the sentence imposed;
- For cautions/ arrests in the UK: Please provide a scan of any paperwork provided to you by the police;
- For denied US visas: Please provide a scan of the visa denial letter you were given by the US Embassy;
- For denied entry into the USA: Please provide a scan of any paperwork you were given by US immigration authorities at the US border;
- For other US immigration-related difficulties (including but not limited to deportations): Please provide a scan of any significant documents issued to you by US immigration authorities, a US immigration court, and other official documentation you were provided with.
Is My Discussion With The Attorney Confidential?
The attorney-client privilege has long been recognized as a central pillar in encouraging candid and complete communications between a client and his or her lawyer. The law firm can only perform truly beneficial services for you only if we are aware of all information that might be relevant to our representation.
However, there are some very limited exceptions to the general rule that everything you tell your lawyer will be kept confidential. For instance, if we believed that someone's life was in danger or if we were under a court order to produce records, we may have to make limited disclosures of information obtained from a consultation client that would otherwise be confidential. (The full list of situations where we may have to reveal confidential information is as follows: in order to prevent death or substantial bodily harm to the client or a third party; prevent the client from committing a crime; where our services were used in order to effectuate fraud or a crime; in order to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial financial loss; in order for the lawyers to secure advice about their own compliance with legal professional rules; in case of a controversy or legal action between the law firm and a client, or between two law firm clients where joint representation was undertaken; or to comply with a court order.)
Please note that confidentiality can be broken in certain situations, such as where you share confidential information in a public place (there is no reasonable expectation of confidentiality if you tell your lawyer information in a crowded public place), where you invite third parties not involved in your case to be present during your conversation with the attorney, or where you share the contents of your conversation with your attorney with others at a later time.
Can I Bring My Spouse/ Relative/ Friend With Me To The Consultation?
Some individuals feel more comfortable bringing a family member or a friend along to the consultation. While the firm welcomes visitors, it is important to be aware that the attorney-client privilege may not apply when third parties are present. This is because information is only confidential when discussed in confidential circumstances by the lawyer and the client. If the client was to disclose confidential information to the lawyer in a crowded lift, for instance, the attorney-client privilege would not attach because the information was shared in public. A third party present at the consultation has a similar impact and 'breaks' the confidentiality attached to communications. In such cases, the attorney will not disclose the information received to others (save in cases where one of the limited exceptions to confidentiality applies) but, if the attorney was directed to reveal the contents of communications with the client, the lawyer would be unable to assert the attorney-client privilege as a means of shielding the information.
Some third parties are needed to assist in the representation (for instance, translators where the client does not speak English well). In such cases, the attorney-client privilege still applies. In other cases, the third party will him or herself be a client (for instance, in cases where a US citizen wishes to petition for their UK citizen spouse to immigrate to the USA, both parties are clients) and, in this case, the attorney-client privilege will still apply.