Lawyer Response Time

We take a number of phone calls from people looking to replace their current lawyer and their number one complaint seems to be that their lawyer never calls them back. No one likes being ignored. What exactly should the response time be back from your lawyer? What is reasonable? What are your own expectations? What are the ethical obligations of the lawyer?

A lawyer is under an ethical duty to keep their client reasonably informed of all details of the case and to reasonably communicate with their client to keep them up to speed on whatever may be going on with the case. The ethical SCR rules don’t spell out specifics as to what is required, so every lawyer’s perception of what is required of them, or the public’s perception of their lawyer is going to be different.

Certainly, the lawyer taking days to get back to you, whether by e mail, phone call or wanting to set up an appointment at the office or being completely ignored is not acceptable behavior and is not a “reasonable response time.” What is reasonable? How about 24 hours? If you call on a Monday or e mail your lawyer, it is not unreasonable for the lawyer to have a 24 hour return policy. If the lawyer can’t get back to you, one of his assistants in the office should. After all, there are days when the lawyer may be in court or in a trial for days on end. However, day to day, if the lawyer is in the office or at meetings or court, getting your messages and inquires responded to within 24 hours certainly seems like a reasonable expectation on your part as the consumer/client and on the

Lawyers can be notorious procrastinators and many times, we get ignored by the other attorney on the case when we try to contact them. What does that say about the lawyer;  that the lawyer doesn’t care about you as the client. If they did, they would be calling you back as quickly as they can. When your messages gets delayed for days or weeks on end, or your repeated attempts at contacting your lawyer goes completely ignored, it is time to go shopping for a new lawyer, one that really cares about you as a person and respects you as a client.

For more information on this article, contact Karp & Iancu.