The Free Advice
It happens to just about every lawyer: Your non-lawyer friends are looking for legal advice and help and turn to you.
Naturally, you want to help your friends out if you can, but there are a lot of other issues at play. For one, most of us have a hectic enough schedule spent on billable hours and “paying” work. For another, we all work in different fields, and the types of stuff our friends and family want help on run the gamut from small claims litigation to preparing a bill of sale for a car. We don’t always have experience in these fields ourselves, but if your family member needs some assistance with fighting a traffic ticket, chances are, you’re helping out.
So the important thing to note is that if possible, we should do our best to offer some free advice to our friends and family so long as your commitment is limited, and the advice is something you can handle and are qualified enough to give. Help out but don’t get yourself in too deep or in trouble over unsound advice!
