FAQs

No. The Bolin Firm is not an attorney referral service.  If you decide that your matter requires a full-scope lawyer to handle it, you must find that lawyer by yourself. Ms. Bolin will help you understand the issues involved in your matter, she will help you understand the type of law specialty and lawyer that may be most helpful to you, and may point you to resources to find a pool of lawyers to choose from, but she will not choose a lawyer for you nor will she make a lawyer referral.

Yes. You come to The Bolin Firm to seek legal advice through legal consultation. Thus, you are a prospective client, as that term is defined by the rules of professional conduct, governing the conduct of attorneys in New York and California. It is important to emphasize that The Bolin Firm is a consultation only, counseling law firm. The Firm will not handle your case, will not draft documents for you nor make an appearance for you. Thus, even though The Bolin Firm is a consultation-only firm, and will not enter into an ongoing retainer agreement with you, your information is still confidential and cannot be disclosed. Your communication will be held in confidence and your secrets will be protected and preserved as required by law. That allows you to freely seek legal advice from The Bolin Firm.

There is a flat fee per hour to consult with Ms. Bolin. Once your booked consultation time is over, that concludes your relationship with The Bolin Firm. Your questions are handled in a confidential manner and your secrets are maintained.

Bring your legal questions. Ms. Bolin will answer them and help you figure out for yourself the best option(s) to follow for an outcome that is satisfactory to you. Ms. Bolin established The Bolin Firm as an alternative to traditional, full-service legal representation. Instead of handling your entire matter from start to finish, The Bolin Firm provides limited scope attorney-client consultation only to prospective clients as to their legal issues. This is intended to allow the prospective client a better opportunity to understand rights, obligations, issues, costs and potential landmines involved in the matters they are dealing with prior to seeking full-scale legal representation.

Yes, booking your appointment must be pre-paid in full. The terms of the pre-payment nonrefundable reservations require full payment to be made at the time of booking. Payment will be processed and debited from the authorized credit card account.

No refund will be offered for cancellations, no-shows and early conclusion of consultations. Changes or amendments to the reservation will be termed as cancellations and no refund will be offered. If you cannot keep your appointment, you must notify us at least 24 hours before your appointment, so we can reschedule you to another date. Failure to do so will be considered a no-show.

Yes, but you must do so at least 24 hours before your appointment time. Please contact us by email at [email protected]. If you do not reschedule at least 24 hours before your scheduled appointment, then you are considered a no-show and no refund is due.

We will notify you by email if for some unforeseen reason, Ms. Bolin will be unavailable, and offer you dates and times to choose from.

The one main difference is that Ms. Bolin is here to answer your questions only within the time you have paid for and is not looking for you to retain her to handle your case. Thus, she can tell you what you should know and not what will bring in your business.

Since Ms. Bolin is a consultant, you are free to consult with her for a second opinion on your matter even when you have your full scale attorney. Most full-scope attorneys and their clients have welcomed this help. There are times when clients feel that they are being “pressured” by their full scope attorneys and some attorneys feel frustrated that their clients are not listening to their legal advice with a likely detrimental outcome. This happens especially in settlement negotiations where Ms. Bolin has been consulted by both attorney and clients alike to aid them in “closing the deal.” Ms Bolin has been involved in such situations to help the client and his/her attorney get back on course for a satisfactory outcome. Ms. Bolin has been involved in this type of “intervention” with attorneys and their clients in various areas of law. Other attorneys have a comfort level in seeking Ms. Bolin’s help as she has no interest in “taking” their clients away.

There is a flat fee per hour to consult with Ms. Bolin. You book your time, come with all your questions. Your questions are handled in a confidential manner with your secrets maintained. Once the consultation session is over, that concludes your relationship with The Bolin Firm. There is no ongoing attorney-client relationship.

With traditional law firms, you are either going to sign a retainer agreement that takes a percentage of your case, or be charged an hourly rate (or sometimes both). Retaining full-scope attorneys can be very expensive. It is not something you should undertake without fully understanding the costs, time and stressors involved.

The average case goes to trial within 2 to 3 years. Some can take much longer. Some cases are not even over after trial concludes, as appeals and post-trial wrangling remain. You must understand what the costs of litigation will entail before you rush out to hire a lawyer. People often discover far too late in the process that litigation was not their best course of action in the first place. By the time that realization comes to light, they are usually so deep into it that trying abandon the case could be very difficult to do, and would pose an entirely new set of problems like being liable for the other side’s litigation costs. The cost of litigation is something you should carefully consider. Some of the these litigation costs include:

If you lose your case, you may be ordered to pay the attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by the other side. That can be crippling. In addition to the fees and costs of proceeding with a lawsuit, there can be serious adverse emotional consequences and stressors that you go through with litigation and alternatives to litigation. Again, it is important that you first come to a firm like The Bolin Firm to get a basic understanding and information you will need to make sound, calm and sober decisions that could have lasting impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones

The Bolin Firm is also different from the so-called “a la carte” legal service in that, Ms. Bolin will not parse out in which area you may consult with her. You are free to bring up any legal issue you have as long as the issue is within the Firm’s areas of practice. Thus, you may freely discuss strategies, pitfalls, and options that will most likely result in the outcomes that you seek in any of those areas of practice within your booked consultation time.

The Bolin Firm seeks to help the prospective client understand that there are options to resolving a contested matter whether through litigation, alternate dispute resolution, amongst other legal avenues that may be available to them. In many cases, Ms. Bolin the prospective client may have absolutely no idea where to start when confronted with a legal issue or matter. The firm offers you that starting point. You can confidently and confidentially ask your questions and discuss your matter openly.

It could be as simple as a letter you got threatening you with a lawsuit, a disagreement with your employer, employment agreement, potential breach of contract, landlord or business partner, or issues involving separation or contemplated divorce. It could be something to do with your HOA, your insurance coverage, debts, bankruptcy, or that you are contemplating mediation or arbitration of an issue. Or possibly you want to know what to do about a nuisance matter, premises that need repairs, disputes involving a contract you are involved in or an injury you sustained, contemplating whether or not to start a lawsuit, whether to accept a settlement you have been offered, or any other legal question that you may have. Ms. Bolin will discuss them with you so that you may have a basic understanding of your matter. Knowledge is power. With knowledge comes understanding to enable you make better decisions as to your possible outcomes.

Perhaps, the biggest difference is that we’ve come to realize that people or entities that come to The Bolin Firm do so outside of regular business hours. So, The Bolin Firm is available evenings and weekends generally to the public.

It is important that you be prepared with all the questions you have before your scheduled appointment with Ms. Bolin.

Absolutely not. This is a question we can easily answer for you, because we are not trying to get you as a client whose case we’ll take to court or handle in any way. You are here only to consult with Ms. Bolin. Once your paid consultation time is over, our relationship terminates.

Ms. Bolin’s consultation appointments are on via zoom only. So, you are able to be in the comfort of your home, in front of your own computer and your paperwork and ask her legal questions that you are seeking guidance on. Ms. Bolin does not entertain meetings outside of zoom. To prepare for your zoom appointment, first book and pay for the time you need.  If you think your matter needs more than one hour, be sure to reserve those hours at the time of your booking. Carefully write down the crux of your legal matter. Write down the questions that you want answered. No matter how important or unimportant you think the question is, write it down and bring it up.

Ms. Bolin believes that the most satisfactory outcomes for the client result from understanding the client’s circumstances completely so that a clear plan of action is set for the outcome that most compliments the client’s desires. Not everyone has the stomach for a protracted legal fight, while some do. In any case, the best way to ensure an outcome that brings some measure of closure for the client is to take a whole person approach to the legal issue(s) confronting the client.

If you need someone to translate for you, please have that person on the zoom meeting with you.