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I do not believe in high-pressure sales efforts. I simply and honestly present myself and what I have to offer. If a potential client hires me it is their decision without pressure or coercion.

When contacted by telephone, I listen first, clarify what is needed, offer ideas of what I could do, and offer to meet. If the client is interested, I set an appointment. If they say they will call back, I leave that up to them.

I just discovered that one client hired me because she was frustrated with the constant sales pitches by the other lawyers. She had gotten tired of letters in her mailbox offering help, of attorneys calling her repeatedly. She liked how I presented everything, and left it up to her to decide.

What's unexpected about that, you ask? It was what she said; “I called you, because you were the one who didn't call me back."

Taken out of context, it sounds like I owed her a call and didn't. The reality was I was the most courteous of the attorney's she had dealt with so far.

This is a true story. It is an example of the tiny details that can go wrong when a person does their will without assistance by a competent lawyer.

An adult brother died, leaving a will. The problem was that the brother apparently drafted the will himself. The content of the will was okay, it even included a self-proving affidavit. However, the signing of the will was messed up by a single, simple mistake. The notary did not stamp the self-proving affidavit.

Without the notary stamp the witnesses’ signatures to the self-proving affidavit were invalid. That meant finding and bringing the witnesses to court. The will had been executed twenty years ago and the witnesses could not be found. To prove the will up would therefore require testimony as to the validity of the deceased brother's signature. Unfortunately, not all the heirs were competent, and guardians had not been appointed. If the will were not validated, the estate would pass under the intestate rules for Texas, which meant the surviving mother would receive everything (he had no children or wife).

Add to this complication that there were Medicaid reimbursement issues for the deceased as well as for his surviving mother.

This entire mess could have been avoided if a lawyer had reviewed everything and noticed the notary failed to use their official stamp.

Real life is messy. Things do not go as planned, the worst case scenarios do come true at times and sometimes we just make mistakes. Those mistakes can come back to haunt you years later in unexpected ways.
In my time as a lawyer, I have talked with people who have married and divorced multiple times, and cannot recall if each "marriage" was officially resolved before the next began. You cannot be married to two people at the same time, and that creates a problem for the current relationship.
I have also had calls from people with children of unresolved parentage. These adults find themselves needing child support, or seeking an adoption years after the other biological parent has disappeared. It becomes complicated to clean up their current parent child affairs, because the past issues were never resolved. Not impossible, just more complex.
I know why this happens. These are not "bad" people. They are regular folks, struggling like the rest of us to find a happy life. In that struggle they did the best they could with the issues at hand, and just tried to get by. That works until some unresolved issue from the past blocks something about their current life.
The point of this post isn't to condemn these people for their choices or current circumstances. The point is to have you stop and asses where you are in your current situation. If you are making changes in your life-relationships, or have in the past, stop and consider if you have tied, or are tying, up all the lose ends. Have you established paternity, have you divided debts and secured such in writing, have you established child support and visitation, will problems arise in securing passports? There are multitudes of issues that seem small now, that can be big problems later.
If you are in mid-change, consider consulting a lawyer to verify it is all being cleaned up. If you made changes without a lawyer, consult with one to verify you did not miss anything. It is always easier to clean up a messy problem as soon as it happens, than it is to deal with it years or decades later.

A paralegal and I were discussing at lunch the animosity over gay marriage. We both have viewed the struggle of homosexuals in America for equal treatment as a civil rights struggle. I personally had not experienced it, but my paralegal told me of online debates he had gotten into with people who did not see any comparison to the struggle of women for the vote, or of blacks (African Americans) for civil rights.

Sure, there are differences in the details of these three struggles. There are differences in the levels of oppression as well. However, at its core, the homosexual struggle is the same as the women’s suffrage movement and the Civil Rights struggle of the 50’s and 60’s A minority group, without adequate representation or voice, who is denied equal treatment in society or under law as a result of a cultural bias against what it is that makes them a minority. There is violence against homosexuals as well. "Gay Bashing" still occurs in much of America. Homosexuals are denied military service and benefits. Their marriages (an essential part of American culture, whether you chose to be married or not) are denied them, along with the benefits and rights of marriage.

I am not making this a religious discussion, or a "sanctity of marriage" discussion. What I point to is the equal protection under the Constitution of the United States of America for a specific class of people denied equality. Equality is a hallmark of American politics and jurisprudence. Although we have a terrible track record throughout history of applying that equality, it is the goal we as Americans strive for. Whether you are for or against homosexual marriage in your personal life, you must recognize that denying that equal treatment goes against the grain of the point of American Culture. How can we clam to be the land of the free and the brave, the land of equality and opportunity for all, without giving this specific class of Americans the same rights enjoyed by the majority?

I only hope that when the matter reaches the United States Supreme Court, which it inevitably will, that the justices in their wisdom include sexual orientation as a natural extension of the protection of gender and the right to the pursuit of happiness. I hope that the Court state unequivocally that it is unconstitutional to deny homosexuals equal protection and rights under the law.

If you went to a doctor for fear you had cancer, but only told the doctor of unrelated issues and symptoms, you couldn't blame the doctor for not noticing you also had cancer. The doctor is going to focus on what issues you present. The same is true of lawyers. Don't go to your lawyer seeking an answer as to child support, when what is really at stake is that the other person is abusing your children. State all your problems to the lawyer, so the lawyer can sort out a best possible solution to your situation.

Frequently I will have a first meeting with a potential client an spend an hour analyzing the facts to find the answer to what they are asking, only to find out that there was something else really at stake. Sometimes, had they never disclosed the real problem at hand, following the advice given to the original question could have made things worse. For example, if you come to a lawyer asking questions about a specific debt collector, while failing to mention the bank wants to foreclose on your house, the lawyer might not catch that point. The advice given would be as to how to handle that one debt, not the foreclosure.

Now, granted, hopefully the lawyer you see has been trained to dig deeper into what you present, to find out the ulterior reasons. My consultations often run longer than I expect, in large part because I spend so much time digging for details and a big picture of what is needed. I really appreciate it when a client is up front, open and honest about what the need and their circumstances. It makes helping them so much easier.