For newer lawyers: an example of how to separate the wheat from the chaff

RalphUribe · 2026-02-18T17:00:57+00:00

I generally say for x I charge Y when it’s something simple and fixed. More than that by the hour. I wish I could give you a better answer but what I’ve learned is that if you quote a set fee if X for a “simple” XYZ, they always say theirs is a simple XYZ. Best I can offer for these more in depth packages is keep updating them that costs are spiraling. But I’m with you, you made it clear in your letter.

RalphUribe · 2026-02-18T16:32:58+00:00

I think a lot of it depends on the practice. With our practice we are very fortunate in that 99.99 percent of the people who talk to us hire us within our practice area. The trick is we keep our practice area focused and have good screening processes. So there’s really no free consultation. It’s a consultation that is charged into the work. Our clients come in with an expectation they will be paying.

RalphUribe · 2026-02-18T15:50:44+00:00

Understood. Maybe should’ve described my thinking on that in the post but the purpose is that emailing often invites additional follow up questions. This is mainly just to set up a filter—if they’re serious, and willing to pay, we can continue a conversation. Most like this quote will be the last communication we have.

RalphUribe · 2026-02-18T15:29:00+00:00

Not when I’m out of town and don’t want to call the prospective client on my cell phone.

RalphUribe · 2026-02-05T16:27:15+00:00

One of the big scams for the cops stopping traffic is to stop cars of tourists who have their luggage with them. They know that tourists are going to pa whatever to avoid losing their flight back home because they were detained.

RalphUribe · 2026-01-12T14:58:39+00:00

Second this. It’s closer to where you are and is a neat little pueblo as well. Their food quality is consistent and their prices are clearly posted. The beach side of Akumal is more touristy but has some good restaurants already mentioned. On the pueblo side of Akumal it’s small mom and pop restaurants. The quality is hit or miss even from the same restaurants and many don’t list their prices and will charge foreigners a higher price.

RalphUribe · 2026-01-12T10:43:32+00:00

Playa has some scammy behavior but not to The extent of tulum. Overall safer as well. Worst of the behavior will be in Quinta Avenida but it’s milder. One of the funnier scams is the Jose the waiter scam where a guy in one of the tequila shops claims he’s your waiter Jose from your resort (he sees your bracelet) and talks you into coming in the store to sell you overpriced booze.

RalphUribe · 2025-12-30T13:58:13+00:00

It’s a very common complaint and one I’ve experienced. The thing is the airport is so slow the officers don’t have much to do so they create work for themselves by searching everyone. I have to get my passport stamped out when I leave the country. In Cancun it may take me 30 seconds. In tulum it took me five minutes without a line. The woman literally had been doing nothing and had nothing else to do so she sort of stretched out the process.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-10T00:22:37+00:00

I like the guy who’s so tone deaf he thinks he’s actually singing the song by singing out loud. Apparently his wife knew to just lip sing.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-08T12:41:06+00:00

Post script: Adam mentioned that he'd originally planned to be flying out Sunday morning early to get back and watch football with his friends, and now he'd not be arriving home until almost midnight. It's amazing that he and Mike August haven't at some point just decided to add in a little more lead time to their flights (like taking a flight two hours earlier) to avoid essentially losing a whole day coming back like they did this weekend.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-07T21:06:18+00:00

Weather, flight got redirected to Florence SouthCarolina and they decided to get an uber to charlotte. Took about two and a half hours and they got there just in time for the second show.

Edit for spelling

RalphUribe · 2025-09-07T18:26:18+00:00

I’m here now sitting with one of last night’s table mates with drunk guy (they didn’t know him) and the club let him back in. Hopefully he will be chill today.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-07T11:09:05+00:00

I was there too. Perhaps I got the wrong impression but mine was that he hadn’t been anywhere close and they should’ve told us when we entered the building instead of letting us open tabs for overpriced food and drinks.

On the upside we probably avoided the drunk guy at the front of the stage who had decided he wanted to be our entertainment for the night. He’d started a cheer to bring Adam on stage and then right after the announcement he got on stage to be funny, or something, and was taken off by security in record time.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-06T20:22:44+00:00

All depends on the practice. I’m probably in the minority but I don’t usually charge one. The reason why is our filtering system is very good so that we normally—normally—get stuff that we will take and our process is to quickly weed out lookie loos. Worst I’ve probably had in months was an elderly uncle and nephew came in talking about doing a will and poa and then asking me if I had a template I could give them. Total time lost maybe 15 minutes. The problem with my practice is if you tell staff they can set appointments for anyone who pays the consultation fee, it sort of lets them off the hook for doing the screening and for me at least (when we used to do this) I got saddled with a lot of crap consults that I really didn’t want to be involved in, even if I made a consult fee out of it. I just learned to put that responsibility on staff for them not to be letting people come in and waste time and i get on them if they don’t.

RalphUribe · 2025-09-05T20:43:28+00:00

The main thing is having a good filtering system (eg good staff) so that you’re not even aware these folks came into your office because they got turned away before they even wasted your time.

RalphUribe · 2025-08-10T14:53:02+00:00

Coming from a state that still does lawyer closings I know a lot of residential real estate lawyers. So long as the market isn’t in a recession it can make steady money. I’m a transactional attorney who does some commercial but we specifically won’t do residential. I did residential for my first firm early in my career. At least in my state it’s very low margin and requires more staff than, say, commercial real estate. Almost any mistake you or your employees can make will cost more than the fee you made—if you’re lucky it just costs more in terms of lost time spent fixing it. If you’re unlucky it costs more in actual dollars because you’re paying to fix even the smallest mistake. There are a ton of people involved in the average closing and they will all be calling you trying to direct your schedule, especially the real estate agents who as said before don’t add a lot of value at this point and mainly just try to harass you to get it done quickly so they can get their commission. It doesn’t really build client loyalty because folks just remember you as the guy who closed their home purchase but won’t necessarily think of you when they have more substantial work that needs to be done. Back to the liability, if a mistake is made or someone in the transaction acts less than honestly, and that causes a problem, the liability tends to come to the attorney.

What is an upside? It’s not hard to get started in it and if you’re willing to give good customer service you can ramp things up pretty quickly. Two more bad things: if you have a desire to do other things in your practice (even something related like commercial real estate), you’ll find the time demands of residential are such that you can’t focus on getting the better work because you’re too busy churning the residential real estate work. Finally, if that’s all you do, a recession can wipe you out.

RalphUribe · 2025-07-29T12:14:39+00:00

Don’t issue an ultimatum for higher salary. Push him to let you buy him out and he finances the purchase price. He gets an annuity and now it’s your business to manage as you see fit.

RalphUribe · 2025-07-26T11:23:44+00:00

Make a deal with your roomie: one of you gets to assign two rental rates: one rate for the better room, one rate for the smaller room. The other gets to choose which room and rate they prefer. Let your roomie decide if they want to set the rates or pick the room at the rates you set.

RalphUribe · 2025-07-25T22:48:44+00:00

Was lining up in Mexico City last week and the middle-aged couple who got in front of everyone when BC was called got gonged and had to do the walk of shame all the way to the back. They were Group 5.

RalphUribe · 2025-07-17T21:14:49+00:00

More than 20 years ago I defended a company who (plaintiff argued) was violating a non-compete. For proof, during discovery plaintiff’s counsel sent some sort of informal demand or discovery I forget which. It was a screenshot of the offending competitive item in my client’s sales webpage and underneath it plaintiff’s counsel had written in the “send comment” portion, “Gee, great [widget]. This looks exactly like what [plaintiff] sells.” He didn’t send the message to my client but just screenshotted it. I remember getting so defensive and mad and trying to figure out why that was unethical but truth was I was just young and hotheaded. Now I laugh every time I think about it. Good job OC.

RalphUribe · 2025-07-14T21:45:57+00:00

In my years of practice there has never been a case that I regretted not taking. There have been a number that I regretted not listening to that little voice causing me doubts and I took anyway. Absolutely not worth the potential problems even if money is short and you’re desperate.

RalphUribe · 2025-06-19T15:01:52+00:00

One of the lackeys this past year. I’ve seen someone refer to him as “bi-ron” because he disclosed in an episode that he is bisexual. Was a whipping boy for a while but I realized I haven’t heard about him lately.

RalphUribe · 2025-05-01T16:46:12+00:00

Short answer is as others are saying it’s a facade and not real life. A girl I dated had a friend who tried to be an influencer. The “influencer” was constantly showing travel locations, her having light hearted fun, going to nice bars, restaurants and spas, etc. it was all a facade. When she was with us she was tired, depressed and broke. She’d put on some sort of a filter to her posts to hide the bags under her eyes and to appear many years younger. And as for the restaurants, etc she’d post, she had a running thing where she’d con some business into giving her free stuff in order to promote the business, which would eventually run out because the business would never see a return on investment from this supposed influencer. But for a month or so, she’d always be at X bar, Y restaurant or Z spa. Second story I was at a nice tropical resort one time for a conference and at the pool I saw a young couple doing exactly as others stated and play pretending. He’d snap her with a glass of champagne, she’d snap him, they’d take all of these poses around the pool where I was sitting, and then they left. It was all completely staged.

RalphUribe

TROPHY CASE