Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, well it may not suggest it very clearly, we are basically discussing, I see this a lot, I especially see it in US immigration and I decided to go ahead and make a video about it because I really want to address this in a general sense.

We get a lot of inquiries and we are happy to get them. We love talking to folks, we love being of assistance to people, but there is one thing out there that I think is both very much a misnomer in people's minds I think and it is really not fair to any lawyer, any law firm, any place when you hear, "Well, I have already done most of the work myself. I just need you to tidy up these little things." My first impression anytime I hear that, "well if it is such an easy thing to do, why don't you go do it?" I don't mean to sound cynical but that is my first reaction. More importantly, I see this often and it comes up in many different contexts, one of the major ones is in US Immigration. We will often times see folks in the US Immigration context, they will say "Well I am done with USCIS. I have done most of the work I just need you to handle getting the case through the Embassy." Well that is not a small thing. The other thing I often find interesting is people want to compare, generally speaking in routine cases we may be able to and this is cases of many different kinds, not just US Immigration, we may be able to provide a flat rate solution but then they come back to me down the road and they say, "well I have done half of it, so cut the fee in half and finish it." No, that is not the way it works. I have no idea what has transpired in the first half of that case. I don't know what has been said to the Government; I don't know what has not been said to the Government; I don't know if there is criminal activity, and by criminal activity the pre-existing criminal activity in a case, I am taking this from a US Immigration context. I don't know what you have done and quite frankly you may have screwed something up, I mean it could be, I hesitate to say probably, but in some cases I think that might be the reason folks come back and ask for something like this. Long story short, look we may be able to deal with something in an hourly basis, we may be able to deal with a flat rate on a case that has had some work done on it but people make all these presumptions, "well I did half the work!" Well, that is not the way that stuff works.

Again, one of my biggest things, I have been burned a lot on this over the years, over almost 15 years of doing this of being at one time of rather more credulous, perhaps gullible lawyer who somebody said "Oh I did half the work, can you please take it on for this amount or whatever." Then I come to find out they made a major, in certain cases I have come to find out that folks made major misrepresentations in their case and that is a real problem, not only from an ethical standpoint but from a legal standpoint. Again, and I am not saying everybody that is looking to do this is trying to obfuscate or lie about something, that is not the point I am getting at. I think what is galling to some extent and really unfair on another level to somebody who is acting as a service provider in the legal business, is this notion that somebody can just dictate what you are going to charge for X amount of work. They can just say "well I have done this and now you should only be paid this to do this." Well long story short, that isn't really the way it is ever going to work. We try to provide reasonable rates; we try to provide reasonable quotations; I try to where possible do things, or we do things on a flat rate basis if it can be done that way, but there are just certain circumstances where it can't. So long story short, this notion that matters can be itemized and "I will do this and you do that", that is just really not the way legal services work.