My working principles
Ten questions you are entitled to ask me — and the answers I hold myself to.
These principles come from my work as a management consultant and apply unchanged in the law office. Some of them are professional law and therefore not to my credit but my duty. I write them down all the same: before you call for the first time, you should know what you can hold me to.
When do I accept instructions?
Only if I consider myself competent for the matter and have the time to handle it carefully. If either is missing, I say so in the first conversation.
Which instructions do I decline?
Instructions that would require unlawful or unfair acts or omissions I neither accept nor carry out. Not even when they would pay well.
When am I barred from acting for you?
When I advise, or have advised, the other side in the same matter. The ban on representing conflicting interests is not a question of tact but of professional law. I check it before you tell me your case in detail.
What do you hear from me — and I from you?
I inform you of every material step. In return I need everything that belongs to the matter, promptly and in full — the awkward parts above all. What I do not know, the other side will use against you.
How long do I keep silent?
Always. Confidentiality is not a promise but a duty; it does not end with the engagement, and it binds everyone who works for me.
Do I name references?
No. You will not learn from me whom I represent — and no one will learn from me that I represent you.
How do I keep my independence?
Professionally and financially. I enter into no ties and accept no benefits that could influence my judgement or my work for you, or that you do not know about.
How do I stay current?
Continuing education is a duty, and otherwise simply self-interest: whoever drafts contracts to last twenty years has to know what changed in the last two.
How do I handle money that is not mine?
Funds held for others — from settlements, payments by the other side, enforcement — I keep separate from my own and pay out without delay.
What do I measure my fee against?
Against the work and the responsibility in the individual case. As a rule within the German fee statute (Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz, RVG), otherwise under a written fee agreement. What it will come to, I discuss before I begin. I expect you to pay as punctually as I work — then I can concentrate on your matter.
What the work costs is set out on the page Fees — that too is one of the principles: you should know before I begin.
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