Why Doesn’t Every Caller Get a Free Consultation?

The free ten-minute call has been part of this practice for nearly two decades, and it remains so. What has changed is the number of people who ask for it, and what the practice has chosen to take on.

Availability, on the same terms for everyone

Free and paid calls are offered as our schedule permits. Describe your situation by voicemail or through the contact form, and we reply with a time when the calendar allows. The free call and the paid Strategy Session draw on the same calendar, and that calendar fills first with the clients we already represent.

The request does the first sorting

A good share of inquiries resolve themselves at the request stage, before the question of time arises. They concern areas the firm no longer pursues, or they describe a matter that no longer fits the practice. A voicemail that asks for help with a custody war, or a written request for a lawyer who will fight for the sake of fighting, tells us what we need to know before any call is placed.

What the practice takes on now

Divorce comes first. We handle marital estates from the simple to the complex, often with no children involved, and with children where custody can be settled by consent. Marital settlement agreements, which we usually draft ourselves and otherwise review before signing; equitable distribution, particularly for the spouse responding to a claim; conciliation before a divorce hearing officer; and PFA defense make up most of the work.

What we have set aside

Matters we handled routinely ten years ago may be declined today. High-conflict custody is the clearest example. So is any matter where one party, or both, has decided that reason will play no part. In those cases our involvement would cost a great deal and change very little, and we say so.

Selectivity leaves plenty of room for hard cases. The matters we decline are rarely the difficult ones; they are the ones that no lawyer can improve. A complex estate with cooperative parties is welcome. A modest estate with an unreasonable opponent usually is not.

The simple matter

Many of the inquiries we receive concern matters too simple to justify our fees, which have risen with demand and with the attention each matter receives. We say that on the call as well. Some callers proceed on their own with a clearer picture. Others return later when the matter has grown.

What the free call is

The call runs ten minutes, directly with Attorney Levine. He answers what he can in that time, whether or not you go on to retain the firm, and he says whether the matter belongs here. Whether we go further is a separate decision, made afterward, by both of us. A Strategy Session is the longer conversation: your documents reviewed, your figures run, and a plan for what comes next.

How to begin

Send a request through the contact form or leave a voicemail describing the matter. As our schedule permits, you hear back, usually the same day.