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Comment by jacques_chester | Hacker News Reader

Lawyers typically bill in increments of 6 minutes.

So when I had a question for my lawyer, I spent a few minutes polishing it up and sent an email. The response was usually billed for one or two increments.

It doesn't require a Rube Goldberg device to turn text into text.

And it turns out that good lawyers are good at writing. It's as central to their job as coding is to ours.

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This has not been my experience at all. I've found that a phone call is much more efficient. If permitted, many lawyers I've dealt with, several of whom were clearly the best and most professional, would milk an email or text-based response for quite a lot more, even after being asked to keep it brief.

If you feel your lawyer is overcharging you, tell them so, complain to the local bar and/or find another lawyer.

Complaining over this kind of issue to local bar will get you absolutely nowhere. I did switch attorneys, two or three times, but they all do this and all assert that all others do it. To boot, in some situations such as family court, switching attorneys can be and often is taken by the judge as a sign that you don't have your shit together well enough to hold down an attorney. Even if you switched for a completely legitimate reason, they can hold it against you and play favorites with the other counsel. This was especially true for a family member of mine going through such a circumstance in a small, rural community where all possible attorneys to hire in the area had close dealings with all of the judicial staff.

OK, you had a bad experience. I've had good experiences. Let's leave it at that.

You've had a good experience,he has had bad experiences. See the difference? The only way you repackaged the discussion was a cheap maneuver, and misleading.

Also, his (only anecdotal, blah blah blah) argument took pains to paint a picture of the entire field/profession using not only his (multiple, to your one) lawyer experiences but also secondhand accounts of people saying the entire industry charges a lot for email.

> The only way you repackaged the discussion was a cheap maneuver, and misleading.

I object to this. I didn't "repackage" the conversation. I pointed out we had diverging experiences. Telling someone that their experiences didn't happen (his or mine) is plainly silly.

Most people have to flip the coin once or twice to get heads, would they comment on a statement that it is easy to get heads?

Probably, lawyers are good at email if they are routinely sent a lot of email given the customer demographic in their region and specialization.

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