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Law Firm Asks Homeless Man for $1,000 Retainer
The headline above is that which appeared yesterday on a post at the blog Downtown Eastside Enquirer. The post says that the Vancouver, Canada, firm Lawson Lundell responded to the homeless man's request for legal representation in a libel action with an e-mail asking for the retainer and advising that he would be charged $400 an hour for the services of a senior lawyer. Alternatively, the e-mail said, the matter could be assigned to a junior lawyer at an hourly rate of $250 to $325, or the firm could provide a referral to a lower-cost lawyer.
It all sounds like a salacious story of lawyer greed until you realize that the author of the post is describing himself and that the only indication he had given the firm of his homelessness was a link to his Web site, which includes a reference to himself as a "moneyless home-free man" who "escapes impoverishment and opens pathways to emancipation and prosperity, for himself and others."
In the end, the author of the post admits: "It is possible that [the firm] had not reviewed the websites and was not aware that he was homeless."
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 23, 2007 at 04:51 PM | Permalink
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