New Member: Former Chief Crown Prosecutor – William Wister

Once you have booked a consultation either online or by calling us we will match you with one of our lawyers (unless specified).  We will then contact you by calling you or emailing you the available dates for a consultation and ask you to choose an appropriate date/time.  

To make the most out of your consultations, please bring the following: 

• All the documents: bring a copy of all necessary legal paper work that is related to your case in anyway 
• Identification:  Please bring a government issued identification such as driver license, passport, health care, etc..
• Notes:  We suggest you to write down some notes that will help clearly outline the legal issue you’re currently having and will make it easier for us to help reach a solution for you
• Questions:  Prepare some questions for our lawyers to help clarify anything you may be wondering about 

As stated by the Law Society of Alberta, you’re required to present some form of government identification when you reach out for any legal services.  Other than following the guidelines presented to us by Law Society of Alberta, there are two valid reasons to why we need to confirm your identity.

1) Identity Fraud:  We want to ensure that you aren’t a victim of identity theft as this is a ongoing issue in Alberta and can present future problems if your identification is stolen.

2) Conflict of Interest:  A conflict of interest is the situation that inhibits our ability to provide clients with our undivided loyalty because of a bias or from past representation from our clients.  

For example, Mr. Smith comes to our law firm seeking legal advice on his divorce case and he decides to retain us.  A few days later, Mrs. Smith comes seeking help on her divorce case as well and wants to retain the same lawyer.  There will be a conflict of interest and we cannot proceed with Mrs. Smith.  

To provide our duty as a legal profession and offer full confidentiality we will always follow our guidelines and responsibility to the best of our ability.  

During our consultation, we will provide you with our undivided attention and offer you sound legal advice for your potential problems.  Our excellent staff will review the necessary documents that you presented to us and answer all the questions that you have.  Depending on the length of the consultation we will create a strategy, plan deadlines and explain the future costs for you.  Following the consultation, we will send you a retainer agreement with the information that was provided during our initial agreement.  

When you’re researching fees for consultations, you may find some firms that offer their consultations for free.  Your first impression may be to call them right away but traditionally we all know the saying, “you get what you pay for”.  This is strongly enforced in legal consultations as our service is an intangible product and time is one of our driving factors in offering our services at at an affordable flat rate.

Another reason to why we charge for initial consultations, as stated above, are conflict of interests.  As a lawyer, we respect and will fulfill our duties to keep your situation confidential.  Even if you do not retain our lawyers but have already talked to them and explained your current legal situation in an initial consultation, we cannot represent your opponent due to a conflict of interest.  For this reason, we charge for consultations as a way to counter loss of future potential legal work. 

A consultation fee will also help our lawyers decide if your situation does need our legal assistance.  During consultations, we regularly tell potential clients that our legal services are not required if that is the case.  Our lawyers will then provide some cost-effective alternatives from other third party connections that we may have.  We offer our consultation fees at a fair and affordable rate for the knowledge and solutions that we will provide to you. At Shim Law, we promise you our upmost best service when providing you with legal advice, legal solutions and responsiveness. 

We understand that unforeseen circumstances may occur and deter you from coming to meet us at your specified time.  At Shim Law, we will not bill you for a missed appointment but we ask that you please tell us about cancellations 48 hours prior to your date.  A missed appointment will result in a loss for us and we ask you to please co-operate.