Chicago Civil Rights Attorney asked:


Choosing an attorney, no matter what it is for, is a very involved process. This is especially true when you need a Chicago civil rights attorney. Your civil rights – anyone’s civil rights – are extremely important issues. You want to make sure that you find someone who will represent you with integrity, dignity, and knowledge of both those rights and the laws which apply to them.

You’re quite lucky if you live in Chicago, or close enough to the city that you can easily travel there, as there are many civil rights attorneys you can choose from there. Chicago is, after all, a city which stands as a front-runner for civil rights.

One of the best places you can begin your hunt for a civil rights lawyer is on the Internet. By simply typing in Chicago civil rights attorney you will come up with a large selection of sites listing legal practices which handle civil rights cases.

You can also talk to the people you know. Family members, friends, colleagues, and even simple acquaintances: if any of them have had to make use of a Chicago civil rights lawyer, or know someone who has, they may be able to make recommendations. That way, you have firsthand knowledge of how a potential lawyer performs.

You need to get together a list of possible candidates. Then, you need to talk to those potential lawyers. You want to detail your case to see if they can handle it. You also want to see how to two of you seem to get along.

What is perhaps the most important item to consider is the lawyer’s credentials. You’ll want to ask a few questions to get a good idea about their level of experience, as well as their success rate, and maybe even their educational background. Ask to see a portfolio of past cases whose circumstance resembles that of your own. Pay attention to the win/lose ratio to get a good feel of where your case might lead.

For more information about Chicago civil rights lawyers, you can look online or visit your local library.

John S. asked:


One can sometimes save a lot on legal fees when they ask to be billed by the hour. But when it comes to a DWI/DUI case which is a criminal case, do most attorneys automaticly price their services on a flat fee? For this kind of case, could one ask for fees by the hour and not be immediately dismissed as “unreasonable” or “off market”?

And when it comes to accounting for hours spent on a case, most attorneys are less willing to provide an hour by hour accounting, at least from my experence. How common is it to ask for an hour-by-hour accounting? And if a flat fee were charged, could one ask for an hour-by-hour accounting so as to determine the REAL hourly rate the client is paying? Or would to do so invoke the ire of the attorney and potentially “underwhelm” them with the attractiveness of your case such that their attention to your legal need may be less than if they were not required to account for hours spent?
To Responder Salem: I qualified my statement about more attorneys charging by a flat fee with my admission, “to my experience”, which has been limited. I’ve worked with many different attorneys in different areas of law but my sense was that criminal attorneys are more inclined to charge a flat fee. But if you are an attorney or have superior knowledge of the legal industry on a national basis, then I would defer to your knowledge as I ask this question to learn. I did not mean to generalize but since you did not provide your source of information, I’m not sure you can speak to “averages” either unless you have the specific data or a credible and authoritative reference.