Howard Law Group, PLLC
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Douglas C. Howard is a attorney licensed to practice law in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. He is originally from Frankfort, Kentucky where he currently resides and is raising his family there. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in History and earned his law degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. He is a recovering “counselor at law” and hopes to assist people with problems on the front end, rather than waiting until they become even bigger problems.
In the course of my career as a lawyer, I’ve noticed that “counselor” at law is not necessarily relevant anymore. People only go see lawyers now when they are in the middle of a mess and cannot quite figure out how to get out of it. Once they are out of the jam, they usually get a bill for something like $5,000.00 or sometimes more. They then, of course, complain that the attorney really did not do anything and only ripped them off. When really, the simple answer would have been to first see the lawyer, get “counseling”, pay a reasonable price, and hopefully, never have to use their services again to clean up a mess.
I think attorneys have gotten away from counseling as well. Simply because many of them, in this dog-eat-dog world, are just looking for that quick $2,500.00 case, get it wrapped up, get paid, and move on to the next case, so they can keep up overhead and paying the bills. In my opinion, how this should work (keeping in mind that I’m still relatively poor and paying on my student loans) is that you find an attorney you like, and you go see them when your issue first comes up, not several weeks after it is a problem.
For example, you just had a child and you need a will. But you put it off and you put it off, because you simply cannot agree on who to name as guardian should you and your spouse die in a tragic accident. So you take the easy way out and avoid the issue altogether. But unfortunately, tragic happens sometimes. Then some person in a black robe will decide what is best for your child. Maybe that is the right answer, but 99% of the time it is not.
So go find an attorney, have coffee with them sometime, chat with them, decide if you like them or not. Attorneys are just like any other contractor, if they are not meeting your needs in a timely fashion and for a reasonable price, then find one that will. Then hire that person and pay a little bit up front to get good counsel. Because when attorneys put “counseling” back into being counselor, they can point out problems to you, offer solutions, and maybe, just maybe avoid those problems on the back end. No attorney is perfect, but just having an attorney is sometimes better than nothing.
Douglas C. Howard
