A prospective client just left my office. He came with original copies of land documents that he wanted me to draft the deed of assignment on. After seeing the value of the property and the size of the property, I told him that my fee will be 10% of the purchase price of the property but I will be willing to accept 5% from him.
The client screamed. He said that the lawyer that prepared the other deed of assignment of a property he recently purchased that is even more valuable than this one he is asking me to prepare charged him only N25,000 but due to my glitz and glam, he is willing to offer me N200k for the job.
Well, as a way of letting me know that he is not lying about the money he paid to the previous lawyer, he called his assistant on the phone and asked him how much he paid the lawyer and the assistant confirmed that it was N25,000.
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That got me pissed, I am not pissed with the man but with the lawyer that will collect N25,000 to prepare a deed of assignment on a property that is worth over N8,000,000. Those are the lawyers that are ruining the legal practice in Nigeria and should be summoned by the NBA disciplinary panel. Those are the lawyers that make clients disrespect other lawyers, thinking that all lawyers are cheap and “charge and bail”. God forbid that I will ever lay my seal on the deed of any landed property that the purchase price is over N8,000,000 and I will accept to be paid a peanut. I will rather dabble into other things than sell myself that short, again, God forbid.
A lawyer that accepts N25,000 to draft a deed has decided that he will never be rich or make any significant money from the law practice. I could have forgiven and moved on if the lawyer the client told me about was a Junior lawyer but I was curious enough to look up the man and he is an older lawyer.
Won’t you be embarrassed as a lawyer to hear that your former client mentioned your name and told others what you charged him and that he paid you N25,000 for a deed of assignment on a property that worth over N8,000,000?; Clients always disclose information like this because they use it as a bargaining chip against the new lawyer. I have no respect for any lawyer that collects N25,000 on a property that is worth N8,000,000 because they are the ones ruining this profession.
It is not a flex but I turn down clients and jobs on a daily basis, once I see that the pay does not meet up my standard, I will decline the offer. I have invested so much in myself and in my practice to accept whatever is thrown at me. Well, truth be told that the N200k the client was offering me is a lot of money in this economy and it won’t hurt for me to accept it but by accepting that, what I have done is devalue myself.
Some lawyers that accept this ridiculous fee have a way of justifying it by saying that “half bread is better than none but there are soured half bread that you should avoid totally. Once you charge a client a ridiculously cheap fee, you have inadvertently told that client that you are cheap because you are constantly devaluing yourself and the client will never rate you.
You can do better.
