Business Hours

Our office is open Monday through Friday, 10AM to 6PM ET. We are closed on weekends, most major US federal holidays, and the day after Thanksgiving. When the office is closed, we do not check voicemail or email.

Telephone Policy

As a client, you are entitled to make reasonable requests for information from our office concerning the status of your case. You are welcome to call us during business hours.

 When you call the office, please identify yourself and the matter that you are calling about.

 If it is a routine question that does not require legal advice, please ask the Director of Operations or Assistants for help. Routine may include asking the meaning of a term on a form you are filling out, questions on deadlines, questions on our Engagement Letter, or questions on our bill. If a routine question requires follow up or we miss your call, we return calls within an hour of receiving.  

If the question requires legal attention, please provide a detailed description to our Assistants. We will follow up by email to provide an answer or schedule a follow up call with one of our attorneys. In general, all calls that require legal attention should be scheduled in advance to avoid wasting time.

If you are calling in regard to an emergency, please use that word. Our staff has been instructed to take every step possible to reach your attorney. For more details on what we consider an emergency, see below.

Telephone appointments spent discussing legal work will be charged at our hourly rates, unless otherwise specified by the terms of your Engagement Letter. You should use your common sense and good judgment in deciding whether your question is urgent enough to warrant the extra expense or if it can wait until your next scheduled phone call or status report for which there is no charge. If your attorney has previously given you the information you need to answer your question, but you have misplaced it, you will not be charged for sending you an extra copy if that is the only reason for your call.

Please do not ask the support staff for legal advice. They are not attorneys licensed to practice law and cannot give legal advice.

Finally, if your phone number changes, please advise our office as soon as possible.

Email Policy

As a client, you are entitled to email reasonable requests for information to our office. During regular business hours, emails are responded to within 24 hours of receipt.

When you email the office, please identify yourself and the matter that you are writing about. Please indicate the urgency of your inquiry. If it is a routine question that does not require legal advice, our team will respond in full in a timely manner. 

If the question requires legal attention, it may take our legal team additional time to provide a complete answer. We will reply to confirm receipt and provide an estimate on when to expect a full answer to your question. Emails from our team are charged at the same rate as time spent working on your case, unless otherwise specified by the terms of your Engagement Letter.

If it is a routine question that does not require legal advice, please ask the Director of Operations or Assistants for help. Please see above for what we consider routine. If your attorney has previously given you the information you need to answer your question, but you have misplaced it, you will not be charged for sending you an extra copy if that is the only reason for your email.

Emergency Policy

An emergency is something that is an immediate threat to your life, liberty, or property. In most cases, if you have an emergency, before calling your attorney you should call 911. If you call us to advise of one of these emergency situations, an attorney from our office will be found to speak with you, no matter what.

Some emergencies you may contact us for include:

• Trademark Deadlines within 1 week

• Lawsuit with less than 30 days to respond

• Arrest or imprisonment

 In our experience, there are a number of legal issues that may be urgent to your case, but that do not rise to the level of an emergency. If a matter is urgent, please use that word when reaching out to our office. Our staff has been instructed to take every step possible to elevate your case, as our schedule allows. 

Urgent situations may be:

• Lawsuit against you or your company with over 1 month to respond

• Trademark Deadlines over 1 week away

• Cease and Desist or Demand Letters sent to you or your company

• Employee departures or conflicts

If you have a defined emergency, call the office and you will be connected with someone on the legal team as soon as possible.

If you have an urgent situation, please call our office. The team will ensure the information is conveyed to an attorney and you receive a response as soon as possible.

If you have other information you would like to convey, please email so the we have this information in your file.

Whether your issue is urgent, important, or in the normal course of business, we are committed to addressing your concerns and responding to you promptly and timely.

The Scope of Our Work

You should have a clear understanding of the legal services we will provide. For each matter we address, a new Engagement Letter detailing the process and payment terms will be sent to you. Any questions that you have should be dealt with promptly. Any questions on the scope of our work, timeline, deadlines, or associated fees will be answered by our term at no cost to you.

Who Will Provide the Services

Each client of the firm is served by our team. This includes our Managing Attorney, Director of Operations, and Assistants. With the supervision of our Managing Attorney, your work or parts of it may be performed by other lawyers and assistants in the firm. Such delegation may be for the purpose of involving lawyers or legal assistants with special expertise in a given area or for the purpose of providing services on the most efficient and timely basis. Whenever possible, we will advise you of the names of those attorneys and legal assistants who work on your matters. When your case requires legal expertise outside of our practice areas, we will facilitate a referral to a trusted colleague with your approval. 

Privacy Policy

Sensitive information will only be stored in the event you hire the firm to represent you in your legal matter. All information received from you is confidential. Phone numbers and other contact details are not released by the firm unless authorized by you or required in the course of representation. Only our employees will have access to your personal information. Every step is taken to protect your privacy. Your information and documents are stored password protected digitally or in secure file drawers in our office. Once your case is closed, we will send any original copies or other physical paperwork received on your behalf to you.

Termination Policy

You may terminate our representation at any time, with or without cause, by notifying us in writing.

 Honesty

It is important that you are always honest and forthcoming about the facts of your case with our team. Finding out all the facts from the beginning allows us to tailor a case strategy with all factors in mind. A delayed disclosure, or finding out important information from another source, often requires us to change case strategies in the middle of a project. When this happens, it generally leads to an increase of attorney time and will increase your legal fees.

Relationship Boundaries

We expect our team to always treat our clients courteously and professionally. While we do not anticipate any problems in this regard, we also want to mention that we don’t permit our staff to be involved in close personal or romantic relationships with clients unless those relationships existed before the client retained our Firm.

Finally, since our obligation of confidentiality includes shielding the fact that you have retained us, our team who encounter you in the community will not discuss anything related to our work together. You, of course, are free to initiate such conversation, but the decision will always be yours. However, even if you initiate contact our Firm member will not discuss or communicate any information related to the case in the presence of another person.

Goals

As we progress into your matter, it is essential that we work together to set clear objectives and goals for your case. We start with an initial Legal Strategy Session where we thoroughly discuss and document your goals. This helps the legal team gain a clear understanding of what you are seeking in your matter and what success looks like to you. They help us to formulate a strategy to proceed forward. We can never make any guarantees of specific outcomes, but your written goals will play into our long-term strategy and will help you evaluate our representation of you. As your case progresses, we may schedule additional follow up meetings to check in on your goals.

Treatment of Opposing Parties and Our Staff

While not every situation is contentious, on occasion a matter can become heated or escalate in tension. We want you to know that in fulfilling our duty to vigorously represent you, we will engage in a manner designed to best represent you while maintaining the professionalism and integrity of our profession.

We expect all clients to remain courteous and respectful toward the other party, and always take the high road. Likewise, we always expect you to be professional. This is beneficial to your case and your mental health.

We realize you will sometimes feel stress related to your case. However, we will not tolerate offensive or abusive language toward our team in person or on the phone.

New Case Developments

It is our goal and responsibility to ensure that you are always informed about the status of your case. Therefore, every 2 weeks you will receive a status update (usually accompanied by the billing statement) from us regarding the status of your case, including any recent changes to your case, reminders of upcoming deadlines, and next steps.

As new developments arise, we may need to have periodic calls. These calls may have a singular focus, or they may be for a general status update on a number of issues. If a call is needed, a member of our team will contact you to schedule. We can do calls by telephone or by video conference.

New Information and New Matters

Please be sure to contact our office and relay any new information related to your case. If there are new documents, please make sure to send a copy of those documents to our office at help@luque.us prior to talking to your attorney about the information.

If, during the course of our representation with you, a new legal matter of any kind arises, we are happy to discuss it with you. If you need help in an area of law that we don’t practice, we will make a personal introduction to a lawyer who we know, like, and trust.

File Retention

Our Firm maintains your file while your case is active. During your case, you will receive a scanned copy of all paperwork. At the conclusion of your case, we will provide you with an electronic copy of any documents not previously provided to you.

The Firm will retain the paper copy of your file until the end of the calendar year. At year end, we will send all physical copies to you via mail or pick up from our office.

Referrals

We have many friends and colleagues we know and trust. We are happy to assist any of our current and past clients, or friends and family of our current and past clients, to find a lawyer they can trust to help them.

Whether the new matter is for you, a friend, or a member of your family, we will provide a free initial phone call to assist in determining the type of legal issue and how we can help.  

If the legal concern is in an area in which we practice, the referred person will be given an opportunity to speak with our team further about their legal issue. If the legal concern falls outside of our practice areas, we have a network of attorneys we trust to do solid work and to treat clients with the same courtesy and respect we provide. We stand behind each referral we make, and if there is ever a problem, we will want to know immediately.