The law offices of LEHMAN, LEE & XU strive to provide our clients with quality service. This Guide for Clients will give a brief summary of what our clients should aim to expect from a Firm such as ours. It will also outline general policies of the Firm, such as the billing procedures as well as communications. Please feel free to contact any of our attorneys, who may in turn direct you to the lawyer who is most able to assist you in your matter/need. If you are unsure about who to speak to, we invite you to contact our Managing Director, Edward E. Lehman at (86) (10) 8532-1919 or send an email to mail@lehmanlaw.com.
Communicating with your lawyer
Our office hours are normally from 8:30 am - 6:00 pm Monday to Friday. However, if these hours are inconvenient for you, we are perfectly willing to meet you outside of these hours by arrangement. Meetings can be held in the conference room at our office, or at another location to better suit your convenience. We have offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong Macau and Mongolia. Our addresses can be found on the contact page of our website. You may contact the lawyer you wish to seek by either sending an email to that attorney directly or alternatively, to mail@lehmanlaw.com. Also, all our lawyers have their own telephone line extensions which are connected to our sophisticated voicemail system. This allows you to leave a message for the lawyer you are looking for outside our normal office hours or when they are otherwise engaged.
Confidentiality
Those who work at LEHMAN, LEE & XU take their responsibilities very seriously and will never discuss your affairs with any other person or organization outside the Firm (unless unique circumstances warrant the need and with your prior expressed permission). We understand that clients need to know that they can trust a firm before engaging its legal services. We also understand that this trust comes in three essential elements: 1) Clients should trust a firm to do its work within the time period agreed upon; 2) Clients should trust it to do their work to a high standard of quality and excellence and 3) most importantly, Clients should trust the Firm to respect the confidentiality of the information it is given, and to never discuss this information with other parties without your consent.
Quality of Service
As one of the largest law practices in China, we strive to maintain the highest standard of practice through a process of selectively recruiting the best people for the job, careful supervision and rigorous training. Our lawyers are dedicated to providing the best quality service to our clients. We strive to meet and exceed customer expectations by working together to provide information and services that are personalized to the client's needs. With our highly-skilled professionals and high speed connections to international electronic data base systems, our lawyers have easy access to all the information they need to handle your problems. All of our operations are supported by our up-to-date office technology, maintained by our highly competent IT staff members. It is because this that we can provide you with first class service, all at a reasonable price.
Basis of Our Charges
We understand that our clients need to budget legal costs. Our goal here at LEHMAN, LEE & XU is to help our clients better comprehend where their money is going to, and we are happy to discuss the basis of our charges and billing procedures.
Our bills are prepared primarily on the basis of the time spent on your case, unless there is another arrangement agreed upon by both parties before the commencement of our working on the case. The professional staff members and other fee earners have different hourly rates. This rate is dependant on experience and are reviewed at the end of every year. The hourly rate of all fee earners is all inclusive, with the exclusion of expenses incurred on your behalf (see Disbursements below).
The time each staff member spends on your case is recorded in a computerized time recording system. This is a highly sophisticated system which ensures that we maintain accurate records of the services provided. A print out of these computerized bills can be provided to you upon request.
Fees for certain types of non-contentious work such as the filing of Patent, Trademark, Copyright and Software registration, fixed hourly rates are applicable predetermined by the law.
Disbursements
Disbursements fees are the expenses which we pay or incur on your behalf and are separated from our professional fees. We will bill you for these expenses or ask in advance for funds to cover the disbursements, such as court filing fees, bonds, stamp duty, search fees and airfares. Our bill will provide an itemized breakdown of all disbursements charged to your account.
Fee Estimates
We are always happy to give our clients or any prospect an overall estimate of the entire fee, including disbursements. This estimate will have to be based on information which the client gives us and our assessment of the workload involved. This is not supposed to be a binding quotation, however we will strive to notify the client of any changes in the fees, and review procedures with them.
It is often not feasible for the Firm to accurately predict fees for future work, and many of the legal services that we provide do not lend themselves to fixed fee arrangements. If you would like to use our services on a regular basis, you may want to agree on a retainer to cover a proportion of our work for you.
When a fixed quote cannot be accurately predicted, you may wish to place a budget on your case. We will work diligently on your case up to when the budget is reached, in which case, we will contact you and review your case with you. You may wish to make a decision on the status of your case at that time.
If you have concerns about the budget, fees or disbursements, or need have a special requirement, please inform us ahead of time. Communication allows us to better work on your case and assist you, knowing what your special needs are.
Billing Procedures
Billing arrangements may vary within different departments. Arrangements will be dictated by your requirements for certain situation. Most of the files will be billed at a monthly interval, however, some departments bill on a less frequent basis. A final bill may be delivered to you at the completion of your case. If there is any balance remaining in your account, we will naturally refund it to you.
Our bills are due for payment when you receive them, and it is expected that we receive payment within 30 days. If payment is not received within 30 days, we reserve the right to charge interest at the rate of the United States Dollar prime lending rate of the Bank of America on the outstanding amount. However, if you are experiencing genuine difficulty in paying our bills, please discuss the matter with the supervising attorney on your case, and we will endeavor to assist you with the matter.
How To Pay Us Less
LEHMAN, LEE & XU strives to make certain that you receive value for your money. One way of doing that is to help you make our charges as low as possible. Some helpful hints are:
- make sure you inform us of what you want us to accomplish. That way we both understand each other, and we can avoid miscommunication;
- give us all the facts that you have. Progress can be hindered when trying to find information;
- if you are engaging our services on behalf of a company or an organization, please allow us to be working with the person with the ability and authority to make decisions. It will save both of us a lot of time;
- insist that your supervisors act promptly to meet deadlines;
- if you need to talk to a lawyer, do this in the most efficient way possible. If you need to discuss many things, it would be best to ask for a meeting where we can both use this time effectively. However, if its not an important matter, or if there are not many matters to discuss, a phone call or email will suffice;
- keep the meetings as brief as possible, to ensure that you are not charged for unnecessary matters;
- prepare for these meetings, and come in with your comments ready, so that no time is wasted. We can better help you if you are clear and concise with your issues. Please ensure that you have all the necessary documents at hand, so that it is not necessary to reschedule another meeting;
- if you require advice of a preliminary nature, it would be most cost effective to do so in a meeting. Also, if you believe that many questions will arise when asking for this advice, a meeting would be the most convenient way to address all your questions.
We look forward to working with you and assisting you with any problems that you may have. We hope that this advice will help us to develop a lasting and mutually rewarding relationship with you.
