05 · About
A firm built around a signed scope
Ashcombe Street Law drafts estate plans, forms small companies, reviews contracts and assesses lease and employment disputes for people and small businesses in Cincinnati. The way it works is set out below, in the order a client meets it.
02 · Approach
How the firm works
Ashcombe Street Law takes work to a signed engagement letter rather than an open-ended retainer. Six services are published with their scope and their fee, and a client chooses one of them or asks which one fits. That choice is the whole of the sales process.
Records matter more than volume here. Each matter carries a note of what was agreed, what was advised and what was deliberately left for later, so the next conversation starts where the last one ended rather than from the beginning. The firm runs a conflict check before it reads the detail of any enquiry, and it would rather decline a matter than take it on without a scope both sides can read.
None of the six published services is billed by the hour, and no service is extended once it has started without a new written scope and a new fee agreed before the extra work begins.
03 · Principles
Three operating principles
Each one is a rule the firm can be held to, not a statement of intent.
01
Scope before fee
A fee is only meaningful next to the work it covers, so every service on this website carries its scope in plain terms. Where a scope cannot be stated in advance, such as a court appearance, the fee is quoted in writing instead of guessed.
02
Plain language, in writing
Advice a client cannot restate in their own words has not been explained. Options, trade-offs and what was decided are put in writing after each meeting, in the same language they were discussed in.
03
No promised outcome
Ashcombe Street Law does not promise a result, a settlement or a ruling, and no attorney there will predict one. It describes what a service covers, what it costs and what the client would need to decide, and stops there.
04 · Process
Four steps, enquiry to closing letter
The same four for every service on the Services page, whatever the fee.
01
The enquiry
A visitor sends the contact form or writes by email, naming a service and the question behind it.
02
The check and the reply
The names are checked for conflicts, then the firm replies with what it can do, what it would cost and what it would need.
03
The engagement letter
Scope and fee are set out in a letter and signed. No attorney-client relationship exists before that.
04
The work and the closing letter
The work is carried out, and a closing letter records what was delivered and any date still to watch.
05 · Place and limits
The courtroom, and what the firm cannot take
One stated limitation
Ashcombe Street Law is a small firm with three attorneys and a fixed weekday schedule. It does not handle criminal defense, personal injury, immigration, divorce or custody litigation, or probate administration, and it declines a matter outright when the conflict check finds an existing client on the other side. When the calendar is full, a new enquiry can wait two working days for a reply rather than one. The firm says so at the enquiry stage rather than accepting work it cannot give proper attention. A visitor facing a court date inside a week is better served by putting that date in the first line of the message.
06 · Contact
Ask whether the firm can take it on
An enquiry gets a straight answer about conflicts, capacity and timing before anything else is discussed.