Questions and answers

Read the six service descriptions first; each one states the question it answers and the question it does not. If two look equally close, that is what the introductory consultation is for – it carries no charge, and it ends either with a scope worth agreeing or with a plain statement that none of the six fits. Nobody is asked to choose correctly before speaking to anyone.

The introductory consultation carries no charge and that is fixed. Document review is $450, a residential property closing $1,850 and a second-opinion file review $600, each a flat fee for the scope stated beside it. Will and estate documents start at $1,200 and small business formation at $950, and the figure is settled in writing after the introductory consultation. No fee is ever added afterwards for work that was not agreed first.

It suits anyone with a legal question that has not yet been framed as a task, including someone who is only deciding whether to instruct a law firm at all. It runs about forty-five minutes, in the rooms or by telephone, and nothing needs to be prepared. What it will not do is answer the question itself, or say how a dispute would end; that belongs to whichever of the five paid services fits.

Yes. The contact form has a message field, and naming a preference there is enough. The practice is small, so the attorney who takes the first conversation is usually the one who does the work, but availability is confirmed in the reply rather than assumed. If the preference cannot be met, that is said plainly and the alternative is named before anything is agreed.

No. Every Book action on this site opens the contact page, and the contact form sends a written enquiry – nothing on these pages reserves a time or holds one open. A time is agreed afterwards, in a reply, once the practice has read what was sent and checked whether the question is one of the six services at all.

Enquiries are read during office hours – Monday to Friday, nine to six, with Saturday by confirmed arrangement – so a message sent on Sunday is read on Monday. The reply comes by email to the address given on the form, from the person who would take the first conversation. If a telephone number was left, that is used instead where it is quicker.

By replying to the email thread the arrangement was made in, or by sending a fresh message through the contact form. Either reaches the same place. There is no cancellation charge on an introductory consultation, and on agreed work the position is whatever the written scope says, which is why the scope says it before the work begins rather than afterwards.

Nothing, for the introductory consultation. It is easier to hear the question in plain words than to read a folder about it. For paid work the practice asks for specific papers once the scope is set, and it asks for them by name, in copies rather than originals. Anything confidential is exchanged through an agreed route rather than an ordinary website message or an email attachment.

Social security numbers, financial account details, scanned identity documents, and anything held under a confidentiality obligation to somebody else. The contact form asks for none of them and the practice will not ask for them by that route either. A message describing the question in general terms is enough to begin, and sending it does not by itself make Marchmont Vale Law anyone’s attorney — that begins only when a written scope is agreed and signed.

On the Privacy page, which sets out exactly what the contact form collects – a name, an email address, an optional telephone number, the service selected and the message – and what the subscribe form collects, which is an email address and nothing else. It also says how long each is kept and how to ask for either to be removed.