Most Often Asked Questions About Daniloff Law Firm (DLF):
1. Q: What kind of law do you practice?
A: DLF practices in all areas of law which can be reasonably encountered by an average individual during their lifetime. This approach limits DLF's legal practice to general litigation, criminal law, personal injury, wrongful death, medical malpractice, property damage, product liability, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy, business and contract law, family law, juvenile law, immigration law, tax law, wills and trusts, probate law, asset protection, guardianship and conservatorship.
2. Q: How can you successfully practice in all these multiple areas of law?
A: Many areas of law are intertwined and overlapping each other. Legal procedures, court proceedings, and rules of evidence are largely the same in federal and state courts and across all areas of law. Of course, such multi-discipline approach to the practice of law involves a lot of learning, digging through statutes and case law. In particularly difficult cases involving multiple areas of law, DLF employs a Temporary Assignment Group (TAG) of attorneys proficient and specializing in the required legal fields of expertise for the duration of the matter at hand. This approach provides all necessary legal experience and flexibility to resolve most complex legal matters and it allows DLF to represent and lead its clients through any legal hurdles and challenges life may throw at them.
3. Q: How many lawyers are working for DLF?
A: On a regular basis, DLF has one founding attorney, Alexander (Alex) Daniloff and two paralegals. When the case load increases or a matter becomes more complicated, Alex forms and manages a Temporary Assignment Group (TAG), described above, to resolve such pending issues. The concept of TAG was brought over from Alex's prior electrical and semiconductor process engineering field of expertise. It is proven to be a perfect working solution in the practice of law as well. So, in the essence DLF is a solo law practice with a per need and/or demand based expandability. It may change in the future if/when other attorneys with certain credentials would become permanent DLF partners.
4. Q: How can DLF represent its clients in so many areas of law?
A: Here is one true story which answers this question. An ordinary matter started out as an immigration proceeding for an American man to bring a foreign bride into the US on K1 fiancee visa. Her coming to the US resulted in a prenuptial agreement and marriage. Then later, it continued with another immigration proceeding to adjust her legal status to a permanent residency. A child was born during that marriage. Shortly thereafter, there was a need for creating a will and a family trust for the benefit of that child. Unfortunately, American husband started to drink heavily and abuse his foreign born wife and the child. Someone reported this abuse to DHS Child Protective Service, who took the child into protective custody, resulting in juvenile court shelter and dependency proceedings. The wife filed a petition for FAPA restraining order against her husband and then she filed another petition for dissolution of marriage. This matter continued in family law court over the division of marital property, alimony, child custody, support and parenting time. After their marriage was dissolved, the husband got into a bar fight and he was sued for personal injury. Shortly thereafter, he was charged with DUII for drunk driving and entered into the diversion program. Later he had financial problems and filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Now, lets count, how many lawyers would have been involved in all these legal matters? At least six! Our client had just one DLF attorney to help him to get through all these legal ordeals. Now he is completely recovered, mentally and financially. In his own words he has two guardian angels, his church pastor over his right shoulder and his trusted lawyer over his left one.
5. Q: Why your web site does not have any pictures and nice graphics?
A: Because we do not want to insult your intelligence with such cheesy web design approach and marketing tricks. Do you really want to see huge site banners with unrelated content, stock images of suits posing as lawyers and some random smiling folks posing as their happy clients? We provide important and valuable information for your consideration. We treat you with the utmost respect and we appeal to your intelligence and common sense, not to your feelings and emotions. All our site design and content is being created by us, not by some hired third party web designers and/or programmers.
6. Q: Do you really provide free legal consultations?
A: Yes, all our consultations and document reviews for prospective clients to evaluate their initial legal matters and to propose available solutions and/or course of actions are completely free of charge. DLF wants to be thorough with the evaluation of your legal matter and we do not want you to worry about the time spent on it and/or consultation fees. Our existing clients, however, enjoy completely free of charge legal consultations and client-lawyer communications regardless of the legal matter at hand, unless it involves extensive legal research, document preparation or time consuming legal analysis.
7. Q: What do you charge for your legal representation and services?
A: It depends on what legal fee and pricing model is more convenient and affordable for you as our client. DLF employs both conventional and flexible value-based fees and pricing models. Conventional legal fees model can be split into three categories: hourly rate, flat fee and contingent fee arrangements. Hourly rate means that the client pays DLF only for the actual billable hours spent working on their legal matter, excluding client-lawyer communications, postal, travel and parking expenses, other administrative and auxiliary tasks. Hourly rate model is mostly applicable to family, juvenile, criminal and immigration law matters. Flat fee is the client agreed amount paid for DLF representation and legal work on the entire client's matter at hand. Flat fee model is mostly applicable to wills and trusts, agreements, contracts, deeds and other mostly legal document preparation matters not involving client's representation and/or arbitration/litigation. Contingent fee is based on the amount of recovered damages for the client through the process of negotiation and settlement or arbitration/litigation. Contingent fee model is mostly applicable, to civil suits for damages, personal injuries, medical/dental malpractice and other similar matters, where the client may recover a substantial amount of money. Value-based fee and pricing model takes into consideration such factors as the type of a legal matter at hand, the value of its positive outcome for or detriment of its negative outcome to the client, the jurisdiction and venue of the proceedings, practical efforts and legal risks involved. Ultimately it depends on the clients which fee and pricing model to choose for DLF representation and work on their legal matters. As it was stated earlier, DLF does not charge its clients for legal consultations and client-lawyer communications regardless of legal matter at hand, unless it involves extensive legal research, document preparation or time consuming legal analysis. DLF also provides substantial discounts to its clients for the continuous representation, long term client-lawyer relationship and referrals of other potential clients to DLF. It is sufficient to say that our legal bills are much lower than you would expect from other law firms.
8. Q: Do you represent your clients for life?
A: Yes, DLF continues to represent all its existing clients even after their legal matters are resolved, unless desired otherwise or there is a conflict of interest. Upon the conclusion of the client's matter, DLF switches to a stand by mode, and always ready to immediately provide its representation and/or service should a new legal matter arise. DLF clients do not pay anything for the time that DLF spends to evaluate their new legal matters and to provide them with the initial representation. In this respect, the difference between DLF existing and prospective clients is that DLF will always provide initial legal representation and/or service to its existing clients by default, whereas DLF prospective clients can be represented only after their legal matters are evaluated and they approve and sign DLF representation agreements.