It is a fact that people are cheated, misled, and suckered daily. Although much of the fault lies with the victim’s greed, envy, and embarrassment, I believe such instances can be significantly reduced if people can access legal advice or lawyers. So often, I read in the media about how people were cheated and rue how easily they could have avoided it if they had bothered to obtain legal advice before signing, paying or transferring money.
Access to competent legal advice early would contribute significantly to reducing instances of cheating. Given the amount of fraud in Malaysia, we should also get into the habit of checking the legal propriety of whatever we are doing or asked to do. Examples are entering a transaction where the promised investment return is high and paid monthly or someone purporting to be from a law enforcement agency calling and asking to transfer a lot of money. We should also do so before entering into any agreement; it might be a sham, notwithstanding the appearance of contractual formalities.
An idea to reduce such instances of cheating is the Personal Legal Retainer service, which every law firm can offer.
For a fixed monthly fee, a person can access a lawyer or legal advice for a fixed amount of time. For example, for a monthly retainer of RM 500, a person is entitled to 45 minutes of access to a lawyer. Even though that does not sound like a lot of time, from my consultation experience, it should suffice for most cases. A competent lawyer should be able to see through the scam within that time or at least identify the red flags to put the person on alert.
The legal retainer fee is usually a pittance compared to the amount of money a person is cheated out of, which is often reported to be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Would you do it if someone told you you had to pay a small amount to avoid losing a massive amount? I think the answer is fairly obvious.
The point of a Personal Legal Retainer is that the client has legal access and an opportunity to verify the legitimacy of a transaction or request. This works like a vaccine against the virus of scams, cons, and cheats.
Ideally, a Personal Legal Retainer should be continuous and not one-off. In an environment where scams and fraud are common, it is prudent to get into the habit of checking on the legal propriety of whatever transactions, deals, or demands we enter. Other times, it is not about whether a demand or transaction is legal but whether it can be done better, more affordably or sustainably. Competent legal advice facilitates that.
In the long run, complying with the law is far cheaper than constantly breaching it. In that way, legal services function a little like insurance. With insurance, you pay a little now, so you have access to a larger sum at a crucial moment in the future. With legal advice, you pay less now to avoid a larger future loss due to not complying with the law.
The legal fee you pay now is usually far cheaper than the legal fee you have to pay later, especially when you didn’t get legal advice earlier. So getting legal advice early actually saves money, sometimes lots of money. However, many cannot appreciate it because it is not palpable, and they do not think long-term enough; naturally, they think a legal fee is a cost.
If lawyers are more expensive than they are worth, why are many wealthy people and large companies likely to have a coterie of lawyers? I’d like to believe the truly wealthy know the value of having a lawyer to consult and comply with the law: it is an investment, not a cost.
And in the long run, especially if you are doing business, it is far cheaper to have a lawyer on retainer than not.
