Guide

Before the Consultation

What Your Attorney Needs You to Know Before You Walk In

Your attorney can only work with what you bring. This is how you bring the right things.

This is for:

For the Anyone approaching a first legal consultation — for divorce, custody, estate planning, business disputes, or any other legal matter — who wants to make the most of the meeting rather than spend the first half of a billable hour organizing their thoughts.

You'll produce:your Your Consultation Prep Sheet

The Name It First Experience

A first legal consultation is expensive, time-limited, and only as useful as the preparation that precedes it. Most people walk in underprepared — not because they don't care, but because they don't know what their attorney needs to know to help them. This prep sheet walks you through everything that should be on the table before you sit down: the facts, the timeline, the documents, the questions, and the outcome you're trying to achieve. What you produce is a document you bring to the meeting — and a clarity of thinking that makes every minute of that consultation more valuable. At the end, you'll have The Before the Consultation Agreement.

You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.

Sample questions

  1. What context does this professional need to do their best work for you?
  2. What outcome are you hoping for — and what would a successful consultation look like?
  3. What questions do you need answered in this consultation — the things you can't figure out without legal guidance?
  4. What is the most important thing you need to communicate in this consultation — and are you ready to say it clearly?

Research basis

Legal access research / consultation preparation effectiveness studies / client-attorney communication research

Choose your format.

Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.

Print Paperbackpersonalize

A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.

$12.99

eBook + journal

The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.

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Audiobook

We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.

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Hardcoverpersonalize

The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.

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Digital Fill + membership+membership

Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.

$6.99

Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership

Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.

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Everything packages

The Paperback Everything Package

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The Hardcover Everything Package

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The Premium Hardcover Everything Package

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Choose your pace.

The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.

Essential path

Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.

Full depth

Every question. Every scenario, every angle.

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