Alaska Employment Law

Several times a week someone calls my office and says, “Can you answer a question?  I just want to know if I have a case.”  Often the caller, quite understandably, will add, “I don’t want to spend money on a lawyer if I don’t have a case.”  In response, I usually say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you over the phone.  I’d be happy to set up a half hour appointment, but I’d charge you $100 for it.  At the end of that, I should be able to give you a pretty good idea of whether you’ve got a decent case.”  More often than not, the caller says “No, thanks,” sounds disappointed or maybe even offended, and hangs up.  I assume some other attorney soon gets an identical call.

Here’s my explanation for my response, using a recent caller who said, “All I want to know is the statute of limitations for a sexual harassment case.”

First, conflicts of interest.  I can’t (professional ethics), or won’t (personal ethics), give advice that may be harmful to a current or recent client, or a close friend.  So, I need to know who the employer is (could be a client), and the name of the bad actor (could be a friend, or partner of a friend).  This may require a review of my index of former clients.

Next, what would be the answer to the question if I weren’t worried about conflicts?  First, I’d need to know the number of employees in the company – because the limitations period for federal discrimination claims is shorter than that for Alaska discrimination claims, but the federal law covers only employers with 15 or more regular employees.  If the number were close to 15, we’d have to explore whether the officers were employees, and whether a related company was really part of the company.  Then, I’d want to know whether the company was a tribe or a Native corporation, or affiliated with one – if it were, it might be exempt from the federal law (though maybe not from the state law). 

If the employer were a federal agency, we’d need to go into whether the person had already filed a complaint with the EEO office, and what happened to the complaint.  If the company were unionized, we’d need to discuss what the arbitration clause said (it may or may not cover discrimination claims), and whether the person had already filed a grievance, whether it’d gone to arbitration, and what the arbitrator had said.  If the company had a personnel manual or employee handbook, I’d need to look at the grievance procedure to see whether it covered discrimination claims, and find out whether the person had filed a grievance and what had happened to the grievance. 

It also matters whether the person has already filed a claim with the EEOC, or the state anti-discrimination agency. 
There’s more, but you get the idea.  Going over these few areas could easily take 15 or 20 minutes, and typically requires review of several documents - documents that the caller typically doesn’t have handy when making the phone call.

And that’s all without getting into the real questions  (which most callers can’t resist asking) - whether the person has “a good case,” what the case might be worth, how long it would take, etc. 

Given all those ins and outs, why would any careful lawyer give such advice orally, with no documentation to summarize the advice for the client (and to protect the attorney in case the person later claimed she’d gotten bad advice)?

Not to mention, why would a lawyer spend at least 20 or 30 minutes going through all that, and taking the risk of miscommunication and resulting blame, without any compensation?

There’s rarely “just one question.”