The cheek of some people...

[mickey house]

I don't blame you for being annoyed because you haven't even spoken to the guy and it's Sunday afternoon when most people want to unwind and spend time with their family.

I would refuse to talk to him, and let your husband tell him that you won't give people legal advice over a telephone, and even if they were a paying client you would only communicate with them during your work hours (Monday to Friday).

Some people are liberty takers, and I have experienced it many times.

[KeithOP]

yeah annoying BUT in no way unique or limited in scope to lawyers.

If I had fiver for every time someone has phoned, knocked on the door, asked at a party for advice on their computer/wifi problems and apparently it should always be a favour.

Just a couple of my fave examples. Hairdresser comes to the house with laptop. It's badly infected, overheating (fan clogged with dust) and slow. Whilst wife's hair was sorted, I took the laptop apart, cleaned it all out, put it back, backed up, blanked the OS, reinstalled the apps and restored the data. Put on decent malware detection and handed it back. Not so much as a thanks but there was a bill for £100 for the hair.

Electrician turns up as agreed, "hey you work with computers I cant get my invoices out?". He does an outside light whilst I fix a badly corrupted hard disk, recover his data, set him up with a backup procedure and redownload a new update to his invoicing app... which he delightedly used to produce my £250+vat bill.

It's just... people.

[tspill]

Dont know why the annoyance. A polite message back to call your office potentially as a new client. Maybe see it as an opportunity for a new client.
I worked in IT has was and am asked hundreds of times yo help people sort out PC and n/w problems. No big deal - sometimes I help, sometimes it isn't convenient.

[Feebee2]

Yes, train your DH to hand out a business card and say call during office hours.

My bookkeeper is amazing at recovering debts. The amount of "friends" she's helped for barely a thanks!

[skalexander]

I am not feeling 100%, so I do accept I may be being disproportionate. I’m also super busy at work at the moment and working lots of weekends, so I didn’t appreciate the disturbance in my increasingly rare downtime.

I think 2 things have particularly irritated me - 1) he’s never had a conversation with me but he wants something from me and 2) the fact he said he “needs” to speak to me and he “needs” me to give him some advice.

I know it’s not unique to lawyers, but I wouldn’t do it to anyone, whatever their occupation.

Hubby has told him he needs to contact me in office hours, if he wants assistance. Hopefully he won’t bother.

[sully301]

you're not being unreasonable. People just want something for nothing. Stick by your guns

[SussexFamily]

That’s a bit necky of him !
Give him your number to arrange an appointment at work!

ETA - just seen you already mentioned this!

[PerksP]

You are not being unreasonable. Some people do not understand the boundary between personal and professional lives.

Since you don't know him personally it is even more of a liberty - assuming he is expecting free advice.

If he is expecting to pay the fees then he will be happy to contact you on your office number.

[Princesa]

I think it’s the same with any job, people expect favours and don’t think about the impact it has on someone’s personal life or their wage. I’m a teacher and parents and students both ask about them staying behind for extra help or for revision. Lots of schools run revision sessions where staff aren’t paid any extra but it’s just expected. I’ll also get students going on holidays for two weeks tomorrow so please could they take the class work with them, as if I can just hand over two weeks’ worth of teaching with half an hour’s notice. Even when I used to work on the tills at Tesco, people would get annoyed when I closed off my till if there were queues and would ask me to just put their stuff through for them to save them waiting, but making me work outside of my paid hours.

[skalexander]

Originally Posted by KeithOP

yeah annoying BUT in no way unique or limited in scope to lawyers.

If I had fiver for every time someone has phoned, knocked on the door, asked at a party for advice on their computer/wifi problems and apparently it should always be a favour.

Just a couple of my fave examples. Hairdresser comes to the house with laptop. It's badly infected, overheating (fan clogged with dust) and slow. Whilst wife's hair was sorted, I took the laptop apart, cleaned it all out, put it back, backed up, blanked the OS, reinstalled the apps and restored the data. Put on decent malware detection and handed it back. Not so much as a thanks but there was a bill for £100 for the hair.

Electrician turns up as agreed, "hey you work with computers I cant get my invoices out?". He does an outside light whilst I fix a badly corrupted hard disk, recover his data, set him up with a backup procedure and redownload a new update to his invoicing app... which he delightedly used to produce my £250+vat bill.

It's just... people.

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You're much nicer than me! I do plenty of pro bono work, but only for people who come through the firm, as otherwise my insurance wouldn't cover me. I guess at least you knew those people, whereas I've never spoken to this guy, but still fancy presenting you with their full bills!