"Friends" Asking For Free Work

[TheChandler]

Name-changed to avoid id.

I've been contacted 8 or 9 times in the last 6 months by friends/acquaintencies/DH's family asking for free advice/services relating to my job. Its really annoying. These requests usually come at weekends or evenings or, in the case of DH's family, on social visits ie when I'm relaxing.

Not only do I not want to give them free advice, because it inevitably involves sifting through the complex and often very personal details of their problem, it could get me into hot water professionally, as there are certain rules of engagement you should adhere to, not least for insurance purposes in case you get it wrong.

And its usually stuff they wouldn't bother paying for ie it doesn't bother them enough to actually pay for proper advice, but they obviously see me as a free source they can turn to at any time (quite often the requests come via FB). It puts me in a really embarrassing position, and I simply directed the last couple to websites where they could read material themselves which would give them the answers they wanted. I am now being called "stuck up" and a "snob" by these acquaintencies. I mean, seriously?

Any advice on ways of stopping these damned annoying requests for "freebies" coming through in the first place? Quite often I find myself being forced to be polite and give some very general comments, it wastes hours of my personal relaxation time and they inevitably don't act on it anyway.

Medical questions are easier to deflect as everybody can access a GP for free. Many people don't want to pay to see a Solicitor, and have no idea how to choose one.

I think the best way would be to give a detailed explanation as to why you can't advise with some information resources and advice about how to find a good Solicitor the first time somebody asks you for advice. Personally I would not know how to go about choosing a Solicitor, perhaps an elbow in the right direction will help some. If they persist in asking you will need to be blunt and risk offending them. If someone is adamant that you should give them free professional advice via FB then it will be impossible to avoid offending them.

Dh used to build computers for fun, you'd be amazed the number of relatives that crawled out of the woodwork of an evening to call him up. It started to become like a bloody technical helpline so he started saying he was sorry, operating systems had moved on and he was now clueless.
The relative who was the worst offender hasn't been in touch for years now. Bloody leeches the lot of em.

Call my office is a good one, or "would you like me to drop you an email with my pricing scales on them?"

"Sorry, am off duty at the moment, why dont you ring my office tomorrow and I'll book you in properly?"

Perfect - except its work that you either wouldn't take on or so complex with so little liklhood of gain that the client wouldn't pay for it. My firm turns away so much work - we only take on high volume commercial work and just don't do the small stuff, because there isn't the money in it. We also don't do court work which has a very limited chance of success. images of sneery partner holding up a file by the edges and saying why did we create a file for "this"

People would even be super friendly to me for a month or so leading up to the request. This was work that I'd normally charge about £600 for and took hours of my time and at least £100 of materials.

Yes, its generally people I know through hobbies. I've even had the following situation - friend's husband is in the car repair business. I paid fro a small dent to be fixed privately. Paid promptly. It was quite expensive. No idea if it was supposed to be "mates' rates" or not, didn't ask for that. Friend then asked me for legal work to be done over the internet late one Sunday evening. The sort of thing it would have cost a couple of thousand in fees if you got a solicitor to do (drawing up a contract). I told her it was an easy problem, one you wouldn't need a solicitor for and directed her to a website which would help her. got another dent on the car a year or so later, asked friend if husband was available to do it again, and was told huffily "No, you wouldn't do legal work for us when we asked"...

You keep saying No. And never attach 'sorry' to it. Why apologise?

Why all these excuses? 'That won't be possible. I never mix business with my personal life.' The end!

A neighbour wanted a bit of legal company advice. I had no problem with helping her out because this neighbourhood has this kind of friendship / acquaintanceship. A will do something for B. B will do something for C. C will do something for D. B will do something for D and D will do something for A. It's just life around here. Anything 'special' will produce a bottle of wine or something.

Unrelated but yesterday was our bin emptying day. I brought my own bin in. Someone (don't know who) brought next door neighbour's bin and left it in my porch. I'll take it to the right porch.

I do understand that some will find that they are being asked too much for advice or something else which almost intrudes into their lives. I'd put a stop to that. for instance, if I were a doctor and a neighbour brought a child to me because she/he couldn't be bothered to take the child to the GP ........

I have the same thing. I have spent hours late at night advising/ talking to people and the requests keep coming. As another poster said Im more than happy to help people out but when it gets into hours of free advice and eats into the small amounts of time I have with my children it gets annoying. Now I say Im happy to hear your issue and direct you to the best source of help and point out its unethical and i could be struck off for doing the work for you in an unofficial capacity ( actually true in my line of work) but no reason you can't say it too. I wouldn't dream of asking anyone for free work/ advise.

I get this too (employment lawyer), less now than when I was first qualified, probably because my friends do know that I specialise and that instructing me will cost them £££. Family members are by far the worst, I don't really do Facebook, but I've had random junior cousins who I never see or socialise with ring me up asking for weird bits of advice, generally where there is no legal answer at all - eg, if you're not happy there, have you considered working somewhere else. The other stars are people you meet socially, barbecues are particularly bad for this, who get a glint in their eye when they find out what you do ( despite all attempts at saying that I just have a boring office job) and then tell me something "they know I'll be really interested in", normally about their house sale ten years ago or a speeding offence.

I second the suggestion that you just say that this isn't your field, or, if it is, that it's too complex a matter to advise on like this, that a consultation will cost £x, or refer them to another firm, and I do also use the not mixing business and pleasure excuse. For you can be sure that the pal who doesn't get the free advice they want to hear will soon turn into the moaning non-paying client from hell.

Having said all that, three are plenty of times when I do happily spend half an hour or so talking through something with a pal. But I'd be problem solving and suggesting practical ideas, not giving legal advice.

This is a common problem if you work in IT. I'll help fix computers for immediate family and selected friends but I have had to learn to say "No" an awful lot. If I've spent all day in front of a computer at work I don't often feel like spending another three or four hours in front of someone else's PC trying to get back data of a dead hard disk.

I am an accountant and although I do my parents and PILs tax returns for free, I do nothing for anyone else.I direct them to the HMRC website.

No good advice but I do feel your pain.
Dh is a dentist, I don't think a social event has ever passed by without someone asking him something about teeth, or to do their teeth.
The worst is the people we are closest to rarely ask, it's just people we barely know whose aunty needs a new crown etc.
grrrr.

To the op - could you construct a polite email, which you copy and paste every time -
'No worries at all to help you. I can even offer you mates rates of £x. I reckon this will take up x of my time, so £x. Let me know if that's acceptable to you and we'll take it from there.'

It depends who is asking and what they are asking whether this is a problem.

My husband does a lot of free work and I've told him not to now, as he just can't help being helpful, but it ends up interfering with our weekend/time off. That has stopped- although he does still help good friends.

On the other hand, I do give advice when asked or proof-read things for students. I tend to help people who are the most respectful about things like time, and also have something to offer back- so I help a neighbour's child with her work and she offers me babysitting/would get a loaf of bread from the shop for me or whatever.

I don't get the impression that yours is reciprocal though and if you are very busy, you just can't spend time doing these things. Don't feel bad about saying no, hopefully if you say no a few times, people might stop asking.

I suppose what I'm saying is I don't always take people up on their offers of returning help- I am happy to help someone for its own sake, but it is nice if they do offer or show willing. I have neighbours who will take in parcels, take the kids out for the day (how nice is that!), do my garden, help out. The world is nice if everyone helps out a little, but you can't be expected to give expensive and potentially uninsured legal advice to all comers!

Op, did you tell your "friend" something along the lines of "I paid for the work your husband did on my car, he did not do it for free, and I would of course pay again, but no worries, I will go to a garage"

GoodKing I do wonder whether the husband actually got the money for the work on the car from the friend!

Happy A neighbour wanted a bit of legal company advice. I had no problem with helping her out because this neighbourhood has this kind of friendship / acquaintanceship. A will do something for B. B will do something for C. C will do something for D. B will do something for D and D will do something for A. It's just life around here. Anything 'special' will produce a bottle of wine or something.

Are you serious? That's quite unethical. Are you a solicitor? Because if you get it wrong and the "client" suffers loss as a result, you can end up liable and not covered by insurance. And theres quite a lot of scope for that in company law. Its hardly equivalent with putting out the bins!! Someone asked me to do their T&Cs for a new business venture, entirely free of charge. I said no - it would have been about £6000 of work!

I don't even want to recommend other solicitors/firms. I now just direct people to the Law Society. Every single person I've politely done this with who has contacted me trying to get free advice has been huffy about it afterwards, or let the "friendship" lapse, which indicates to me they were only friendly in the first place in case they needed me for free advice. Maybe I'm not snobby enough!

tigerdriver Family members are by far the worst, I don't really do Facebook, but I've had random junior cousins who I never see or socialise with ring me up asking for weird bits of advice, generally where there is no legal answer at all

Agreed family and random family hangers on are the worst. They don't even bother to be polite when asking. I've had a phone call at 9.30pm on a Sunday evening from DH's cousin that I've met once: "Heh. Can you give me legal advice. I don't want to pay for a lawyer but I want to challenge my dad's will..." I mean, whats the point anyway? They won't understand the advice, they won't act on it and they won't be able to enforce it.

I wonder if the 'snobbery' accusation is based on an idea that, as a professional who charges high fees, you see your time as more valuable than other people's, thus yourself as more important.

That would only make any sense if these people are constantly doing time-consuming favours in whatever capacity they can.

Are people in your circle and DHs family self-employed? Do they see you as an extension of a family 'firm' in which everyone mucks in and helps each other out?

Just trying to understand the thinking.

I suspect people think you can give them an off the cuff opinion and don't realise how circumscribed your advice is, so how much time it takes to say anything meaningful.

An answer about how long the work might take, likely cost if they paid someone, timescale and chances of success, might put a lot of people off. If you can estimate those things without going into detail. At least they'd get an idea of what they were actually asking you to do.

But don't mix business and pleasure / can't for insurance reasons is fine. Anyone who rants at or insults you in any medium is not a friend - cut them off!

my husband is in the building trade- astonishing how many people expect him to do a small job for free just because he has gone around to quote.

Cheeky people abound. He has no problems saying' happy to do that and I can fit it in next Tues at xx per hour. Should take x hours'

lottie Are people in your circle and DHs family self-employed? Do they see you as an extension of a family 'firm' in which everyone mucks in and helps each other out?

No, none of them are! DH's family mainly don't work or work in the public sector! I agree they seem to think if you marry them into the family, it entitles even remote members of it to free legal advice on any topic 24/7!

I suspect its the ease of presumed access. These are often "problems" so complicated that no-one in their right mind would pay a lawyer to unravel them or take them to court.

I've already got most of them blocked on FB. Going to do another cull soon.

Oh, and with FIL, its very much a case of his refusal to ongoing refusal to believe that I really am a lawyer (don't ask) and/or to "prove myself a lawyer".

People are often amazed when you want to turn away work, though.

We often get a friend of a friend ringing us up to ask for assistance in a particular area. If the person was a current client, we would do the work, but as a one off, it wouldn't be worth it.

They are usually gobsmacked that we just don't want their money.

I often help people out and they often help me out - no body takes the piss, so it's fine. It's a fair exchange of work.

However what you describe sounds very unfair. I agree with saying 'I'm not at work now but if you want me to book you a formal appointment I can. It has to go through formal channels as i could lose my job otherwise'

Can you just not respond to FB or emails? If they ring just apologise and explain you don't want to risk losing your job and what they are asking for is a large amount of work'

Surely no better way to prove yourself a real lawyer than by charging enormous fees

Aaah! We get this a lot. DP works for himself (tradesperson). I do the office stuff, accounts and suchlike. I'll get a call from Steve, for instance. "Steve who?" I ask (we know a fair few Steves). "Steve - I was at school with your DP 30 years ago. Good mate he was, haven't seen him for, well, about 30 years" Really good mate, then?? "Got a little job for him - I'll buy him a pint in exchange" Err, no you won't - DP will come and do the job and invoice you, the same as he would anyone else, actually!! Cheeky sod!

Thing is, if DP didn't have me to fend off all these long-lost "mates" , he'd be out of business, as he's too soft to say No.

And going out in the evening can be a nightmare - it always ends up with heaps of people coming up to us and asking if this, that and the other can be done. I do try to fend people off and ask them to call when we're not socialising, but it is very wearing, nonetheless.

AND - because we work from home, the phone rings at all hours of the night and day. Late at night (past midnight, sometimes), any time on a Saturday or Sunday (including Sunday lunchtime), early hours any day of the week (before 7:00am I think is very cheeky). Do people think we never need to eat or sleep, for crying out loud? And they'll often start with "Sorry to bother you on a Sunday/so early in the morning/so late at night, but ......." Well why the bloody hell are you, then??

You answer the phone because it might be a family member in an emergency situation. And if the phone has rung at a strange hour and woken you, your heart is hammering, so even if you don't answer, you can't get back to sleep.