Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Legal Obligation to Respond to New Client Inquiries?

You are correct, with two caveats:

1. If you don't already have it on your site, you may want to be certain to mention your client selection criteria - and that non-selected clients will NOT always receive a response to that end; and

2. Be absolutely certain you're not turning away clients on a discriminatory basis (e.g. not taking any elderly or disabled clients, etc.)

Re: Legal Obligation to Respond to New Client Inquiries?

Amen, brother.

Spam is a fact of life. A few years back a certain organization decided to sell the email addresses of all California lawyers, and to this day I get numerous spam emails from "prospective clients" who are running the fake-check scam or one of its variants. Obviously you are under no obligation to respond to spam or scam emails.

Also, we often receive legitimate inquiries from people who are insane or otherwise undesirable as clients; you can ignore them, subject, as attorney Truitt noted, to the various discrimination laws.

Sometimes I have dealt with such people by quoting them a fee that I think they won't be able to afford, on occasion this has come back to bite me when the prospective client offered to pay!

Perhaps the best disclaimer is on the menu at your local greasy-spoon eatery: We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone.