Employee Survival Guide® - S6 Ep.128: Legal Consultation With Carey & Associates PC: What to Expect

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.Navigating employment disputes can feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to decide if seeking legal counsel is worth the investment. Mark pulls back the curtain on what makes a legal consultation truly valuable and why the $400 fee for a session with Carey & Associates PC delivers exceptional return on investment.The consultation process starts before you even get on the call. By submitting your detailed narrative and relevant documents like severance agreements in advance, our team thoroughly reviews your situation to maximize your time together. While officially scheduled for 30 minutes, Mark admits his tendency toward thoroughness often extends these calls to a full hour—providing comprehensive guidance during a critical decision-making period in your career.What separates these consultations from casual legal advice is the structured roadmapping approach. Mark walks through establishing clear, realistic goals beyond vague notions of "justice," which in employment law typically translates to financial compensation. He candidly discusses the "shaming" element of holding employers accountable through well-crafted affidavits while providing honest assessments of case viability. Perhaps most refreshingly, he reminds clients that doing nothing remains a valid option (often the most economical one), and that lawsuits should be considered only as a last resort—unusual perspective from someone in the legal profession.Ready to gain clarity on your employment situation? Schedule a consultation with Caren & Associates PC, where attorney-client privilege protects your conversation while you explore all available options with an experienced employment law specialist. Our goal isn't to push you toward litigation, but to provide the information you need to make confident decisions that align with your personal and professional priorities. If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Hey, it's Mark here and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about and a lot more. It's Mark and I wanted to give you a quick discussion about consultations with our office. If you called Care & Associates PC, we do do paid consultations for about $400 for roughly half an hour, but you know me, I'm long-winded and I talk a lot, so you may get more out of it because I go for an hour. That's pretty darn well worth it.

But I want you to understand when you call for consultation or you're considering a consultation with our office, we're working to try to develop new ways to convey to you the importance of what we do and just being transparent, why is a paid consultation worth it? That's the question. And I'm gonna give it to you straight and narrow. You're gonna be able to, before the consultation with me, you're going to send me your detailed

narrative of facts. You're going to send me your severance agreements, some other documents. I will attempt to read most, if not all, of the material before the call, so I'm spending more time before the call to understand the call with you to maximize your time with me. So that's my time out of the day day because I want the consultation to be informative. I want it to be far-reaching. I also want it to be productive and provide for process, provide for roadmapping, what's going to happen to give you the

the risks of what you're doing, but also explain to you the benefit of proceeding in a case potentially against your employer. I'll also warn you against the aspect of filing lawsuits and why they're like the last resort thing you ever wanna do. I'm gonna pack that conversation so heavily that you're gonna be pretty much overwhelmed

by the time you get off the phone. You'll have a clear understanding about what you want to do. And that's my job is to get you to the end point to make a decision one way or another. And it's not influencing decision which way you go. It's simply if there's no case there, I'm going to basically express to you there's not much we can do because I can't make up stuff. But usually when we have consults, we take them on. We know what we're getting into beforehand.

We take a lot of notes before, when the calls come in, and we can decipher the quality of the case before the consultation. So I got a leg up before the call so to make it more important for you. So when you're calling us for a consultation or deciding whether to do a consultation with our office More nine times that tend to be speaking directly with me

And if not because of scheduling issues, I'll have someone else on the phone who's equally as qualified as myself to do the intake because all we do here is implement law and Everyone does the same thing in terms of trying to figure out, you know, how can we help you? everyone does the same thing in terms of trying to figure out how can we help you roadmap the case, figure out a solution. And most important, I can't underestimate this, to establish what is your goal if you start this case? Like you have to have that goal in mind ahead of time. And the easiest example is people want more severance pay

because it's not enough. So establishing what your goal, think about that before the consultation, we'll go through that and ask you specifically, sometimes just simply asking the question forces people to really reconcile what is my goal. I will dispense with an easy one of justice. You need to understand, yes,

we have a American justice system. The employment area is covered by the courts. Justice is equivalent to money in terms of what happens in these cases. So I need you to understand that the best that we can do, and our system's not perfect, and I've had many judges say the same thing in front of my clients

in private caucus sessions with mediation. An apology is helpful, but money is what does it. And typically that's what the goal should be, is to put you into a transaction which you benefit from so you can have money to land in the next job and your economics are not screwed up because you lost income. So it's income replacement. So the goal is really important. There is other implicit goals

in the process of pursuing employers. I call the shaming goal, where you basically shame your employer because your affidavit that you hear me talk about so much. The affidavit is really where we call out the employer through your narrative, your words. We obviously choreograph that in such a way that demonstrates the legality of the employer's behavior or illegality of that and shames the bad actors and what they did. And so shaming is part of the process. Or you want to put it this way, having your employer reconcile what they did against you.

Whatever way you want to phrase it, I don't really care. But I'm going to pack that consultation in a way that moves you, moves you from point A to Z, and you know how to do it. And that's what I believe. I don't know what other people do, but you know, if that's what I think consultations should be. So we're thinking about you, we're thinking about the consultation process and why you should do it. If you're considering it with our office, we're going to make it worthwhile for you. It is a confidential discussion.

You're talking with an attorney, it's attorney-client privilege. However, we don't retain you. We're not your attorneys until you actually engage us in a written agreement. So you just need to understand that. But the conversation you're having is, in fact, privileged. We have no reason to tell anybody else about it, but it's designed just for you. And if your spouse wants to show up,

their spouse can participate in that. If you have a family friend who's a lawyer, the lawyer can participate in the. If you have a family friend who's a lawyer, the lawyer can participate in the conversation if you need to. But outside of that group, the conversation's between just us and yourself because of the level of the attorney-client privilege

only flows so far. So again, a very impactful conversation designed to allow you to understand choices of options. And remember that first option you can always choose is do nothing. It's the cheapest. Consider that. I'll actually remind you of that. And the last option of filing lawsuits, I'll tell you, stay away from it. You don't want to pay legal fees to lawyers. Yeah, you heard from me. I'm a lawyer, but it's something you need to hear because most lawyers don't tell people that it's just you need to hear because most lawyers don't tell people that. It's just, our job ethically is to put ourselves

in your shoes to make decisions for you if you had understood the law, that's what lawyers do. So one of the aspects is don't spend money on legal fees if you don't have to. You might want to spend them on college education or your mortgage, but working in a very conservative decision-making process is really what I guess I'm driving

into the consultative process with you. In that half hour to hour long conversation I'm having with you, that's what the consultation means to me and what I want it to mean to you. So walk into it prepared, walk into it providing documents and information to us, and we will provide the feedback you're looking for to allow you to make the decisions one way or the other, okay? Just a few thoughts about consultations with our office. Enjoy, take care. If you like the Employee Survival Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a

review. We try really hard to produce information to you that's informative, that's timely, that's timely, that you can actually use and solve problems on your own and at your employment. So if you'd like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right? I'll keep it up. I'll keep the standards up. I'll keep the information flowing at you.

If you'd like to send me an email and ask me a question, I'll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to mcaru at capclaw.com.