Hostile Work Environment Claims

The process of scheduling your initial legal consultation begins with calling our St. Louis office (even if your employment situation has occurred elsewhere in the State of Missouri) at (314) 480-5474.  One of Hollingshead & Dudley’s intake receptionists will take down some basic contact information and ask you to briefly describe your anticipated legal needs.  That information is immediately conveyed to one of the firm’s experienced intake specialists who will timely call you to gather some additional information and advise you as to the next steps in scheduling your initial consultation.

Initial Contact: During your conversation with one of Hollingshead & Dudley’s intake specialists, you will be asked to complete some paperwork that is required by the firm prior to scheduling your initial consultation.  However, rest assured, the process of scheduling your initial consultation will not be overly tedious, and you will be able to schedule the consultation in a timely manner (typically within 48-72 hours of initially contacting the firm).

Necessary Documents/Steps: To give you a head start in Hollingshead & Dudley’s initial client intake process, before your initial consultation with one of the firm’s employment attorneys will be scheduled, your intake specialist will need to receive the following:

Consultation Fee Payment: Shortly after you speak with your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist, you will receive an email from the firm’s payment processing service (LawPay) containing an encrypted link that will allow you to securely make your $300.00 initial consultation payment. Once payment is made, your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist will receive electronic confirmation of your payment.

Signed Fee Agreement: Second, you will receive an email from Adobe DocuSign which contains Hollingshead & Dudley’s standard client consultation fee agreement.  This fee agreement is required by the firm’s malpractice insurance carrier and is strongly encouraged by the Missouri Bar. 

In short, the fee agreement simply explains that, for your $300.00 initial consultation fee, Hollingshead & Dudley has agreed:  a) for one of its employment attorneys to review/discuss only your current legal situation; b) to provide you with a telephone consultation discussing the attorney’s legal opinions about your current situation; and c) if both you and your Hollingshead & Dudley employment attorney were to jointly agree on pursuing additional legal remedies on your behalf, a new fee agreement would need to be discussed, agreed-upon, and signed. 

Once received, you will review the fee agreement, and follow Adobe DocuSign’s instructions for completing, signing, and electronically submitting the fee agreement to your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist.

Hollingshead & Dudley Client Intake Form: Finally, you will receive a second email from Adobe DocuSign requesting that you complete Hollingshead & Dudley’s initial client intake form.  You’ll note that this form requests personal information from you that you may consider to be highly confidential.  Rest assured that this information is important for Hollingshead & Dudley’s staff and employment attorneys to complete certain aspects of your case—depending on which legal option you may choose.  If you remain uncomfortable providing any requested information, simply type “WILL PROVIDE LATER,” and that information can be requested at a later time in a manner by which you are comfortable. 

In any event, please know that any information or documentation you provide to Hollingshead & Dudley is stored on the firm’s secure, encrypted server, and except as is required by law—such as for filing claims/lawsuits with federal or state governmental entities—will be maintained as strictly confidential by the firm’s staff and attorneys.  Please follow Adobe DocuSign’s instructions for filling out the intake form and electronically submitting it to your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist.

Type-Written Client Narrative: Finally, there is one last thing you will need to do prior to scheduling your initial consultation with one of Hollingshead & Dudley’s employment attorneys. Specifically, your employment attorney will need you to take some time to prepare a type-written (i.e., in Microsoft Word or another word processing software) narrative detailing the factual circumstances that led you to seek legal advice from our firm. 

Once completed, please email your type-written narrative (in Microsoft Word format) to your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist.  As our new clients often have many questions about the nature or scope of the attorney-client privilege, it is critical for you to understand that, with very few exceptions, any information you share with legal counsel (or legal counsel’s staff members)—as part of seeking legal advice—is protected by attorney-client privilege, and thus, cannot be revealed to other people.   By “with very few exceptions,” you also need to understand that rare circumstances exist whereby a client can be found to have waived attorney-client privilege. 

The most common circumstances where this can happen are:  a)  Third-Party Disclosure:  when a client shares otherwise attorney-client privileged information with a  third-parties who do not hold any privilege.  Please note that your spouse, physicians, mental health professionals, clergy, and other legal counsel also have their own privileges, so disclosure to these individuals will not typically waive attorney-client privilege.  On the other hand, there is no applicable privilege associated with disclosing otherwise protected information to your other relatives (except for your spouse), friends, co-workers, girlfriend, etc.;  and b) Future Crime/Fraud:  Disclosing to legal counsel your intention to commit a future criminal act or fraud is typically not protected by the attorney-client privilege.  However, the disclosure of prior criminal action actions, including fraud, is protected.  These are certainly not the only ways to waive attorney-client privilege, but in our experience, they are the most common.

Back to your client narrative—if you are like most of the firm’s former and current clients, you may be getting a little anxious about typing up your narrative.  For example, we frequently have clients who are worried that their narrative either won’t be the right length or will be missing important information.  As for length, typically speaking, most client narratives that we receive are somewhere between one and three single-spaced pages.  While a single paragraph narrative is not typically long enough to provide our attorneys with enough information to form a legal opinion, writing a “dissertation” is equally unhelpful because the “information overload” tends to cause important information to “get lost in the shuffle.”

As to what information you should include in your client narrative, Hollingshead & Dudley’s employment attorneys fully understand that you wouldn’t be seeking their legal advice if you fully understood every relevant fact to any potential legal claim you may have.  Rest assured that if your Hollingshead & Dudley employment attorney feels that additional facts or documentation are necessary to provide you with a proper legal opinion or advice as to your potential legal claims, your employment attorney (or your Hollingshead & Dudley intake specialist) will either follow-up with you by email or phone to obtain any missing information (prior to your initial consultation), or at your employment attorney’s discretion, he or she will simply elect to discuss the missing information with you at the onset of your initial consultation.

In short, don’t let typing up your client narrative scare you.  Not only is the narrative critical for your employment attorney to competently understanding the “nuts and bolts” or your current legal situation, but we’ve also found it immensely helpful in assisting the firm’s former and current clients with remembering important facts down the line that may have otherwise been long forgotten due to the passage of time! 

IMPORTANT REMINDER: It is very important for you to understand that Hollingshead & Dudley DOES NOT represent you in any capacity until you have completed ALL steps listed above. As a reminder and a summary, those steps are as follows: 1) make your $300.00 initial consultation payment; 2) complete/electronically submit your initial client intake form; 3) complete/sign/electronically submit Hollingshead & Dudley’s standard consultation fee agreement; and 4) submitting your type-written client narrative to your intake specialist.

Our experienced intake receptionists, intake specialists, and employment attorneys understand that you are likely experiencing a wide range of emotions right now—anxiety, frustration, anger, etc.  As a result, we make every effort to quickly schedule and conduct your initial client consultation, but that process begins with you!  If you are in need of an experienced employment attorney to advise you on any employment situation you are currently experiencing, don’t delay!  Contact Hollingshead & Dudley now at (314) 480-5474 to schedule an initial consultation with one of our firm’s experienced employment attorneys.