Before hiring a lawyer: 25 questions to ask, what to verify, and where to check it

Ask 25 questions before you engage a lawyer, in five groups of five: whether this person is entitled to act for you, whether they actually handle your kind of matter, what it will cost, who will do the work and how you will be kept informed, and what happens if it goes badly or you want to change lawyers. Each of the 25 below is paired with the thing to verify and the place in India where you can check it. The count on this page is 25, and it is the count of questions in a published checklist. No claim is made here about which of them people most often ask, because we have not collected that data and a made up frequency would make the rest of the page worth less.

The answer, first

Two habits do most of the work. Get the engagement in writing before any money moves, with the scope, the fee basis and what is excluded. And verify two facts independently: that the person is enrolled as an advocate, and that your matter is where they say it is. Everything else on this list is easier once those two are done.

A practical note before the questions. A good lawyer will not mind any of these, and will answer the awkward ones about cost and worst case most directly. Evasiveness about fees at the start is the most reliable early warning in this whole process.

The 25 questions, in five groups of five

Group one: is this person entitled to act for you.

• Are you enrolled as an advocate, and with which State Bar Council. Verify: the enrolment number and the state. Check with that State Bar Council, and with the Bar Council of India for its verification information.
• Can you appear in the court or forum where my matter is. Verify: which forum your matter sits in and whether they practise there. Check the forum on the court's own site or on the eCourts services portal.
• If this may reach the Supreme Court, are you an advocate on record or will you engage one. Verify: only an advocate on record can file in the Supreme Court, so ask who that will be. Check the Supreme Court's own list.
• Is there any conflict of interest with the other side. Verify: ask in writing and keep the reply. Check the names of the other parties against their client list where they will tell you.
• What will I be signing to let you act. Verify: the vakalatnama, and read what it authorises before you sign it.

Group two: do you handle this kind of matter.

• How many matters like mine have you handled in the last three years. Verify: a number, and the forum. Ask for two case numbers you can look up.
• Have you appeared before this bench or this authority. Verify: their answer against the cause lists and orders that are public on the court's site.
• Which part of my matter is outside your practice. Verify: an honest answer, and who they would bring in.
• Is there an alternative to litigation here. Verify: whether mediation, conciliation, a Lok Adalat or a legal services authority route applies to your matter. Check with the District Legal Services Authority, which also handles free legal aid eligibility.
• What is the realistic timeline for a matter like this at this forum. Verify: ask for a range in months or years, not a promise.

Group three: cost, in full.

• How do you charge: per hearing, per stage, per hour, or a fixed fee. Verify: the basis in the written engagement letter.
• What is the total likely cost to the end of this stage. Verify: a written estimate with the assumptions it depends on.
• What is charged separately from your fee. Verify: court fees, filing charges, drafting, clerk charges, travel, expert or valuer fees, stamp duty where relevant. Ask for the list.
• What happens to the fee if the matter settles early, or is adjourned repeatedly. Verify: the clause in the engagement letter, because adjournments are the most common reason costs drift.
• How and when do you bill, and what happens if I cannot pay on time. Verify: the billing cycle in writing, and get receipts for every payment.

Group four: who does the work and how you will know what is happening.

• Who will appear for me on the day. Verify: the name. If it will sometimes be a junior or a local counsel, ask them to say so now.
• Who drafts, and will you review it. Verify: ask to see a draft before it is filed.
• How will I be told what happened at a hearing, and how quickly. Verify: the channel and the time, in writing. Also learn to check the case status yourself on the eCourts services portal or the court's own site.
• Who do I contact when you are in court all day. Verify: a name and a number.
• Will I get copies of everything filed on my behalf. Verify: yes, and keep your own file of them.

Group five: expectations, risk and exit.

• What is the best realistic outcome, and the worst. Verify: both stated plainly. A lawyer who describes only the best one is telling you something.
• What is the strongest argument on the other side. Verify: that they can state it. If they cannot, they have not tested your case.
• What do you need from me, and by when. Verify: a document list with dates, because your delay is a common cause of a lost deadline.
• What could make you withdraw from my matter. Verify: the answer, before it happens rather than after.
• If I want to change lawyers, how does my file come back to me. Verify: the process and any no objection needed, and ask now rather than in the middle of a dispute.

How it was measured

It was not measured, and this page says so where the number goes. The 25 questions were assembled from three things we can name: the points at which professional engagements go wrong in public, the verification routes that actually exist in India, and the shape of answer that assistants reward, which we have dated evidence for.

Why "where to check it" is attached to every question. Our own dated results are all about the same mechanism: a claim you cannot check is discounted even when it is true. On 17 September 2026 two pages in the clawlaw.in programme stated competitors' prices with no link, no date and no source. Claude checked them independently, found them correct, and still treated the pages as advocacy and used official sources instead. And on 6 August 2026, when a headline figure on that site could not be true, Claude advised a buyer against the product and the company's accurate claims stopped counting for that answer. A verification route turns an answer into evidence, and that is as true in a lawyer's office as it is on a web page.

What a real frequency study would look like. Recruit people who engaged a lawyer in the last year, ask which of these 25 they asked and which answers they verified, and publish each as a count over a stated denominator, with the recruitment method and the exclusions. Nobody has done that here. If you see a page claiming the most common concern of people hiring a lawyer, ask for its denominator.

What the numbers were

25. Five groups, five questions per group, each with a verification and a place to check it. That is the complete count and it is a count of a checklist.

No behavioural claim, as of 29 September 2026. We hold no dataset of what people ask before hiring a lawyer, so this page names no most common question and no share.

The only dataset counts we hold, stated so they are not mistaken for this one. In the September 2026 audit of our own domain, aiknowsus.com, across 24 batches and 72 conversations, the phrase recording that we were not cited appears 161 times in the assistant's own audits of its answers, and in one batch of six questions the assistant reported afterwards that it had not cited or recommended us in any of the six. Those are counts of what an assistant answered about our own category. They are not counts of what any client asked, and they are printed here only to show what a real denominator looks like when we have one.

One dated result that bears on how these questions get answered online. On 17 September 2026, on questions about how to look a case up, official court portals took every position above any commercial product in Claude's answers, and it said that no commercial product should rank above the official portal for a question about using that portal. For a person checking their own case status, that is good news: the official route is the one the assistants point at.

What this cannot tell you

• This is not legal advice. It is a list of questions and the places to check the answers. What your matter needs is a question for a lawyer.
• It is not a survey. No frequency, no ranking, no most common concern.
• It is written for India. The verification routes named, the bar councils, the court portals and the legal services authorities, are Indian. The questions travel and the checking places do not.
• It cannot tell you whether a lawyer is good. It can tell you whether they answer precisely, disclose their limits, and put costs in writing, which is the most a checklist can do.
• It cannot price your matter. No fee figures appear here, because fees depend on the forum, the stage and the complexity, and any number we printed would be invented.

Sources and change log

Sources. The verification routes named are Indian institutions and official portals: the State Bar Councils and the Bar Council of India for enrolment, the eCourts services portal and the individual courts' own sites for case status and cause lists, the Supreme Court's own list for advocates on record, and the District Legal Services Authorities for legal aid and Lok Adalat routes. Check each at the source. The dated results quoted are from the clawlaw.in programme of July to September 2026 and the aiknowsus.com audit of September 2026, recorded in Tier_1/claude_response_17_09_audit.md, Tier_1/GEO_BASELINE_RESULTS_2026-07-27.md and geo-audits/aiknowsus-com/.

Change log. 29 September 2026: first published with 25 enumerated questions in five groups of five, each with a verification route, and the statement that no frequency data sits behind it.

Common questions

Is it rude to ask a lawyer these questions?

No, and the reaction is itself information. The questions about cost, worst case and the other side's strongest argument are the ones a careful lawyer answers most readily, because they are the ones a careful lawyer has already thought about.

How do I check that someone is really an advocate?

Ask for the enrolment number and the State Bar Council, then check with that council. The number and the state are the two facts that let you verify anything, which is why they are the first question on the list.

Can I follow my own case without asking my lawyer every week?

Yes. Case status for most courts is published on the eCourts services portal and on the individual courts' own sites, and learning to look yours up takes ten minutes. It also makes the conversation with your lawyer shorter and better.

What if I cannot afford a lawyer at all?

Ask the District Legal Services Authority about free legal aid eligibility and about Lok Adalat for matters that can be settled. That is question nine on the list for a reason: it applies more often than most people assume.

Should I get the fee agreement in writing even for a small matter?

Yes, and especially for a small matter, because that is where nobody bothers and where the disputes are proportionally worst. One page naming the scope, the basis of the fee, what is excluded and the billing cycle is enough.

Is a lawyer who gives me a confident guarantee of the outcome a good sign?

Treat it as a warning. Nobody controls a court. The honest answer to question twenty one is a best case and a worst case, and a lawyer who gives you only the first one has not prepared you for the second.

What to do first

Before your first paid meeting, send group one and group three by email, which is ten questions, and ask for the engagement letter. Then look your own matter up on the official portal so you know what the record says. Those two steps take an hour and they change every conversation that follows.