Finance & Legal Doing Business in Dumaguete on a week with a holiday.

I have a favorite lawyer/notary in Dumaguete for doing bills of sale and similar documents. She is friendly, not too busy, does a good job and is reasonably priced. Despite the following rant, I would go to her again if needed.

Being as there was a holiday on Tuesday, I dropped by the law office on Monday at 1:30 in the afternoon to finalize some documents. Oops, staff have gone home for the day. Early departure I suppose due to the next day being a holiday.

Okay, Tuesday is the holiday so I go back Wednesday at 1:30 and see this sign in the window.

No problem. I know how things work here. So I realize I better be early on Friday as the lawyer is going to have a busy day after being closed all week. So I show up at 10 am sharp (I have never known her to get to the office before 9:30 am so I think I have plenty of time.) Here is the new sign.

Welcome to the Philippines, it's more fun here.

Are there other lawyers? You bet. But all the reasonably priced ones were playing the same silly games this week so I ended up paying double at one of the reliable law offices. Grumble Grumble. Your mileage will vary but this may explain why it takes so long to get things done here.

 

Legal firms in many countries appear to like as many holidays as they can get - closing about 2 weeks over Xmas being an example. I guess it is because they charge so much they can afford not to work much.

 

Not all their 'thousands of $ per hour' is from Court time. They get paid 'retainers' for being 'retained'!

I would also say that many top jobs CAN be done by 'monkeys' but the 'network' ensures they go to the 'right' type of person - be that a thick private school chum, a thick relative or a thick 'donor' (there is a pattern there!).

A major reason legal services can charge so much is that many elite legal employees are also in government - governments draft bad laws full of loopholes and the legal people get paid a fortune arguing about those 'loopholes' forever and ever. Another pattern there.

 

Very cheap notary services are available upstairs in law office of the government offices building.

 

Further to my post on this, I realized that Monday is another holiday. If I had enough interest I'd go in on Monday to see what they had changed the sign to but I just won't bother.

 

If "finalizing documents" means notarizing, there is no cheap versus expensive law office. The cost is set by law at P200 per page. Of course, if the attorney/notary downloads the document etc., that amounts to legal, not notarial service.

 

That is an interesting opinion.

I base my facts on being able to take you (or anyone) to the law office in the picture and having a bill of sale for a motor vehicle, (with a value of 100K pesos or less), drafted, printed, notarized and proper consultation given about how to register the said vehicle. The price is 500 pesos for that service. It is a very fair price. I can take you to at least one alternative attorney who will match that service and price.

The second set of facts are: I can take you (or anyone) to 2 different law offices who will do exactly the same thing but the price is 1,000 pesos. There may be other various other firms out there with different fees and service but these are the ones I have personal experience with.

Yes, I know you can draft the document yourself and just go to a notary for 200 pesos. I have not had as much luck with that method as some other members. I tend to find that even one misspelled word on a document I wrote myself, or had a friend write, can ruin my whole day at the LTO. In addition, the notary may not offer up to date legal advice on what other documents are currently required by LTO. Your mileage may vary.

This thread is more to do with the "budget lawyers" who are not exactly cheap at 500 pesos but are half the price of the "full service lawyers" who (IMHO) offer nothing more than the budget lawyers when drawing up transfer papers except that they are there in the office when they need to be while the budget lawyer is out enjoying the day (at least this last week that has been so).

If people want to change the direction of the thread, fly at 'er. I've had my say and had my documents prepared and notarized so I'm done for now