COMMUNICATION WITH US
Thanks again for your assignment! We really look forward to making your dream come true. Before we go into details, let us say something to enable an effective and smooth processing. Since I’m Christian, I would like to use an orientation from my religion. Please work along these commandments:
Mutual Dependence
Our work is heavily dependent on your support! Depending on the assignment, you will typically have received a checklist to work off. This list is not about options / possibilities / whatever! These documents are all required and not only some of them. If you have an issue providing such document at all or do not understand what we are relating to, then exactly ask that.
Have a Stamp?
Before writing us an email, please consider whether you would handwrite a letter, envelope this letter, affix the postage, and bring it to the mailbox. If not, then please refrain from emailing. Take a break and finish your thoughts before sending!
Read before you Call
God has given you eyes to read. Use them exactly for that. My professional law requires that I put our correspondence in writing instead of phone calls. I also admit being an email junkie. Nothing irritates us more than when we send an actually highly respected client / partner a letter and this client calls us two minutes later only to ask: “You wrote us an email, what’s is it about?” If you need us to orally repeat the contents of a letter / email, then please assign us on a time-fee agreement!
Coming back to "Read before you Call": Would you really waste a stamp for that call – if you were to write a letter instead? Please give us the respect we give to you. Wanting to provide you with the best and quickest approach, we went out of our way and wrote you a letter with instructions / hints. Read them! If after reading, you still have questions, address them, and we will gladly answer them.
Communicating with us via Email
We will have pointed you to this page for one or maybe more of several reasons. You could be a new client. You may have communicated from our point of view in an extremely time-consuming manner, and we are kindly asking you to be more (time) efficient.
Please consider that we have to deal with over one hundred eMails per day, and we are really interested in giving your eMail the right and full attention! WE NEED YOUR HELP WITH THIS!
You wish to have your results quickly? Really, the same goes for us. Typically, we will be even more impatient than you are. How can we then improve our communication?
1. Use Concise Reference Lines
Especially use concise reference lines if you have several assignments ongoing, please address each in a separate eMail! We browse through all incoming eMails upon the start of the working day and sort them by their reference line for the need of urgency. As an example, you want to meet us next month but also want to comment on a draft that needs to be submitted tomorrow. If your reference line reads like “Let’s meet next month”, we will typically not get back to that eMail for a couple of days...
N.B. Do not worry about the case number – that is totally our issue. Admittedly, it's helpful but not vital.
2. Keep Threads of Thoughts Clean
What we want to communicate is that we are eMail junkies. Please do not refer to incorporation when you have a question about your immigration case – as an example. How are we to keep track of my open assignments when everything is messed up into one eMail with attachments concerning several different persons / assignments / companies / whatever? We get lost in oblivion...
Different projects mean different threads!
3. We are People too
Knowing you actually want to be polite but sometimes things go wrong. We will make a mistake, too. We intend to we establish – as a rule – how to best communicate.
4. After Buying a Readymade Company
Many people become confused about "who is who" and "what is what". I am a natural person representing two businesses: "attorney" and "Beam". Beam's business is exclusively the transfer of the company shell to you and parallel to that, providing virtual offices. Everything else will be the attorney's business. Which first name to use? I prefer my real first name, Alex(ander). Especially during acquisition, it is important for me not to confuse anybody, so I use my first name for the attorney's business and my first middle name, Konstantin, for Beam's business.
5. My Name
Especially those people from the Middle East and further eastwards are often not sure how to really politely address me. They do not understand the structure of my name. May I clarify it for you here:
Alexander Konstantin Franz Baron von Engelhardt
"Alexander" is my first name.
"Konstantin Franz" are my middle names.
"Baron von Engelhardt" is my last name.
"Baron" might ring a bell regarding aristocracy. Yes and no. Yes, this is a former aristocratic title. Since 1919, aristocracy has been abolished in Germany. In contrast to e.g. Austria, Germany allowed persons to continue carrying these titles as a part of their last name.
Are you worried about correctly addressing me? No worries, I am flexible. It is most important to be polite! I assume this is your intention anyhow.
We will Reply to your Email
Please give us a maximum of three days to reply to your email and do not call us to ask if we receive your email. Answering your call constantly only reduces our effectiveness in serving you because this takes up not only our precious time, it also stops our working momentum. It is also important for us to communicate with you in writing so that important messages are not lost. If you seriously wish to talk things through with us in general, then communicate exactly what your concern is and that you wish for a call and you will receive it.
Don’t Trash us
We are working together remotely, and you will have to send us copies. Please do not send us pictures but decent scans in PDF format. Do you crumple your original copies? Well, that is what it’s like for us when you send a jpeg where the picture shows mostly a shadow over black spots on an otherwise light background. A simple scanner already suffices fully for decent documents. It does not cost the earth to buy one – even when relocating.
Also please send us a multipage document not in scattered single files but one document / file (= PDF). You have assigned us for legal consultation and not for playing puzzles.
We are not perfect either
Though we list here many wishes and rules, we also are not faultless. You will surely catch us making a mistake or two. Go ahead and point them out to us! We will not frown on that.