Unfair treatment in the workplace is always the cause of great frustration, especially when we’re talking about sexual harassment. Aside from frustration, it can cause a lot of harm to your overall integrity and personality. Not to mention the toll it can take on your psychological health. The more you stay silent about it, the worse it gets, so the best piece of advice I can give you is to speak up.

Of course, the point here is not to confront the people who are harassing you directly, but to vent out and be done with it. Further action needs to be taken, both for your own protection and for the protection of other people in the same workplace. In short, you need to hire a sexual harassment lawyer to represent you, to fight for your rights and interests, and to take all the action necessary so as to ensure that the harassment won’t happen again.

When you have these professionals on your side, the fight will not only be more serious and more successful, but also highly more gratifying, because of the great results that will ensue after the case is completed. So, you already know that hiring a sexual harassment lawyer is the best course of action here. Now, what you may be worried about is the actual process of hiring them.

To be more precise, you may be worried about making certain mistakes in the hiring process, which is definitely a legitimate concern. You wouldn’t be the first person to make some mistakes here and to then wind up dissatisfied with the outcomes. This is why we are here today, so we can avoid making these mistakes. 

How do you avoid them? By learning about them, of course. By learning what other people have done and then making sure not to make the same mistakes. If you are ready to learn, you’ll find some of the most common errors listed below, which will definitely help get you prepared for the hiring process.

Thinking You Don’t Need One

The single biggest mistake you can make here is assume you don’t really need a sexual harassment lawyer. You could make this assumption for two different reasons. For starters, you could wrongly assess that the situation you are in is not that serious and that involving professionals won’t lead you anywhere but towards wasting your money. This is not the right thing to do, since the professionals are the ones that will get to say if you have a case or not, so talking to them instead of assuming things is a must.

Another reason why you may decide you don’t need lawyers is because you may think you can represent yourself without anyone’s help. Even if your case seems so clear-cut that you believe there are no chances you can lose, you should still have professionals on your side. While you may know the truth behind the case, you probably don’t know the ins and outs of the law, which could lead to losing when you should win. Something that certainly won’t happen with a great lawyer on your side.

Going for the First One You Come Across Without Doing Research

Okay, once you’ve gone past thinking you can do this alone, you’ll definitely be ready to hire professionals. The only thing is, you may impulsively jump right towards hiring the first one you come across, without even taking the time to do the necessary research on them. As you may have imagined, this is a huge mistake. Hiring a sexual harassment lawyer, and you can read some more about the hiring process here, requires you to do a lot of research, so don’t jump towards making the decision.

Not Checking Licenses

Knowing what kind of research to do is also highly important here. Otherwise, you’ll be roaming in the dark, not having a clue about what it is you should check and therefore failing to check some important things. Such as, for example, the licenses.

Do you really want to work with unlicensed lawyers? When I put it so bluntly, you definitely don’t. The thing is, though, that you may wind up accidentally working with unlicensed professionals, due to not failing to check for those licenses in the first place. So, be careful here and always remember to check whether the professionals you’re hiring are properly licensed or not.

Forgetting to Check Specific Experience

Most people will remember to check experience in during the researching process, and I suppose you will too. Yet, what you may forget to do is check specific experience with similar cases. Put simply, you need the lawyer you’ll hire to have plenty of experience with sexual harassment cases instead of just general legal experience. This way, you’ll be sure that they will know what they are doing while representing you.

Ignoring Reputation

Have you found that a lot of people are complaining about a certain professional that has represented them in their case? Sexual harassment is still a serious problem, and there is no doubt that the lawyers you’re considering have had their fair share of clients before. If those clients have nothing good to say about the attorneys, you should take that seriously and not ignore the bad reputation. In short, always aim at hiring those professionals that are highly reputable and that are held in very high regard.

Choosing Someone You’re Not Free to Communicate With

The single most important thing you need from your lawyer is the possibility for clear and open communication. In other words, you want to be free to tell your story, and you want the experts to be transparent with their expectations regarding the case, as well as with the strategies they will employ while fighting for you. Choosing someone you’re not free to communicate with is definitely not a good idea, so don’t make that mistake. Instead, have interviews and always take note of communication.

Jane