Most lawyers, perhaps as a rite of passage, will face an inevitable dilemma in their careers. This quandary is not an ulcerous battle over right and wrong or good and evil. It's not even about money or greed. It's about family.
Some practitioners do.
Others are desperate for work. It doesn't matter if it's a real estate transaction or a problem with their estate. They expect you to solve their problem and to do it almost for free. Thomas Vesper, a small-office practitioner in West Atlantic City, N.J., cautions against the temptation to help out a relative but has failed to heed his own advice a time or two in his career. In other words, if you do a good job, it's usually not good enough, and if you do a bad job, you'll be the laughingstock of the family.