Transcript: Are We a Good Match?

You’re listening to Special Education Matters, a regular podcast about things that matter in special education. I’m your host, Michael boll, and I am the proud father of a 18 year old boy with autism. Hey, they’re ingredients to everyone. My name is Michael and I’m the Director of Operations at California Special Needs Law group, or as we typically call it CS lg, I’m here to introduce a special serious. We are running on our podcast, Special Education matters, or lead attorney, Richard isaacs, and others will be discussing the process and steps that happen when a parent asides to work with us. Some of this process is unique to working with csg, but a lot of the information you hear you can take with you and use in your own specific situation. For example, if you’re working with an advocate, I’m going to be here for the first show and Richard and others will join us for future stages. Deciding to work with a law firm can be a big step you might have, and you probably do have a lot of questions about how the entire process works.

This is the first stage in a multi stage discussion about all those sorts of things, and as you listen to this podcast and future ones, hopefully your questions will be answered. The first tag is deciding to work together. You have to decide if you wanna even work with a law firm to do that as best to have a conversation beside of working together is something that will help everybody. Here’s how it works for us here at csg. We ask you to fill out an intake form for your information that’s on our website at CSG com slash intake. We ask you a pretty detailed list of questions about your situation and about the situation for your son or daughter or guardian. That information is transferred to us and we work to set up a free consultation. This consolation does take a little bit of time during that time. We learn whether we can help you or whether we should direct you to help from somebody else. It helps us to get an understanding of the case and help share with you and what the next steps will be for a typical family. We try to get real information that you can use even if you don’t decide to work with us, for example, what the next steps might be and what the law says regarding your situation, we then, if you want, send an agreement to you. This agreement is called a retention agreement and it gets a specific description of the contract of what we offer along with the retention agreement are two additional forms. One is the authorization for representation, and the next one is the authorization to request records. The letter of representation is sent districts to let them know that you are being represented by a law firm, the records authorization letter. Let’s us request records from the district right away. We send both of those letters and districts have five business days in which to send back records that we request on your behalf as a father, myself to a son with autism, have a strong relationship with the school district and with the teachers is very important to me, going to a law firm isn’t something I would personally do lightly. It’s interesting to know though that districts are pretty used to representation, especially larger districts. Teachers, depending on their level of experience, might become a little bit stressed about it. So those are all things to consider before you decide whether or not to hire a law firm in our next show. We’re gonna talk about what happens once we get all the files we need to understand the situation and what role assessments play in that.

Thanks for listening to another diction of Special Education Matters for more information, including shows, head to our website, Cs in lcom, sasha, listen. And if you like what you hear, please consider giving us a review on itunes. Those reviews bring us lots of happiness. I’m your host, Michael boll, and we will talk again soon.