California Private Investigators Save Clients Time and Money
At Kinsey Investigations, we’re not always the first California private investigations firm our clients have called. We hear about it all the time, from something as simple as needing court documents served to full-on infidelity investigations in Los Angeles, many people come to us after becoming frustrated with law enforcement or another private investigator. We’ve earned our reputation as the best private investigator in Los Angeles as well as dozens of 5-Star online reviews, because we get the job done, and often within days, when others have failed over weeks or even months. The same can be true for our attorney and corporate clients. Attorneys and law offices sometimes attempt to keep all billable hours for a case in-house. They may believe that they or their staff can adequately handle any private investigation services required. And many business owners don’t understand the legal liability they’re undertaking in potentially litigious situations without the help of a private detective agency. However, wise California attorneys and business owners facing cases such as these realize they’ll save money and time by choosing to work with a licensed Los Angeles private investigations firm.
Best to Leave Private Investigations to Private Investigators
As the DIY craze of the 2010s demonstrated, bringing tasks, jobs, and labor that you used to pay someone else to do “in-house” could save you money and time and even help you discover ingenuity and creativity you didn’t know you possessed. However, this same trend also proved that sometimes, attempting to Do-It-Yourself led to disastrous results! The satirical #NailedIt hashtag became synonymous with epic fails – the birthday cupcakes that looked more like demon rats than pink bunnies, the inadequately repaired pipe blowing out to the tune of tens of $1,000s in water damage. The lessons from these cautionary tales are applicable beyond the mom-turned-pastry-chef or the newly-minted mister-fix-it. The same discernment can guide attorneys and other professionals away from the mistake of failing to hire a professional private investigator when they vitally need more details for a legal case or any potentially litigious situation.
In her article “Why Business Owners and Attorneys Should Utilize Private Investigators” published in the September/October 2023 issue of PI Magazine, M. Ettisch-Enchelmaier makes a compelling argument for leaving investigative work to the professionals. Like the overly ambitious DIY-ers of the 2010s, the attorneys, paralegals, secretaries and other business people she recalls found themselves outmatched by the investigative tasks that they or their management teams assumed they could handle without the help of a licensed private investigator.
For example, she relates an incident in which an attorney gave a P.I. an incorrect address for serving court papers:
A PI had a summons to serve for… a Janice Williams (an assumed name) in an accident case. The PI went to the address the attorney’s in-house investigator had (given) and found an individual with the same last name. The PI told Mr. Williams that he had a summons to serve (to his) wife Janice. Mr. Williams stated that he was not married, nor did he know anything whatsoever of the accident.
Ettisch-Enchelmaier also points out the significant cost savings of hiring a private investigator from the beginning of a case:
The PI found that the attorney had sent the in-house paralegal investigator to the courthouse across the street to get some records. The attorney’s billing rate was $250.00 per hour, and it took two hours to find the information needed. The PI found the information online in no time at all.
The Legal Liability of Doing Private Investigation Work Yourself
Ettisch-Enchelmaier details the many pitfalls associated with mistakes such as these, not only in terms of wasted time/money and inadequate or incorrect information/evidence, but the potential for legal liabilities as well. The truth is even private investigators are not immune to the consequences of ethically unsound techniques. Ettisch-Enchelmaier remembers an attorney’s client who “sued the opposing counsel and their investigators for invasion of privacy, claiming that the investigators had misrepresented their identity to secure information…. A California appellate court ruled that indeed there was an invasion of privacy. The investigators were also sued on the grounds that a private investigator is effectively an agent of a lawyer and his client.” As you can see, California private investigators need to be particularly wary of these liabilities as our state is well known for its extensive protections against unethical behavior by professionals or corporations infringing on private citizens.
You can read the full article (reposted with permission) here. And whether you’re an attorney, a business owner, or a private citizen, you can depend on Kinsey Investigations for all your investigation services needs.
