I'm taking a few hours' break and sitting facing the sea with a glass of beer, breathing the air of the Mediterranean, this time from the Greek side.
This is my time with myself to sum up and draw conclusions in the style of 3 things to keep and 3 things to improve (after all, I'm a lieutenant colonel in the reserves).
My mobile phone doesn't stop ringing, and on the line is a client asking for urgent advice on Zoom about land for which we carried out the purchase.
I find out the initial details and schedule a Zoom with him for 19:30 in the evening.
After buying the land, my client set up a planning team and began contacts with the local authority to advance the plans. After a few weeks the architect approached him and explained that the local authority's engineer was unwilling to advance the plan. The client thought her story made no sense, since before the purchase we had checked the building rights and he is not asking for significant deviations from what is permitted. He traveled and asked to meet the authority's engineer.
At the meeting the engineer repeated his refusal with various strange claims. But... two days after the meeting with the engineer he received a phone call from a local architect who asked to meet him. The local architect explained that he could help with the plans because he had the necessary connections in the relevant local authority and could even obtain additional building rights if only the client would hire his services. He also named a price that was 50% higher than what the client would pay his own team.
What do we do? he asked.
A serious dilemma, I replied. It's clear to you that whoever approached you is a kind of fixer who is somehow connected to the authority's architect, and this is a kind of payment you are required to make in order to receive what you are entitled to by law.
I understand, he replied. But I want to move forward. I don't want a process now that will take me several years to get what I'm entitled to. Remember, time = money.
And I keep pressing him - and what guarantees that he will really achieve it? What is he committing to in terms of timelines? Are there additional costs? And if he doesn't succeed?
It's not that the client had answers, but I understood that he was inclined to go for it.
And what would you do?
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית