The following is important if you wish to contact The PALADINS Organisation in an emergency. Many of our mandates arise out of emergencies, so these instructions are important.
The methods of communicating with us are those identified on this page:
We provide an exhaustive list of instructions on that page. Please note that the listed methods are exhaustive. To recap:
A number of people seek to contact us using the 'contact us' form. That is fine; but it may take us one to three days to read such communications. Moreover because communications sent using such forms are in principle anonymous (the author could write any contact details on the form), we typically treat communications sent in that way with great caution and we may not reply. It is particularly unlikely that we will reply if we cannot independently verify the email address given by a person completing the form.
We are well aware that some people like to communicate anonymously and with complete deniability. That is all very well. But you cannot communicate with us like this. We are a professional services organisation, with our own obligations of confidentiality and secrecy towards our clients and what they know. But it is a regulatory flipside of our having that legal privilege to preserve our clients' secrets beyond judicial or other inquiry, that we know who our clients are. If you cannot accept that, it will be very difficult for us to work with you.
The method of communication most likely to give us confidence that the person communicating with us is acting in good faith is an email from a plausible email address to thepaladins2021@gmail.com. Even then we will require you to verify your identity. We are very reluctant to accept anonymous instructions. Where we do that, it would only be after substantial reflection and with those instructions being communicated via a trusted third party and with full due diligence having been undertaken by us; and without regulatory hindrance to our doing so.
If you want to know why we use Gmail as our preferred method of contact, it is because Gmail, used correctly, can provide the maximum combination of ease of use and security. Prudent people avoid email management software and prefer Gmail email use in a browser window or another arrangement of a similar kind (there are others). We are experts on both public and private aspects of Signals work (i.e. interception of electronic communications, and how to mitigate the risk of it). Protonmail is the best, which is why we offer thepaladins2021@protonmail.com but with specific injunctions on www.the-paladins.com/contact webpage about how to use it. We do not respond to emails to our Protonmail address where the prescribed approach set out on our Contact page has not been adopted; such emails are automatically deleted and/or reported as Spam without being read.
If you try to contact us using social media such as LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter, then we may or may not read your communication but we are unlikely to answer if it appears to propose a commercial diplomatic or political relationship. We simply do not accept being introduced to people in such ways, because it is too easy to create a fake identity using social media.
As a general rule we do not care to communicate with people whose identity we cannot assess. So if you think you can engage us by writing from 26356433@gmail.com (for example), please think again. We ignore things like this.
You may communicate with us in any language. If you are acting in good faith, then we will work out how to translate it into a language we understand.
Please always bear in mind that although the services we offer are on occasion distinctive, we are a law firm and therefore you should contact us as though you were contacting a law firm. You need to say who you are and what you want us to do. Then we will consider whether we can do it and, if so, how much we will charge for it (all fees being paid in advance).
Unlike most law firms, we take the view that we know our business well enough not to charge by the hour (unless a client is hiding their true goals from us) and instead to charge a flat fee, including expenses. When we quote a flat fee we will also provide percentage probabilities of different outcomes. Because we may be magicians, but we are not fortune tellers. No outcome is guaranteed except our fees; and we do not gamble on our clients' prospects, so there can be no contingency fees (even where these are permitted by law). A lawyer who gambles on his client's fortunes loses the requisite objectivity to provide his or her client with frank and fearless advice. That is why we won't do it.
If you contact us consistently with the foregoing philosophy, and you use one of the communication methods listed on www.the-paladins.com/contact webpage, then you will discover that we reply lightning-fast to a legitimate crisis. All those methods of communication are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year including public holidays.
Recall that we do not accept unsolicited telephone calls. If we do not recognise the number calling then we will not answer. This is to avoid nuisance calls.
If you trust us, you will need to put your initial details in writing. If you do not, then please use one of our competitor organisations (if you can find one).
Please review, at www.the-paladins.com/contact, the list of clients from whom we do not habitually accept instructions. They are mostly certain governments (with all respect to those governments as may be appropriate) and their proxies. If you fall into one of those categories, please do not contact us pretending to be something else. We mean you every courtesy when we say that we will spot what is going on most promptly and then we will terminate the relationship. If you do fall into one of those categories and you wish to instruct us anyway, then your best approach is to draw our attention to the fact on first contact; and explain to us why you think we should accept instructions from you nonetheless. We will then consider the matter and decide how to proceed (if at all) - in consultation with you. Should we decline to accept instructions in such circumstances, we will maintain our obligation of confidentiality in respect of the declined instructions provided that your approach was a good faith attempt to retain us for our services.
We pride ourselves upon our scrupulous integrity.
You have nothing to fear from contacting us providing your name and a description of what you want us to do. We cannot undertake illegal activities, but we are still bound by our legal obligations of confidentiality in respect of client requests that we do illegal things (that we must refuse). Hence you are safe to ask risky questions.
Moreover a government in a civilised country (where we prefer to focus our central office activities) has no legal right, as a general rule, either to surveil our communications with clients or to put to use the products of any such surveillance. There are less civilised countries, of course; but we can work with our clients to prevent improper seizure of communications between us as a professional services organisation and our clients in jurisdictions that use their intelligence gathering powers without legal scruple.
We know exactly what we are doing, and we say that due to our extraordinary experiences and background we are the best in the world at it. You must decide for yourself whether that is right.
None of the above detracts from our legal terms and conditions of engagement, set out at www.the-paladins.com/contact. Those terms and conditions bind you if you engage us or otherwise contact us, save in defamation suits or similar arising out of our news and articles website, in which cases the courts of the jurisdiction in which this website is hosted have exclusive jurisdiction.
The PALADINS. We are here to serve.